Trivia: Over the course of his extraordinary life, Audie Murphy went from being a poor Texas sharecropper's son to America's most decorated WWII hero to a popular Western and action movie star. Though he died in 1971, his accomplishments are still commemorated in a variety of ways that range from his native Hunt County's annual Audie Murphy Day celebration to his induction into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and the Country Music Association of Texas. His name also appears on a VA hospital, a library room, a stretch of U.S. Highway 69 in Texas, and a San Antonio division of the Army. Murphy was born to a family of cotton growers near Kingston, TX. Boyish-looking and slender, he appeared an unlikely war hero, but while stationed in Europe with his infantry unit, Murphy was credited with killing 240 Germans, was promoted to lieutenant, and earned at least 24 medals, including a Purple Heart for a gunshot wound that shattered his hip and the coveted Congressional Medal of Honor. Following the war, Murphy worked as a clerk and a garage attendant before James Cagney invited him to his Hollywood home. Murphy stayed for 18 months and made his screen debut in Beyond Glory (1948), playing a guilt-ridden soldier. He had his first starring role in Bad Boy (1949) and was praised for his naturalistic acting style. Some critics chided him for only playing himself, but Murphy never claimed any acting ability. For audiences impressed with his war record and charmed by his charisma, Murphy playing himself was enough to sustain his busy film career for two decades. By the early '50s, Murphy was appearing in second-string Westerns. In 1953, distinguished director John Huston, whom Murphy regarded as a friend and mentor, starred him as the young soldier in his adaptation of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage (1953). He would again work with Huston in 1960s' The Unforgiven. In 1955, Murphy appeared in his signature film, To Hell and Back, a chronicle of his war experiences based on his published autobiography. This film's box-office success allowed Murphy to appear in larger-budget films through the early '60s when he once again returned to B-movies. All told, during his heyday, Murphy worked with some of the era's most prominent stars including Jimmy Stewart, Broderick Crawford, and Audrey Hepburn. But while Murphy's professional life flourished, he had to grapple with some tough situations in his personal life. In the late '60s, an Algerian oil field he'd purchased was blown up during the Seven Day War. Murphy lost around 250,000 dollars. In 1970, he was tried and acquitted for beating up and threatening to kill a man during a heated fight, the precise circumstances of which remain muddled. Despite this courtroom victory, rumors circulated that Murphy was suffering personal problems resulting from his war experiences. Murphy was once briefly married to actress Wanda Hendrix with whom he had appeared in Sierra (1950). In 1951, Murphy married Pamela Archer and they remained happily wed until he accidentally crashed his plane into a Virginia mountainside on Memorial Day 1971. Murphy was given a full military burial and was interred in Arlington Cemetery.

Trivia: The son of professional ballplayer Walter Hart, William Sterling Hart attended the University of Pittsburgh, then worked as a clothing salesman before entering show business. He was signed by Columbia in 1939, where his name was changed to Robert Sterling so as to avoid confusion with silent western star William S. Hart. At Columbia, Sterling played bits in such features as Golden Boy and Blondie Brings Up Baby, and was also seen in the studio's short subjects product, notably as star of a 2-reel dramatization of the life of rubber magnate Charles Goodyear. In 1941, Sterling moved to MGM, where he was groomed as a potential Robert Taylor replacement. During his MGM tenure, he married actress Ann Sothern, with whom he appeared in Ringside Maisie. The union, which lasted until 1949, produced a daughter, future actress Tisha Sterling. Following war service, Sterling's career fell into a rut of colorless second leads. He finally achieved stardom on the delightful TV sitcom fantasy Topper, co-starring with his second wife Anne Jeffreys. After Topper completed its two-year run in 1955, the Sterlings took to the road in touring stage productions; they reteamed before the cameras in Love That Jill, a 1958 TV comedy which perished after 13 weeks. Sterling's additional TV work included the hosting chores on the 1956-57 season of The 20th Century-Fox Hour, and the starring role of small-town editor Robert Major on the 1961 sitcom Ichabod and Me. He was also one of several actors seriously considered for the role of Perry Mason before Raymond Burr won the part. Robert Sterling retired from acting in the 1970s to run a successful computer business; he has kept so low a public profile in the last two decades that many sources have referred to the still-active Anne Jeffreys as Sterling's widow!

Trivia: Actress Joan Evans' father was playwright Dale Eunson, and her mother was screenwriter/novelist Katherine Eunson. A stage performer from childhood, Evans was brought to Hollywood in 1949 with a fanfare of publicity as Sam Goldwyn's exciting new "discovery." She played the title role in Roseanna McCoy, a fanciful interpretation of the Hatfield/McCoy feud, then went on to co-star with Farley Granger in the uncharacteristically glum Goldwyn production Edge of Doom. When audience response to Evans failed to meet expectations, her option was quietly dropped by Goldwyn. Joan Evans spent her next nine years in Hollywood as a free-lancer, occasionally essaying worthwhile parts in such films as the cult-favorite western No Name on the Bullet (1959).

Trivia: A descendant of one of California's pioneer families, American actor Ray Collins' interest in the theatre came naturally. His father was drama critic of the Sacramento Bee. Taking to the stage at age 14, Collins moved to British Columbia, where he briefly headed his own stock company, then went on to Broadway. An established theatre and radio performer by the mid-1930s, Collins began a rewarding association with Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. He played the "world's last living radio announcer" in Welles' legendary War of the Worlds broadcast of 1938, then moved to Hollywood with the Mercury troupe in 1939. Collins made his film debut as Boss Jim Gettys in Welles' film classic Citizen Kane (1940). After the Mercury disbanded in the early 1940s, Collins kept busy as a film and stage character actor, usually playing gruff business executives. Collins is most fondly remembered by TV fans of the mid-1950s for his continuing role as the intrepid Lt. Tragg on the weekly series Perry Mason.

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: Gregg Palmer started out as a radio disc jockey, billed under his given name of Palmer Lee. He launched his film career in 1950, usually appearing in Westerns and crime melodramas. During the 1950s, he could most often be seen in such inexpensive sci-fi fare as A Creature Walks Among Us (1956) and Zombies of Moro Tau. Before his retirement in 1983, Gregg Palmer logged in a great many TV credits, including a 13-week stint as a Chicago gunman named Harry in Run Buddy Run (1966).

Trivia: Having served as a bombardier in World War II, Russell Johnson used the GI Bill to finance his studies at the Actor's Lab. Between performing assignments, Johnson supported himself by driving a cab and working the assembly line at a ballpoint pen factory. His first movie break (indeed, his first movie) was in director Paul Henreid's For Men Only (1952), an exposé of barbaric college-fraternity initiation ceremonies; Johnson was suitably loathsome as the sadistic frat leader who is exposed as a snivelling coward in the climax. The balance of the 1950s found Johnson appearing in several fondly remembered science fiction efforts like It Came From Outer Space (1953), This Island Earth (1955), Attack of the Crab Monsters (1956) and The Space Children (1958). He carried over this relationship with the Unreal into his classic performance as an anguished time-traveller desperately attempting to prevent Lincoln's assassination in the 1961 Twilight Zone installment Back There. In 1964, Russell Johnson took his first steps into TV sitcom immortality when he assumed the role of "The Professor" (aka Roy Hinkley) in Gilligan's Island, a role that he'd continued to essay on and off for the next two decades in Gilligan cartoons and TV-movie spin-offs. Johnson worked in television through the 1980s and early '90s before retiring from acting; he died in 2014 at age 89.

Trivia: The son of actress Nan Kelly Yorke, Jack Kelly was the younger brother of stage and film star Nancy Kelly. Like Nancy, Jack was a professional from an early age, acting in radio and on stage before the age of 10, and in films from 1937 (he is quite prominent in a brace of 1939 20th Century-Fox films, Young Mr. Lincoln and The Story of Alexander Graham Bell). He reemerged as a leading man in the early 1950s, appearing in such films as Forbidden Planet (1956, as the ill-fated Lieutenant Farnam). Signed by Warner Bros. in 1955, Kelly starred as Dr. Paris Mitchell in the weekly TV version of the 1942 film King's Row. He went on to play gamblin' man Bart Maverick on the longer-running Warners western series Maverick. Though his popularity never matched that of his co-star James Garner, Kelly still developed a fan following as Bart; he remained with the series from 1957 until its cancellation in 1962, appearing opposite such Garner successors as Roger Moore and Robert Colbert. Kelly dabbled in a little bit of everything after that: hosting the anthology series NBC Comedy Playhouse (1973), emceeing the game show Sale of the Century (1969-71), and playing hard-nosed Lt. Ryan on the Teresa Graves series Get Christie Love (1974) and Harry Hammond on The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries (1977-79). He revived the Bart Maverick character on 1978's The New Maverick and the 1990 TV movie The Gambler Returns: Luck of the Draw. Chances are that, had he lived, Jack Kelly would have been invited to co-star again with Garner in the 1994 Mel Gibson theatrical-feature version of Maverick.

Trivia: The son of a Naval officer, American actor Johnny Downs was hired as one of Hal Roach's "Our Gang" kids in 1923. Alternately playing heroes and bullies, Downs stayed with the short-subject series until 1927, appearing in twenty-four two-reelers. He honed his dancing and singing skills on the vaudeville stage, working prominently on Broadway until returning to Hollywood in 1934. Downs became a fixture of the "college musical" movie cycle of the late '30s, usually cast as a team captain or a cheerleader. He returned briefly to Hal Roach to star in a 45-minute "streamlined" feature, All American Co-Ed (1941), shortly before his movie career began to decline. Working in vaudeville, summer stock, and one solid Broadway hit (Are You With It), Downs made a short-lived movie comeback in supporting roles and bit parts in the early '50s. Johnny Downs' biggest break in these years came via television, where he launched a long-running career as a San Diego TV host and kiddie show star.

Trivia: Born Robert Bradbury, he began appearing (at age 14) in semi-documentary nature shorts directed by his father, prolific silent director Robert North Bradbury; he later appeared in juvenile parts in some Westerns his father directed. In 1927 he began starring in cowboy films, maintaining his career in screen Westerns through the early '40s; he was one of the "Three Mesquiteers" in the series of that name. He also played straight dramatic roles, including the part of Curly in Of Mice and Men (1940). After the mid '40s he played character roles, appearing in films every few years until the early '70s. He was a regular on the '60s TV sitcom "F Troop."

Trivia: James Best started appearing on film in 1950 in such westerns as Winchester 73 and Kansas Raiders, he was touted as a bright new face on the cinematic scene. When Best showed up as a regular on the 1963 TV series Temple Houston, he was promoted as a "promising" performer. When co-starred in Jerry Lewis' Three on a Couch in 1965, Best was given an "and introducing" credit. And in 1979, He finally found his niche when he was cast as Sheriff Roscoe Coltrane on the immensely popular weekly TVer The Dukes of Hazzard. Best played the role for all seven seasons of the show, and returned to it for TV movies and video games. He died in 2015, at age 88.

Trivia: A favorite of producer/director Jack Webb, character actor Ralph Moody was a familiar face to viewers of Dragnet in both its 1950s and 1960s incarnations -- but that would be an unfair (as well as inaccurate) way to describe an actor who amassed hundreds of film and television appearances in barely 20 years of movie and television work. Born in St. Louis, MO, in 1886, Moody didn't make his screen debut until 1948, with a small role in Man Eaters of Kumaon. Already in his sixties, he always looked older than he was, and his craggy features could also impart a fierceness that made him threatening. Although Moody was known for playing kindly or crotchety old men, he occasionally brought that fierceness to bear, as in the Adventures of Superman episode "Test of a Warrior", in which he played the sinister medicine man Okatee. But in between that and dozens of other one-off television assignments, Moody also managed to work in scenes as the coffin-boat skipper in Samuel Fuller's Pickup on South Street and one of the rescue workers in Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole. Moody was one of those actors who could work quickly and milk a line or a scene for all its emotional worth. What's more, he could do it without over-emoting. He was the kind of character player that directors and producers in budget-conscious television of the 1950s needed. In an episode of Circus Boy, he played a touching scene with a young Micky Dolenz, as an aging railroad engineer introducing the boy to the world of locomotives and trains. After that, Moody got called back to do three more episodes. But it was Jack Webb who really put him to work in Dragnet and many of his other productions, in radio and feature films as well as television. His more memorable appearances on Dragnet included "The Big Producer", as a once-famous movie producer who is reduced to selling pornographic pictures to high-school students, and "The Hammer", from the 1967 revival of the series, in which he portrayed the neighbor of a murder victim. Moody continued working regularly in television until a year before his death in 1971, at age 84. His final appearance was in the Night Gallery episode "The Little Black Bag".

Trivia: Ray Montgomery was a gifted character actor who spent his early career trapped behind a too-attractive face, which got him through the studio door in the days just before World War II, but limited him to callow, handsome supporting roles. Born in 1922, Montgomery joined Warner Bros. in 1941 and spent the next two years working in short-subjects and playing small, uncredited parts in feature films, including All Through The Night, Larceny, Inc., Air Force, and Action In The North Atlantic -- in all of which he was overshadowed by lead players such as Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, and John Garfield, and the veteran character actors in supporting roles (including Alan Hale, William Demarest, Frank McHugh, Barton McLane, and Edward Brophy) at every turn. And even in The Hard Way as Jimmy Gilpin, he was overshadowed (along with everyone else) by Ida Lupino. Montgomery went into uniform in 1943 and didn't return to the screen until three years later, when he resumed his career precisely where he left off, playing a string of uncredited roles. He got what should have been his breakthrough in 1948 with Bretaigne Windust's comedy June Bride, and his first really visible supporting role -- but again, he was lost amid the presence of such players as Robert Montgomery and Bette Davis and a screwball-comedy story-line. It was back to uncredited parts for the next few years, until the advent of dramatic television. In the early 1950s, after establishing himself on the small-screen as a quick study and a good actor, Montgomery finally got co-starring status in the syndicated television series Ramar of the Jungle, playing Professor Howard Ogden, friend and colleague of the Jon Hall's title-character in the children's adventure series. The show was rerun on local television stations continuously into the 1960s. By then, Montgomery had long since moved on to more interesting parts and performances in a multitude of dramatic series and feature films. He proved much better with edgy character roles and outright bad guys than he had ever been at playing good natured background figures -- viewers of The Adventures of Superman (which has been in reruns longer than even Ramar), in particular, may know Montgomery best for two 1956 episodes, his grinning, casual villainy in the episode "Jolly Roger" and his sadistic brutality in "Dagger Island", where his character convincingly turns on his own relatives (as well as a hapless Jimmy Olsen). He could do comedy as well as drama, and was seen in multiple episodes of The Lone Ranger, The Gale Storm Show, and Lassie, in between movie stints that usually had him in taciturn roles, such as Bombers B-52 (1957) and A Gathering of Eagles (1963). During the 1960s, the now-balding, white-haired Montgomery was perhaps most visible in police-oriented parts, as a tough old NYPD detective in Don Siegel's Madigan (1968) and as an equally crusty (but sensitive) LAPD lieutenant in the Dragnet episode "Community Relations: DR-17". Montgomery's last screen appearance was in the series Hunter -- following his retirement from acting, he opened a notably successful California real estate agency.

Trivia: Often cast as American Indians, tough-looking stunt man/supporting player Boyd Stockman appeared in more than 50 B-Westerns and serials between 1946 and 1956, and was equally busy on such television shows as Gene Autry Show, The Range Rider, Adventures of Wild Bill Hickock, and Sky King. A namesake son (1938-1992) also worked as a Hollywood stunt man in the 1950s.

Trivia: Veteran B-Western player Steven Darrell (aka J. Stevan Darrell) got the acting bug early, playing Abraham Lincoln in a grade-school tableau. He made his professional debut with the Galloway Players of Pittsfield, MA, and his West Coast bow with the famed Pasadena Playhouse in 1937. Darrell, who told an interviewer that he "enjoyed all kind of character roles, the more villainous the better," went on to menace nearly every cowboy hero around, from Roy Rogers to Whip Wilson, appearing in more than 100 films and over 200 television segments. Retiring after a 1967 episode of television's Daniel Boone, the veteran actor died from a brain tumor in 1970 at the age of 63.

Trivia: The brother of western star Ken Maynard, Kermit Maynard was a star halfback on the Indiana University college team. He began his career as a circus performer, billed as "The World's Champion Trick and Fancy Rider." He entered films in 1926 as a stunt man (using the stage name Tex Maynard), often doubling for his brother Ken. In 1927, Kermit starred in a series for Rayart Films, the ancestor of Monogram Pictures, then descended into minor roles upon the advent of talking pictures, taking rodeo jobs when things were slow in Hollywood. Independent producer Maurice Conn tried to build Kermit into a talkie western star between 1931 and 1933, and in 1934 launched a B-series based on the works of James Oliver Curwood, in which the six-foot Maynard played a Canadian mountie. The series was popular with fans and exhibitors alike, but Conn decided to switch back to straight westerns in 1935, robbing Maynard of his attention-getting gimmick. Kermit drifted back into supporting roles and bits, though unlike his bibulous, self-indulgent brother Ken, Kermit retained his muscular physique and square-jawed good looks throughout his career. After his retirement from acting in 1962, Kermit Maynard remained an active representative of the Screen Actors Guild, lobbying for better treatment and safer working conditions for stuntpersons and extras.

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from 1951.

Trivia: From 1923 until his retirement in 1949, American character actor Monte Montague was an adventure-film "regular." In both his silent and sound appearances, Montague was usually seen in comic-sidekick roles. He was busiest at Universal in the 1930s, where he appeared in such serials as Tailspin Tommy (1934), The Adventures of Frank Merriwell(1934) and Radio Patrol (1938). He also showed up in bit parts in the Universal "A" product; he was, for example, Dr. Praetorius' miniaturized King in Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Monte Montague wound up his career at Republic, playing utility roles in that studio's serial and western efforts.

Trivia: Had he been born a decade earlier, American actor Denver Pyle might well have joined the ranks of western-movie comedy sidekicks. Instead, Pyle, a Colorado farm boy, opted for studying law, working his way through school by playing drums in a dance band. Suddenly one day, Pyle became disenchanted with law and returned to his family farm, with nary an idea what he wanted to do with his life. Working in the oil fields of Oklahoma, he moved on to the shrimp boats of Galveston, Texas. A short stint as a page at NBC radio studios in 1940 didn't immediately lead to a showbiz career, as it has for so many others; instead, Pyle was inspired to perform by a mute oilfield coworker who was able to convey his thought with body language. Studying under such masters as Michael Chekhov and Maria Ouspenskaya, Pyle was able to achieve small movie and TV roles. He worked frequently on the western series of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry; not yet bearded and grizzled, Pyle was often seen as deputies, farmers and cattle rustlers. When his hair turned prematurely grey in his early '30s, Pyle graduated to banker, sheriff and judge roles in theatrical westerns -- though never of the comic variety. He also was a regular on two TV series, Code 3 (1956) and Tammy (1966). But his real breakthrough role didn't happen until 1967, when Pyle was cast as the taciturn sheriff in Bonnie and Clyde who is kidnapped and humilated by the robbers -- and then shows up at the end of the film to supervise the bloody machine-gun deaths of B&C. This virtually nonspeaking role won worldwide fame for Pyle, as well as verbal and physical assalts from the LA hippie community who regarded Bonnie and Clyde as folk heroes! From this point forward, Denver Pyle's billing, roles and salary were vastly improved -- and his screen image was softened and humanized by a full, bushy beard. Returning to TV, Pyle played the star's father on The Doris Day Show (1968-73); was Mad Jack, the costar/narrator of Life and Times of Grizzly Adams (1978-80); and best of all, spent six years (1979-85) as Uncle Jesse Duke on The Dukes of Hazzard. Looking stockier but otherwise unchanged, Denver Pyle was briefly seen in the 1994 hit Maverick, playing an elegantly dishonest cardshark who jauntily doffs his hat as he's dumped off of a riverboat. Pyle died of lung cancer at Burbank's Providence St. Joseph Medical Center at age 77.