Trivia: A dancer from childhood, Buddy Ebsen headlined in vaudeville in an act with his sister Velma. In 1935, Ebsen was signed by MGM as a specialty performer in The Broadway Melody of 1936, wherein he was shown to good advantage in several solos. He worked in a number of subsequent musicals, including Shirley Temple's Captain January (1936), teaming with Shirley for the delightful number "At the Codfish Ball." MGM assigned Ebsen to the role of the Scarecrow in 1939's The Wizard of Oz, but Ray Bolger, who'd been cast as the Tin Man, talked Ebsen into switching roles. The move proved to be Ebsen's undoing; he found that he was allergic to the silver makeup required for the Tin Man, fell ill, and was forced to bow out of the film, to be replaced by Jack Haley (however, Ebsen's voice can still be heard in the reprises of "We're Off to See the Wizard").Ebsen then returned to the stage, taking time out to provide the dancing model for a electronically operated wooden marionette which later was used at Disneyland. In 1950 Ebsen returned to films as comical sidekick to Rex Allen, gradually working his way into good character parts in "A" pictures like Night People (1955). Walt Disney, who'd remembered Ebsen from the dancing marionette, offered the actor the lead in his 1954 three-part TV production of Davy Crockett, but at the last moment engaged Fess Parker as Davy and recast Buddy as Crockett's pal George Russel. Ebsen continued to pop up in films like 1961's Breakfast at Tiffany's (as Audrey Hepburn's abandoned hometown husband), and in TV westerns, where he often cast his image to the winds by playing cold-blooded murderers. Comfortably wealthy in 1962 thanks to his film work and wise business investments, Ebsen added to his riches by signing on to play Jed Clampett in the TV sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies, which ran for nine years to excellent ratings. A millionaire several times over, Ebsen planned to ease off after Hillbillies, but in 1972 he was back in TV in the title role of Barnaby Jones. Few observers gave this easygoing detective series much of a chance, but they weren't counting on Ebsen's built-in popularity; Barnaby Jones lasted until 1980. The actor now confined himself to special events appearances and occasional guest-star roles, though he did play the recurring part of Lee Horsley's uncle in the final season of the TV mystery show Matt Houston (1983-85). One of Buddy Ebsen's final roles was in the 1993 theatrical film version of The Beverly Hillbillies -- not as Jed Clampett but in a cameo as Barnaby Jones!

Trivia: For as long as she could remember, Irene Ryan was performing on some stage or other. From the 1920s onward, she and her husband Timothy Ryan formed the popular vaudeville duo Tim and Irene. They carried over their song, dance and snappy patter into a brief series of two-reel comedies and several radio programs. During her first burst of filmmaking activity in the 1940s, Ryan played comedy relief parts in a number of B pictures scripted by her husband. Her standard characterization at this time was the traditional wisecracking, man-hungry spinster. During and after her divorce, Ryan continued accepting roles of varying sizes in such pictures as Woman on the Beach (1948), My Dear Secretary (1948), Mighty Joe Young (1949), Bonzo Goes to College (1952) and Blackbeard the Pirate (1952). By the early 1960s, Ryan was (as she would later cheerfully admit) pretty much washed up in show business. All this changed when she was invited to audition for an upcoming sitcom about a family of mountaineers who suddenly come into a fortune. Ryan read one single line and was hired on the spot: she played Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies from 1962 through 1971, never missing an opportunity to express gratitude for her involvement in so popular a project. No sooner had Hillbillies folded than Irene Ryan was cast in a show-stopping role in the 1971 Broadway musical Pippin, scoring yet another personal success--which, sadly, turned out to be her last.

Trivia: Though she appeared in feature films before and after the much-loved '60s sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies, American actress Donna Douglas will always be remembered as the buxom, blue-eyed tomboy Elly May Clampett. She was born Doris Smith in Pride, LA, and grew up to be very much like Elly May in that she always had a special affinity for animals and nature. As a teen, Douglas was a cheerleader and won some beauty contests, notably the title of Miss New Orleans 1957. From there Douglas appeared as the Letters Girl on The Perry Como Show and later appeared on The Steve Allen Show as a Billboard Girl. She made her feature-film debut in Career Girl (1959) and followed it up with a co-starring role in the Rock Hudson/Doris Day screwball comedy Lover Come Back (1960). She was cast as Elly May in 1962 and remained with the series through its demise in 1971. Later, she returned for a Beverly Hillbillies made-for-TV reunion movie in 1981. In 1965, Douglas starred opposite Elvis Presley in Fred de Cordova's Frankie and Johnnie. It would be her last film that had nothing to do with Hillbillies. Whereas some actors deeply resent being so closely associated with a single role, Donna Douglas embraced Elly Mae and continued to make public appearances in costume. A devout Christian, Douglas was also a noted gospel singer. Douglas died in 2015, at age 81.

Trivia: Born into a poor San Francisco family, Raymond Bailey dropped out of school in the 10th grade to help make ends meet. He took on a variety of short-term jobs before escaping his lot by hopping a freight to New York. He tried in vain to find work as an actor, eventually signing on as a mess boy on a freighter. While docked in Honolulu, Bailey once more gave acting a try, and also sang on a local radio station. In Hollywood from 1932 on, Bailey took any nickel-and-dime job that was remotely connected to show business, but when World War II began, he once more headed out to sea, this time with the Merchant Marine. Only after the war was Bailey able to make a living as a character actor on stage and in TV and films. In 1962, he was cast as covetous bank president Milburn Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies, a role that made him a household name and one which he played for nine seasons (ironically, he'd once briefly worked in a bank during his teen years). After the show was cancelled in 1971, Bailey dropped out of sight and became somewhat of a recluse.

Trivia: American actor Milton Frome made an unlikely film debut as the cowboy star of Grand National's Ride 'Em Cowgirl (1939)--unlikely in that the tall, bald actor spent the rest of his career playing nervous corporate types and "second bananas" for some of show business' greatest clowns. After touring with the USO during World War II, the vaudeville-trained Frome was an early arrival on the television scene: he worked as a straight man and foil on Milton Berle's variety series, and also functioned as the hapless target of the antics of Martin and Lewis on The Colgate Comedy Hour. The actor was also busy in live and filmed detective and action series (he frequently appeared in Superman with his good friend George Reeves) as well as in two-reel comedies with The Three Stooges. After Jerry Lewis broke away from Dean Martin, Frome continued to function as one of Lewis' stock company in such films as The Delicate Delinquent (1957), The Nutty Professor (1963) and Disorderly Orderly (1964). TV sitcom buffs remember Milton Frome best as Lawrence Chapman, the hapless mogul who ran a film studio owned by rustic millionaire Jed Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies.

Trivia: General purpose actor Don Megowan began his acting career in 1951 in Robert Parrish's crime thriller The Mob, playing a beefy longshoreman. Usually playing low-mentality thugs, he made several fleeting appearances in Westerns and crime dramas. Larger roles came his way in Disney productions as Colonel Billy Travis in Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955) and as Marion A. Ross in The Great Locomotive Chase (1956), and starting in the second half of 1950s he also became a familiar figure to fans of horror and science fiction -- although pretty much unrecognizable, Megowan played the title role of the land-bound Gill Man in John Sherwood's The Creature Walks Among Us (1956), and that same year was the star -- this time as the hero, the sheriff trying to understand a series of seemingly random, grisly killings -- in Fred F. Sears' The Werewolf; and in 1962, he was the lead in Wesley Barry's The Creation Of The Humanoids, a script that gave Megowan the largest amount of dialogue of his whole career . On television, Megowan was seen as Captain Huckabee on the 1961 syndicated adventure series The Beachcomber, replacing Adam West, who had been cast in the role in the pilot episode. And he later played Lucille Ball's boyfriend, whose indisposition gets her Lucy Carmichael involved in stuntman work, on The Lucy Show. One of the actor's more enjoyable assignments during the '70s was as the gum-chewing desperado in Mel Brooks' Western spoof Blazing Saddles (1974). Megowan died of throat cancer in 1981.

Trivia: Delightful hatchet-faced character comedian Elvia Allman made quite a few screen appearances in the 1940s but is today much better remembered for her television work. It was Allman who, as the factory foreman, introduced Lucy and Ethel to the chocolate assembly line in the classic 1951 I Love Lucy episode "Job Switching"; and she appeared in no less than three of the most fondly remembered situation comedies, playing memorable supporting roles: Cora Dithers in Blondie, Selma Plout in Petticoat Junction, and Elverna Bradshaw in The Beverly Hillbillies. Allman also created the voice for the Disney cartoon character Clarabelle Cow and played Aunt Sally in a 1981 television version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Trivia: Film and television actor Sidney Clute amassed well over 100 big- and small-screen credits across a career lasting just over 30 years. As a result of his personal popularity and the friendships borne of his professionalism, Clute's credits extended for three years beyond his death in 1985. Born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1916, he began working professionally in summer stock productions, and didn't make the leap to film work until shortly after World War II. His movie debut came in an uncredited role in William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), playing a drugstore clerk. His next appearance on film was on the small screen, in an uncredited role in the first-season Adventures of Superman episode "Czar of the Underworld", first seen in 1953. None of the five film and television roles he had in 1953 -- in the series Racket Squad, Fritz Lang's The Big Heat, and Russell Rouse's Wicked Woman -- were credited, but they opened a three-decade career. He was busier in 1954, on the sitcom I Married Joan, the crime dramas Waterfront and The Lineup, and small roles in feature films, including Douglas Sirk's ancient-world costume drama Sign of the Pagan, playing a monk. And that was the shape of Clute's career for the next 25 years, individual days of work on series ranging from Westerns to melodramas, broken by the occasional feature-film role. He did have a recurring role on Steve Canyon as Crew Chief Sergeant Gerke, and producer/director Jack Webb used him in three episodes of Dragnet during the 1950s, but it was the action/adventure series Whirlybirds that kept Clute the busiest over its two seasons from 1957 through 1959. His bald head and hangdog features seemed to register well with audiences no matter which side of the law his characters were on, and his Brooklyn accent (which he could hide effectively) even worked well in Westerns. Directors and producers appreciated his ability to nail a character or a line in short order, as well as his genial personality behind the scenes. Clute was working more often in the 1960s, on Dick Powell Theatre, Wagon Train, Hogan's Heroes, Mannix, Ben Casey, Perry Mason, That Girl, and dozens of other series, though he was probably most visible in the revived series Dragnet, which used him in key supporting roles in seven episodes. His best part in that series was in "Public Affairs: DR-07", as a gun nut on a television talk show who takes an open microphone to express his opposition to California's licensing and registration laws. But his chameleon-like ability as an actor was showcased that same year with an appearance on Iron Horse, in the episode "Wild Track", as a duplicitous 19th century businessman involved in a high-stakes poker game on a train besieged by outlaws -- even those familiar with his work elsewhere could forget that it was the familiar face from Dragnet. Clute was just as active in the 1970s, jumping between theatrical thrillers such as Breakout and Executive Action and dozens of television series. Toward the end of the 1970s, he settled into recurring work on Lou Grant as the newspaper's national editor, and finally, in 1982, he landed a co-starring role in a successful series when he was cast as Detective Paul La Guardia in Cagney and Lacey. As the oldest member of the detective squad -- and the most sympathetic to the two female detectives of the title, played by Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless -- Clute was a memorable presence on the series for its first three seasons. He died suddenly in the fall of 1985 from an especially fast-moving form of cancer. In tribute to the actor, producer Barney Rosensweig, a good friend of Clute's, left his name and image in the credits and continued to have his character referred to as an active member of the squad for the remaining four seasons of the show.