Trivia: Leading man and sex symbol, Selleck has a gentle, humorous manner. He attended college on an athletic scholarship, majoring in business. A drama coach suggested he become an actor; soon he began making the rounds of auditions. He won a part in the disastrous film Myra Breckinridge (1970), his screen debut, then appeared in small roles in a handful of films during the '70s. Meanwhile, Selleck was signed to a seven-year contract with Fox, leading to a great many TV roles, including appearances as a recurring character on the TV series "The Rockford Files." Eventually he was chosen as the lead for the TV series "Magnum P.I.;" the show became a hit, staying on the air from 1980-88, and he became a star and sex symbol, winning an Emmy, a Golden Globe award, and a star on Hollywood Boulevard. He suffered a serious career setback in 1981, when he was chosen to star in the Lucas-Spielberg blockbuster Raiders of the Lost Ark, but couldn't get released from his TV responsibilities. Beginning in 1983 he tried to break back into films, finally landing a major hit in a co-starring role in Three Men and a Baby (1987); although he appeared in a dozen films after 1983 he never firmly established himself as a screen star. He has also been active as a TV producer. He is married to English dancer Jillie Mack.

Trivia: Through a cruel twist of fate, American actor Sam Elliott came to films at just the point that the sort of fare in which he should have thrived was dying at the box office. A born cowboy star if ever there was one, the stage-trained Elliot made his debut in a tiny role in the 1969 western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Within a few years, the western market had disappeared, and Elliot had to settle for standard good-guy roles in such contemporary films as Lifeguard (1976). Never tied down to any one type, Elliot's range has embraced sexy "other men" (Sibling Rivalry [1989]) and vicious rapist/murderers (the TV movie A Death in California [1986]). Still, one yearned to see Elliot playing frontiersmen; fortunately, the western genre had not completely disappeared on television, and Elliot was well-served with such hard-riding projects as The Sacketts (1977), I Will Fight No More Forever (1981), The Shadow Riders (1982), Houston: The Legend of Texas (1986) and Conagher (1991), in which he appeared with his wife, actress Katherine Ross. When westerns began showing up on the big screen again in the 1990s, Elliot was there, prominently cast as Virgil Earp in Tombstone (1993) and the made-for-cable sagebrusher The Desperate Trail (1995). Awarded Bronze Wrangler trophies for his involvement in Conagher, The Hi-Lo Country, and You Know My Name, Elliot also made an impression on Cohen Brothers fans with a memorable performance as the laid back Stranger in the cult hit The Big Lebowski. A featured role in the 2000 made for television remake Fail Safe found Elliot hanging up his duster to revisit rising Cold War tensions, and later that same year he would finally make the leap into the new millennium with his role as a presidential aid in Rod Lurie's Oscar-nominated hit The Contender. Rewarded with a double hernia as a result of his intense training efforts to prepare for a role in the 2002 Vietnam War drama We Were Soldiers, the then fifty-seven-year-old endured the pain through the entire production and put of surgery until shooting had wrapped. Though Elliot would remain in the armed forces to portray a military general hell-bent on destroying the Hulk in 2003, his onscreen authority would weaken somewhat when he was cast as a cancer-riddled Marlboro Man in the 2005 comedy Thank You for Smoking. After traveling to the far corners of the globe to carry out a little vigilante justice in the 2006 made for television thriller Avenger, Elliot would next break a little new ground by venturing into the world of animation by lending his distinctive voice to the character of Ben the Cow in Steve Oedekerk's rural family romp Barnyard. He co-starred with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig in The Golden Compass (2007), a film adaptation of the first installment of the wildly successful book series from author Philip Pullman. In 2009 he took on a role in the award winning comedy drama Up in the Air, and co-starred as an eccentric billionaire in director Tony Krantz's The Big Bang in 2011. He joined Robert Redford and Julie Christie to play a supporting role in 2012's comedy drama The Company You Keep.

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: Actress Katharine Ross was trained at the San Francisco Workshop, barely completing her apprenticeship before landing leading roles on television. She made her TV debut as a spoiled teenager implicated in a fatal auto accident in Are There Any More Out There Like You?, a 1963 installment of the NBC anthology Kraft Suspense Theatre. Ross was Oscar nominated for her second film role as Dustin Hoffman's amour in The Graduate (1967). After successfully teaming with Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, she became mired in a series of steadily worsening films. She staged a comeback as Francesca in the 1985 nighttime TV serial The Colbys. At that time, Ross was married to actor Sam Elliott. Together, Ross and Elliot scripted and starred in an above-average Western TV movie Conagher (1991).

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from the '80s.

Trivia: A professional actor since his teens, Gene Evans made his first film appearance in 1947's Under Colorado Skies. Evans' gritty, no-nonsense approach to his craft attracted the attention of like-minded director Sam Fuller, who cast the actor in several of his 1950s film projects. Many consider Evans' portrayal as the grim, born-survivor sergeant in Fuller's The Steel Helmet (1951) to be not only the actor's best performance, but also one of the best-ever characterizations in any war film. Active in films until 1984, Gene Evans also co-starred in the TV series My Friend Flicka (1956), Matt Helm (1975) and Spencer's Pilots (1976).

Trivia: Birmingham-born R.G. Armstrong attended the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where he was active with the Carolina Playmakers. On the New York stage since the 1940s, Armstrong is best remembered for creating the role of Big Daddy in the original 1955 Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In film since 1957, Armstrong appeared in more than his share of westerns, usually as an able-bodied sheriff or thick-necked land baron. A frequent visitor to television, R. G. Armstrong was a regular on the 1967 adventure series T.H.E. Cat.

Trivia: Jane Greer was born Bettejane Greer (the name she was billed under in her 1945 films). A stunning brunette with a low voice and large, impressive eyes, she was born to an ambitious stage mother. As a child she frequently participated in beauty and talent contests, and at age 12 she began modeling professionally. In high school Greer performed in student plays before dropping out in her senior year to work as a vocalist with a nightclub band. In her late teens Greer posed in a WAC uniform for a World War II recruiting poster, bringing her to the attention of Howard Hughes, who signed her to a film contract; this led to an introduction to crooner Rudy Vallee, whom she married soon thereafter. Within a year both the contract and marriage ended in failure. Eventually signed by RKO, she debuted onscreen in 1945, playing a number of leads until 1953, when (having re-married) she retired from the screen to raise a family. Later Greer returned occasionally to films, and in the '80s she was a semi-regular on the TV series Falcon Crest.

Trivia: The son of actors Harry Carey and Olive Golden, Harry Carey Jr. never answered to "Harry" or "Junior"; to his friends, family and film buffs, he was always "Dobe" Carey. Raised on his father's California ranch, the younger Carey spent his first six adult years in the Navy. While it is commonly assumed that he made his film debut under the direction of his dad's longtime friend John Ford, Carey in fact was first seen in a fleeting bit in 1946's Rolling Home, directed by William Berke. It wasn't until his third film, Three Godfathers (dedicated to the memory of his father) that Carey worked with Ford. Honoring his promise to Harry Sr. that he'd "look after" Dobe, Ford saw to it that the younger Carey was given a starring assignment (along with another of the director's proteges, Ben Johnson), in Wagonmaster (1950). Though he handled this assignment nicely, exuding an appealing earnest boyishness, Carey wasn't quite ready for stardom so far as the Hollywood "higher-ups" were concerned, so he settled for supporting roles, mostly in westerns. John Ford continued to use Carey whenever possible; in 1955's The Long Gray Line, the actor has a few brief scenes as West Point undergraduate Dwight D. Eisenhower. Carey was also featured on the "Spin and Marty" segments of Walt Disney's daily TVer The Mickey Mouse Club (1955-59). In later years, Carey's weather-beaten face was seen in choice character assignments in films ranging from The Whales of August (1987) to Back to the Future III (1990); he was also hired by such John Ford aficionados as Peter Bogdanovich, who cast Carey as an old wrangler named Dobie (what else?) in Nickelodeon (1976), and as an ageing bike-gang member named Red in Mask (1985). In 1994, Harry Carey Jr. published his autobiography, Company of Heroes. Carey died of natural causes at age 91 in late December 2012.

Trivia: American actress Dominique Dunne was a celebrity to the Manor born. She was the daughter of authors Dominick Dunne and Ellen Griffin Dunne, the sister of actor Griffin Dunne (star of the quirky After Hours [1985]), and the niece of writers John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion. Given an elite education at the exclusive Taft School of Watertown, Connecticut, the Fountain Valley School of Colorado Springs, the British Institute and the Michelangelo School of Florence, Italy, Dunne seemed predestined for a career in the Arts. She chose acting as her avocation, and soon her aristocratic beauty was gracing a myriad of TV series. Starring in the 1982 shocker Poltergeist as the oldest daughter of Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams, Dunne proved she was an accomplished actress and not a mere "presence." Dunn was preparing to star in the science fiction TV miniseries V, when her career and her life came to an abrupt, violent end. Less than five months after Poltergeist was finished, Dominique Dunne was strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend John Sweeney. Despite the concerted efforts of her father Dominick Dunne and other concerned parties, Dunne's murderer received a reduced voluntary manslaughter sentence, and walked out of jail in 1986 after serving only four years of a mere 6 1/2-year sentence.

Trivia: A fair-haired character actress who maintained a nearly constant presence in American television series and features (making her countenance eminently familiar), Jeanetta Arnette began her career in late-'70s exploitation pictures, such as the 1977 releases Teenage Graffiti and The Class Reunion Massacre. Beginning with a bit part as a party guest in Blake Edwards' midlife-crisis comedy 10 (1979), however, Arnette segued gently into more mainstream efforts. She specialized in playing upbeat, highly energetic women with a professional edge. Early assignments included Rob Cohen's underrated Age of Aquarius period film A Small Circle of Friends (1980), the made-for-television sci-fi opus Brave New World (1980), and Andrew V. McLaglen's telemovie Western The Shadow Riders (1982). Arnette achieved her broadest fame and recognition for several years in 1986, when she signed on to play Bernadette Meara, the assistant principal of the Monroe High School for teen prodigies, on the popular sitcom Head of the Class (1986-1991) -- a role she carried for the entire run of the series. Subsequent assignments included the Rodney Dangerfield comedy Ladybugs (1992), the gender-bending melodrama Boys Don't Cry (1999), and Lasse Hallström's offbeat romantic drama The Shipping News (2001). In 2007, Arnette tackled a more prominent role in director David Gordon Green's earnest ensemble drama Snow Angels.

Trivia: The son of actor Victor McLaglen, McLaglen cut his teeth working on industrial films and by the early '50s was assistant directing for several directors, including Budd Boetticher and John Ford. By the mid '50s he was helming features, as well as episodes of such television shows as Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, and Have Gun Will Travel. His career got a jump start from John Wayne in the early '60s with the sexist slugfest McLintock!; the two went on to make Hellfighters, The Undefeated, Chisum, and Cahill -- United States Marshall. McLaglen also helmed two offbeat character studies starring James Stewart, Shenandoah and Fools' Parade. A solid director of westerns (Bandolero!, The Last Hard Men) and actioners (Mitchell, The Wild Geese), McLaglen can be more fun spoofing his specialties, as in Something Big and Ffolkes (aka North Sea Hijack). He has worked in television since the mid '70s. McLaglen passed away in 2014 at age 94.