Trivia: Ex-prizefighter Dale Robertson was brought to films by virtue of his vocal and physical resemblance to Clark Gable. After a year of bit parts at Warner Bros., Robertson graduated to leading-man gigs at 20th Century Fox. In 1957, Robertson was cast on the popular TV Western Tales of Wells Fargo which ran until 1962. Since that time, Robertson has starred or co-starred in a number of television weeklies, nearly always Western (both period and contemporary) in nature: The Iron Horse (1966-1968), Dynasty (1980-1982), and J.J. Starbuck (1989). In addition, Dale Robertson has headlined two TV-movie pilots based on the exploits of famed G-Man Melvin Purvis. Robertson made his final screen appearance in Martha Coolidge's 1991 period piece Rambling Rose, passing away from lung cancer over twenty years later at the age of 89.

Trivia: Handsome leading man Rory Calhoun's successful film and television career spanned well over 50 years. In the mid-1940s,after a difficult childhood and adolescence, Calhoun found work as a lumberjack in Santa Cruz, California. It was while there employed that Calhoun was discovered by actor Alan Ladd, who suggested that the rugged young man give movies a try. Billed as "Frank McCown," Calhoun was signed to a brief contract at 20th Century-Fox, but most of his earliest movie scenes (including a sizeable supporting role in the Laurel and Hardy vehicle The Bullfighters) ended up on the cutting room floor. Free-lancing in the late 1940s, Calhoun first attracted a fan-following with his supporting role as a high-school lothario in 1948's The Red House. He returned to Fox in 1950, enjoying major roles in such films as How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and River of No Return (1955). Established as a western player by the late 1950s, Calhoun starred on the popular TV western The Texan from 1958 through 1960. He spent his spare time writing, publishing at least one novel, The Man From Padeira. From 1949 through 1970, Calhoun was married to actress Lita Baron. Perpetuating his career into the 1980s and '90s, a more weather-beaten Rory Calhoun was seen in the lead of the satirical horror film Motel Hell (1980), was quite funny as a washed-up macho movie star in Avenging Angel (1985), and stole the show from ostensible leading-man George Strait in Pure Country (1992).

Trivia: One of the precious few actors of the "pretty boy" school to survive past the 1950s, Robert Wagner was the son of a Detroit steel executive. When his family moved to Los Angeles, Wagner's original intention of becoming a businessman took second place to his fascination with the film industry. Thanks to his dad's connections, he was able to make regular visits to the big studios. Inevitably, a talent scout took notice of Wagner's boyish handsomeness, impressive physique, and easygoing charm. After making his unbilled screen debut in The Happy Years (1950), Wagner was signed by 20th Century Fox, which carefully built him up toward stardom. He played romantic leads with ease, but it wasn't until he essayed the two scene role of a shellshocked war veteran in With a Song in My Heart (1952) that studio executives recognized his potential as a dramatic actor. He went on to play the title roles in Prince Valiant (1954) and The True Story of Jesse James (1956), and shocked his bobby-soxer fan following by effectively portraying a cold-blooded murderer in A Kiss Before Dying (1955). In the early '60s, however, Wagner suffered a series of personal and professional reverses. His "ideal" marriage to actress Natalie Wood had dissolved, and his film career skidded to a stop after The Pink Panther (1964). Two years of unemployment followed before Wagner made a respectable comeback as star of the lighthearted TV espionage series It Takes a Thief (1968-1970). For the rest of his career, Wagner would enjoy his greatest success on TV, first in the mid-'70s series Switch, then opposite Stefanie Powers in the internationally popular Hart to Hart, which ran from 1979 through 1983 and has since been sporadically revived in TV-movie form (a 1986 series, Lime Street, was quickly canceled due to the tragic death of Wagner's young co-star, Savannah Smith). On the domestic front, Wagner was briefly wed to actress Marion Marshall before remarrying Natalie Wood in 1972; after Wood's death in 1981, Wagner found lasting happiness with his third wife, Jill St. John, a longtime friend and co-worker. Considered one of Hollywood's nicest citizens, Robert Wagner has continued to successfully pursue a leading man career into his sixties; he has also launched a latter-day stage career, touring with his Hart to Hart co-star Stefanie Power in the "readers' theater" presentation Love Letters. He found success playing a henchman to Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies, and in 2007 he began playing Teddy, a recurring role on the hit CBS series Two and a Half Men.

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: Signed up by MGM's dramatic school directly after graduating from the University of Southern California, American actor James Millican was groomed for that studio's stable of young leading men. Instead, he made his first film, Sign of the Cross (1932), at Paramount, then moved on to Columbia for his first important role in Mills of the Gods (1934). Possessor of an athletic physique and Irish good looks, Millican wasn't a distinctive enough personality for stardom, but came in handy for secondary roles as the hero's best friend, the boss' male secretary, and various assorted military adjutants. According to his own count, Millican also appeared in 400 westerns; while such a number is hard to document, it is true that he was a close associate of cowboy star "Wild Bill" Elliott, staging a number of personal-appearance rodeos on Elliott's behalf. Fans of baseball films will recall James Millican's persuasive performance as Bill Killefer in the Grover Cleveland Alexander biopic The Winning Team.

Trivia: Lola Albright's meat-and-potatoes job as switchboard operator of an Ohio radio station led to on-the-air work in minor roles. She then worked as a model before travelling to Hollywood in 1948. Impressed by Lola's hands-on-hips self-assuredness, producer Stanley Kramer cast her opposite Kirk Douglas in 1949's Champion. The film should have secured Lola's stardom, but didn't; for nearly a year after its release she couldn't get an acting job, and for a long period she subsisted on peanut-butter sandwiches. After marrying her Good Humor Man (1950) co-star Jack Carson, Lola found that her husband preferred her at home rather than in the studio. She acceded to his wishes, taking film and TV work only sporadically; still, by 1958 the marriage dissolved due to the very career conflicts that both Lola and Jack had tried to avoid. From 1958 through 1961, Lola played sultry nightclub songstress Edie Hart on the TV private eye series Peter Gunn. Lola's post-Gunn film roles alternated between fascinating (especially her over-the-hill stripper in Cold Wind in August [1964]) and merely rent-paying (David Niven's antiseptic spouse in The Impossible Years [1968]). In 1966, Albright briefly replaced a seriously ill Dorothy Malone in the role of Constance McKenzie on the prime time TV serial Peyton Place. Albright died in 2017, at age 92.

Trivia: Irish actor J. M. Kerrigan was a stalwart of Dublin's Abbey Players, though from time to time he'd make the crossing to America to appear in such films as Little Old New York (1923) and Song O' My Heart (1930) (His film debut was 1916's Food of Love). Kerrigan settled in Hollywood permanently in 1935 when he was brought from Ireland with several other Abbey performers to appear in John Ford's The Informer. Kerrigan was given a generous amount of screen time as the barfly who befriends the suddenly wealthy Victor McLaglen, then drops his "pal" like a hot potato when the money runs out. Not all of Kerrigan's subsequent Hollywood performances were this meaty, and in fact the actor did a lot of day-player work, sometimes showing up for only one or two scenes. It was in one of these minor roles that J. M. Kerrigan shone in Gone with the Wind (1939), playing Johnny Gallegher, the seemingly jovial mill owner who whips his convict labor into "cooperation."

Trivia: After stock experience in New England and a starring role in a Broadway flop, American actor John Kellogg was selected to play the lead in the road company of the long-running service comedy Brother Rat. He continued working steadily on stage until interrupted by World War II service. After a smattering of movie exposure at other studios, Kellogg signed a Columbia contract in 1946. Good-looking and dependable enough for secondary roles but not quite star material, Kellogg was seen in such films as Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1943), A Walk in the Sun (1945), Johnny O'Clock (1947) and 12 O'Clock High (1949).

Trivia: Flint-eyed American character actor Ian MacDonald began appearing in films in 1941. The war interrupted MacDonald's screen career, but he was back at his post in 1947. Nearly always a villain on-screen, his most celebrated role was Frank Miller, the vindictive gunman who motivates the plot of High Noon (1952). Likewise memorable were his portrayals of Bo Creel in White Heat (1949) and Geronimo in Taza, Son of Cochise (1954). In films until 1959, Ian MacDonald also occasionally dabbled in screenwriting.

Trivia: Not to be confused with the later 20th Century-Fox contract player of the same name, silent screen actor Harry Carter had appeared in repertory with Mrs. Fiske and directed The Red Mill for Broadway impresario Charles Frohman prior to entering films with Universal in 1914. Often cast as a smooth villain, the dark-haired Carter made serials something of a specialty, menacing future director Robert Z. Leonard in The Master Key (1914); playing the title menace in The Gray Ghost (1917); and acting supercilious towards Big Top performers Eddie Polo and Eileen Sedgwick in Lure of the Circus (1918). In addition to his serial work, Carter played General Von Kluck in the infamous propaganda piece The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin (1918). It was back to chapterplays in the 1920s, where he menaced Claire Anderson and Grace Darmond in two very low-budget examples of the genre: The Fatal Sign (1920) and The Hope Diamond Mystery (1921).

Trivia: A distinguished member of Broadway's famed Group Theater, with whom he appeared in Casey Jones (1938) and Night Music (1940), Clancy Cooper entered films with Warner Bros. in 1941. But despite his distinctive theater pedigree, Cooper's busy screen career proved middling at best and he mainly played bit roles. A notable exception came in the 1944 serial Haunted Harbor, as one of hero Kane Richmond's two sidekicks. A veteran of more than 100 feature films, the veteran actor went on to also embrace television, appearing in over 200 episodes in shows such as The Lone Ranger, Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, Gunsmoke, Twilight Zone, Maverick, Dr. Kildare, and The Wild Wild West. Married to novelist Elizabeth Cooper, Clancy Cooper died of a heart attack while driving in Hollywood.

Trivia: Life literally began at 60 for American actor Burt Mustin, who didn't enter show business until that age and didn't make his film debut until Detective Story (1951), at which time he was 68. After a decade of uncredited movie roles as hillbilly patriarchs and Town's Oldest Citizens, Mustin began getting name recognition for numerous TV appearances in the late '50s and early '60s. The actor was a particular favorite of producer/actor Jack Webb, who cast Mustin several times on Dragnet; in one episode Burt was an octogenarian burglar, and in another was a retired detective who solved a murder case - and chewed out a young cop for not knowing the proper way to take fingerprints! Situation comedy producers made good use of Burt Mustin as well, and he was featured in innumerable cameos on such programs as The Dick Van Dyke Show, Get Smart and The Jack Benny Program, usually stealing most of the laughs from the stars. Mustin had regular TV roles as eccentric neighbor Finley on Date with the Angels, Gus the Fireman on Leave It to Beaver, barber shop patron Jud Crowley on The Andy Griffith Show, the amorous senior-citizen husband of Queenie Smith on The Funny Side, and nursing-home refugee Justin Quigley on All in the Family. Mustin got the biggest press coverage of his career when, in character as Arthur Lanson, he married Mother Dexter - played by 82-year-old Judith Lowry - on the December 13, 1976 episode of Phyllis. It was a hilarious and, in retrospect, poignant moment in TV history: Judith Lowry had died a few days before the program was aired, and Burt Mustin, who was too ill to watch the show, passed away six weeks later.

Trivia: In films from 1939, character actor Dan White trafficked in small-town blowhards and rustic constables. Often unbilled in bit roles, White was occasionally afforded such larger roles as Deputy Elmer in Voodoo Man (1944), Millwheel in The Yearling (1946) and Abel Hatfield in Roseanna McCoy (1949). He remained active until the early 1960s. The "Dan White" who appeared in 1977's Alien Factor is a different person.

Trivia: Paul Wexler was born to play character roles -- well over six feet tall but seemingly thinner than the young Frank Sinatra, he was no one's idea of a leading man, but he could dominate a scene simply by standing in the shot with his long features and imposing height, and embellish the effect with his deep voice. Born in Oregon, Wexler's screen career began in 1952, when he was 23 years old, with a performance as a hillbilly in the Bowery Boys comedy Feudin' Fools. He had little to do in the movie except look and act like a slow-witted country bumpkin, in tandem with such gifted young players as Robert Easton and veterans like Russell Simpson; he obviously made an impression on the producers, because two years later he appeared in one of the most popular of all the movies in that series, The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters, playing Grissom, the butler to a household of mad scientists seemingly lifted right out of Arsenic and Old Lace. He was funny in that film, but Wexler's first truly memorable role was much more serious, in Lewis Allen's presidential assassination thriller Suddenly (1954); portraying Slim the deputy, he managed to melt into the scenery despite his appearance, and into the part as well, portraying a tough, no-nonsense peace officer to the hilt, culminating with a violent shootout midway through the movie. In The Kentuckian, released the following year, it was back to playing backwoods roles as one of the murderous Frome brothers, alongside Douglas Spencer. Perhaps owing to his appearance, Wexler tended to get roles with a certain component of the macabre, or an element of threat, but he never had a role stranger or more memorable than his non-speaking part in Edward L. Cahn's The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959). His portrayal of Zutai, the mute Jivaro Indian zombie (his tissues permeated with curare), always ready with a curare-tipped blade to paralyze a victim and a basket for their head, was a brilliantly mimed portrayal and one of the grisliest elements of a very nasty horror film. Seemingly almost as a balance to his mute role in that movie, Wexler's next film involved only speaking, as he was one of the voice actors in Disney's original 101 Dalmatians (1961). He made appearances onscreen in roles of various sizes as late as 1967, in Andrew V. McLaglen's The Way West and the William Castle comedy The Busy Body. He cut back on his acting after that, possibly due to declining health, and gave one last film performance in the 1975 in Michael Anderson's feature Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze. On television, Wexler tended to work in Westerns, including The Rifleman, Gunsmoke, and Death Valley Days, although he also turned up during the later '60s in episodes of Get Smart and made his final onscreen appearance on an episode of Charlie's Angels in 1976. Wexler died of leukemia in 1979.

Trivia: Rotund, moon-faced character actor Charles Watts made a mini-career out of portraying glad-handing politicians, voluble businessmen and salesmen, crafty bankers, and cheerful or cynical parents, uncles, family friends, and other supporting players. He never had a starring role, or even a co-starring role, in a motion picture, but his physical presence and voice made for some memorable moments. Born in Clarksville, TN, in 1912, Watts was a high-school teacher -- handling both business law and drama -- for a time during his mid-twenties, working in Chattanooga. He worked in local theater and tent shows early in his career, and after World War II was also in demand for industrial shows. Watts didn't start doing movie or television appearances until 1950, and in that first year he played small, uncredited roles in such serious dramas as The Killer That Stalked New York (1950), as a mailman, and Storm Warning (1951), as a lunch-counter proprietor -- and somewhat larger parts, as a sheriff, in three episodes of The Lone Ranger. Over the next 16 years, he was seen in nearly 100 movies and television shows. His most prominent big-screen role was that of Judge (and later United States Senator) Oliver Whiteside in George Stevens' Giant (1956), where his rich, melodious voice and cheerful demeanor were put to extensive use. Watts was also an uncredited man in the crowd in Stuart Heisler's I Died a Thousand Times, a police sergeant in Philip Dunne's The View From Pompey's Head (both 1955), and Mr. Schultz, the salesman from the suspender company, in Billy Wilder's The Spirit of St. Louis (1957). Watts even found his way into two big-scale musicals -- Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) and Jumbo (1962) -- a decade apart. When he had a role with dialogue of any length, he was often used -- or so it seemed -- for his tendency to speechify, and to make even ordinary words stand out in relief. As active on television as he was in movies, Watts was familiar to several generations of young viewers for his role as Bill Green, the skeptical anti-superstition league leader in the Adventures of Superman episode "The Lucky Cat" (1955). He also played a small but key role in the Father Knows Best episode "24 Hours in Tyrantland," done on behalf of the Treasury Department to sell U.S. Savings Bonds, as the Andersons' skeptical neighbor, whose brief, cynical talk to son Bud finally pushes Jim Anderson (Robert Young) to straighten his kids out about the importance of savings bonds. Watts remained busy into the mid-'60s, and died of cancer in 1966.

Trivia: It is quite probable that, in real life, Jack Rice was an all-around good friend and stout fellow. In films, however, the shifty-eyed, weak-chinned Rice was forever typecast as malingerers, wastrels, back-stabbers, and modern-day Uriah Heeps. He was particularly well cast as Edgar Kennedy's shiftless brother-in-law in a series of RKO two-reel comedies produced between 1934 and 1948. Rice also appeared as the snivelly Ollie in 11 entries of Columbia's Blondie series. Jack Rice remained active until 1963, five years before his death.