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: Actress Jeanne Cooper entered films in 1953. Though she worked often, Cooper appeared in only a handful of memorable movies, including the rare Roger Corman social-protest film The Intruder (1961) and The Boston Strangler (1968). She was seen to better advantage on television, guesting in a wide range of roles on such series as The Twilight Zone and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. From 1969 to 1970, she was seen as Grace Douglas on the prime-time "inside Hollywood" series Bracken's World. She is best known for her ongoing characterization of Kay Chancellor on the CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless. Unlike many other daytime-drama actresses, who prefer to keep their onscreen characters and actual personalities separate, Cooper has invested many of her own life experiences in the role of Kay Chancellor. She harked back on her own bout with alcoholism to realistically portray Kay's recovery from a chronic drinking problem; and, when Jeanne underwent a facelift, so did Kay -- complete with in-progress shots of the actual operation. Jeanne Cooper is the mother of actor Corbin Bernsen. She passed away at age 84 in 2013.

Trivia: The son of a Baptist minister, actor DeForest Kelley was one of the lucky few chosen to be groomed for stardom by Paramount Pictures' "young talent" program in 1946. He served an apprenticeship in 2-reel musicals like Gypsy Holiday before starring as a tormented musician in Fear in the Night (47). Unfortunately, a sweeping cancellation of Paramount young talent contracts ended Kelley's stardom virtually before it began. By the mid-1950s, he was scrounging up work on episodic TV and playing bits in such films as The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (56) (this film, by the way, is the first in which Kelley uttered his now-famous line, "He's dead, captain"). Producer/writer Gene Roddenberry took a liking to Kelley and cast the actor in the leading role of a flamboyant criminal attorney in the 1959 TV pilot film 333 Montgomery. The series didn't sell, but Roddenberry was still determined to help Kelley on the road back to stardom. One of their next collaborations was Star Trek (66-69), in which (as everybody in the galaxy knows) Kelley appeared as truculent ship's doctor Leonard "Bones" McCoy. Virtually all of Kelley's subsequent film appearances have been as McCoy in the seemingly endless series of elaborate Star Trek feature films. And on the pilot for the 1987 syndie Star Trek: The Next Generation, DeForrest Kelley was once more seen as "Bones" -- albeit appropriately stooped and greyed.

Trivia: Jim Davis' show business career began in a circus where he worked as a tent-rigger. He came to Los Angeles as a traveling salesman in 1940, gradually drifting into the movies following an MGM screen test with Esther Williams. After six long years in minor roles, he was "introduced" in 1948's Winter Meeting, co-starring with Bette Davis (no relation, though the Warner Bros. publicity department made much of the fact that the two stars shared the same name). He never caught on as a romantic lead, however, and spent most of the 1950s in secondary roles often as Western heavies. He starred in two syndicated TV series, Stories of the Century (1954) and Rescue 8 (1958-1959), and made at least 200 guest star appearances on other programs. Jim Davis is best known today for his work as oil-rich Jock Ewing on the prime time TV serial Dallas, a role he held down from 1978 to his unexpected death following surgery in 1981.

Trivia: Following a wartime tour with the Navy, New Jersey-born Lee Van Cleef supported himself as an accountant. Like fellow accountant-turned-actor Jack Elam, Van Cleef was advised by his clients that he had just the right satanic facial features to thrive as a movie villain. With such rare exceptions as The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1954), Van Cleef spent most of his early screen career on the wrong side of the law, menacing everyone from Gary Cooper (High Noon) to the Bowery Boys (Private Eyes) with his cold, shark-eyed stare. Van Cleef left Hollywood in the '60s to appear in European spaghetti Westerns, initially as a secondary actor; he was, for example, the "Bad" in Clint Eastwood's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). Within a few years, Van Cleef was starring in blood-spattered action films with such titles as Day of Anger (1967), El Condor (1970), and Mean Frank and Crazy Tony (1975). The actor was, for many years, one of the international film scene's biggest box-office draws. Returning to Hollywood in the late '70s, He starred in a very short-lived martial arts TV series The Master (1984), the pilot episodes of which were pieced together into an ersatz feature film for video rental. Van Cleef died of a heart attack in 1989.

Trivia: Former real-life cowboy and rodeo performer Bob Woodward entered films in 1938. For the next 25 years, Bob Woodward showed up in bit roles in westerns like Cheyenne Takes Over (1947) and actioners like Radar Secret Service (1949). The main source of his income, however, was in the realm of stunt work. Though it understandably wasn't publicized at the time, Bob Woodward doubled for many of the major Western stars of the 1930s and 1940s, including Dick Foran and Buck Jones.

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.