Trivia: Big, burly Dan Blocker only did a handful of movies in his 17-year acting career, but he became one of the most beloved and popular television stars of the 1960s for his portrayal of Hoss Cartwright on the Western series Bonanza. Weighing 14 pounds at birth, Blocker was the largest baby ever born in Bowie County, TX. At 18, he stood 6'3" and weighed close to 300 pounds, and was legendary for his physical prowess. Blocker attended the Texas Military Institute and studied for his B.A. at Sul Ross State College, where he initially majored in athletics. His build accidentally led him to the drama department for a production of Arsenic and Old Lace -- a stage hand was needed who was big and strong enough to quickly remove the dummies representing corpses on the set, between acts. While working on the production, Blocker was bitten by the acting bug and switched his major to drama. He pursued his theatrical aspirations in earnest after graduation, working in one season of summer stock before he was drafted. Blocker served in combat during the Korean War, after which he earned a master's degree, married, moved to Los Angeles, and settled down to raise a family, earning his living as a high school teacher. It was his successful audition for the small role of a cavalry lieutenant on Gunsmoke during the 1956 season, in the episode "Alarm at Pleasant Valley," that rekindled Blocker's interest in an acting career. Over the next three years, he took any work that he could get, on programs like Sgt. Preston of the Yukon, Cheyenne, Tales of Wells Fargo, Zane Grey Theater, Wagon Train, Colt .45, Zorro, Maverick, and Richard Diamond, Private Detective. Blocker also got some movie work, portraying a bartender in the offbeat murder mystery The Girl in Black Stockings and an android in Outer Space Jitters, a very late Three Stooges short. His career took an upturn when he got a guest-starring role in an episode of the series The Restless Gun, starring John Payne, in 1958; his work was good enough to catch the attention of the producer, David Dortort. A year later, Dortort was putting together a new, hour-long Western series called Bonanza and cast Blocker in the role of "Hoss" Cartwright, the big-boned, good-natured middle son in a ranching family near Virginia City, NV, set in the mid- to late 19th century (the time frame of Bonanza was always vague, with stories shifting between the early 1860s to the 1870s and 1880s). Blocker's character's real name, incidentally, was Eric, but Hoss -- a nickname from his mother's Norwegian language that meant "friend" -- was what he was known as to everyone on the series and all viewers. Despite the weaknesses in the scripts during the early seasons, the role was a dream part for the actor, who got a chance to display his gentle, sensitive side as well as his gift for comedy, and also work in a serious dramatic context as well on many occasions, and show off his brute strength as well. It is arguable that Blocker was the most popular member of the cast during the 1960s; he was especially beloved of younger viewers, in part because his character was always very sympathetic to children. In contrast to the other stars of the series, Blocker's big-screen career wasn't halted by his work on Bonanza. He appeared in The Errand Boy, playing himself in an uncredited cameo, and played a role in the Frank Sinatra movie Come Blow Your Horn. Blocker got his first major movie part five years later in the Sinatra film Lady in Cement (1968), playing Waldo Gronsky, a burly, potentially murderous thug who hires private detective Tony Rome (played by Sinatra) to find his missing girlfriend. By the end of the 1960s, Blocker was taken seriously enough as an actor to star in two features, Something for a Lonely Man, a beautiful and poignant Western/comedy-drama, and the broader comedy The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County. Some of Blocker's television appearances separate from Bonanza also reflected his personal side -- his politics were essentially liberal Democratic (in sharp contrast to the conservative Republican sympathies of his co-stars Michael Landon and Lorne Greene), and he appeared in several public service announcements promoting brotherhood and racial tolerance, as well as on one television special that gently satirized American popular culture, starring Henry Fonda. He was also part of the liberal contingent in the 1971 John Wayne-hosted patriotic special Swing Out, Sweet Land. In 1972, Blocker was chosen for what could have been the breakthrough role to a major movie career, when he won the part of Roger Wade, the has-been author in Robert Altman's revisionist detective movie The Long Goodbye. In May of that year, however, he went into the hospital for routine gall bladder surgery, and during recovery he died suddenly of a blood clot in his lung. Sterling Hayden replaced Blocker in The Long Goodbye, which was dedicated to the actor's memory. Blocker's passing, immediately before the shooting for the 1972-1973 season of Bonanza was to begin, signed the death knell for the series. The cast and crew were genuinely shaken by his sudden death; scripts had to be hastily rewritten to explain the passing of Hoss Cartwright, and Blocker's absence and the reason behind it removed any element of lightheartedness that the series had displayed. The final season, despite the best efforts of surviving stars Lorne Greene, Michael Landon, and David Canary, was characterized by grim, downbeat stories and a dark mood that seemed to repel longtime viewers. Coupled with this change in tone, the NBC network moved Bonanza from its longtime Sunday nighttime slot to Tuesday nights, where it died a quick death, cancellation coming halfway through the 1972-1973 season. Blocker left behind a wife and four children, among them actor Dirk Blocker and director/producer David Blocker. He also left behind a legacy of good will that survives to this day, as Bonanza is in perpetual reruns on various cable channels, decades after its cancellation. Significantly, the final season, in which he did not appear, is the body of episodes that is shown (and requested) the least of its 14 years' worth of programs.

Trivia: British actor Maxwell Reed entered films in 1947. At first, Reed enjoyed star billing in such films as The Brothers (1948) and The Dark Man (1951). Later on, he settled into such secondary roles as Ajax in Helen of Troy (1955) and "murder" victim Miles Hardwicke in The Notorious Landlady (1962). In 1955, he starred on the weekly TV series Captain David Grief, filmed in Mexico. Maxwell Reed was the first husband of actress Joan Collins.

Trivia: Most filmgoers and television viewers know Jason Evers for his performances on such series as The Guns of Will Sonnett, movies like The Green Berets, and guest-starring roles on programs such as Star Trek ("Wink of an Eye"). In reality, the actor has had a much longer career than those movie and television credits rooted in the 1960s and 1970s. Born Herbert Evers in the Bronx, NY, in 1922, he was the son of a theatrical ticket agent. Evers left De Witt Clinton High School before graduation in order to pursue an acting career and landed an apprenticeship with the Ethel Barrymore Colt Jitney Players, with whom he toured the country for two years at the end of the 1930s. In the early '40s, he was signed up by producer Brock Pemberton, who cast him in his breakthrough part, as Pvt. Dick Lawrence in the play Janie. That play established Evers as a handsome male ingenue, of a type similar to contemporaries such as Van Heflin, Van Johnson, and Bill Williams. He subsequently endured a series of flop plays, as well as two years in uniform. After returning to civilian life, Evers resumed his career, principally in road company productions, including a tour of I Am a Camera with Veronica Lake. By then Evers was married to actress Shirley Ballard and the two frequently found themselves struggling financially between roles. Strangely enough, their marriage ended just at a point when the two were working together in a successful Broadway play entitled Fair Game. By 1960, Evers was ready to make the jump to the potentially greener pastures of the West Coast, and possible film work. He landed the leading role in a summer replacement television series called Wrangler, portraying a rugged, laconic cowboy. In the bargain, he also traded in his first name for the smoother and more manly Jason Evers. The series wasn't picked up for the regular season but Evers was on the map, his new name and image working very much in his favor. Jason Evers was a fresh name and face, and he had also acquired an intense, edgy quality, in sharp contrast to the callow handsomeness of his image in the 1940s and 1950s. Herbert Evers seemed a slightly bland leading man, but Jason Evers, in name and image, conveyed intensity and even danger. He did a few small movie roles at the outset of the decade, and then got the only starring screen role of his career -- unfortunately, the latter was in the horror thriller The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962). The actor -- credited as Herb Evers -- played a scientist obsessed with the idea of keeping the severed head of his fiancée alive. Luckily, no one of any consequence in the entertainment industry ever saw the film (which has since been embraced by bad-movie cultists, and has turned up on Mystery Science Theater 3000), or tied "Herb Evers" up with Jason Evers. In 1964, he got another crack at a series with Channing, a topical drama set at a university -- a kind of collegiate answer to Mr. Novak -- co-starring Henry Jones. That program failed to find an audience, but by then, Evers was making a massive number of guest-star appearances, on series as different as Gunsmoke and Star Trek, often playing villains. He also played important supporting roles in feature films, including an excellent performance in The Green Berets, as the doomed Captain Coleman, the outgoing commander of the forward base where John Wayne's Colonel Kirby tries to make a stand. Evers landed what was arguably his best television role on the series The Guns of Will Sonnett, portraying Jim Sonnett, the gunslinger who is the object of a search through the West by his father (Walter Brennan) and son (Dack Rambo). Evers was perfect as Jim Sonnett, grim and taciturn and, yet, beneath his nasty veneer as a tired veteran gunman, concerned for the well-being of his father and son once he knows they are looking for him. The only problem with the role was that he hardly ever got to play it -- as the object of the quest at the center of the series' plot, he only actually appeared onscreen a handful of times during the two-year run of the series. Still, it was an actor's dream of a part, in the sense that his character was discussed prominently in every episode, and figured in virtually every plot complication and development; no performer could ask for a better lead-in than that to his actually taking the stage, and his appearances were memorable. Evers' career began to wind down during the 1970s, amid roles of varying size in such movies as Escape From the Planet of the Apes and Barracuda, and the horror-exploitation movie Claws. Evers has been in retirement since the mid-'80s, although he did briefly return to work, portraying a role in Basket Case 2 (1990).

Trivia: The background of Irish-born comic actor J. Pat O'Malley has frequently been misreported in source books because his credits have been confused with those of silent film star Pat O'Malley. J. Pat started out in the British musical halls, then came to the U.S. at the outbreak of WWII. Achieving radio fame for his versatile voicework, O'Malley carried over this talent into the world of animated cartoons, providing a multitude of vocal characterizations in such Disney cartoon features as Alice in Wonderland (1951) and 101 Dalmatians (1961), among others. The portly, leprechaunish O'Malley essayed on-camera character parts in films like Witness for the Prosecution (1957) and Mary Poppins (1965). He was a near-habitual TV guest star, with appearances in several fondly remembered Twilight Zone episodes; he also worked extensively on Broadway. J. Pat O'Malley had regular roles on the TV sitcoms Wendy and Me (1964) and A Touch of Grace (1973).

Trivia: Supporting and occasional leading actress Randy Stuart was a regular on television during the '50s and in feature films of the '40s and '50s, including The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) in which she played the title character's loving wife. Stuart was born in Iola, Kansas, the daughter of parents involved in vaudeville. When she was old enough, Stuart joined them on stage. In 1943, she joined Fox Studios and was relegated to parts in films ranging from Whirlpool, to I Was a Male War Bride (both 1949), to All About Eve (1950), to New Day at Sundown (1957). Some of her notable television roles include that of the "Hubba-Hubba girl" on The Jack Carson Show and as the wife of Alan Hale, Jr. on Biff Baker U.S.A. Between 1952 and 1956, Stuart played Emily Fisher on the drama This Is the Life. She was also a regular on the short-lived The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1959-60). On Dragnet, Stuart occasionally played the wife of Harry "Joe Friday" Morgan. Her additional television credits include appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, Cheyenne and Cavalcade of America.

Trivia: White-haired, patriarchal Canadian actor Lorne Greene attended Queen's University in pursuit of a chemical engineering degree. Amateur college theatricals whetted his appetite for the stage, and upon graduation he decided upon a performing career. He started out on radio, eventually emerging as Canada's top newscaster, designated "the voice of the CBC" (For a while, Greene managed a mail-order announcer's school; one of the "pupils" was Leslie Nielsen). Moving to New York in 1950, Greene became a stage, film and TV actor, co-starring on Broadway with Katherine Cornell in Prescott Proposals and in films with the likes of Paul Newman, Ginger Rogers and Joan Crawford, generally in villainous roles. In 1959, Greene was cast as Ben Cartwright, owner of the Ponderosa ranch and father of three headstrong sons, in TV's Bonanza. He would hold down this job until 1972; during the series' run, Greene unexpectedly became a top-ten recording artist with his hit single "Ringo." Upon the cancellation of Bonanza, Greene vowed he'd retire, but within one year he was playing a private detective on the brief TV weekly Griff. Five years later, he starred on the network sci-fier Battlestar Gallactica. Active as chairman of the National Wildlife Foundation, Greene put forth the organization's doctrine in his popular syndicated TV series Lorne Greene's Last of the Wild. His final weekly television appearance was on the 1980 adventure series Code Red. In 1987, Lorne Greene was all set to recreate Ben Cartwright for the 2-hour TV movie Bonanza: The Next Generation, but he died before shooting started and was replaced by John Ireland.

Trivia: The son of a Jewish movie-publicist father and an Irish Catholic musical-comedy actress, Michael Landon grew up in a predominantly Protestant New Jersey neighborhood. The social pressures brought to bear on young Michael, both at home and in the schoolyard, led to an acute bedwetting problem, which he would later dramatize (very discreetly) in the 1976 TV movie The Loneliest Runner. Determined to better his lot in life, Landon excelled in high school athletics; his prowess at javelin throwing won him a scholarship at the University of Southern California, but a torn ligament during his freshman year ended his college career. Taking a series of manual labor jobs, Landon had no real direction in life until he agreed to help a friend audition for the Warners Bros. acting school. The friend didn't get the job, but Landon did, launching a career that would eventually span nearly four decades. Michael's first film lead was in the now-legendary I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), widely derided at the time but later reassessed as one of the better examples of the late-'50s "drive-in horror" genre. The actor received his first good reviews for his performance as an albino in God's Little Acre. This led to his attaining the title role in 1959's The Legend of Tom Dooley, which in turn was instrumental in his being cast as Little Joe Cartwright on the popular TV western Bonanza. During his fourteen-year Bonanza stint, Landon was given the opportunity to write and direct a few episodes. He carried over these newfound skills into his next TV project, Little House on the Prairie, which ran from 1974 to 1982 (just before Little House, Landon made his TV-movie directorial bow with It's Good to Be Alive, the biopic of baseball great Roy Campanella). Landon also oversaw two spinoff series, Little House: The New Beginning (1982-83) and Father Murphy (1984). Landon kept up his career momentum with a third long-running TV series, Highway to Heaven (1984-89) wherein the actor/producer/director/writer played guardian angel Jonathan Smith. One of the most popular TV personalities of the '70s and '80s, Landon was not universally beloved by his Hollywood contemporaries, what with his dictatorial on-set behavior and his tendency to shed his wives whenever they matured past childbearing age. Still, for every detractor, there was a friend, family member or coworker who felt that Landon was the salt of the earth. In early 1991, Landon began work on his fourth TV series, Us, when he began experiencing stomach pains. In April of that same year, the actor was informed that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. The courage and dignity with which Michael Landon lived his final months on earth resulted in a public outpouring of love, affection and support, the like of which was seldom witnessed in the cynical, self-involved '90s. Michael Landon died in his Malibu home on July 1, 1991, with his third wife Cindy at his side.

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: Possessor of one of the meanest faces in the movies, American actor Ray Teal spent much of his film career heading lynch mobs, recruiting for hate organizations and decimating Indians. Naturally, anyone this nasty in films would have to conversely be a pleasant, affable fellow in real life, and so it was with Teal. Working his way through college as a saxophone player, Teal became a bandleader upon graduation, remaining in the musical world until 1936. In 1938, Teal was hired to act in the low-budget Western Jamboree, and though he played a variety of bit parts as cops, taxi drivers and mashers, he seemed more at home in Westerns. Teal found it hard to shake his bigoted badman image even in A-pictures; as one of the American jurists in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), he is the only member of Spencer Tracy's staff that feels that sympathy should be afforded Nazi war criminals -- and the only one on the staff who openly dislikes American liberals. A more benign role came Teal's way on the '60s TV series Bonanza, where he played the sometimes ineffectual but basically decent Sheriff Coffee. Ray Teal retired from films shortly after going through his standard redneck paces in The Liberation of LB Jones (1970).

Trivia: Character actor Al Christy started out in radio. He began his brief film career in In Cold Blood (1967). He did not make another film appearance until Stand Alone (1985). Christy also occasionally appeared on television, guest starring on such shows as Bonanza and Peter Gunn.