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: James Stacy had passed the quarter-century mark before deciding upon an acting career. In 1956, Stacy's James Dean-ish handsomeness landed him a part in a Pepsi-Cola commercial. Afterward, Stacy put together a portfolio and started making the casting rounds. Unfortunately, his difficult attitude managed to get him fired from his first film role in South Pacific (1958), and had his lines taken away from him in Sayonara (1957). His recurring appearances as Fred on TV's The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet started the ball rolling again, and by 1965 Stacy was Columbia Pictures' answer to Frankie Avalon, starring in such Beach Party rip-offs as A Swingin' Summer and Winter a Go Go. He also found time to marry actress Connie Stevens, only to lose her to singer Eddie Fisher. Stacy's second wife was Kim Darby. From 1968 through 1971, Stacy starred on the TV western Lancer. Two years after the series' cancellation, he was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident, which cost him his left arm and leg. Courageously refusing to retire, he began appearing in roles specially written to accommodate his handicap. His comeback film was the 1975 Kirk Douglas western Posse, in which he was cast in the nonambulatory role of newspaper editor Hellman. In 1977, he starred in the TV-movie Just a Little Inconvenience, playing a double-amputee Vietnam veteran. And in Disney's 1982 fantasy film Something Wicked This Way Comes, Stacy plays a crippled, embittered bartender, who makes the mistake of his life when he wishes to be "whole" again. His last regular TV role was Rogosheske in the weekly cop series Wiseguy. In 1996, once he was retired from acting, he served a six-year prison sentence after pleading no contest to the molestation of a minor (Stacy's erratic behavior around his arrest negated the hope of only getting probation for the incident). He was released in 2001 and resumed his life as a private citizen. Stacy died in 2016.

Trivia: Intending to become a dentist like his father, American actor Edgar Buchanan wound up with grades so bad in college that he was compelled to take an "easy" course to improve his average. Buchanan chose a course in play interpretation, and after listening to a few recitations of Shakespeare he was stagestruck. After completing dental school, Buchanan plied his oral surgery skills in the summertime, devoting the fall, winter and spring months to acting in stock companies and at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. He was given a screen test by Warner Bros. studios in 1940, received several bit roles, then worked himself up to supporting parts upon transferring to Columbia Pictures. Though still comparatively youthful, Buchanan specialized in grizzled old westerners, with a propensity towards villainy or at least larceny. The actor worked at every major studio (and not a few minor ones) over the next few years, still holding onto his dentist's license just in case he needed something to fall back on. Though he preferred movie work to the hurried pace of TV filming, Buchanan was quite busy in television's first decade, costarring with William Boyd on the immensely popular Hopalong Cassidy series, then receiving a starring series of his own, Judge Roy Bean, in 1954. Buchanan became an international success in 1963 thanks to his regular role as the lovably lazy Uncle Joe Carson on the classic sitcom Petticoat Junction, which ran until 1970. After that, the actor experienced a considerably shorter run on the adventure series Cade's County, which starred Buchanan's close friend Glenn Ford. Buchanan's last movie role was in Benji (1974), which reunited him with the titular doggie star, who had first appeared as the family mutt on Petticoat Junction.

Trivia: An alumnus of the Yale School of Drama, Alan Baxter came to films in 1935 after three seasons' stage work. Though occasionally cast in a leading role, Baxter was more convincing as a character actor, usually playing roles with sinister undertones. Hitchcock devotees will remember Baxter as the bespectacled, implicitly homosexual Nazi spy in the Hoover Dam sequences of Saboteur (1942). Alan Baxter continued accepting supporting roles into the 1970s, often portraying big-time gangsters or disreputable politicians.

Trivia: Rough-edged character actor Morgan Woodward is the son of a Texas physician. Specializing in Westerns, the 6'3" Woodward has been seen in scores of big-screen oaters, and in 1956 held down the semi-regular role of Shotgun Gibbs in the TV series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. He has also made quite a few non-Western appearances on such video weeklies as Star Trek and The A-Team. In his spare time, Morgan Woodward is a licensed pilot.

Trivia: Beginning in the '60s, stunt man and supporting actor Larry Gatlin often appeared in westerns.

Trivia: In films from 1939, character actor Dan White trafficked in small-town blowhards and rustic constables. Often unbilled in bit roles, White was occasionally afforded such larger roles as Deputy Elmer in Voodoo Man (1944), Millwheel in The Yearling (1946) and Abel Hatfield in Roseanna McCoy (1949). He remained active until the early 1960s. The "Dan White" who appeared in 1977's Alien Factor is a different person.