Trivia: American actor James Arness had an unremarkable Minneapolis childhood, but his wartime experiences shattered that normality - literally. During the battle of Anzio, Arness' right leg was peppered with machine gun bullets, and when the bones were set they didn't mend properly, leaving him with a slight but permanent limp. The trauma of the experience mellowed into aimlessness after the war. Arness became a "beach bum," lived out of his car, and worked intermittently as a salesman and carpenter. Acting was treated equally lackadaisically, but by 1947 Arness had managed to break into Hollywood on the basis of his rugged good looks and his 6'6" frame. Few of his screen roles were memorable, though one has become an object of cult worship: Arness was cast as the menacingly glowing space alien, described by one character as "an intellectual carrot," in The Thing (1951). For a time it looked as though Arness would continue to flounder in supporting roles, while his younger brother, actor Peter Graves, seemed destined for stardom. John Wayne took a liking to Arness when the latter was cast in Wayne's Big Jim McLain (1953). Wayne took it upon himself to line up work for Arness, becoming one of the withdrawn young actor's few friends. In 1955, Wayne was offered the role of Matt Dillon in the TV version of the popular radio series Gunsmoke. Wayne turned it down but recommended that Arness be cast and even went so far as to introduce him to the nation's viewers in a specially filmed prologue to the first Gunsmoke episode. Truth be told, Arness wasn't any keener than Wayne to be tied down to a weekly series, and as each season ended he'd make noises indicating he planned to leave. This game went on for each of the 20 seasons that Gunsmoke was on the air, the annual result being a bigger salary for Arness, more creative control over the program (it was being produced by his own company within a few years) and a sizeable chunk of the profits and residuals. When Gunsmoke finally left the air in 1975, Arness was the only one of the original four principals (including Amanda Blake, Milburn Stone and Dennis Weaver) still appearing on the series. Arness made plans to take it easy after his two-decade Gunsmoke hitch, but was lured back to the tube for a one-shot TV movie, The Macahans (1976). This evolved into the six-hour miniseries How the West Was Won (1977) which in turn led to a single-season weekly series in 1978. All these incarnations starred Arness, back in the saddle as Zeb Macahan. The actor tried to alter his sagebrush image in a 1981 modern-day cop series, McClain's Law -- which being set in the southwest permitted Arness to ride a horse or two. It appeared, however that James Arness would always be Matt Dillon in the hearts and minds of fans, thus Arness obliged his still-faithful public with three Gunsmoke TV movies, the last one (Gunsmoke: The Last Apache) released in 1992. In between these assignments, James Arness starred in a 1988 TV-movie remake of the 1948 western film classic Red River, in which he filled the role previously played by his friend and mentor John Wayne.

Trivia: Milburn Stone got his start in vaudeville as one-half of the song 'n' snappy patter team of Stone and Strain. He worked with several touring theatrical troupes before settling down in Hollywood in 1935, where he played everything from bits to full leads in the B-picture product ground out by such studios as Mascot and Monogram. One of his few appearances in an A-picture was his uncredited but memorable turn as Stephen A. Douglas in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln. During this period, he was also a regular in the low-budget but popular Tailspin Tommy series. He spent the 1940s at Universal in a vast array of character parts, at one point being cast in a leading role only because he physically matched the actor in the film's stock-footage scenes! Full stardom would elude Stone until 1955, when he was cast as the irascible Doc Adams in Gunsmoke. Milburn Stone went on to win an Emmy for this colorful characterization, retiring from the series in 1972 due to ill health.

Trivia: Following her training in regional theatre and radio, red-headed actress Amanda Blake was signed by MGM in 1949, where she was briefly groomed for stardom. Among her MGM assignments was 1950's Stars in My Crown, in which she was cast for the first time opposite James Arness. Film fame eluded Amanda, especially after her sizeable role in the 1954 version of A Star is Born was almost completely excised from the release print. By 1955, she had to make do with appearances in such epics as the Bowery Boys' High Society. Amanda's fortunes took a turn for the better later in 1955, when she won the role of Miss Kitty, the euphemistically yclept "hostess" of the Long Branch Saloon on the TV western Gunsmoke, which starred James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon. She remained with Gunsmoke until its next-to-last season in 1974. After Gunsmoke, Amanda went into semi-retirement save for a handful of film projects like the made-for-TV Betrayal (1974), the theatrical releases The Boost (1988) and B.O.R.N (1989), and the 1987 reunion project Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge. Amanda Blake died in 1989 at the age of sixty.

Trivia: Lead actress, onscreen from the '50s.

Trivia: Starting out in musicals and comedies, leather-lunged character actor Henry Jones had developed into a versatile dramatic actor by the 1950s, though he never abandoned his willingness to make people laugh. Jones scored his first cinematic bullseye when he re-created his Broadway role as the malevolent handyman Leroy in the 1956 cinemadaptation of Maxwell Anderson's The Bad Seed (1956). Refusing to be typed, Jones followed this triumph with a brace of quietly comic roles in Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It (1956) and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter. He returned to Broadway in 1958, winning the Tony and New York Drama Critics' awards for his performance in Sunrise at Campobello. Since that time, Jones has flourished in films, often making big impressions in the tiniest of roles: the coroner in Vertigo (1958), the bicycle salesman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), the hotel night clerk in Dick Tracy (1990) and so on. From 1963's Channing onward, Jones has been a regular on several weekly TV series, most notably as Judge Jonathan Dexter in Phyllis (1975-76) and B. Riley Wicker on the nighttime serial Falcon Crest (1985-86). Henry Jones is the father of actress Jocelyn Jones.

Trivia: Birmingham-born R.G. Armstrong attended the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where he was active with the Carolina Playmakers. On the New York stage since the 1940s, Armstrong is best remembered for creating the role of Big Daddy in the original 1955 Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In film since 1957, Armstrong appeared in more than his share of westerns, usually as an able-bodied sheriff or thick-necked land baron. A frequent visitor to television, R. G. Armstrong was a regular on the 1967 adventure series T.H.E. Cat.

Trivia: Pernell Roberts worked such odd jobs as butcher, forest ranger and tombstone-maker while studying acting and singing and scouting around for off-Broadway jobs. Roberts' film debut, in a characteristic Deep Brooder role, was in 1958's Desire Under the Elms. From 1959 through 1966, Roberts co-starred as black-clad, taciturn Adam Cartwright on Bonanza. "Aloof, rebellious and outspoken" was how Bonanza producer David Dotort summed up Roberts, who fought tooth and nail over every real or imagined challenge to his integrity (his biggest beef was that he had to call Lorne Greene "Pa" rather than "Father"). Fed up with what he perceived as the series' declining quality, Roberts left Bonanza in 1966; it was explained to fans that "Adam" had left to study at a European university. Free of his TV series commitment, Roberts returned to his first love, the stage--and also divested himself of the toupee he'd been forced to wear as Adam. The actor played the straw-hat circuit in such musicals as Camelot and The King and I, all the while accepting film and TV roles that came up to his standards. Unfortunately, his stubbornness and standoffishness left a sour taste with co-workers and fans alike, and Roberts was unable to soar to the artistic heights to which he aspired. After years of declaring that he'd never again return to the grind of weekly television, Roberts accepted the role of Dr. "Trapper" John McIntyre, chief of surgery at San Francisco memorial hospital, in the seven-season (1979-86) M*A*S*H spin-off Trapper John MD. In 1991 Pernell Roberts assumed the hosting duties of the TV anthology FBI: The Untold Stories.

Trivia: The original leader of the original "Dead End Kids," American actor Billy Halop came from a theatrical family; his mother was a dancer and his sister Florence was a busy radio actress. After several years as a well-paid radio juvenile, Billy was cast as Tommy Gordon in the Broadway production of Sidney Kingsley's Dead End (1935), where thanks to his previous credentials he was accorded star status. Travelling to Hollywood with the rest of the Dead End Kids when Samuel Goldwyn produced a film version of the play in 1937, Billy had no trouble lining up important roles, specializing in tough kids, bullies and reform school inmates in such major pictures as Dust be My Destiny (1939) and Tom Brown's School Days (1940). A long-standing rivalry between Halop and fellow Dead-Ender Leo Gorcey (both actors wanted to be the leader of the gang) led to Billy's breakaway from the Dead End Kids and its offspring groups, the East Side Kids and the Bowery Boys, though Halop briefly starred in Universal's "Little Tough Guys" films. After serving in World War II, Halop found that he'd grown too old to be effective in the roles that had brought him fame; at one point he was reduced to starring in a cheap "East Side Kids" imitation at PRC studios, Gas House Kids (1946). Diminishing film work, marital difficulties and a drinking problem eventually ate away at Halop's show business career. In 1960, he married a multiple sclerosis victim, and the nursing skills he learned while taking care of his wife led him to steady work as a registered nurse at St. John's Hospital in Malibu. For the rest of his life, Billy Halop supplemented his nursing income with small TV and movie roles, gaining a measure of latter-day prominence as Archie Bunker's cab-driving pal Bert Munson on the '70s TV series All in the Family.

Trivia: American actor Kerry MacLane was still in his early teens when he began playing leads on stage, television, commercials, and in feature films. In addition to acting, he was also a commercial hand model and did voice-overs.

Trivia: It was while attending Colorado College that American actor/singer Ken Curtis discovered his talent for writing music. After an artistic apprenticeship on the staff of the NBC radio network's music department in the early '30s, Curtis was hired as male vocalist for the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, then went on to work for bandleader Shep Fields. Preferring country-western to swing, Curtis joined the Sons of the Pioneers singing group in the 1940s, and in this capacity appeared in several western films. Columbia Pictures felt that Curtis had star potential, and gave the singer his own series of westerns in 1945, but Ken seemed better suited to supporting roles. He worked a lot for director John Ford in the '40s and '50s, as both singer and actor, before earning starring status again on the 1961 TV adventure series Ripcord. That was the last we saw of the handsome, clean-shaven Ken Curtis; the Ken Curtis that most western fans are familiar with is the scraggly rustic deputy Festus Haggen on the long-running TV Western Gunsmoke. Ken was hired to replace Dennis Weaver (who'd played deputy Chester Good) in 1964, and remained with Gunsmoke until the series ended its 20-year run in 1975. After that, Ken Curtis retired to his spread in Fresno, California, stepping back into the spotlight on occasion for guest appearances at western-movie conventions.