Trivia: Chuck Connors attended Seton Hall University before embarking on a career in professional sports. He first played basketball with the Boston Celtics, then baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Chicago Cubs. Hardly a spectacular player -- while with the Cubbies, he hit .233 in 70 games -- Connors was eventually shipped off to Chicago's Pacific Coast League farm team, the L.A. Angels. Here his reputation rested more on his cut-up antics than his ball-playing prowess. While going through his usual routine of performing cartwheels while rounding the bases, Connors was spotted by a Hollywood director, who arranged for Connors to play a one-line bit as a highway patrolman in the 1952 Tracy-Hepburn vehicle Pat and Mike. Finding acting an agreeable and comparatively less strenuous way to make a living, Connors gave up baseball for films and television. One of his first roles of consequence was as a comic hillbilly on the memorable Superman TV episode "Flight to the North." In films, Connors played a variety of heavies, including raspy-voiced gangster Johnny O in Designing Woman (1957) and swaggering bully Buck Hannassy in The Big Country (1958). He switched to the Good Guys in 1958, when he was cast as frontiersman-family man Lucas McCain on the popular TV Western series The Rifleman. During the series' five-year run, he managed to make several worthwhile starring appearances in films: he was seen in the title role of Geronimo (1962), which also featured his second wife, Kamala Devi, and originated the role of Porter Ricks in the 1963 film version of Flipper. After Rifleman folded, Connors co-starred with Ben Gazzara in the one-season dramatic series Arrest and Trial (1963), a 90-minute precursor to Law and Order. He enjoyed a longer run as Jason McCord, an ex-Army officer falsely accused of cowardice on the weekly Branded (1965-1966). His next TV project, Cowboy in Africa, never got past 13 episodes. In 1972, Connors acted as host/narrator of Thrill Seekers, a 52-week syndicated TV documentary. Then followed a great many TV guest-star roles and B-pictures of the Tourist Trap (1980) variety. He was never more delightfully over the top than as the curiously accented 2,000-year-old lycanthrope Janos Skorzeny in the Fox Network's Werewolf (1987). Shortly before his death from lung cancer at age 71, Chuck Connors revived his Rifleman character Lucas McCain for the star-studded made-for-TV Western The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1993).

Trivia: A former Mousketeer, Johnny Crawford is best remembered for playing young Mark McCain on The Rifleman (1958-1963). His career slowed after he reached adulthood when he was relegated to supporting roles.

Trivia: Born William Anderson, this brawny, blond second lead had the looks of a Viking god. He worked as a band vocalist and trombone player, then gained a small amount of stage experience before debuting onscreen in a bit part (as a corpse) in Wanderer of the Wasteland (1935). Billed by Paramount as Glenn Erickson, he began his screen career as a leading man in Westerns. Because of his Nordic looks he was renamed Leif Erikson, which he later changed to Erickson. He played intelligent but unexciting second leads and supporting parts in many films. Erickson took four years off to serve in World War II and was twice wounded. He made few films after 1965 and retired from the screen after 1977. Also working on Broadway and in TV plays, he played the patriarch Big John Cannon in the TV series High Chaparral (1967-1971). From 1934 to 1942, he was married to actress Frances Farmer, with whom he co-starred in Ride a Crooked Mile (1938); later, he was briefly married to actress Margaret Hayes (aka Dana Dale).

Trivia: The odyssey of Dennis Hopper was one of Hollywood's longest, strangest trips. A onetime teen performer, he went through a series of career metamorphoses -- studio pariah, rebel filmmaker, drug casualty, and comeback kid -- before finally settling comfortably into the role of character actor par excellence, with a rogues' gallery of killers and freaks unmatched in psychotic intensity and demented glee. Along the way, Hopper defined a generation, documenting the shining hopes and bitter disappointments of the hippie counterculture and bringing their message to movie screens everywhere. By extension, he spearheaded a revolt in the motion picture industry, forcing the studio establishment to acknowledge a youth market they'd long done their best to deny. Born May 17, 1936 in Dodge City, Kansas, Hopper began acting during his teen years, and made his professional debut on the TV series Medic. In 1955 he made a legendary collaboration with the director Nicholas Ray in the classic Rebel Without a Cause, appearing as a young tough opposite James Dean. Hopper and Dean became close friends during filming, and also worked together on 1956's Giant. After Dean's tragic death, it was often remarked that Hopper attempted to fill his friend's shoes by borrowing much of his persona, absorbing the late icon's famously defiant attitude and becoming so temperamental that his once-bright career quickly began to wane. Seeking roles far removed from the stereotypical 'troubled teens' which previously dotted his resume, Hopper began training with the Actors Studio. However, on the set of Henry Hathaway's From Hell to Texas he so incensed cast and crew with his insistence upon multiple takes for his improvisational techniques -- the reshoots sometimes numbering upwards of 100 -- that he found himself a Hollywood exile. He spent much of the next decade mired in "B"-movies, if he was lucky enough to work at all. Producers considered him such a risk that upon completing 1960's Key Witness he did not reappear on-screen for another three years. With a noteworthy role in Hathaway's 1965 John Wayne western The Sons of Katie Elder, Hopper made tentative steps towards a comeback. He then appeared in a number of psychedelic films, including 1967's The Trip and the following year's Monkees feature Head, and earned a new audience among anti-establishment viewers.With friends Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson in front of the camera, Hopper decided to direct his own movie, and secured over $400,000 in financing to begin filming a screenplay written by novelist Terry Southern. The result was 1969's Easy Rider, a sprawling, drug-fueled journey through an America torn apart by the conflict in Vietnam. Initially rejected by producer Roger Corman, the film became a countercultural touchstone, grossing millions at the box office and proving to Hollywood executives that the ever-expanding youth market and their considerable spending capital would indeed react to films targeted to their issues and concerns, spawning a cottage industry of like-minded films. Long a pariah, Hopper was suddenly hailed as a major new filmmaker, and his success became so great that in 1971 he appeared in an autobiographical documentary, American Dreamer, exploring his life and times.The true follow-up to Easy Rider, however, was 1971's The Last Movie, an excessive, self-indulgent mess that, while acclaimed by jurors at the Venice Film Festival, was otherwise savaged by critics and snubbed by audiences. Once again Hopper was left picking up the pieces of his career; he appeared only sporadically in films throughout the 1970s, most of them made well outside of Hollywood. His personal life a shambles -- his marriage to singer/actress Michelle Phillips lasted just eight days -- Hopper spent much of the decade in a haze, earning a notorious reputation as an unhinged wild man. An appearance as a disturbed photojournalist in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now did little to repair most perceptions of his sanity. Then in 1980, Hopper traveled to Canada to appear in a small film titled Out of the Blue. At the outset of the production he was also asked to take over as director, and to the surprise of many, the picture appeared on schedule and to decent reviews. Slowly he began to restake his territory in American films, accepting roles in diverse fare ranging from 1983's teen drama Rumble Fish to the 1985 comedy My Science Project. In 1986 Hopper returned to prominence with a vengeance. His role as the feral, psychopathic Frank Booth in David Lynch's masterpiece Blue Velvet was among the most stunning supporting turns in recent memory, while his touching performance as an alcoholic assistant coach in the basketball drama Hoosiers earned an Academy Award nomination. While acclaimed turns in subsequent films like 1987's The River's Edge threatened to typecast Hopper, there was no doubting his return to Hollywood's hot list, and in 1988 he directed Colors, a charged police drama starring Sean Penn and Robert Duvall. While subsequent directorial efforts like 1989's Chattahoochee and 1990's film noir The Hot Spot failed to create the same kind of box office returns as Easy Rider over two decades earlier, his improbable comeback continued throughout the 1990s with roles in such acclaimed, quirky films as 1993's True Romance and 1996's Basquiat. Hopper was also the villain-du-jour in a number of Hollywood blockbusters, including 1994's Speed and the following year's Waterworld, and was even a pitchman for Nike athletic wear. He also did a number of largely forgettable films such asRon Howard's EdTV (1999). In addition, he also played writer and Beat extraordinaire William S. Burroughs in a 1999 documentary called The Source with Johnny Depp as Jack Kerouac and John Turturro as Allen Ginsberg. In 1997 Hopper was awarded the distinction of appearing 87th in Empire Magazine's list of "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time."Hopper contracted prostate cancer in the early 2000s, and died of related complications in Venice, CA, in late May 2010. He was 74 years old.

Trivia: Birmingham-born R.G. Armstrong attended the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where he was active with the Carolina Playmakers. On the New York stage since the 1940s, Armstrong is best remembered for creating the role of Big Daddy in the original 1955 Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In film since 1957, Armstrong appeared in more than his share of westerns, usually as an able-bodied sheriff or thick-necked land baron. A frequent visitor to television, R. G. Armstrong was a regular on the 1967 adventure series T.H.E. Cat.

Trivia: Sidney Blackmer had planned to study law at the University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill, but football and amateur theatricals held more interest for him. Heading east to make his fortune as an actor, Blackmer accepted day work at various film studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, reportedly appearing in the pioneering Pearl White serial The Perils of Pauline (1914). After making his Broadway bow in 1917, Blackmer served as a lieutenant in World War I. His starmaking stage role was the title character in 1921's The Mountain Man. Eager to have a go at all branches of entertainment, Blackmer sang on radio in the 1920s, and participated in the first experimental dramatic presentations of the Allen B. DuMont television series. In films, Blackmer was usually cast as a smooth society villain, e.g. "The Big Boy" in the 1931 gangster flick Little Caesar. He appeared in both sinister and sympathetic roles in a handful of Shirley Temple pictures, and also starred as pulp-novel detective Thatcher Colt in the 1943 programmer The Panther's Claw. Blackmer is best remembered for his portrayals of President Theodore Roosevelt in over a dozen films, including This is My Affair (1937) and My Girl Tisa (1947). In 1950, Blackmer won the Tony award for his portrayal of the drink-sodden "Doc" in the William Inge play Come Back Little Sheba; he later created the role of Boss Finley in Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth. For several years, Blackmer served as the national vice president of the Muscular Dystrophy Association. Sidney Blackmer was married twice, to actresses Lenore Ulric and Suzanne Kaaren.

Trivia: Well-muscled former 1935 New York City heavyweight boxing champ Mickey Simpson was typically cast as a villain in numerous low-budget actioners, adventures, and Westerns of the '40s, '50s, and '60s. Before making his screen debut with a bit part in Stagecoach, Simpson had been Claudette Colbert's personal chauffeur. He served with the military during WWII and then returned to Hollywood to continue his busy onscreen career.

Trivia: Indiana native Charles Arnt attended Princeton University, where he was president of the Triangle Club and where he earned a geological engineering degree. Short, balding and with an air of perpetual suspicion concerning his fellow man, Arnt seemed far older than his 30 years when he was featured in the original Broadway production of Knickerbocker Holiday. In the movies, Arnt was often cast as snoopy clerks, inquisitive next-door neighbors or curious bystanders. Charles Arnt was seen in such films as The Falcon's Brother (1942), The Great Gildersleeve (1943) and That Wonderful Urge (1948); he also played one top-billed lead, as an obsessive art dealer in PRC's Dangerous Intruder (1946).