Trivia: American leading man William Bishop studied law at the University of West Virginia before settling upon an acting career. He came to Hollywood at the tail end of the "victory casting" period, when the major studios were hiring any and all handsome young actors to fill the gap until the major male stars like Gable and Fonda came back from the war. Under contract to MGM, Bishop was seen in sizeable but non-descript supporting roles in such films as A Guy Named Joe (1943) and Song of the Thin Man (1947). In the 1950s, the muscular, jut-jawed Bishop specialized in westerns like The Texas Rangers (1952), Redhead from Wyoming (1953) and Phantom Stagecoach (1954). His best showing during this period was as Carter Doone in Columbia's Technicolor costumer Lorna Doone (1952). For 39 weeks in 1954, Bishop costarred with Michael O'Shea and James Dunn in It's a Great Life, a TV sitcom about two ex-GIs living together in a small apartment. William Bishop died of cancer in his Malibu home at the age of 42; he had just completed work on his last film, The Oregon Trail (1959), in which he was billed just below star Fred MacMurray.

Trivia: The daughter of a Texas judge, Martha Hyer majored in speech and drama at Northwestern University. Her work at the Pasadena Playhouse led to a 1946 contract with RKO. Free from her contract in 1951, Hyer free-lanced in films made both in the U.S. and abroad. In 1954, she played the role of William Holden's fiancée in Sabrina. She earned an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of a prim small schoolteacher in Some Came Running (1958), but has also played "hot to trot" roles in films like Pyro (1966) and spoiled-little-rich-girl types in films such as The Happening (1967). She retired from acting in the '70s. The widow of producer Hal B. Wallis, Martha Hyer has set forth her life story in the 1990 autobiography Finding My Way. Hyer died in 2014 at age 89.

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: American general-purpose actor Douglas Kennedy attended Deerfield Academy before trying his luck in Hollywood, using both his own name and his studio-imposed name Keith Douglas. He was able to secure contract-player status, first at Paramount and later at Warner Bros. Kennedy's Paramount years weren't what one could call distinguished, consisting mainly of unbilled bits (The Ghost Breakers [1940]) and supporting roles way down the cast list (Northwest Mounted Police [1940]); possibly he was handicapped by his close resemblance to Paramount leading man Fred MacMurray. Warner Bros., which picked up Kennedy after his war service with the OSS and Army Intelligence, gave the actor some better breaks with secondary roles in such A pictures as Nora Prentiss (1947), Dark Passage (1948), and The Adventures of Don Juan (1949). Still, Kennedy did not fill a role as much as he filled the room in the company of bigger stars. Chances are film buffs would have forgotten Kennedy altogether had it not been for his frequent appearances in such horror/fantasy features as Invaders from Mars (1953), The Alligator People (1959) and The Amazing Transparent Man (1960), playing the title role in the latter. Douglas Kennedy gain a modicum of fame and a fan following for his starring role in the well-circulated TV western series Steve Donovan, Western Marshal, which was filmed in 1952 and still posting a profit into the '60s.

Trivia: Tall, silver-maned character actor Roy Roberts began his film career as a 20th Century-Fox contractee in 1943. Nearly always cast in roles of well-tailored authority, Roberts was most effective when conveying smug villainy. As a hotel desk clerk in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), he suavely but smarmily refused to allow Jews to check into his establishment; nineteen years later, Roberts was back behind the desk and up to his old tricks, patronizingly barring a black couple from signing the register in Hotel (1966). As the forties drew to a close, Roberts figured into two of the key film noirs of the era; he was the carnival owner who opined that down-at-heels Tyrone Power had sunk so low because "he reached too high" at the end of Nightmare Alley (1947), while in 1948's He Walked By Night, Roberts enjoyed one of his few sympathetic roles as a psycho-hunting plainclothesman. And in the 3-D classic House of Wax, Roberts played the crooked business partner of Vincent Price, whose impulsive decision to burn down Price's wax museum has horrible consequences. With the role of bombastic Captain Huxley on the popular Gale Storm TV series Oh, Susanna (1956-1960), Gordon inaugurated his dignified-foil period. He later played long-suffering executive types on The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and The Lucy Show. Roy Roberts last appeared on screen as the mayor in Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974).

Trivia: Dapper, rotund character actor Don Beddoe was born in New York and raised in Cincinnati, where his father headed the Conservatory of Music. Beddoe's professional career began in Cincinnati, first as a journalist and then an actor. He made his Broadway debut in the unfortunately titled Nigger Rich, which starred Spencer Tracy. Beddoe became a fixture of Columbia Pictures in the 1930s and 1940s, playing minor roles in "A"s like Golden Boy, supporting parts ranging from cops to conventioneers in the studio's "B" features, and flustered comedy foil to the antics of such Columbia short subject stars as The Three Stooges, Andy Clyde and Charley Chase. Beddoe kept busy until the mid-1980s with leading roles in 1961's The Boy Who Caught a Crook and Saintly Sinners, and (as a singing leprechaun) in 1962's Jack the Giant Killer.

Trivia: The son of an immigrant Russian tailor, Aaron Spelling grew up in the Jewish ghetto of Dallas. Traumatized by constant bullying from his WASP schoolmates, Spelling psychosomatically lost the use of his legs at age eight and was confined to bed for a year. He spent his solitude with the written works of Mark Twain, O. Henry, and other masters, developing his own storytelling skills in the process. After wartime service with the Army Air Force, Spelling attended Southern Methodist University, then headed to New York, hoping to find work as an actor and writer. No one was interested in his writing, though he did eventually secure a few good film and TV roles (he was the squirrelly murderer in Vicki, the 1952 remake of 1941's I Wake Up Screaming). He then moved to California in the company of his wife, actress Carolyn Jones. While her career flourished, his dreams of becoming a great writer dwindled, and he reluctantly returned to acting. Spelling's writing skills finally came to the attention of actor/production executive Dick Powell, who hired Spelling as a scripter and producer for Powell's Four Star Productions. Spelling's strong suit during this period was the ability to woo TV-shy film actors into the Four Star fold by writing the sort of parts they'd like to play, but had never been permitted to by the Hollywood typecasting system. After Dick Powell died, Spelling became aligned with comedian/TV mogul Danny Thomas, for whom Spelling produced the hit series The Mod Squad in 1968. His new-found industry clout permitted Spelling to produce one TV hit after another: The Rookies, Starsky & Hutch, S.W.A.T., Charlie's Angels, Dynasty, among others. Whenever accused of merely turning out "schlock," Spelling could point with pride to his highly regarded weekly drama Family, and, much later, to his Emmy win for Day One, a 1989 TV movie about the wartime Manhattan Project. After several years of indifferent projects, Aaron Spelling once more became the king of youth-oriented television with his 1990 series Beverly Hills 90210 (which co-starred his daughter, Tori) and the equally popular follow-up, Melrose Place. Spelling's name continued to grace the credits of numerous youth-oriented soaps on the fledgling WB and UPN networks right up until his death in June of 2006.

Trivia: Actor Harry Harvey Sr. started out in minstrel shows and burlesque. His prolific work in Midwestern stock companies led to film assignments, beginning at RKO in 1934. Harvey's avuncular appearance (he looked like every stage doorman named Pop who ever existed) won him featured roles in mainstream films and comic-relief and sheriff parts in B-westerns. His best known "prestige" film assignment was the role of New York Yankees manager Joe McCarthy in the 1942 Lou Gehrig biopic Pride of the Yankees. Remaining active into the TV era, Harry Harvey Sr. had continuing roles on two series, The Roy Rogers Show and It's a Man's World, and showed up with regularity on such video sagebrushers as Cheyenne and Bonanza.

Trivia: A writer turned actor/director, Mel Welles was one of the most enduring cult figures from '50s exploitation pictures. Born in New York City in 1924, Welles moved into films after careers in clinical psychology, writing, and radio, and also performed in theater and wrestling promotion in Canada. He arrived in Hollywood at just about the time that his services were needed, in the first half of the 1950s -- filmmakers were eager to make movies appealing to teens, and in addition to some skills as an actor, Welles, who had written for jazz satirist Lord Buckley, was a natural both as a performer and writer of "special material" to jazz up the scripts and action of the exploitation pictures being ground out. His most notable work in this area was in the 1958 drug-and-sexploitation classic High School Confidential, directed by Jack Arnold, for which Welles provided two stunningly funny (and effective) parodies of beat poetry and jargon, and also served as the movie's resident expert on marijuana. During this period, Welles -- who was a master of numerous accents and dialects -- appeared in numerous Roger Corman films (Attack of the Crab Monsters, Rock All Night etc.), usually in small roles, and became part of the stock company that included Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze. His most prominent and enduring role for Corman -- and his personal favorite -- was that of Gravis Mushnik in the original 1960 non-musical version of Little Shop Of Horrors. During the '60s, Welles began directing low budget films such as the crime thriller Code of Silence (1960) and the horror film Lady Frankenstein (1972). By the 1980's, Welles had come to appreciate the admiration lavished on his work by his former teenage fans at conventions and in books -- he appreciated the outpourings of approval for his acting, in cult movies that came to be described and categorized as "psychotronic," though he was also somewhat embarrassed by the seriousness with which modern audiences embraced his beat poetry parodies in High School Confidential (and which, much to his puzzlement, recently surfaced on a compact-disc collection of actual Beat poetry). He had also resumed acting in the 1980s, including occasional voice-over work. Welles died of heart failure in 2005, at the age of 81.

Trivia: Though born in the American Midwest, Henry Rowland had heavily Teutonic facial features, making him an invaluable commodity in wartime films. Rowland "heiled" and "achtunged" his way through films ranging from 1942's Casablanca to 1975's Russ Meyer's Supervixens, in which he played a suspicious old coot named Martin Borman! Conversely, he showed up as an American flight surgeon in 1944's Winged Victory, billed under his military ranking as Corporal Henry Rowland. In his last years, Rowland continued playing such Germanic characters as the Amish farmer in 1975's The Frisco Kid.

Trivia: Often cast as American Indians, tough-looking stunt man/supporting player Boyd Stockman appeared in more than 50 B-Westerns and serials between 1946 and 1956, and was equally busy on such television shows as Gene Autry Show, The Range Rider, Adventures of Wild Bill Hickock, and Sky King. A namesake son (1938-1992) also worked as a Hollywood stunt man in the 1950s.

Trivia: Former real-life cowboy and rodeo performer Bob Woodward entered films in 1938. For the next 25 years, Bob Woodward showed up in bit roles in westerns like Cheyenne Takes Over (1947) and actioners like Radar Secret Service (1949). The main source of his income, however, was in the realm of stunt work. Though it understandably wasn't publicized at the time, Bob Woodward doubled for many of the major Western stars of the 1930s and 1940s, including Dick Foran and Buck Jones.

Trivia: Don C. Harvey's screen acting career was launched when he signed a Columbia contract in 1949. An all-purpose villain, Harvey showed up in most of Columbia's serials of the era, including Atom Man vs. Superman (1949), Adventures of Sir Galahad (1949), Batman and Robin (1949), Captain Video (1950), and the studio's final chapter play, Blazing the Overland Trail (1956). He also appeared in Columbia's "A" product (Picnic), "B" pictures (Women's Prison) and two-reel comedies (the Three Stooges' Merry Mavericks). Fans of 1950s horror films may recall Harvey as Mac in Revenge of the Creature (1955) and Lester Banning in Creature with the Atom Brain (1955). Don C. Harvey was married to actress June Harvey.

Trivia: Mean-looking John Lacy Cason was one of those unsung Hollywood heroes: a stuntman. A former professional prizefighter (hence his battered-looking nose), Cason was, according to his fellow stunt people, Pierce Lyden, "one of the toughest men in the business." He had arrived in Hollywood in the late '30s and began receiving billing in 1941, always playing henchmen. Nicknamed "Lefty" due to a fierce left-handed hook, Cason appeared in scores of B-Westerns in the '40s and guest starred on nearly all the television oaters of the following decade. He died in a road accident near Santa Barbara, CA, shortly after finishing an episode of Wagon Train.

Trivia: Beefy, muscular leading man Philip Carey entered films in 1951, shortly after his hitch in the Marines was up. Cutting quite a dashing figure in a 19th-century military uniform, Carey was most often cast as an American cavalry officer. In a similar vein, he appeared as Canadian-born Lt. Michael Rhodes on the 1956 TV series Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers. Curiously, he never appeared in any of director John Ford's cavalry films, though he did co-star in Ford's Mister Roberts (1955) and The Long Gray Line (1955). In 1959, Carey starred in a TV series based on Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled private eye Philip Marlowe. While no one could fault his performance in the role, the Philip Marlowe series survived but a single season. He is best known for his four subsequent TV assignments: as spokesperson for the regionally aired Granny Goose potato chips commercials, as forever-flustered Lt. Parmalee on the comedy Western Laredo (1966-1968), as narrator of the documentary series Untamed World (1968-1975), and, from 1980-2007, as eternally scheming patriarch Asa Buchanan on the daytime soap opera One Life to Live. One of Philip Carey's least typical TV appearances was on a 1971 All in the Family episode, in which he played Archie Bunker's macho-man bar buddy -- who turns out to be a homosexual.