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.

Trivia: Though best known to modern filmgoers as a horror star, cadaverous John Carradine was, in his prime, one of the most versatile character actors on the silver screen. The son of a journalist father and physician mother, Carradine was given an expensive education in Philadelphia and New York. Upon graduating from the Graphic Arts School, he intended to make his living as a painter and sculptor, but in 1923 he was sidetracked into acting. Working for a series of low-paying stock companies throughout the 1920s, he made ends meet as a quick-sketch portrait painter and scenic designer. He came to Hollywood in 1930, where his extensive talents and eccentric behavior almost immediately brought him to the attention of casting directors. He played a dizzying variety of distinctive bit parts -- a huntsman in Bride of Frankenstein (1935), a crowd agitator in Les Miserables (1935) -- before he was signed to a 20th Century Fox contract in 1936. His first major role was the sadistic prison guard in John Ford's Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), which launched a long and fruitful association with Ford, culminating in such memorable screen characterizations as the gentleman gambler in Stagecoach (1939) and Preacher Casy ("I lost the callin'!") in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Usually typecast as a villain, Carradine occasionally surprised his followers with non-villainous roles like the philosophical cab driver in Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) and Abraham Lincoln in Of Human Hearts (1938). Throughout his Hollywood years, Carradine's first love remained the theater; to fund his various stage projects (which included his own Shakespearean troupe), he had no qualms about accepting film work in the lowest of low-budget productions. Ironically, it was in one of these Poverty Row cheapies, PRC's Bluebeard (1944), that the actor delivered what many consider his finest performance. Though he occasionally appeared in an A-picture in the 1950s and 1960s (The Ten Commandments, Cheyenne Autumn), Carradine was pretty much consigned to cheapies during those decades, including such horror epics as The Black Sleep (1956), The Unearthly (1957), and the notorious Billy the Kid Meets Dracula (1966). He also appeared in innumerable television programs, among them Twilight Zone, The Munsters, Thriller, and The Red Skelton Show, and from 1962 to 1964 enjoyed a long Broadway run as courtesan-procurer Lycus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Though painfully crippled by arthritis in his last years, Carradine never stopped working, showing up in films ranging from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972) to Peggy Sue Got Married (1984). Married four times, John Carradine was the father of actors David, Keith, Robert, and Bruce Carradine.

Trivia: American actor Steve Franken was the son of a Hollywood press agent, thus he grew up discoursing in the highly stylized trade-magazine lingo that every show-business functionary was required to learn in the '40s and '50s. Sustaining himself as a stage actor in 1960, Franken was appearing in a Los Angeles production of Say Darling when he was spotted by Rod Amateau, producer-director of the TV sitcom Dobie Gillis. Amateau was looking for someone to play the insufferable rich-boy nemesis of Dobie, a role recently vacated by Warren Beatty. Thus Franken's first assignment on a Hollywood soundstage was in the role of Chatsworth Osborne Jr., snotty young millionaire overachiever (the character had been called "Milton Armitage" when Beatty played it). The character's trademark was a pained look of condescension, which Franken attributed to an ulcer that he'd suffered since the age of 14, when his mother died. Not really a regular on Dobie Gillis, Franken found himself at the unemployment office between his "Chatsworth" stints, and understandably grew to resent the character he played so well. When he did receive an outside job, it was generally as a Chatsworth type, so when Dobie Gillis ended its run in 1963, Franken sought out as many villainous roles as possible--after another "rich buddy" stint on the short-lived series Tom, Dick and Mary. Some of the actor's best work can be caught in reruns of such '60s TV series as Perry Mason and The Wild Wild West. Still, Franken didn't work as often as he should, and it was his contention that Dobie Gillis had all but ruined his career. Steve Franken persevered into the '70s and '80s, notably as an actor/director on the popular religious TV anthology Insight, with frequent appearances on the Jerry Lewis Telethons and in occasional character roles in such films as Westworld (1973).

Trivia: American actor Brian Cutler appeared in 1970s feature films such as Wilderness Family. Prior to that he had spent many years appearing on stage. Cutler also worked on radio and television.

Trivia: Black supporting actor, onscreen from 1972.

Trivia: Supporting actor John Carter appeared on screen beginning in the '70s.