Trivia: Robert Fuller spent his first decade in show business trying his best to avoid performing. After his film debut in 1952's Above and Beyond, Fuller studied acting with Sanford Meisner at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse but never exhibited any real dedication. He tried to become a dancer but gave that up as well, determining that dancing was "sissified." Fuller rose to nominal stardom fairly rapidly in the role of Jess Harper on the popular TV western Laramie (1959-63). Once he found his niche in cowboy attire, he stuck at it in another series, Wagon Train, turning down virtually all offers for "contemporary" roles. When westerns began dying out on television in the late 1960s, Fuller worked as a voiceover actor in commercials, earning some $65,000 per year (a tidy sum in 1969). On the strength of his performance in the Burt Topper-directed motorcycle flick The Hard Ride, Fuller was cast by producer Jack Webb as chief paramedic Kelly Brackett on the weekly TVer Emergency, which ran from 1972 through 1977. In 1994, Robert Fuller was one of several former TV western stars who showed up in cameo roles in the Mel Gibson movie vehicle Maverick.

Trivia: Sultry blues vocalist Julie London began her film career long before she achieved fame as a recording artist. In 1945, 18-year-old London was selected to play a bargain-basement jungle princess, appearing opposite a gorilla in the PRC cheapie Nabonga. She was pretty bad, but no worse than the film itself. By the time she was cast as a sexy teenager in The Red House (1947), her acting had improved immensely, and by the time she played the female lead in the 1951 programmer The Fat Man, it looked as though she actually had a future in films. Still, London's greatest claim to fame was her long string of hit records ("Cry Me a River" et. al.) of the 1950s; many male admirers bought her albums simply to gaze upon her come-hither countenance on the dust jacket. Her status as every red-blooded American boy's wish dream was gently lampooned in Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It (1956), in which she appears as a spectral vision who transfixes a wistful Tom Ewell. Her best dramatic film appearances of this period include her leading-lady gigs in Voice in the Mirror (1958) and Man of the West (1958). From 1945 through 1955, Julie London was the wife of actor/producer Jack Webb; years after the divorce, London played Nurse Dixie McCall on the popular Jack Webb-produced TV series Emergency, in which she co-starred with her second husband, actor/jazz musician Bobby Troup.

Trivia: American actor Jamie Farr was the only son of a Lebanese butcher living in Toledo, Ohio. An easy target for bullies due to his short stature and large nose, Farr became the neighborhood clown to save himself from physical abuse. Humor gave him confidence, and by the time Farr graduated from high school he was a top student, extremely popular and active in numerous extra-curricular activities. Always a big movie fan, Farr harbored dreams of being an actor, and to that end studied at the Pasadena Playhouse. In 1955, Farr was cast in his first film (still billed under his own name, Jameel Farrah), The Blackboard Jungle, playing a redeemable hoodlum named Santini; shortly thereafter, he was cast in the Broadway production of No Time for Sergeants, just before he was drafted. The two years in the Army upset the momentum of Farr's career, and he found himself from 1958 through 1971 rebuilding himself from the ground up in bits and supporting roles. (Farr was not in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians during this period, as has often been reported; the cast of that turkey included a Broadway actor named Al Nesor, who bore a startling resemblance to Farr and played many of the same type roles). One of Farr's one-day bits was for the sixth episode of the new TV series M*A*S*H in 1972; Farr had the almost wordless role of a GI who dressed in women's clothing in hopes of getting out of the Army. The character of "Corporal Klinger" was meant to be a onetime joke, but the producers of M*A*S*H sensed possibilities in the character. By Season Two of M*A*S*H, Farr became a full supporting character; by Season Three he was being given co-starring billing in the series' opening credits sequence. After misguidingly "camping" the character in the earliest rehearsals, Farr played Klinger "straight" in every sense of the word: Neither gay nor transvestite, Klinger was simply a guy who'd go to great extremes to get out of military service. Gradually the character began to become fashion conscious, and before the eighties were over Klinger was making several fashion lists as one of the best-dressed characters on TV! Farr's role was expanded when Gary Burghoff left M*A*S*H in 1979; promoted to company clerk, Klinger began to thrive in the military, and the outrageous costuming was allowed to lapse. By the time M*A*S*H left the air, Klinger had taken a Korean wife, and Jamie Farr had become a true-blue celebrity. Unfortunately neither Farr nor Klinger were able to extend their audience appeal into the sequel series After M*A*S*H, not even when the scripts contrived to have Klinger become a fugitive from justice in a move to repeat his "outsider" status on M*A*S*H. Nonetheless, Jamie Farr has kept busy in the years following the cancellation of After M*A*S*H in 1984 with TV guest spots and stage appearances in such roles as Ali Hakim in Oklahoma and Evil Eye Fleegle in Li'l Abner. Farr would continue to appear regularly on screen in the years to come, appearing in movies like Scrooged, and on TV shows like Diagnosis Murder and Mad About You.

Trivia: American actor Victor Millan played character roles on stage, television, and in feature films during the '50s and in the '70s and '80s. When not acting, associate professor Millan taught theater arts at Santa Monica College.

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from 1959.