Trivia: An art major at Yale University, Tom Tryon attended the Art Student's League in New York, then studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Working both on-stage and backstage with several stock companies, Tryon began picking up TV work in the 1950s. His first burst of fame was the result of his starring stint in the Texas John Slaughter episodes of TV's Walt Disney Presents. In 1962, he was signed to a contract by producer/director Otto Preminger, who cast Tryon in the lead of the 1963 big-budgeter The Cardinal. Tryon later quit acting to become a successful novelist, specializing in gothic horror. Tom Tryon's best-selling novels include The Other, Harvest Home, and Crowned Heads, all of which were adapted to film.

Trivia: First earning an international reputation in opera and musical comedy, Harve Presnell made his feature-film debut in the film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown playing opposite Debbie Reynolds. Though he has spent the bulk of his career on the stage, Presnell periodically appeared in other films through the '70s. After taking no film roles in the '80s, Presnell re-emerged in the Coen brothers' Fargo (1996) and continued to play character roles in films such as Julian Po (1997) and Saving Private Ryan (1998).

Trivia: Born in Indiana and raised in Texas, Andrew Duggan attended Indiana University on a speech and drama scholarship. He was starred there in Maxwell Anderson's The Eve of St. Mark, which was being given a nonprofessional pre-Broadway tryout; on the basis of this performance, Duggan was cast in the professional Chicago company of the Anderson play. Before rehearsals could start, however, Duggan was drafted into the army. After wartime service, Duggan began his acting career all over again, working at his uncle's Indiana farm in-between Broadway and stock engagements. In Hollywood in the late 1950s, Duggan was co-starred in the Warner Bros. TV series Bourbon Street Beat and was featured in such films as The Bravados (1958), Seven Days in May (1964) and In Like Flint (1967). He also was starred on the 1962 TV sitcom Room for One More and the 1968 video western Lancer. Because of his marked resemblance to Dwight D. Eisenhower, Duggan was frequently cast as generals and U.S. presidents. Andrew Duggan's last screen appearance was in The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover.

Trivia: Like so many other prominent actors of the 1970s, the versatile James Caan rose to success on the strength of his riveting performance in The Godfather. Born March 26, 1939, in the Bronx, NY, Caan decided to pursue a career in acting while attending college and in 1960 was accepted by Sanford Meisner into the Neighborhood Playhouse. After making his debut off-Broadway in I Roam, he landed in the Broadway production of Mandingo but exited after just four performances because of artistic difficulties with star Franchot Tone. Caan then landed in television, where he became a busy character actor; he made his film debut in an unbilled performance in 1963's Irma La Douce, followed by a meatier role in Lady in a Cage the following year. The 1965 Howard Hawks auto-racing drama Red Line 7000 was his first starring role, followed two years later by the Hawks Western El Dorado, which cast him opposite John Wayne and Robert Mitchum; in 1968, Caan starred in Robert Altman's Countdown, and in 1969, he appeared in Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People. Caan shot to fame thanks to a poignant performance in the 1970 television movie Brian's Song, in which he played the ill-fated Chicago Bears star Brian Piccolo; his turn as the similarly ill-fated Sonny Corleone in Coppola's 1972 masterpiece The Godfather solidified his stardom and earned him an Academy Award nomination, but his subsequent films, including 1973's Slither and the next year's Freebie and the Bean, failed to live up to expectations. After earning a Golden Globe bid for his work in 1974's The Gambler, Caan briefly appeared in 1974's The Godfather Pt. 2 before co-starring with Barbra Streisand in the hit Funny Lady, followed by Norman Jewison's futuristic parable Rollerball. When both 1975's Sam Peckinpah thriller The Killer Elite and 1976's Harry and Walter Go to New York met with failure, Caan's career took a downward turn, and apart from cameo appearances in both Mel Brooks' Silent Movie and the star-studded A Bridge Too Far, he was largely absent from screens for a time. He also made any number of ill-considered decisions; he and Coppola were unable to come to terms for Apocalypse Now, and he also rejected roles in hits including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Superman, and Kramer vs. Kramer.By the end of the decade, Caan's career had hit the skids, as projects including the 1978 Western Comes a Horseman (co-starring Jane Fonda) and the following year's Neil Simon drama Chapter Two all failed to live up to expectations. His directorial debut in 1980's Hide in Plain Sight fared no better, although Michael Mann's thriller Thief garnered a cult following; when 1982's Kiss Me Goodbye bombed, Caan disappeared from sight for the next five years. Finally, in 1987, Caan resurfaced, starring in Coppola's war drama Gardens of Stone; the next year's science fiction picture Alien Nation was a hit, as was his next major project, Rob Reiner's 1990 feature Misery. After 1991's For the Boys failed to connect with audiences, Caan spent much of the decade in prominent supporting roles which showcased his smart, edgy persona; among the more high-profile were 1992's Honeymoon in Vegas, 1996's Eraser, and the wonderful indie hit Bottle Rocket.Caan would prove over the coming decades that he liked to work, appearing in projects that ran the gamut from big to small. He'd appear in comedies like Mickey Blue Eyes and Elf, thrillers like City of Ghosts and In the Shadows, indie films like Lars Von Trier's Dogville and Tony Kaye's Detachment. Caan would also delight audiences on the small screen with a starring role on the TV series Las Vegas from 2003 to 2007,

Trivia: Though he spoke most of his movie dialogue in a slow Western drawl, actor Slim Pickens was a pure-bred California boy. An expert rider from the age of four, Pickens was performing in rodeos at 12. Three years later, he quit school to become a full-time equestrian and bull wrangler, eventually becoming the highest-paid rodeo clown in show business. In films since 1950's Rocky Mountain, Pickens specialized in Westerns (what a surprise), appearing as the comic sidekick of Republic cowboy star Rex Allen. By the end of the 1950s, Pickens had gained so much extra poundage that he practically grew out of his nickname. Generally cast in boisterous comedy roles, Pickens was also an effectively odious villain in 1966's An Eye for an Eye, starting the film off with a jolt by shooting a baby in its crib. In 1963, director Stanley Kubrick handed Pickens his greatest role: honcho bomber pilot "King" Kong in Dr. Strangelove. One of the most unforgettable of all cinematic images is the sight of Pickens straddling a nuclear bomb and "riding" it to its target, whooping and hollering all the way down. Almost as good was Pickens' performance as Harvey Korman's henchman in Mel Brooks' bawdy Western spoof Blazing Saddles (1974). Slim Pickens was also kept busy on television, with numerous guest shots and regular roles in the TV series The Legend of Custer, B.J. and the Bear, and Filthy Rich.

Trivia: Not to be confused with the 1940s bit player of the same name, American leading man Peter Breck was the son of a bandleader. Majoring in drama and minoring in psychology at the University of Houston, Breck went the regional-theater route until selected by Robert Mitchum for a role in Mitchum's Thunder Road (1958). He paid a few further dues on network television, showing up now and then as Doc Holiday on the weekly Western Maverick. In 1959, Breck starred in his own sagebrush series, Black Saddle, in which he played gunslinger-turned-lawyer Clay Culhane. When the series was dropped after one season, he accepted a few low-paying theater assignments, making ends meet with whatever odd jobs came along. His tenacity paid off when, in 1969, Breck was cast as firebrand "number two son" Nick Barkeley on The Big Valley, which ran for four years. A decade later, he appeared in still another Western, playing a megalomaniac miner in the serialized Secret Empire. Peter Breck has devoted considerable time to teaching drama in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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: Laurel Goodwin started working as a child model at the age of seven and decided in her teens to move into acting as a profession. She was born in Wichita, KS, but moved to San Francisco, CA, where she attended Lowell High School and San Francisco State University as a drama major. In the summer of her freshman year, her teacher advised her to do summer stock work in Shasta, CA, and in her spare time she ended up baby-sitting for the children of cinematographer Kurt Gunther; in return, he took some stills of her and passed them to the publicity department at Paramount, where he was working. She was invited to audition and became a contract player in 1962. Goodwin was noticed by producer Hal Wallis and cast in the Elvis Presley vehicle Girls! Girls! Girls! as the "nice girl" vying for the rock 'n' roll king's heart, in competition with female lead Stella Stevens. Goodwin received good notices for her debut and other film roles followed; in Papa's Delicate Condition she was Jackie Gleason's older daughter and in the A.C. Lyles-produced Stage To Thunder Rock she played alongside such veteran actors as Barry Sullivan, John Agar, and Lon Chaney Jr. Goodwin's third and last feature film was the Sam Peckinpah-authored, Arnold Laven-directed Western The Glory Guys, where she had the chance to make the acqaintance of a promising young actor in the cast named James Caan. By this time in the mid-'60s, however, film production was slowing to a relative trickle and there wasn't too much demand for actresses of Goodwin's type. Her subsequent career was confined to television, where she played a multitude of roles, ranging from ingenue parts to voluptuous hippie-chicks, in episodes of The Virginian, Mannix, Get Smart, and The Beverly Hillbillies, through the end of the 1960s. If she has any screen immortality beyond the Elvis Presley movie, however, it is from her work in "The Cage", the original pilot episode for Star Trek, starring Jeffrey Hunter and Susan Oliver, in which Goodwin played Yeoman Colt. Later recut into the two-part episode "The Menagerie" and then restored to circulation intact, "The Cage ended up one of the most renowned touchstones of 1960s science fiction. After losing the lead in Gidget because she was too tall, Goodwin gradually eased out of performing, apart from commercials. Since the 1970s, she has been married to film executive William Wood, and together the two have been involved in the making of several feature films, including Stroker Ace.

Trivia: The son of a Rhodes Scholar, Wayne Rogers attended Princeton University and acted with the college's Triangle Club players, then forgot all about performing for several years. After navy service, Rogers headed to New York to learn the intricacies of the world of finance. But with aspiring actor Peter Falk as his roommate, it was only a matter of time before Rogers would again yearn for the smell of greasepaint. He took classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse while supporting himself as a busboy and lifeguard. During these lean years, Rogers amazed Falk and his other friends with his uncanny ability to invest his meager earnings into winning propositions. Even after making it as an actor, Rogers continued dispensing wise financial advice to his show-biz buddies, earning the affectionate soubriquet "The Wizard." After Broadway, film, and daytime soap opera experience, Rogers landed his first prime time TV starring role, playing hard-riding Luke Perry on the 1960 series Stagecoach West. During a lull in his acting career in the mid-1960s, Rogers suddenly turned producer, bankrolling a horror quickie called The Astro Zombies, from which he earned back a 2000% profit on a $47,000 investment. In 1972, Rogers was cast as irreverent army surgeon "Trapper John" McIntyre on a new sitcom called M*A*S*H. Three years later, he abruptly stopped showing up on the set. Claiming that the producers had promised him that he'd be the star of M*A*S*H, Rogers was incensed that Alan Alda had emerged as top dog, so he quit the series cold. The producers slapped on a $2.9 million breach of contract suit, whereupon Rogers countersued; these legal volleys went back and forth for over a year before an amenable settlement was ironed out. Like many other M*A*S*H bailouts, Rogers had difficulty finding success as a solo TV performer: of his three subsequent starring series, City of Angels, House Calls and High Risk, only House Calls (1979-82) lasted beyond its first season. Wayne Rogers has had better luck as the star of such made-for-TV movies as Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan (1975), It Happened One Christmas (1977), The Girl Who Spelled Freedom (1986) and American Harvest (1987). The founder of the Wayne Rogers & Company investment firm, the veteran film and television actor was given his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005. He died in 2015, at age 82.

Trivia: American actress Alice Backes has played supporting roles on stage, screen, radio, and primarily television (where she has played over 100 roles) since 1946.

Trivia: Burly stunt man Walter Scott appeared in a number of big-budget features of the '80s and '90s.

Trivia: American actor Michael Forest starred in the title role in Roger Corman's sword-and-sandal opus Atlas (1961), after which he made the Hollywood adventure movie rounds of the mid to late '60s. He was among the handsome Hollywood hunks prevalent in such films as The Glory Guys (1966), The Sweet Ride (1967) and 100 Rifles (1969). Two decades later, Forest was still essaying beefcake supporting roles, notably in 1988's Deep Space. Soap-opera addicts are most familiar with Michael Forest for his interpretation of Nick Andropoulos on TV's As the World Turns. Devotees of Star Trek will remember Forest as the messianic Apollo in the 1967 episode "Who Mourns for Adonis?." And sitcom fans will recall Forest as Laura Petrie's former beau Joe Coogan, who shows up unexpectedly in clerical collar as Father Coogan on a 1963 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. In 2013, Forest turned in a very touching and powerful performance reprising his 1960s-era Star Trek role of the Greek god Apollo, in the fan-produced "Star Trek Continues" episode "Pilgrim Of Eternity," in which he was introduced working opposite his real-life wife Diana Hale (playing Athena).

Trivia: Beckman is a stocky character actor, onscreen from the '50s.

Trivia: An actor-turned production assistant-turned-director, Michael Anderson had a relatively undistinguished record in motion pictures until the mid 1950s, when he directed The Dam Busters. One of the more successful British films about World War II, it involved mixed drama and special effects work in a combination that pointed the way toward Anderson's later career in international pictures. His mid 1950s version of 1984 received mixed notices but wide distribution, and Around The World In 80 Days brought him into international prominence, despite producer Michael Todd being the dominant personality involved in shaping the movie, and Anderson worked in the United States as often as he did in England over the next two decades. Operation Crossbow and The Shoes of the Fisherman were dramas featuring international casts and large canvases for their action, in which Anderson largely held the proceedings together, in spite of major script problems. His most popular movie, other than Around The World In 80 Days, is the science-fiction adventure Logan's Run, in which he once again overcame a weak script by getting some strong performances out of his actors and pulling them together around extremely impressive special-effects sequences.

Trivia: Flinty character actor Paul Birch was strictly a Broadway performer until switching to films in 1952. It didn't take long for Birch to be typecast in science fiction films after playing one of the three "vaporized" locals at the beginning of 1953's The War of the Worlds. Birch's more memorable cinema fantastique assignments included The Beast With a Million Eyes (1955), The Day the World Ended (1956), The 27th Day (1957), and Queen of Outer Space (1958). In 1957, he played the melancholy leading role in Roger Corman's Not of This Earth (1957). Not exclusively confined to flying-saucer epics, Paul Birch was also seen in such roles as the Police Chief in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and the Mayor in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

Trivia: A Mexican supporting actor, Brook was onscreen from the '60s.