Trivia: Rough-hewn American leading man Richard Boone was thrust into the cold cruel world when he was expelled from Stanford University, for a minor infraction. He worked as a oil-field laborer, boxer, painter and free-lance writer before settling upon acting as a profession. After serving in World War II, Boone used his GI Bill to finance his theatrical training at the Actors' Studio, making his belated Broadway debut at age 31, playing Jason in Judith Anderson's production of Medea. Signed to a 20th Century-Fox contract in 1951, Boone was given good billing in his first feature, Halls of Montezuma; among his Fox assignments was the brief but telling role of Pontius Pilate in The Robe (1953). Boone launched the TV-star phase of his career in the weekly semi-anthology Medic, playing Dr. Konrad Steiner. From 1957 through 1963, Boone portrayed Paladin, erudite western soldier of fortune, on the popular western series Have Gun, Will Travel. He directed several episodes of this series. Boone tackled a daring TV assignment in 1963, when in collaboration with playwright Clifford Odets, he appeared in the TV anthology series The Richard Boone Show. Unique among filmed dramatic programs, Boone's series featured a cast of eleven regulars (including Harry Morgan, Robert Blake, Jeanette Nolan, Bethel Leslie and Boone himself), who appeared in repertory, essaying different parts of varying sizes each week. The Richard Boone Show failed to catch on, and Boone went back to films. In 1972 he starred in another western series, this one produced by his old friend Jack Webb: Hec Ramsey, the saga of an old-fashioned sheriff coping with an increasingly industrialized West. In the last year of his life, Boone was appointed Florida's cultural ambassador. Richard Boone died at age 65 of throat cancer.

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from the '50s; he often played military men, sheriffs, or policemen.

Trivia: The son of actors Harry Carey and Olive Golden, Harry Carey Jr. never answered to "Harry" or "Junior"; to his friends, family and film buffs, he was always "Dobe" Carey. Raised on his father's California ranch, the younger Carey spent his first six adult years in the Navy. While it is commonly assumed that he made his film debut under the direction of his dad's longtime friend John Ford, Carey in fact was first seen in a fleeting bit in 1946's Rolling Home, directed by William Berke. It wasn't until his third film, Three Godfathers (dedicated to the memory of his father) that Carey worked with Ford. Honoring his promise to Harry Sr. that he'd "look after" Dobe, Ford saw to it that the younger Carey was given a starring assignment (along with another of the director's proteges, Ben Johnson), in Wagonmaster (1950). Though he handled this assignment nicely, exuding an appealing earnest boyishness, Carey wasn't quite ready for stardom so far as the Hollywood "higher-ups" were concerned, so he settled for supporting roles, mostly in westerns. John Ford continued to use Carey whenever possible; in 1955's The Long Gray Line, the actor has a few brief scenes as West Point undergraduate Dwight D. Eisenhower. Carey was also featured on the "Spin and Marty" segments of Walt Disney's daily TVer The Mickey Mouse Club (1955-59). In later years, Carey's weather-beaten face was seen in choice character assignments in films ranging from The Whales of August (1987) to Back to the Future III (1990); he was also hired by such John Ford aficionados as Peter Bogdanovich, who cast Carey as an old wrangler named Dobie (what else?) in Nickelodeon (1976), and as an ageing bike-gang member named Red in Mask (1985). In 1994, Harry Carey Jr. published his autobiography, Company of Heroes. Carey died of natural causes at age 91 in late December 2012.

Trivia: Following Korean War service as a paratrooper, Hal Needham drifted into movies as a bit player. His remarkable physical dexterity and willingness to "take it" enabled him to rise up the professional ladder from stuntman to stunt coordinator to 2nd unit director. A longtime chum of Burt Reynolds (himself an ex-stuntman), Needham was given his first chance to direct a theatrical feature with Reynolds' Smokey and the Bandit (1977); the film was a huge hit, assuring Needham future assignments as both director and scriptwriter. The 1980 Reynolds vehicle Hooper was widely recognized as Reynolds and Needham's tribute to the entire fraternity of Hollywood stunters. For television, Needham directed several installments 1989 Burt Reynolds adventure series B. L. Stryker (1989) and the pilot for the syndicated adventure semi-weekly Bandit (1994); there was also a 1992 animated cartoon series titled Stunt Dawgs, wherein the central character was named Needham. Founder of the troubleshooting aggregation Stunts Unlimited (which also served as the title of a 1980 TV movie), Needham has also served as chairman for another movie-industry organization, Camera Platforms International. In addition, Hal Needham is owner of the "world's fastest car," the Budweiser Rocket, now on display at the Smithsonian Institute. Needham was awarded an Honorary Oscar in 2012 for his innovations, just one year before he died at age 82.

Trivia: Despite his less than masculine moniker, Carol Henry was a tough-looking hombre who appeared in countless B-Westerns and quite a few serials of the 1940s. Often cast as a henchman, Henry could also play stage drivers, townsmen, or even, as in Three Desperate Men (1951), a lawman. When B-Westerns bit the dust in the early '50s, Henry went into television, where he appeared on such popular shows as The Cisco Kid, Wild Bill Hickock, Wagon Train, and Cimarron Strip. He retired in the late 1960s.

Trivia: Stage actor Andrew Prine was first seen on-screen as James Keller, older brother to Helen, in 1962's The Miracle Worker. The gangling, athletic Prine went on to specialize in frontier adventures and military dramas--sometimes a combination of both, as in the made-for-cable epic Gettysburg (1993). Prine's first starring TV role was as rodeo rider Andy Guthrie in the 1962 weekly Wide Country. Andrew Prine's subsequent TV-series assignments included homesteader Timothy Pride in The Road West (1966), bibulous network sales chief Dan Costello in W.E.B. (1978), and talk-show personality Reed Ellis in Room for Two (1992).

Trivia: Character actor Hal Smith (born Harold John Smith) cut his acting teeth in various touring road companies. Before serving in the Air Force during World War II, he had amassed impressive credits as a band singer, radio disc jockey, and writer. In the postwar years, he decided to try his luck in Hollywood, although holding down a real-estate job so he'd have a financial cushion between acting jobs. His first recurring TV role was on the vintage sitcom I Married Joan (1952-53). (It was a different actor who appeared in the bit role of Anne Baxter's suitor in O. Henry's Full House [1952].) He spent most of the '50s playing guest stints and providing voice-overs for cartoon characters, and was briefly Hal the Bartender, a commercial spokesman for a popular brand of beer. In 1960, he was signed for the semi-regular role of town drunk Otis Campbell on The Andy Griffith Show, essaying this hilarious (if politically incorrect) characterization with expertise, although he often insisted, "I don't think I've ever really been drunk in my whole life." Since Otis did not appear in every Griffith episode, Smith had time aplenty to free-lance, playing such film roles as a drunken Santa in Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960) and an effeminate Roman emperor in The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962), and supplying voices for such cartoon programs as Davey and Goliath and The Flintstones. By 1962, he was making 50,000 dollars per year, a tidy sum in those days. During the 1970s and '80s, Smith was most closely associated with Disney, replacing the late Vance "Pinto" Colvig as the voice of Goofy and providing voices for series ranging from Winnie the Pooh and Friends to Ducktales. Smith died in 1994.