Trivia: British actor Robert Harris is best known for his ability to bring Shakespearean roles to life. Though most of his career was spent on stage, Harris also appeared in many feature films and occasionally on television. A graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the London-born Harris took his first professional bow at the Westminister Theater following a 1932 production of J.M. Barrie's The Will. Harris made his Broadway debut in Noel Coward's Easy Virtue. Harris's film credits include The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown (1957), The Alamo (1960), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943).

Trivia: Character actor of films and television, Paul Brinegar specialized in playing feisty, grizzled cowboy sidekicks. Fans of the Western series Rawhide may remember Brinegar for playing Wishbone, the grumbly old cook. He was also known for playing Lamar Pettybone on the early-'80s television series Matt Houston. Born and raised in New Mexico, he headed to California as a young man and made his feature film debut in Larceny (1948). From there, he launched a steady film career that slowed down considerably in the late '50s, after he began appearing on television but did not end until 1994, when Brinegar made his final screen appearance, as a stagecoach driver, in the 1994 film version of Maverick.

Trivia: One of the most beloved of movie clichés concerns the violinist who must give up his music for sports -- or vice versa. Gary Conway was lucky enough to be able to keep up with his violin studies (and even play at the Hollywood bowl) while remaining heavily active in high school athletics. Conway was also an accomplished painter in his teen years, winning a scholarship to the Otis Art Institute, and later transferring to the art department at U.C.L.A. Invited to participate in a campus production of Volpone, Conway switched his major to drama. In films and TV from 1956, Conway's best-known (and, in many ways, most notorious) screen role was the title character in the deathless I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957). In 1963, Conway was cast as detective Tim Tilson in the lighthearted TV cop series Burke's Law. He left the show in 1965, hoping to go on to "a wider spectrum of creative challenge." One such challenge was the 1968 Irwin Allen weekly Land of the Giants, in which, as Captain Steve Burton, Conway spent his time reacting in amazement at king-sized special effects. After Giants left the air in 1970, he went into films as an actor, producer (1977's The Farmer) and screenwriter (1987's American Ninja 2: The Confrontation). He has also worked as a drama teacher. Gary Conway was married to former Miss America Marian McKnight.

Trivia: American actor Malcolm Atterbury may have been allowed more versatility on stage, but so far as TV was concerned he was the quintessential grouchy grandfather and/or frontier snake-oil peddler. Atterbury was in fact cast in the latter capacity twice by that haven of middle-aged character players The Twilight Zone. He was the purveyor of an elixir which induced invulnerability in 1959's "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" and a 19th century huckster who nearly sets a town on fire in "No Time Like the Past" (1963). Atterbury enjoyed steadier work as the supposedly dying owner of a pickle factory in the 1973 sitcom Thicker Than Water, and as Ronny Cox's grandfather on the 1974 Waltons clone Apple's Way. Malcolm Atterbury's best-known film role was one for which he received no screen credit: he was the friendly stranger who pointed out the crop-duster to Cary Grant in North By Northwest (1959), observing ominously that the plane was "dustin' where they're aren't any crops."

Trivia: Dennis Cross began playing supporting roles on television in 1949 and eventually became a dialogue director for Spelling Productions. His son is professional football player Randy Cross.

Trivia: John Ashley should be a familiar name and face to anyone who attended a drive-in double feature in the 1950s. Ashley starred or co-starred in such passion-pit fodder as Hot Rod Gang (1958), How to Make a Monster (1958), Frankenstein's Daughter (1959) and High School Caesar (1960). In 1961, Ashley co-starred with future Flipper leading man Brian Kelly in the short-lived TV action series Straightaway. Ashley switched his base of operations to the Philippines in the 1960s and 1970s, frequently wearing several hats as actor, producer, director and scriptwriter. Films like Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1969) may not have been cited at the annual Oscar ceremonies, but they paid the bills many times over for the peripatetic Ashley. In the 1980s, Ashley hooked up with television producer Stephen J. Cannell to work on such series as The A-Team. He later teamed with Frank Lupo to executive or co-executive produce such series as Walker, Texas Ranger (1983), Werewolf (1987) and Something is Out There (1988). In the mid-'90s, Ashley began working as an in-house producer for Tri-Star Television. On October 4, 1997, John Ashley was working on the film Scarred City in New York, when he suffered a fatal heart attack.

Trivia: American actor Morris Ankrum graduated from the University of Southern California with a law degree, then went on to an associate professorship in economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Here he founded a collegiate little theatre, eventually turning his hobby into a vocation as a teacher and director at the Pasadena Playhouse. (He was much admired by his students, including such future luminaries as Robert Preston and Raymond Burr.) Having already changed his name from Nussbaum to Ankrum for professional reasons, Ankrum was compelled to undergo another name change when he signed a Paramount Pictures contract in the 1930s; in his first films, he was billing as Stephen Morris. Reverting to Morris Ankrum in 1939, the sharp-featured, heavily eyebrowed actor flourished in strong character roles, usually of a villainous nature, throughout the 1940s. By the 1950s, Ankrum had more or less settled into "authority" roles in science-fiction films and TV programs. Among his best known credits in this genre were Rocketship X-M (1950), Red Planet Mars (1952), Flight to Mars (1952), Invaders From Mars (1953) (do we detect a subtle pattern here?), Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) and From the Earth to the Moon (1958). The fact that Morris Ankrum played innumerable Army generals was fondly invoked in director Joe Dante's 1993 comedy Matinee: the military officer played by Kevin McCarthy in the film-within-a-film Mant is named General Ankrum.

Trivia: He was Walter Reed Smith on his birth certificate, but when he decided to pursue acting, the Washington-born hopeful dropped the "Smith" and retained his first and middle name professionally. Bypassing the obvious medical roles that an actor with his hospital-inspired cognomen might have accepted for publicity purposes, Reed became a light leading man in wartime films like Seven Days Leave (1942). Banking on his vague resemblance to comic-book hero Dick Tracy, Reed starred in the 1951 Republic serials Flying Disc Man from Mars and Government Agents vs. Phantom Legion. He was also seen as mine supervisor Bill Corrigan in Superman vs. the Mole Men (1951), a 58-minute B-film which represented George Reeves' first appearance as the Man of Steel. Walter Reed continued as a journeyman "authority" actor until 1970's Tora! Tora! Tora!

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from the '60s.

Trivia: In any given circus picture made between 1938 to 1964, chances were that Eddie Marr was in the cast. Possessed of leather lungs and a slightly larcenous demeanor, Marr was the archetypal sideshow barker, as exemplified by his weekly appearance on the 1956 TVer Circus Boy. One of his rare appearances outside the big top was as composer Buddy DeSylva in the 1945 George Gershwin biopic Rhapsody in Blue. Eddie Marr also appeared frequently on radio, playing a variety of gamblers, gangsters, race track touts, city detectives, travelling salesmen and, yes, carnival barkers in such series as The Damon Runyon Theatre, The Lux Radio Theatre, The Jack Carson Show and Murder Will Out.

Trivia: The son of a wholesale grocer who later became one of the founders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Robert Shayne studied business administration at Boston University. Intending to study for the ministry, Shayne opted instead to work as field secretary for the Unitarian Layman's League. He went on to sell real estate during the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s before heading northward to launch an acting career. After Broadway experience, Shayne was signed to a film contract at RKO radio in 1934. When this led nowhere, Shayne returned to the stage. While appearing with Katharine Hepburn in the Philip Barry play Without Love, Shayne was again beckoned to Hollywood, this time by Warner Bros. Most of his feature film roles under the Warner banner were of the sort that any competent actor could have played; he was better served by the studio's short subjects department, which starred him in a series of 2-reel "pocket westerns" built around stock footage from earlier outdoor epics. He began free-lancing in 1946, playing roles of varying size and importance at every major and minor outfit in Hollywood. In 1951, Shayne was cast in his best-known role: Inspector Henderson on the long-running TV adventure series Superman. He quit acting in the mid-1970s to become an investment banker with the Boston Stock Exchange. The resurgence of the old Superman series on television during this decade thrust Shayne back into the limelight, encouraging him to go back before the cameras. He was last seen in a recurring role on the 1990 Superman-like weekly series The Flash. Reflecting on his busy but only fitfully successful acting career, Robert Shayne commented in 1975 that "It was work, hard and long; a terrible business when things go wrong, a rewarding career when things go right."

Trivia: John Phillips is a British character player, active in films from 1954. He has been seen in such roles as the Duke of Norfolk in Olivier's Richard III (1954), as authority figures in the sci-fi movies Village of the Damned (1960) and Man in the Moon (1961), and as the prosecutor at the Esterhazy trial in I Accuse (1958). Phillips has also shown up in several TV miniseries (Jesus of Nazareth, Masada), and was cast as MacGown in the internationally syndicated The Forsyte Saga. This John Phillips is no relation to the American actor or the musical composer who share his name.

Trivia: A veteran of the Yiddish Art Theater, Robert H. Harris made his first Broadway appearance in 1937. He gained TV fame in 1953 as Jake on the long-running dramedy The Goldbergs, remaining with the series until 1954. He also directed quite a few live productions during television's Golden Age, and co-starred as Dr. LeMoyne Snyder in the weekly crime drama Court of Last Resort (1957). Usually seen in featured roles in films, Robert H. Harris was afforded a starring part as a vengeful Hollywood makeup man in the quickie American-International horror flick How to Make a Monster (1958).