Trivia: Ex-prizefighter Dale Robertson was brought to films by virtue of his vocal and physical resemblance to Clark Gable. After a year of bit parts at Warner Bros., Robertson graduated to leading-man gigs at 20th Century Fox. In 1957, Robertson was cast on the popular TV Western Tales of Wells Fargo which ran until 1962. Since that time, Robertson has starred or co-starred in a number of television weeklies, nearly always Western (both period and contemporary) in nature: The Iron Horse (1966-1968), Dynasty (1980-1982), and J.J. Starbuck (1989). In addition, Dale Robertson has headlined two TV-movie pilots based on the exploits of famed G-Man Melvin Purvis. Robertson made his final screen appearance in Martha Coolidge's 1991 period piece Rambling Rose, passing away from lung cancer over twenty years later at the age of 89.

Trivia: Though weighing in at a sylphlike 155 pounds, Jack Ging starred for three years in the backfield of the University of Oklahoma football team. After a hitch in the Marines, Ging headed to Hollywood to break into the movies. He made his film debut in The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow (1959), then secured the continuing role of Beau McCloud on TV's Tales of Wells Fargo (1961-62). From 1962 to 1964, Ging starred as clinical psychologist Paul Graham on the NBC weekly The Eleventh Hour. Jack Ging went on to play authoritative supporting roles in three TV series: Detective Chuck Morris in Dear Detective (1979), Lt. Ted Quinlan in Riptide (1984-85) and Sheriff Hollings in PS I Luv U (1991).

Trivia: Famed for his ratchety voice and cold-fish stare, William Demarest was an "old pro" even when he was a young pro. He began his stage career at age 13, holding down a variety of colorful jobs (including professional boxer) during the off-season. After years in carnivals and as a vaudeville headliner, Demarest starred in such Broadway long-runners as Earl Carroll's Sketch Book. He was signed with Warner Bros. pictures in 1926, where he was briefly paired with Clyde Cook as a "Mutt and Jeff"-style comedy team. Demarest's late-silent and early-talkie roles varied in size, becoming more consistently substantial in the late 1930s. His specialty during this period was a bone-crushing pratfall, a physical feat he was able to perform into his 60s. While at Paramount in the 1940s, Demarest was a special favorite of writer/director Preston Sturges, who cast Demarest in virtually all his films: The Great McGinty (1940); Christmas in July (1940); The Lady Eve (1941); Sullivan's Travels (1942); The Palm Beach Story (1942); Hail the Conquering Hero (1944); Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), wherein Demarest was at his bombastic best as Officer Kockenlocker; and The Great Moment (1944). For his role as Al Jolson's fictional mentor Steve Martin in The Jolson Story (1946), Demarest was Oscar-nominated (the actor had, incidentally, appeared with Jolie in 1927's The Jazz Singer). Demarest continued appearing in films until 1975, whenever his increasingly heavy TV schedule would allow. Many Demarest fans assumed that his role as Uncle Charlie in My Three Sons (66-72) was his first regular TV work: in truth, Demarest had previously starred in the short-lived 1960 sitcom Love and Marriage.

Trivia: Of Swedish-American heritage, Virginia Christine (born Virginia Kraft) grew up in largely Scandinavian communities in Iowa and Minnesota. As a high schooler, Christine won a National Forensic League award, which led to her first professional engagement on a Chicago radio station. When her family moved to Los Angeles, Christine sought out radio work while attending college. She was trained for a theatrical career by actor/director Fritz Feld, who later became her husband. In 1942, she signed a contract with Warner Bros., appearing in bits in such films as Edge of Darkness (1943) and Mission to Moscow (1944). As a free-lance actress, Christine played the female lead in The Mummy's Curse (1945), a picture she later described as "ghastly." Maturing into a much-in-demand character actress, Christine appeared in four Stanley Kramer productions: The Men (1950), Not as a Stranger (1955), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). Other movie assignments ranged from the heights of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) to the depths of Billy the Kid Meets Dracula (1978). To a generation of Americans who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, Christine will forever be Mrs. Olson, the helpful Swedish neighbor in scores of Folger's Coffee commercials.

Trivia: Mary Jane Saunders was one of the more promising child actors of the post-World War II period, alongside such slightly older contemporaries as Beau Bridges and Gigi Perreau. Despite a good start in a major Bob Hope vehicle, however, she failed to sustain her career into adulthood. Born Mary Jayne Saunders in Pasadena, CA, in 1943, she was the only child of an auto parts and machinery dealer and his homemaker wife. Saunders was thrust into a film career at age five when her parents sent in her photo, in response to a casting call from Paramount. The studio was looking for a five-year-old girl to play in Sorrowful Jones, a remake of Little Miss Marker, a 1930s Shirley Temple vehicle (based on a Damon Runyon story) about a little girl who is left with a bookmaker as security for a bet . Saunders won the part and the film was a success in the output of Bob Hope, if not one of his more enduring classics. She next turned up in a major role in Columbia Pictures' A Woman of Distinction, playing alongside Rosalind Russell, Ray Milland, and Edmund Gwenn. She worked in two more good romantic comedies, Father Is a Bachelor at Columbia, starring William Holden, and The Girl Next Door at Fox, with Dan Dailey and June Haver, both of which had her working with her fellow child actor Billy Gray. After that flurry of activity, Saunders was absent from the big screen until the end of the decade when she re-emerged as a teenager, playing one of 17 children of Clifton Webb's title character in The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker at 20th Century-Fox. Saunders turned up in one more movie, an uncredited role in Billy Wilder's Kiss Me Stupid (1964), but was most visible on television, playing the teenager Mary Gee in the 1961-62 season of Tales of Wells Fargo; two of her episodes were later intercut to form the feature film Gunfight at Black Horse Canyon. A pert blonde with an irrepressible manner, she seemed younger than her 17 years and was still playing teenagers in the mid-'60s on programs like My Three Sons and I Spy. In late 1967, she married major league baseball player Jay Johnstone and retired from acting.

Trivia: Heavyweight American actor Robert Middleton trained for a musical career at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and Carnegie Tech. His deep, booming voice enabled Middleton to secure steady work as a radio actor and announcer. After appearing on Broadway in Ondine and in several live TV dramas, Middleton entered films in 1954. He was most effectively cast as burly, bullying villains, notably the sadistic prison escapee Dobish in The Desperate Hours (1955) and "grim and grisly Griswold" in Danny Kaye's The Court Jester (1956). That he could leaven his skullduggery with humor was proven in his many appearances on the Jackie Gleason shows of the mid-'50s as Ralph Kramden's boss, Mr. Marshall. Television continued to make good use of Middleton's talents into the 1960s; there was hardly a Western series in existence which didn't at least once feature the massive actor as a brutish mountain patriarch, smirking town boss, or grim-faced lynch mob leader. Shortly before his death in 1977, Robert Middleton was featured as inordinately sinister Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in the speculative feature The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977).

Trivia: Making her film bow in 1955's The Scarlet Hour, actress Carol Ohmart was heavily touted as Paramount's answer to Marilyn Monroe. Unfortunately, Ohmart never quite attained Monroe's stature, though she turned in credible performances in such programmers as House on Haunted Hill. She left films in 1960 to study metaphysics, briefly resurfacing in 1964 in the camp horror classic Spider Baby. After a long absence, Carol Ohmart made her final film appearance in The Spectre of Edgar Allen Poe (1972).