Trivia: Steely jawed, hard bodied, terse in speech, Charlton Heston was an American man's man, an epic unto himself. While he played modern men, he was at his best when portraying larger-than-life figures from world history, preferably with his shirt off. He was born John Charles Carter on October 4, 1924 and originally trained in the classics in Northwestern University's drama program, gaining early experience playing the lead in a 1941 filmed school production of Peer Gynt. He also performed on the radio, and then went on to serve in the Air Force for three years during WWII. Afterwards, he went to work as a model in New York, where he met his wife, fellow model Lydia Clarke, to whom he remained married until his death. Later the two operated a theater in Asheville, North Carolina where Heston honed his acting skills. He made his Broadway debut in Katharine Cornell's 1947 production of Anthony and Cleopatra and subsequently went on to be a staple of the highly-regarded New York-based Studio One live television anthology where he played such classic characters as Heathcliff, Julius Caesar and Petruchio. The show made Heston a star. He made his Hollywood film debut in William Dieterle's film noir Dark City playing opposite Lizabeth Scott. Even though she was more established in Hollywood, it was Heston who received top billing. He went on to appear as a white man raised in Indian culture in The Savage (1952) and then as a snob who snubs a country girl in King Vidor's Ruby Gentry (1952). His big break came when Cecil B. DeMille cast him as the bitter circus manager Brad Braden in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). In subsequent films, Heston began developing his persona of an unflinching hero with a piercing blue-eyed stare and unbending, self-righteous Middle American ethics. Heston's heroes could be violent and cruel, but only when absolutely necessary. He began a long stint of playing historical characters with his portrayal of Buffalo Bill in Pony Express and then Andrew Jackson in The President's Lady (both 1953). Heston's star burned at its brightest when DeMille cast him as the stern Moses in the lavish The Ten Commandments (1956). From there, Heston went on to headline numerous spectaculars which provided him the opportunity to play every one from John the Baptist to Michelangelo to El Cid to General "Chinese" Gordon. In 1959, Heston won an Academy Award for the title role in William Wyler's Ben Hur. By the mid-1960s, the reign of the epic film passed and Heston began appearing in westerns (Will Penny) and epic war dramas (Midway). He also did sci-fi films, the most famous of which were the campy satire Planet of the Apes (1968), The Omega Man (1970) and the cult favorite Soylent Green (1973). The '70s brought Heston into a new kind of epic, the disaster film, and he appeared in three, notably Airport 1975. From the late '80s though the '90s, Heston has returned to television, appearing in series, miniseries and made-for TV movies. He also appeared in such films as Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996) and 1998's Armageddon (as the narrator).Outside of his film work, Heston served six terms as the president of the Screen Actors Guild and also chaired the American Film Institute. Active in such charities as The Will Rogers Institute, he was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 1977 Oscar ceremony. Known as a conservative Republican and proud member of the National Rifle Association, Heston worked closely with his long-time colleague and friend President Ronald Reagan as the leader of the president's task force on arts and the humanities. He made two of his final film appearances in the disastrous Warren Beatty-Diane Keaton sex farce Town and Country (2001) (in a parodistic role, as a shotgun wielding arsonist who burns Beatty's cabin to the ground) and as himself in Michael Moore's documentary Bowling For Columbine (2002) (in which he stormed out of an interview after Moore pummeled him with gun-related questions). Heston died in the spring of 2008 at age 84; although the cause of death was officially undisclosed, he had revealed several years prior that he was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease.

Trivia: Former model Joan Hackett diligently studied acting under Lee Strasberg; proof that her diligence paid off was her critically acclaimed performance in the 1961 Broadway production Call Me By My Rightful Name. A versatile actress who successfully combined brains with beauty (not always the case with ingenues of the 1960s), Hackett made her film debut in 1966's The Group. Perhaps her best film performance was as the lonely frontier wife who is briefly attracted to drifter Charlton Heston in Will Penny (1968). Hackett's TV work included recurring roles on the dramatic weekly The Defenders in the early 1960s and the situation comedy Another Day in 1978. Ravaged by cancer in her last months, Hackett could take some small comfort in the knowledge that her penultimate movie appearance in Only When I Laugh (1981) had won her a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination. Joan Hackett was at one time the wife of actor Richard Mulligan.

Trivia: Balding, deceptively bland-looking British actor Donald Pleasence was first seen on the London stage in a 1939 production of Wuthering Heights. He then served in the RAF, spending the last years of World War II in a German POW camp. Resuming his career after the war, Pleasence eventually came to New York in the company of Laurence Olivier in 1950, appearing in Caesar and Cleopatra. And although he began appearing in films in 1954, Pleasence's British fame during the '50s was the result of his television work, notably a recurring role as Prince John in The Adventures of Robin Hood from 1955-1958. He also co-starred in TV productions of The Millionairess, Man in a Moon, and Call Me Daddy. Voted British television actor of the year in 1958, Pleasence produced and hosted the 1960 series Armchair Mystery Theatre, before creating the stage role for which he was best remembered: Davies, the menacing tramp in Harold Pinter's The Caretaker. The actor revived the character throughout his career, appearing as Davies for the last time in 1991. Pleasence was fortunate enough to be associated with the success of The Great Escape in 1963, which led to a wealth of American film offers. Four years later, the actor portrayed arch criminal Ernst Blofeld in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice -- the first time that the scarred face of the secretive character was seen onscreen in the Bond series. Firmly established as a villain, Pleasence gradually eased into horror films such as Halloween (1978), The Devonsville Terror (1979), and Buried Alive (1990); commenting on this phase of his career, Pleasence once mused "I only appear in odd films." One of his few "mainstream" appearances during this period was virtually invisible. Pleasence is seen and prominently billed as a rabbi in Carl Reiner's Oh, God! (1977), but the role was deemed dispensable and all the actor's lines were cut. Pleasence continued to work steadily in the 1980s and early '90s -- making 17 pictures alone in 1987-1989 -- before undergoing heart surgery in 1994; he died from complications two months later. Married four times, the actor was the father of six daughters, among them actress Angela Pleasence.

Trivia: A football star at Eastern Kentucky State College, Lee Majors came to Los Angeles armed with a physical education degree and possessed with a vague desire to break into films. He worked as a park recreation director for the City of Los Angeles before entering show business in 1963. Majors was promoted as "the New James Dean," though he personally aspired to become a new Steve McQueen or Paul Newman (he also retained his permit to work as a recreation director, just in case the world wasn't holding its breath for a new Dean, McQueen or Newman). Majors achieved stardom on his own merits in a variety of television series, the most recent of which was 1992's Raven. His best-known TV roles included Heath Barkley on The Big Valley (1965-69), bionic Steve Austin on The Six Million Dollar Man (1973-78) and stunt man Colt Seavers on The Fall Guy (1981-86). In addition, he has headlined a number of made-for-TV movies, essaying the old Gary Cooper part in the 1991 sequel to High Noon and portraying U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers in a 1976 biopic. Majors would continue to act in the decades to come, memorably appearing in Big Fat Liar and on The Game. For several years, Lee Majors was married to actress Farrah Fawcett.

Trivia: Bruce MacLeish Dern is the scion of a distinguished family of politicians and men of letters that includes his uncle, the distinguished poet/playwright Archibald MacLeish. After a prestigious education at New Trier High and Choate Preparatory, Dern enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, only to drop out abruptly in favor of Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio. With his phlegmatic voice and schoolyard-bully countenance, he was not considered a likely candidate for stardom, and was often treated derisively by his fellow students. In 1958, he made his first Broadway appearance in A Touch of the Poet. Two years later, he was hired by director Elia Kazan to play a bit role in the 20th Century Fox production Wild River. He was a bit more prominent on TV, appearing regularly as E.J. Stocker in the contemporary Western series Stoney Burke. A favorite of Alfred Hitchcock, Dern was prominently cast in a handful of the director's TV-anthology episodes, and as the unfortunate sailor in the flashback sequences of the feature film Marnie (1964). During this period, Dern played as many victims as victimizers; he was just as memorable being hacked to death by Victor Buono in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965) as he was while attempting to rape Linda Evans on TV's The Big Valley. Through the auspices of his close friend Jack Nicholson, Dern showed up in several Roger Corman productions of the mid-'60s, reaching a high point as Peter Fonda's "guide" through LSD-land in The Trip (1967). The actor's ever-increasing fan following amongst disenfranchised younger filmgoers shot up dramatically when he gunned down Establishment icon John Wayne in The Cowboys (1971). After scoring a critical hit with his supporting part in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Dern began attaining leading roles in such films as Silent Running (1971), The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), The Great Gatsby (1974), and Smile (1975). In 1976, he returned to the Hitchcock fold, this time with top billing, in Family Plot. Previously honored with a National Society of Film Critics award for his work in the Jack Nicholson-directed Drive, He Said (1970), Dern received an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of an unhinged Vietnam veteran in Coming Home (1978), in which he co-starred with one-time Actors' Studio colleague (and former classroom tormentor) Jane Fonda. He followed this triumph with a return to Broadway in the 1979 production Strangers. In 1982, Dern won the Berlin Film Festival Best Actor prize for That Championship Season. He then devoted several years to stage and TV work, returning to features in the strenuous role of a middle-aged long distance runner in On the Edge (1986).After a humorous turn in the 1989 Tom Hanks comedy The 'Burbs, Dern dropped beneath the radar for much of the '90s. He would appear in cult favorites like Mulholland Falls and the Walter Hill Yojimbo re-make Last Man Standing (both 1996), as well as The Haunting (1999) and All the Pretty Horses (2000). As the 2000's unfolded, Dern would continue to act, apperaing most notably in film like Monster and Django Unchained.Formerly married to actress Diane Ladd, Bruce Dern is the father of actress Laura Dern.

Trivia: Born in Oklahoma of Cherokee-Irish stock, Ben Johnson virtually grew up in the saddle. A champion rodeo rider in his teens, Johnson headed to Hollywood in 1940 to work as a horse wrangler on Howard Hughes' The Outlaw. He went on to double for Wild Bill Elliot and other western stars, then in 1947 was hired as Henry Fonda's riding double in director John Ford's Fort Apache (1948). Ford sensed star potential in the young, athletic, slow-speaking Johnson, casting him in the speaking role of Trooper Tyree in both She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950). In 1950, Ford co-starred Johnson with another of his protégés, Harry Carey Jr., in Wagonmaster (1950). Now regarded as a classic, Wagonmaster failed to register at the box office; perhaps as a result, full stardom would elude Johnson for over two decades. He returned periodically to the rodeo circuit, played film roles of widely varying sizes (his best during the 1950s was the pugnacious Chris in George Stevens' Shane [1953]), and continued to double for horse-shy stars. He also did plenty of television, including the recurring role of Sleeve on the 1966 western series The Monroes. A favorite of director Sam Peckinpah, Johnson was given considerable screen time in such Peckinpah gunfests as Major Dundee (1965) and The Wild Bunch (1969). It was Peter Bogdanovich, a western devotee from way back, who cast Johnson in his Oscar-winning role: the sturdy, integrity-driven movie house owner Sam the Lion in The Last Picture Show (1971). When not overseeing his huge horse-breeding ranch in Sylmar, California, Ben Johnson has continued playing unreconstructed rugged individualists in such films as My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys (1991) and Radio Flyer (1992), in TV series like Dream West (1986, wherein Johnson was cast as frontier trailblazer Jim Bridger), and made-for-TV films along the lines of the Bonanza revivals of the 1990s.

Trivia: Though he spoke most of his movie dialogue in a slow Western drawl, actor Slim Pickens was a pure-bred California boy. An expert rider from the age of four, Pickens was performing in rodeos at 12. Three years later, he quit school to become a full-time equestrian and bull wrangler, eventually becoming the highest-paid rodeo clown in show business. In films since 1950's Rocky Mountain, Pickens specialized in Westerns (what a surprise), appearing as the comic sidekick of Republic cowboy star Rex Allen. By the end of the 1950s, Pickens had gained so much extra poundage that he practically grew out of his nickname. Generally cast in boisterous comedy roles, Pickens was also an effectively odious villain in 1966's An Eye for an Eye, starting the film off with a jolt by shooting a baby in its crib. In 1963, director Stanley Kubrick handed Pickens his greatest role: honcho bomber pilot "King" Kong in Dr. Strangelove. One of the most unforgettable of all cinematic images is the sight of Pickens straddling a nuclear bomb and "riding" it to its target, whooping and hollering all the way down. Almost as good was Pickens' performance as Harvey Korman's henchman in Mel Brooks' bawdy Western spoof Blazing Saddles (1974). Slim Pickens was also kept busy on television, with numerous guest shots and regular roles in the TV series The Legend of Custer, B.J. and the Bear, and Filthy Rich.

Trivia: In the '70s, American actor Clifton James became the foremost film impersonator of Southern redneck sheriffs -- but he had to go to England to do it. A graduate of the Actors Studio, James secured small roles in such Manhattan-filmed productions as On the Waterfront (1954) and in well over 100 TV programs. But his parts were tiny and frequently unbilled, relegating James to the ranks of "Who is that?" character actors. All this changed when James was cast as Sheriff Pepper in the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973), which led to a reprise of the character in the next Bond epic The Man With the Golden Gun (1973). Since that time, the stocky, ruddy-cheeked James has been prominent in such films as Silver Streak (1976), The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977) and Superman II (1980). In 1981, James was a regular on the brief TV sitcom Lewis and Clark. James kicked off the '90s as one of the willing but floundering cast members of that disaster of disasters, Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). He continued working in small roles through the rest of his life. James died in 2017, at age 96.

Trivia: Disdaining the "surfer" mentality of his California boyhood friends, Anthony Zerbe chose to head to New York to become an actor. He studied with Stella Adler and worked off-Broadway before achieving success in the mid-'60s. He made his film debut in 1967's Will Penny, after which he settled into a series of sharkish, saturnine villainous portrayals. An adherent of EST training, Zerbe preferred to work with people who allowed him "space" to develop a characterization; one such person was David Janssen, with whom Zerbe appeared on the mid-'70s TV series Harry O (in which he won an Emmy award for his portrayal of Lieutenant Trench). Active on-stage and in films and television into the 1990s, Anthony Zerbe has contributed some unforgettable acting moments to the big screen, notably as the shadow-enshrouded leper in 1971's Papillon and the "blowed up real good" secondary villain in the 1989 James Bond opus License to Kill.

Trivia: Before making his career switch to acting, G.D. Spradlin had been a prosperous Texas business tycoon and a highly respected history teacher. In films from 1968's Will Penny, the actor is perhaps best remembered for his work as on-the-take Senator Pat Geary in The Godfather, Part 2 (1974). His regal, assured bearing made him a natural for such forceful characterizations as LBJ in the 1990 TV movie Robert Kennedy and His Times. Spradlin has also played his share of high-ranking military officers, most memorably in Apocalypse Now (1979). A somewhat more avuncular G. D. Spradlin was seen in the role of Baptist minister (and erstwhile movie producer) Reverend Lemon in Ed Wood (1994).

Trivia: The son of the Los Angeles Times' drama editor, William Schallert was, along with Sydney Chaplin, one of the co-founders of Hollywood's highly regarded Circle Theatre troupe. Sent to Great Britain on a Fulbright Fellowship to study British repertory theatre, Schallert guest-lectured at Oxford on several occasion before heading home. A character actor of almost intimidating versatility, Schallert began his long film and TV career in 1951. While he appeared in films of every variety, Schallert was most closely associated with the many doctors (mad or otherwise), lab technicians and scientific experts that he played in such science fiction endeavors as The Man From Planet X (1951), Gog (1954), Them! (1954) The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) and The Monolith Monsters (1959). Director Joe Dante paid homage to Schallert's prolific horror-flick work by casting the actor in his Matinee, where he played yet another dabbler in Things Man Is Not Meant to Know in the film-within-a-film "Mant." Schallert's hundreds television credits could fill a book in themselves; the Nickelodeon cable network once tried to put together a montage of the actor's guest star appearances, touching only the tip of the iceberg. He was a regular on such series as Dobie Gillis (as literature teacher Mr. Pomfrit, who always dismissed his class as though announcing the beginning of the Indy 500), Get Smart (as a senile 97-year-old Navy admiral), The Nancy Drew Mysteries (as Nancy's attorney father) The New Gidget (as Gidget's professor father) The Nancy Walker Show, Little Women and Santa Barbara. His most famous TV role was as Patty Lane's ever-patient newspaper-editor dad on The Patty Duke Show, which ran from 1963 through 1966; over twenty years later, Mr. Schallert and Ms. Duke were touchingly reunited--again as father and daughter--on an episode of The Torkelsons (1991-92). William Schallert once served as president of the Screen Actors' Guild, a position later held...by Patty Duke. Shallert continued acting until the early 2010s; he died in 2016, at age 93.

Trivia: Askew is a supporting actor onscreen beginning with Cool Hand Luke (1967).

Trivia: Chanin Hale never really made it in movies, apart from a relative handful in the mid-'60s in which she played prominent supporting roles. But on television as a wholesome-yet-voluptuous blonde, she was a memorable guest star and supporting player for years on programs as diverse as Dragnet and The Red Skelton Show. She was born Marilyn Victoria Chanine Hale Harvey in Dayton, OH, and survived a desperately unhappy childhood in a broken home from where even her adopted younger sister was given up. (According to Hale in a 1969 interview, her sister returned to the orphanage when her parents separated). Hale took her mother's family name. She was a creative and very athletic girl, winning art awards and was very competitive in sports. She was bitten by the performing bug while still in school. After graduating from high school and working as a secretary, she decided to do something about pursuing acting. Some limited work in student and community theater helped, along with dancing and singing lessons, but she felt out of place and somehow "off balance" when it came to performing, until one day she dyed her red hair platinum blonde and suddenly recognized herself. She joined the Dayton Y Players and gained experience in everything from Greek tragedy to low comedy, and enjoyed a taste of success in the title role of Annie Get Your Gun. A move to New York in 1955, at age 18, put her in position to be discovered. During her first six years, she toured in the revue High Time, performed in The Gazebo (with William Bendix), Come Blow Your Horn, and Bus Stop in regional theater. She also worked as a cocktail waitress at the Gaslight Club (a pre-Playboy club institution for the well-heeled man about town), fending off advances from the patrons (and from her employers) when she worked as a stenographer. She also did Annie Get Your Gun on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and sang at Manhattan's #1 Fifth Avenue, eventually landinga role in Little Mary Sunshine, playing a flirtatious character named Twinkle. Hale also started doing television, playing secretaries, corpses, and everything in between. Her big break came from television in 1963 when she went to Los Angeles to appear in a comedy production at U.C.L.A. and was discovered by Jack Albertson, who offered her an introduction to Red Skelton. The veteran comic was always on the lookout for women with pantomime skills for his show, and after meeting Hale and seeing her work, immediately put her onto his weekly comedy variety show in the pantomime segment. She worked for him as a semi-regular for the next seven years. She also managed to appear in a handful of subsequent feature films, among them Gunn, Synanon, Will Penny, and The Night They Raided Minsky's, and in numerous dramatic television series. The most notable among them was the '60s revival of Dragnet on which she did three episodes -- in one, playing the seductive hostess for a crooked gambling ring, she came convincingly close to melting Jack Webb's by-the-book persona as Sgt. Joe Friday; watching the show today, Hale came off like the '60s answer to Gloria Grahame, and she may have had as good a career if only films were being made that included partly fallen-but-redeemable women in their casts of characters, but it was mostly Anne Francis and, on the much older side, Ava Gardner getting those parts. Hale's other television work includes appearances on Death Valley Days, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Hey Landlord, Hondo, The Donna Reed Show, The Danny Kaye Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Dating Game, and Girl Talk (the latter two as herself, out-of-character), as well as television productions of Brigadoon and Alice Through the Looking Glass. Hale was also a regular supporter of the USO and did tours of Vietnam and other overseas locations where American troops were stationed for more than a decade, well into the late '60s, working with John Welsh and John Malpezz on one tour. Indeed, she was one of the last fabulously successful pinups. In early 1969, a quarter century after the heyday of the pinup, when a picture of Hale in a homemade costume as "Eve" appeared in the New York Daily News, it generated so many requests from soldiers overseas that thousands of 8x10s had to be printed up and mailed. She continued working into the '70s on series such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Adam-12, and Marcus Welby, M.D.