Trivia: Handsome leading man Rory Calhoun's successful film and television career spanned well over 50 years. In the mid-1940s,after a difficult childhood and adolescence, Calhoun found work as a lumberjack in Santa Cruz, California. It was while there employed that Calhoun was discovered by actor Alan Ladd, who suggested that the rugged young man give movies a try. Billed as "Frank McCown," Calhoun was signed to a brief contract at 20th Century-Fox, but most of his earliest movie scenes (including a sizeable supporting role in the Laurel and Hardy vehicle The Bullfighters) ended up on the cutting room floor. Free-lancing in the late 1940s, Calhoun first attracted a fan-following with his supporting role as a high-school lothario in 1948's The Red House. He returned to Fox in 1950, enjoying major roles in such films as How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and River of No Return (1955). Established as a western player by the late 1950s, Calhoun starred on the popular TV western The Texan from 1958 through 1960. He spent his spare time writing, publishing at least one novel, The Man From Padeira. From 1949 through 1970, Calhoun was married to actress Lita Baron. Perpetuating his career into the 1980s and '90s, a more weather-beaten Rory Calhoun was seen in the lead of the satirical horror film Motel Hell (1980), was quite funny as a washed-up macho movie star in Avenging Angel (1985), and stole the show from ostensible leading-man George Strait in Pure Country (1992).

Trivia: Signed by Universal in 1950, the perky, redheaded Piper Laurie (born Rosetta Jacobs) was a welcome presence in many a musical, situation comedy and costume drama. In later years, she tended to dismiss her ingenue years, noting that she spent most of her time posing for cheesecake layouts. Thanks in great part to her devastating performance as an alcoholic in the 1958 Playhouse 90 TV drama "The Days of Wine and Roses", Laurie completely altered her cuddly image, reinventing herself as a powerful dramatic actress. She earned an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Paul Newman's neurotic girlfriend in The Hustler (1961), then suddenly retired from acting upon her marriage to movie critic Joseph Morganstern. She made a brilliant return to films with another Oscar-nominated performance, this time as Sissy Spacek's religious fanatic mother in Carrie (1976). Ten years and several topnotch performances later, she was honored with a third Oscar nomination for Children of a Lesser God (1986). Laurie's television work has included a co-starring assignment opposite a very young Mel Gibson in the superb Australian TV movie Tim (1979) and an Emmy-nominated stint on David Lynch's 1990 "cult" series Twin Peaks. Working only when the spirit moves her in recent years, Piper Laurie has been seen in such prestige productions as Wrestling Ernest Hemingway (1993) and White Man's Burden (1995).

Trivia: Authoritative leading man David Brian had previously been a musical comedy performer when signed by Warner Bros. in 1949. His first role was as the unbilled "host" of the 1949 reissue of Warners' 1935 G-Men, but within a few months he was starring opposite Joan Crawford (Flamingo Road) and Bette Davis (Beyond the Forest). Loaned out to MGM, Brian delivered one of his finest performances as the civil libertarian lawyer in Intruder in the Dust (1949). In films until the early 1970s, Brian was also a prominent TV actor, starring in the syndicated Mr. District Attorney (1954-1955, repeating his radio role) and appearing as villainous billionaire Arthur Maitland in the Christopher George series The Immortal (1970). David Brian was the husband of actress Adrian Booth, aka Lorna Gray.

Trivia: On stage from the age of 19, American actor Alex Nicol toiled away in supporting roles for nearly a decade, his Actors Studio training often serving him well in helping him make something out of nothing. Nicol enjoyed a good run in the 1949 Broadway smash South Pacific, albeit in a role consisting of no more than four lines. Things perked up when he made his first film, The Sleeping City, in 1950, after which Nicol concentrated upon movie parts calling for shifty villainy. He worked in both Hollywood and England, with time out for TV assignments, including an oddly delineated role as a grown-up Mamma's boy on the 1962 Twilight Zone episode "Young Man's Fancy." Nicol had accrued enough capital in the late '50s to begin directing as well as starring in films. Some of his projects were tawdry little items like The Screaming Skull (1958), but at least one Nicol-directed film, And Then There Were Three (1962), proved that a singular talent had been wasted in Hollywood. And Then There Were Three, a no-budget war film, scored on its grittiness and spontaneity; unfortunately the film was not given a general release, and began circulating only when sold to television in 1965. Alex Nicol added to his directing credits by helming a few network TV series in the '60s, often through the auspices of Universal, his home studio as an actor in the '50s.

Trivia: American actress Kathleen Hughes was recruited right out of UCLA to be a contract actress at 20th Century-Fox. After several years of thankless bits, Kathleen signed at Universal, where she flourished in supporting parts as seductresses and mystery women. The actress was right in her element in The Glass Web (1953), in which she is murdered by jealous TV writer Edward G. Robinson, who then fashions a script based on the crime! Kathleen Hughes retired upon her marriage to producer Stanley Rubin, making a brief comeback in 1967's The President's Analyst.

Trivia: Intending to become a dentist like his father, American actor Edgar Buchanan wound up with grades so bad in college that he was compelled to take an "easy" course to improve his average. Buchanan chose a course in play interpretation, and after listening to a few recitations of Shakespeare he was stagestruck. After completing dental school, Buchanan plied his oral surgery skills in the summertime, devoting the fall, winter and spring months to acting in stock companies and at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. He was given a screen test by Warner Bros. studios in 1940, received several bit roles, then worked himself up to supporting parts upon transferring to Columbia Pictures. Though still comparatively youthful, Buchanan specialized in grizzled old westerners, with a propensity towards villainy or at least larceny. The actor worked at every major studio (and not a few minor ones) over the next few years, still holding onto his dentist's license just in case he needed something to fall back on. Though he preferred movie work to the hurried pace of TV filming, Buchanan was quite busy in television's first decade, costarring with William Boyd on the immensely popular Hopalong Cassidy series, then receiving a starring series of his own, Judge Roy Bean, in 1954. Buchanan became an international success in 1963 thanks to his regular role as the lovably lazy Uncle Joe Carson on the classic sitcom Petticoat Junction, which ran until 1970. After that, the actor experienced a considerably shorter run on the adventure series Cade's County, which starred Buchanan's close friend Glenn Ford. Buchanan's last movie role was in Benji (1974), which reunited him with the titular doggie star, who had first appeared as the family mutt on Petticoat Junction.

Trivia: Mara Corday's principal career in movies only lasted seven years, from 1951 until 1958, but as a result of a handful of those films -- coupled with her status as one of the most photographed models of her era -- she has maintained a fandom for 50 years. This is especially true among science fiction buffs, among whom Corday's three movies in the genre -- Tarantula, The Giant Claw, and The Black Scorpion -- remain beloved films of their era. She was born Marilyn Watts in Santa Monica, CA, and displayed an outgoing personality at an early age. Her modeling career began while she was still in her teens, and by the end of the 1940s, when she was 17, Corday was also working as a chorus girl at the Earl Carroll Theatre. Following Carroll's death, she joined the George White Scandals of 1950, and was part of the cast of a stage production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Corday was lucky enough in 1951 to appear in a small Los Angeles production of William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life, where she was seen by Paul Kohner, one of Hollywood's top agents. Kohner offered to represent her, and there followed a string of appearances for Corday in supporting roles on shows like Kit Carson, starring Bill Williams, as well as bit parts in movies such as Two Tickets to Broadway (1951) at RKO, Sea Tiger (1952) at Monogram, and Problem Girls at Columbia. Corday was also briefly signed up with legendary producer Hal Wallis -- this coincided with her appearance in the Wallis-produced Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis 3-D comedy Money From Home (1953) at Paramount. Unfortunately, her brief contractual link-up with Wallis yielded no further work in films of that prominence, and her next two films were with Republic Pictures. Her contact with Wallis, however, yielded a screen test that got Corday a spot as a contract player at Universal in 1954. This not only secured her a steady income and a series of small (but gradually larger) roles in various Universal features, among them the musical So This Is Paris (1954), but also training in the finer points of acting. The studio also featured young players like Corday, Grant Williams, and Clint Eastwood any place they could, such as their appearances as contract players in the 1955 network television special Allen in Movieland, hooked around the studio's upcoming release of The Benny Goodman Story. Corday was still pursuing her modeling career, and by 1955 was one of the most photographed women on the West Coast, a fact that wasn't lost on the studio -- Universal's management, in turn, began putting her into better movies, including the Kirk Douglas feature Man Without a Star (1955), directed by King Vidor. Ironically, even as she was getting bigger and better roles in movies aimed at mainstream audiences -- including Harmon Jones' A Day of Fury (1956), which arguably contains Corday's best work -- it was her work in a trio of genre films that would ensure Corday a devoted fandom for decades to come. Jack Arnold's Tarantula (1955) showed off the actress in a demure, intelligent role as a scientist's assistant, quite unlike the hardboiled girls from the wrong side of the tracks that she often played; and while the 200-foot-tall spider of the title attracted a lot of attention, Corday's good looks were impossible to ignore as well. In The Giant Claw (1957), which suffered from ludicrous special effects, she was the best thing to look at in the movie, even for filmgoers under age 13; and in The Black Scorpion (1957), she even supplied her wardrobe, and looked nothing less than stunning in virtually all of her scenes, and got to act the role of a full-blooded heroine, complete with acts of bravery of her own. Corday's modeling career had continued uninterrupted, culminating in October 1958 when she was the Playmate of the Month in Playboy magazine -- she would probably have been able to build on the momentum of the Playboy issue, but for the fact that she married actor Richard Long, who insisted that she stay at home to raise their family. Following Long's death in 1974, Corday resumed her career with help from the most successful of her fellow Universal contract players, Clint Eastwood, who got her roles in The Gauntlet (1977), Sudden Impact (1983), Pink Cadillac (1989), and The Rookie (1990). Corday has been working on various film-related writing projects, and has also been delighted to discover that she has a fandom.

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: Child actor Skip Homeier began acting on radio in his native Chicago, which in the early 1930s was a major network center. Billed as "Skippy," he was one of the kiddie regulars on Let's Pretend, and for a while played the son of the heroine on the long-running soap opera Portia Faces Life. He was also frequently tapped for stage work in both the Midwest and New York. It was Homeier's chilling portrayal of a preteen Nazi in the Broadway production Tomorrow the World that led to his film debut in the 1944 movie version of that play. Typecast as a troublesome teenager thereafter, Homeier was finally permitted a comparatively mature role in Lewis Milestone's The Halls of Montezuma (1950). He worked steadily in westerns and crime films thereafter, occasionally billed as G. V. Homeier. It was back to "Skip" for his 1960 TV series Dan Raven. Alternating between Skip and G. V. Homeier for the rest of his career, the actor went on to co-star as Dr. Hugh Jacoby in the weekly TVer The Interns (1970-71) and to play supporting roles in such films as The Greatest (1977) and the made-for-TV The Wild Wild West Revisited (1979). Homeier died in 2017, at age 86.

Trivia: Signed up by MGM's dramatic school directly after graduating from the University of Southern California, American actor James Millican was groomed for that studio's stable of young leading men. Instead, he made his first film, Sign of the Cross (1932), at Paramount, then moved on to Columbia for his first important role in Mills of the Gods (1934). Possessor of an athletic physique and Irish good looks, Millican wasn't a distinctive enough personality for stardom, but came in handy for secondary roles as the hero's best friend, the boss' male secretary, and various assorted military adjutants. According to his own count, Millican also appeared in 400 westerns; while such a number is hard to document, it is true that he was a close associate of cowboy star "Wild Bill" Elliott, staging a number of personal-appearance rodeos on Elliott's behalf. Fans of baseball films will recall James Millican's persuasive performance as Bill Killefer in the Grover Cleveland Alexander biopic The Winning Team.

Trivia: Following a wartime tour with the Navy, New Jersey-born Lee Van Cleef supported himself as an accountant. Like fellow accountant-turned-actor Jack Elam, Van Cleef was advised by his clients that he had just the right satanic facial features to thrive as a movie villain. With such rare exceptions as The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1954), Van Cleef spent most of his early screen career on the wrong side of the law, menacing everyone from Gary Cooper (High Noon) to the Bowery Boys (Private Eyes) with his cold, shark-eyed stare. Van Cleef left Hollywood in the '60s to appear in European spaghetti Westerns, initially as a secondary actor; he was, for example, the "Bad" in Clint Eastwood's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). Within a few years, Van Cleef was starring in blood-spattered action films with such titles as Day of Anger (1967), El Condor (1970), and Mean Frank and Crazy Tony (1975). The actor was, for many years, one of the international film scene's biggest box-office draws. Returning to Hollywood in the late '70s, He starred in a very short-lived martial arts TV series The Master (1984), the pilot episodes of which were pieced together into an ersatz feature film for video rental. Van Cleef died of a heart attack in 1989.

Trivia: Actor Stanley Andrews moved from the stage to the movies in the mid 1930s, where at first he was typed in steadfast, authoritative roles. The tall, mustachioed Adrews became familiar to regular moviegoers in a string of performances as ship's captains, doctors, executives, military officials and construction supervisors. By the early 1950s, Andrews had broadened his range to include grizzled old western prospectors and ageing sheriffs. This led to his most lasting contribution to the entertainment world: the role of the Old Ranger on the long-running syndicated TV series Death Valley Days. Beginning in 1952, Andrews introduced each DVD episode, doing double duty as commercial pitchman for 20 Mule Team Borax; he also became a goodwill ambassador for the program and its sponsor, showing up at county fairs, supermarket openings and charity telethons. Stanley Andrews continued to portray the Old Ranger until 1963, when the US Borax company decided to alter its corporate image with a younger spokesperson -- a 51-year-old "sprout" named Ronald Reagan.

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: Actor Philo McCullough began his movie career at the Selig Company in 1912. At first, McCullough specialized in light comedy roles, often playing cads and bounders. After a brief stab at directing with 1921's Maid of the West, he found his true niche as a mustachioed, oily-haired, jack-booted heavy. During the 1920s he appeared in support of everyone from Fatty Arbuckle to Rin Tin Tin. Talkies reduced him to such bit parts as the "Assistant Exhausted Ruler" in Laurel & Hardy's Sons of the Desert (1933) and Senator Albert in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). One of his few roles of consequence in the 1930s was the principal villain in the 1933 serial Tarzan the Fearless. Philo McCullough remained active until 1969, when he appeared with several other silent-screen veterans in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?.

Trivia: Veteran American character actor Forrest Taylor is reputed to have launched his film career in 1915. His screen roles in both the silent and sound era seldom had any consistency of size; he was apt to show up in a meaty character part one week, a seconds-lasting bit part the next. With his banker's moustache and brusque attitude, Taylor was most often cast as a businessman or a lawyer, sometimes on the shadier side of the law. Throughout his 40 year film career, Taylor was perhaps most active in westerns, appearing in such programmers as Headin' For the Rio Grande and Painted Trail. From 1952 through 1954, Forrest Taylor costarred as Grandpa Fisher on the religious TV series This is the Life.

Trivia: The namesake nephew of American journalist Tris Coffin, actor Tristram Coffin set his stage career in motion at age 14. By 1939, the tall, silver-mustached Coffin was well on his way to becoming one of the screen's most prolific character actors. Generally cast as crooked lawyers, shifty business executives, and gang bosses in B-pictures, Coffin projected a pleasanter image in A-films, where he often played soft-spoken doctors and educators. In 1949, he essayed his one-and-only film starring role: heroic Jeff King in the Republic serial King of the Rocket Men. Even busier on TV than in films (he was virtually a regular "guest villain" on the Superman series), Tristram Coffin starred as Captain Ryning of the Arizona Rangers in the weekly syndicated Western 26 Men (1957-1958).