Trivia: Brooklyn-born actor John Joseph Patrick Ryan borrowed his stage name "Jack Lord" from a distant relative. Spending his immediate post-college years as a seafaring man, Lord worked as an engineer in Persia before returning to American shores to manage a Greenwich Village art school and paint original work; he flourished within that sphere (often signing his paintings "John J. Ryan,") and in fact exhibited the tableaux at an array of prestigious institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Modern Museum of Art. Lord switched to acting in the late 1940s, studying under Sanford Meisner at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. In films and television from 1949, Lord (a performer with stark features including deep-set eyes and high cheekbones) played his share of brutish villains and working stiffs before gaining TV fame as star of the critically acclaimed but low-rated rodeo series Stoney Burke (1962). At around the same time, Lord played CIA agent Felix Leiter in the first James Bond film, Dr. No. From 1968 through 1980, Lord starred on the weekly cop drama Hawaii Five-O; producers cast him as Steve McGarrett, a troubleshooter with the Hawaii State Police who spent his days cruising around the islands, cracking open individual cases, and taking on the movers and shakers in Hawaiian organized crime, particularly gangster Wo Fat (Khigh Dhiegh), who eluded capture until the program's final month on the air. Lord also wrote and directed several episodes. After Hawaii 5-0 folded, Jack Lord attempted another Hawaii-based TV series, but M Station: Hawaii (1980) never got any farther than a pilot film. Lord died of congestive heart failure in his Honolulu beachfront home at the age of 77, in January 1998. He was married to Marie Denarde for 50 years.

Trivia: Born in New York City on May 4, 1903, Luther Adler was the product of a well-known Yiddish theatre family. His stage debut came at the age of five when he appeared in Schmendrick. Although primarily a stage actor, Adler's film credits contain character portrayals that are both potent and noteworthy, as evidenced in the 1951 film The Magic Face, where he plays an impersonator who murders Hitler and then takes his place. Here Adler shines in what would otherwise be an average picture. His first movie role came in 1937 with Lancer Spy and continued over the next four decades, with credits in some two dozen films. His sister Stella is well-known as an acting teacher, and his brother Jay starred in occasional films until his death in 1978. Adler was married to Sylvia Sidney from 1938 to 1947. Other memorable films include: D.O.A. (1950); The Desert Fox (1951); The Last Angry Man (1959); Voyage of the Damned (1976).

Trivia: Actor George Voskovec made his first stage appearance in his native Czechoslovakia, where he also made his first film, Powder and Gas (1930). Emigrating to America after Czechoslovakia fell to Hitler's armies, Voskovec quickly gained a Broadway reputation as an actor, playwright, and musical composer. Though he spoke with very little accent, Voskovec was frequently cast as foreigners, usually Teutonic or Slavic in nature. George Voskovec maintained a busy schedule to the end of his life, appearing in films (1980's Somewhere in Time was his last), plays, and a lot of television; in the latter medium, Voskovec was seen on a regular basis as Fritz the butler (his last role) on the 1981 TV series Nero Wolfe.