Trivia: American actress Kathleen Crowley made her first mark on the entertainment world when she was elected Miss Egg Harbor of 1949. This led to the Miss New Jersey title and finally to the Miss America pageant, where Kathleen got no farther than Miss Congeniality. Fortunately this title came with a scholarship, enabling Kathleen to go to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. A few years later, Kathleen was hired by actor/producer Robert Montgomery to portray Esther Blodgett/Vicki Lester in a 1951 live-TV adaptation of A Star is Born. A desultory film contract followed, but after a single unimportant appearance in a Betty Grable picture Kathleen was back in television. She preferred free-lancing, appearing regularly only on the 1954 syndicated series Waterfront. At the height of her TV activity, Ms. Crowley was cast as the female lead in Disney's Westward Ho the Wagons (1956); unfortunately most of the studio publicity concentrated on the presence in the film of several Mousketeers like Cubby O'Brien and Karen Pendleton. Several years of TV work later, Kathleen was still a "guest star" but not quite a real star. In the early '60s, after a brief Warner Bros. contract, she gradually faded from view. Crowley died in 2017, at age 87.

Trivia: Onslow Stevens was the son of character actor Housley Stevenson who, in turn, was the son of a prominent British artist. Stevens' own career in the arts began in 1928, when he was featured in the Pasadena Playhouse production Under the Roof. To believe his publicity, Stevens was "accidentally" hired for film work in 1932 when he agreed to help an actress friend get through her screen test. At first a leading man, Stevens soon established himself in character roles, often cast as saturnine villains -- or, as in the case of films like House of Dracula (1945), he played weak-willed men with the capacity for villainy. From 1952 through 1955, Stevens played the kindly Mr. Fisher on the religious TV dramatic series This Is the Life. Onslow Stevens spent his last years in a nursing home, where, according to his wife, he was persecuted and brutalized by his fellow patients; he died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 75.

Trivia: The son of a brewery owner, steely-eyed American character actor Paul Fix went the vaudeville and stock-company route before settling in Hollywood in 1926. During the 1930s and 1940s he appeared prolifically in varied fleeting roles: a transvestite jewel thief in the Our Gang two-reeler Free Eats (1932), a lascivious zookeeper (appropriately named Heinie) in Zoo in Budapest (1933), a humorless gangster who puts Bob Hope "on the spot" in The Ghost Breakers (1940), and a bespectacled ex-convict who muscles his way into Berlin in Hitler: Dead or Alive (1943), among others. During this period, Fix was most closely associated with westerns, essaying many a villainous (or at least untrustworthy) role at various "B"-picture mills. In the mid-1930s, Fix befriended young John Wayne and helped coach the star-to-be in the whys and wherefores of effective screen acting. Fix ended up appearing in 27 films with "The Duke," among them Pittsburgh (1942), The Fighting Seabees (1943), Tall in the Saddle (1944), Back to Bataan (1945), Red River (1948) and The High and the Mighty (1954). Busy in TV during the 1950s, Fix often found himself softening his bad-guy image to portray crusty old gents with golden hearts-- characters not far removed from the real Fix, who by all reports was a 100% nice guy. His most familiar role was as the honest but often ineffectual sheriff Micah Torrance on the TV series The Rifleman. In the 1960s, Fix was frequently cast as sagacious backwoods judges and attorneys, as in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962).

Trivia: With his slight built, narrow face and pencil-thin mustache, I. Stanford Jolley did not exactly look trustworthy, and a great many of his screen roles (more than 500) were indeed to be found on the wrong side of the law. Isaac Stanford Jolley had toured as a child with his father's traveling circus and later worked in stock and vaudeville, prior to making his Broadway debut opposite Charles Trowbridge in Sweet Seventeen (1924). Radio work followed and he arrived in Hollywood in 1935. Pegged early on as a gangster or Western outlaw, Jolley graduated to playing lead henchman or the boss villain in the '40s, mostly appearing for such poverty-row companies as Monogram and PRC. Although Jolley is often mentioned as a regular member of the Republic Pictures' stock company, he was never under contract to that legendary studio and only appeared in 25 films for them between 1936 and 1954. From 1950 on, Jolley worked frequently on television and remained a busy performer until at least 1976. According to his widow, the actor, who died of emphysema at the Motion Picture Country Hospital, never earned more than 100 dollars on any given movie assignment. He was the father of art director Stan Jolley.

Trivia: A slightly built, often mustachioed, supporting actor who usually played professional men (dentists, fingerprint experts, druggists, bookkeepers, etc.), Perry Ivins had been in the original 1924 production of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms. He entered films as a dialogue director in 1929 (The Love Parade [1929], The Benson Murder Case [1930]) before embarking on a long career as a bit part player. Among Ivins' more notable roles were the copy editor in Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), the assistant home secretary in Charlie Chan in London, and the mysterious but ultimately benign Crenshaw in the serial Devil Dogs of the Air (1937). Ivins' acting career lasted well into the television era and included guest roles on such programs as Gunsmoke and Perry Mason.

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: American actor Ward Bond was a football player at the University of Southern California when, together with teammate and lifelong chum John Wayne, he was hired for extra work in the silent film Salute (1928), directed by John Ford. Both Bond and Wayne continued in films, but it was Wayne who ascended to stardom, while Bond would have to be content with bit roles and character parts throughout the 1930s. Mostly playing traffic cops, bus drivers and western heavies, Bond began getting better breaks after a showy role as the murderous Cass in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). Ford cast Bond in important roles all through the 1940s, usually contriving to include at least one scene per picture in which the camera would favor Bond's rather sizable posterior; it was an "inside" joke which delighted everyone on the set but Bond. A starring role in Ford's Wagonmaster (1950) led, somewhat indirectly, to Bond's most lasting professional achievement: His continuing part as trailmaster Seth Adams on the extremely popular NBC TV western, Wagon Train. No longer supporting anyone, Bond exerted considerable creative control over the series from its 1957 debut onward, even seeing to it that his old mentor John Ford would direct one episode in which John Wayne had a bit role, billed under his real name, Marion Michael Morrison. Finally achieving the wide popularity that had eluded him during his screen career, Bond stayed with Wagon Train for three years, during which time he became as famous for his offscreen clashes with his supporting cast and his ultra-conservative politics as he was for his acting. Wagon Train was still NBC's Number One series when, in November of 1960, Bond unexpectedly suffered a heart attack and died while taking a shower.

Trivia: Redheaded leading man Robert Horton attended UCLA, served in the Coast Guard during World War II, and acted in California-based stage productions before making his entree into films in 1951. Horton's television career started off on a high note in 1955, when he was cast in the weekly-TV version of King's Row as Drake McHugh (the role essayed by Ronald Reagan in the 1942 film version). The series barely lasted three months, but better things were on the horizon: in 1957, Horton was hired to play frontier scout Flint McCullough in Wagon Train, which became the highest-rated western on TV. Horton remained with Wagon Train until 1962. He then did some more stage work before embarking on his third series, 1965's The Man Called Shenandoah. When this one-season wonder ran its course, Horton toured the dinner-theatre circuit, then in 1982 accepted a major role on the popular daytime soap opera As the World Turns. Horton continued acting until the late 1980s. He died in 2016, at age 91.

Trivia: Robert Fuller spent his first decade in show business trying his best to avoid performing. After his film debut in 1952's Above and Beyond, Fuller studied acting with Sanford Meisner at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse but never exhibited any real dedication. He tried to become a dancer but gave that up as well, determining that dancing was "sissified." Fuller rose to nominal stardom fairly rapidly in the role of Jess Harper on the popular TV western Laramie (1959-63). Once he found his niche in cowboy attire, he stuck at it in another series, Wagon Train, turning down virtually all offers for "contemporary" roles. When westerns began dying out on television in the late 1960s, Fuller worked as a voiceover actor in commercials, earning some $65,000 per year (a tidy sum in 1969). On the strength of his performance in the Burt Topper-directed motorcycle flick The Hard Ride, Fuller was cast by producer Jack Webb as chief paramedic Kelly Brackett on the weekly TVer Emergency, which ran from 1972 through 1977. In 1994, Robert Fuller was one of several former TV western stars who showed up in cameo roles in the Mel Gibson movie vehicle Maverick.