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 Wayne took it upon himself to line up work for Arness, becoming one of the withdrawn young actor's few friends.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: A track star at the University of Oklahoma, Dennis Weaver went on to serve as a Navy Pilot during World War II. After failing to make the 1948 U.S. decathalon Olympic team, Weaver accepted the invitation of his college chum Lonny Chapman to give the New York theatre world a try. He understudied Chapman as "Turk Fisher" in the Broadway production Come Back Little Sheba, eventually taking over the role in the national company. Deciding that acting was to his liking, Weaver enrolled at the Actors' Studio, supporting his family by selling vacuum cleaners, tricycles and ladies' hosiery. On the recommendation of his Actors' Studio classmate Shelley Winters, Weaver was signed to a contract at Universal studios in 1952, where he made his film debut in The Redhead From Wyoming (1952). Though his acting work increased steadily over the next three years, he still had to take odd jobs to make ends meet. He was making a delivery for the florist's job where he worked when he was informed that he'd won the role of deputy Chester Goode on the TV adult western Gunsmoke. So as not to be continually upstaged by his co-star James Arness (who, at 6'7", was five inches taller than the gangly Weaver), he adopted a limp for his character--a limp which, along with Chester's reedy signature line "Mis-ter Diillon" and the deputy's infamously bad coffee, brought Weaver fame, adulation and a 1959 Emmy Award. Though proud of his work on Gunsmoke--"I don't think any less seriously of Chester than I did about King Lear in college"--Weaver began feeling trapped by Chester sometime around the series' fifth season. Having already proven his versatility in his film work (notably his portrayal of the neurotic motel night clerk in Orson Welles' Touch of Evil [1958]), Weaver saw to it that the Gunsmoke producers permitted him to accept as many "outside" TV assignments as his schedule would allow. Twice during his run as Chester, Weaver quit the series to pursue other projects. He left Gunsmoke permanently in 1964, whereupon he was starred in the one-season "dramedy" series Kentucky Jones (1965). In 1967, he headlined a somewhat more successful weekly, Gentle Ben (1967-69) in which he and everyone else in the cast played second fiddle to a trained bear (commenting upon his relationship with his "co-star", Weaver replied "I liked him, but it was a cold relationship...Ben didn't know me from a bag of doughnuts.") The most successful of Weaver's post-Gunsmoke TV series was McCloud, in which, from 1970 to 1977, he played deputy marshal Sam McCloud, a New Mexico lawman transplanted to the Big Apple. In addition to his series work, Weaver has starred in several made-for-TV movies over the past 25 years, the most famous of which was the Steven Spielberg-directed nailbiter Duel (1971). Dennis Weaver is the father of actor Robby Weaver, who co-starred with his dad on the 1980 TV series Stone.

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.

Trivia: Charming, handsome, and easy-going, lead actor and megastar Burt Reynolds entered the world on February 11, 1936. He attended Florida State University on a football scholarship, and became an all-star Southern Conference halfback, but - faced with a knee injury and a debilitating car accident - switched gears from athletics to college drama. In 1955, he dropped out of college and traveled to New York, in search of stage work, but only turned up occasional bit parts on television, and for two years he had to support himself as a dishwasher and bouncer.In 1957, Reynolds's ship came in when he appeared in a New York City Center revival of Mister Roberts; shortly thereafter, he signed a television contract. He sustained regular roles in the series Riverboat, Gunsmoke, Hawk, and Dan August. Although he appeared in numerous films in the 1960s, he failed to make a significant impression. In the early '70s, his popularity began to increase, in part due to his witty appearances on daytime TV talk shows. His breakthrough film, Deliverance (1972), established him as both a screen icon and formidable actor. That same year, Reynolds became a major sex symbol when he posed as the first nude male centerfold in the April edition of Cosmopolitan. He went on to become the biggest box-office attraction in America for several years - the centerpiece of films such as Hustle (1975), Smokey and the Bandit (1977) (as well as its two sequels), The End (1978), Starting Over (1979), The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), and The Man Who Loved Women (1983). However, by the mid-'80s, his heyday ended, largely thanks to his propensity for making dumb-dumb bumper-smashing road comedies with guy pals such as Hal Needham (Stroker Ace, The Cannonball Run 2). Reynolds's later cinematic efforts (such as the dismal Malone (1987)) failed to generate any box office sizzle, aside from a sweet and low-key turn as an aging career criminal in Bill Forsyth's Breaking In (1989). Taking this as a cue, Reynolds transitioned to the small screen, and starred in the popular sitcom Evening Shade, for which he won an Emmy. He also directed several films, created the hit Win, Lose or Draw game show with friend Bert Convy, and established the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater in Florida. In the mid-'90s, Reynolds ignited a comeback that began with his role as a drunken, right-wing congressman in Andrew Bergman's Striptease (1996). Although the film itself suffered from critical pans and bombed out at the box office, the actor won raves for his performance, with many critics citing his comic interpretation of the role as one of the film's key strengths. His luck continued the following year, when Paul Thomas Anderson cast him as porn director Jack Horner in his acclaimed Boogie Nights. Reynolds would go on to earn a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, and between the twin triumphs of Striptease and Nights, critics read the resurgence as the beginning of a second wind in the Deliverance star's career, ala John Travolta's turnaround in 1994's Pulp Fiction. But all was not completely well chez Burt. A nasty conflict marred his interaction with Paul Thomas Anderson just prior to the release of Boogie Nights. It began with Reynolds's disastrous private screening of Nights; he purportedly loathed the picture so much that he phoned his agent after the screening and fired him. When the Anderson film hit cinemas and became a success d'estime, Reynolds rewrote his opinion of the film and agreed to follow Anderson on a tour endorsing the effort, but Reynolds understandably grew peeved when Anderson refused to let him speak publicly. Reynolds grew so infuriated, in fact, that he refused to play a role in Anderson's tertiary cinematic effort, 1999's Magnolia. Reynolds's went on to appear in a big screen adatpation of The Dukes of Hazzard as Boss Hogg, and later returned to drama with a supporting performance in the musical drama Broken Bridges; a low-key tale of a fading country music star that served as a feature debut for real-life country music singer Toby Kieth. Over the coming years, Reynolds would also enjoy occasional appearances on shows like My Name is Earl and Burn Notice.

Trivia: A New Mexican of Native American extraction, actor Glenn Strange held down several rough-and-tumble jobs, from deputy sheriff to rodeo rider, before settling on a singing career. He made his radio bow on Los Angeles station KNX (the CBS-owned affiliate) as a member of the Arizona Wranglers singing group. Thanks to his husky physique and plug-ugly features, Strange had no trouble finding work as a stuntman/villain in western films and serials. He also displayed a flair for comedy as the sidekick to singing cowboy Dick Foran in a series of B-sagebrushers of the late '30s. During the war years, Strange became something of a bargain-basement Lon Chaney Jr., playing homicidal halfwits in a handful of horror pictures made at PRC and other low-budget studios. These appearances led to his being cast as the Frankenstein monster in the 1944 Universal programmer House of Frankenstein; he was coached in this role by the "creature" from the original 1931 Frankenstein, Boris Karloff. Given very little to do in House of Frankenstein and the 1945 sequel House of Dracula other than stalk around with arms outstretched at fadeout time, Strange brought none of the depth and pathos to the role that distinguished Karloff's appearances. Strange was shown to better advantage in his last appearance as The Monster in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) where he convincingly menaced the eternally frightened Lou Costello and even indulged in a couple of time-honored "scare" routines, while still remaining in character (Some scenes had to be reshot because Strange couldn't stop laughing at Costello's antics; towards the end of shooting, Strange broke his ankle and had to be replaced in a few shots by Lon Chaney Jr., who was costarring in the film as the Wolf Man). Though typecast as heavies in both movies and television -- he played the hissable Butch Cavendish in the Lone Ranger TV pilot -- Strange was well known throughout Hollywood as a genuine nice guy and solid family man. Glenn Strange's last engagement of note was his 11-year run (1962-73) as Sam, the Long Branch bartender on TV's Gunsmoke.

Trivia: American actor Buck Taylor was the son of western comical sidekick Dub "Cannonball" Taylor. Buck was born in 1938, coincidentally the same year that Taylor pere made his film debut in You Can't Take it with You. True to his heritage, Buck showed up in the occasional western, notably Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1980) and Triumphs of a Man Called Horse (1983). For the most part, Taylor's film roles fell into the "young character" niche, notably his appearances in Ensign Pulver (1964), The Wild Angels (1966) (as motorcycle punk Dear John), and Pickup on 101 (1972). Buck Taylor will probably be seen on TV in perpetuity thanks to his recurring role as Newly O'Brian on the marathon TV western Gunsmoke, a role which he recreated for a 1987 Gunsmoke reunion film.

Trivia: One of the most prolific of the "Who IS that?"school of character actors, Dabbs Greer has been playing small-town doctors, bankers, merchants, druggists, mayors and ministers since at least 1950. His purse-lipped countenance and Midwestern twang was equally effective in taciturn villainous roles. Essentially a bit player in films of the 1950s (Diplomatic Courier, Deadline USA, Living It Up), Greer was given more screen time than usual as a New York detective in House of Wax (1953), while his surface normality served as excellent contrast to the extraterrestrial goings-on in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and It! The Terror from Beyond Space. A television actor since the dawn of the cathode-tube era, Greer has shown up in hundreds of TV supporting roles, including the "origin" episode of the original Superman series, in which he played the dangling dirigible worker rescued in mid-air by the Man of Steel. Greer also played the recurring roles of storekeeper Mr. Jones on Gunsmoke (1955-60) and Reverend Robert Alden on Little House on the Prairie (1974-83). Showing no signs of slowing down, Dabbs Greer continued accepting roles in such films as Two Moon Junction (1988) and Pacific Heights (1990) into the '90s. He died following a battle with kidney and heart disease, on April 28, 2007, not quite a month after his 90th birthday.

Trivia: Tom Brown was the "boy next door" type in many films, playing ideal, clean-cut, all-Americans youths in many films of the '30s. The son of vaudevillian Harry Brown and musical comedy star Marie (Francis) Brown, he was on radio and stage from infancy, Broadway from age nine. Brown began appearing in silent movies at age ten in 1923. Pleasantly baby-faced, in the thirties he acquired his typecast image, playing students, sons, sweethearts, military cadets, brothers. His first talkie was The Lady Lies (1929), playing Walter Huston's son; he appeared in more than 100 other films. After service in World War Two (as a paratrooper), he attempted to shed his image by playing heavies, without much success; his career was further derailed when he was called up for service in Korea, from where he returned as a lieutenant colonel. After that Brown did little film work but became a familiar face on TV; now bald-headed, he had continuing roles on the TV series Gunsmoke (as rancher Ed O'Conner) and on the soap operas General Hospital (as Al Weeks) and Days of Our Lives (as Nathan Curtis).

Trivia: What do actors Gig Young, Anne Shirley, and L.Q. Jones have in common? All of them lifted their show-biz names from characters they'd portrayed on screen. In 1955, University of Texas alumnus Justice McQueen made his film debut in Battle Cry, playing a laconic lieutenant named L.Q. Jones. McQueen liked his character so much that he remained L.Q. Jones offscreen ever after (though he never made it legal, still listing himself as Justice Ellis McQueen in the 1995 edition of Who's Who). A natural for westerns both vocally and physically, Jones played supporting roles in several big-screen oaters, and was seen on TV as Smitty on Cheyenne (1955-58) and as Belden on The Virginian (1964-67). Jones gained a measure of prominence in the films of Sam Peckinpah, notably Ride the High Country (1961) and The Wild Bunch (1969). Turning to the production side of the business in the early 1970s, L. Q. Jones produced and co-starred in the 1971 film Brotherhood of Satan; he also co-produced, directed, adapted and played a cameo (as a porn-movie actor!) in the fascinating 1975 cinemazation of Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog, a tour de force that won Jones a Hugo Award from America's science fiction writers.

Trivia: American actor Sam Melville is best known for his television work on such series as The Rookies (he played Officer Mike Danko), The Scarecrow and Mrs. King (as Mr. King), and Gunsmoke as a regular guest star. Melville also appeared in a couple of films from the late '60s through the late '80s.

Trivia: African-American stage and film actor Robert Do Qui was first seen by televiewers on a weekly basis as Detective Cliff Sims in Felony Squad (1968-1969). Do Qui has worked extensively with director Robert Altman, most prominently as the sympathetic nightclub manager in Nashville (1975). In the 1980s and 1990s, he became familiar to action fans as Sgt. Reed in the three Robocop flicks. In addition to his many acting credits, Robert Do Qui served several terms as an officer of the Screen Actors Guild. He died at age 74 in 2008.

Trivia: African American actor Brock Peters was a stage performer as early as 1943, long before he was old enough to attend CCNY. Peters made his film bow as Sgt. Brown in Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones (1954). Five years later, he appeared in another Preminger-directed musical film, playing the menacing Crown in Porgy and Bess (1959); coincidentally, he'd made his earliest stage appearance in that same Gershwin opera. Specializing in roles of unquestioned authority, Peters was at home with the villainous Rodriguez in The Pawnbroker (1965) as he was with the kindly Reverend Kumalko in Lost in the Stars (1974). Conversely, one of Peters' most impressive screen performances was as a victim; in 1962's To Kill a Mockingbird, he played accused rapist Tom Robinson. His more recent movie assignments have included Admiral Cartwright in two of the Star Trek theatrical features (numbers IV and VI), and a brace of roles previously associated with white actors: reclusive Mr. Pendergast in Polly, the 1988 musical adaptation of Pollyanna, and the fatuous Reverend Chasuble in the all-black 1992 remake of The Importance of Being Earnest. Peters also produced the 1973 film Five on the Black Hand Side, and has from time to time pursued a nightclub singing career. On television, Peters was briefly a regular on the daytime drama Young and the Restless, and supplied the voice of Lucius Fox on 1992's Batman: The Animated Series. The recipient of numerous industry awards and honors, Brock Peters was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1976.

Trivia: The African-American actor Rex Ingram -- not to be confused with the Irish-born director of the same name from the silent era -- was, for a time, the most prominent black dramatic performer in Hollywood and second only to Paul Robeson in recognition among all black actors. And like Robeson, Ingram also had a difficult time finding enough serious roles to keep himself employed and maintain a viable career. The son of a steamer fireman on the riverboat Robert E. Lee, Rex Ingram was literally born on the Mississippi River, somewhere between Natchez, MS, and Cairo, IL, where his mother resided. He spent a big part of his youth working with his father on riverboats until he entered Northwestern University and, later, medical school. After earning his degree, he took a trip to California for some rest; while standing on a street corner in L.A., he was spotted by a casting director and offered ten dollars per day to appear in a movie. He ended up playing an African tribesman in the first of the Tarzan movies (starring Elmo Lincoln), Tarzan of the Apes (1918). Ingram subsequently got a succession of the typical roles available to black actors in the silent era: butlers, porters, and native Africans. He was busier than most of his colleagues because of his startlingly good looks, his 6' 2" height, and substantial 220-pound build. The money was good and living in California agreed with him, even if the parts didn't, and he turned up in the silent The King of Kings and The Ten Commandments, as well as such early-'30s epics as Sign of the Cross. Lacking any formal acting training and having entered movies from literally right off the street, Ingram never considered working on the stage until someone suggested it. With help from English actor Alan Mowbray, he got readings and auditions and began studying everything he could find about the theater. He was cast in David Belasco's L.A. production of Lulu Belle in 1928 and proved a quick study and a superb performer. From there, he moved on to occasional roles in short-lived shows, the most notable of which was his portrayal of Crown in the drama Porgy. When there was no work in theater, he returned to movies, but the stage became his preference. A succession of theatrical roles followed, including the major part of Blacksnake Johnson in the Theatre Union's New York production of the topical play Stevedore and the title role at Suffern in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones -- a part immortalized onscreen by Robeson. Both performances raised his stature and the latter became the favorite of all Ingram's roles. He also broke some ground on the sociological and racial front, portraying the Prince of Morocco in a production of The Merchant of Venice that starred Estelle Winwood at the University of Illinois. In addition, he wrote and produced a play, Drums of the Bayou (which closed before reaching New York). His breakthrough came with the film version of Marc Connelly's play The Green Pastures. Ingram was initially cast as Adam, but stage manager Claude Archer suggested that Warner Bros. test Ingram for the role of De Lawd, pointing out that makeup could compensate for his being two decades too young for the part. But he slipped into it so convincingly, with his forceful, articulate presence and dignified, yet unpretentious, bearing, that he was cast in the role immediately. Ingram's performance as De Lawd in The Green Pastures film was the defining moment of his movie career and turned him into the most prominent black leading man in Hollywood -- not that there was much competition. Paul Robeson, who had emerged to stardom in the 1920s in Showboat and had done The Emperor Jones on film, was living in England at the time, making films there because there were simply no vehicles or roles available in Hollywood for strong, powerful, black leading men. Alas, Ingram encountered the same problem after playing De Lawd; there were few movie roles from the major studios suitable to an actor of such stature. He would not and could not go back to playing porters or African tribesmen, but he found himself unable to go forward either. The best offer he got was to do a theatrical revival of The Green Pastures, in which he refused to take part. So he left acting, returned to medicine, and planned to go into research. A year later, Ingram was bankrupt. Faced with the need to support his wife and daughter, he returned to acting, working in stock before heading back to New York and the Broadway stage for productions of The Emperor Jones and the WPA Theater production of Haiti. He returned to the screen in 1939 for the first time in three years, with his portrayal of Jim, the runaway slave, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In 1940, Ingram played what became the most well-known and beloved role of his career, as the towering Djinni in Alexander Korda's production of The Thief of Bagdad (1940). His character stood over 200-feet tall and he played his role solo against a blue-screen background, never actually interacting with the other performers in the same shot. He also turned the fantasy part into a compelling monologue on freedom that resonated far beyond the boundaries of the movie. Ingram continued to work steadily and well in plays such as Cabin in the Sky (he later starred in the movie version, as well) and films like The Talk of the Town. His best part from this period was that of the Sudanese army sergeant who joins a ragtag band of Allied soldiers fighting a delaying action in the desert in Zoltan Korda's Sahara. His performance was also one of the best elements of Dark Waters, a Hitchcock-like thriller starring Merle Oberon and Thomas Mitchell. Ingram was busy throughout the mid-'40s, including work in an all-black Broadway stage production of Lysistrata, and played a major role in Fritz Lang's Moonrise (1948). And then disaster struck. In April 1949, Ingram was arrested and accused of violating the Mann Act -- specifically, transporting a teenage Kansas girl to New York for "immoral purposes." He pleaded guilty in May and his screen career was crippled for the next six years. He did appear in an episode of Ramar of the Jungle, a series with which he would never have been associated in better times, and, in 1955, he did The Emperor Jones on the small screen as part of Kraft Television Theatre. He returned to movies that same year in Tarzan's Hidden Jungle, the kind of film in which he'd started 25 years earlier. There were some good roles in better productions such as God's Little Acre, Anna Lucasta (in which he starred), Elmer Gantry, and even Your Cheatin' Heart, but his days as an onscreen leading man were behind him. He got some great opportunities on-stage, however, most notably in Herbert Berghof's 1957 production of Waiting for Godot, which also starred Earl Hyman, Mantan Moreland, and Geoffrey Holder. In the late '60s, Ingram got roles in the movies Hurry Sundown and Journey to Shiloh and a prominent part in one episode of I Spy ("Weight of the World"). Comedian-turned-actor Bill Cosby also saw to it that Ingram got work in an episode of The Bill Cosby Show. Ingram died of a heart attack in September 1969, two months prior to the airing of that last television appearance.