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: During the late '60s through the mid '70s, American actress, Catherine Burns was well on the way to becoming a major star. After graduating from the American-Academy of Dramatic Arts, Burns played a gangly adolescent in 1969's Last Summer and was nominated for an Oscar for the part. She went on to work in a few more distinguished films and appeared in the TV movie, Amelia Earhart, but unfortunately her film career faded shortly thereafter.

Trivia: American actress Yvonne Craig trained for a ballet career from age 10 onward. While in high school, Yvonne was accepted by George Balanchine for the School of American Ballet, but she chose instead to tour with the Ballet Russe. Stopping over in Los Angeles, Ms. Craig was approached by a producer asking if she'd like to be in movies. She turned him down, but was more responsive to Hollywood after she later broke her contract with the Ballet Russe. Yvonne's first film was The Young Land (1957), but it remained on the shelf for two years, thus Eighteen and Anxious (1957) was the moviegoers' first introduction to the actress. The Young Land earned Yvonne a contract with Columbia pictures, where because of her exotic looks and flowing black hair she was cast in teen-aged "femme fatale" roles, such as the seductress in The Gene Krupa Story (1960) (though quite thin, she was actually larger than her frail Krupa co-star Sal Mineo, which caused a minor crisis when the script called for Mineo to hold Yvonne in his arms). Amidst movie assignments of off-and-on quality, Yvonne tested for West Side Story, but lost out to Natalie Wood. She did, however, hold the distinction of appearing with Elvis Presley twice in It Happened at the World's Fair (1962) and Kissin' Cousins (1964). In 1967, Yvonne was called upon to replace an incapacitated Mary Ann Mobley as Batgirl (aka Barbara Gordon) on the once-popular TV series Batman. Ms. Craig did her best in a sketchily written part, and was proud of the fact that she handled her motorcycle-riding scenes without a double, but Batman was on its last legs, and was cancelled in early 1968. When acting roles became repetitive--and few and far between--Yvonne drifted out of show business, making her last film in 1971. She co-produced industrial shows for a time, then went into the real estate business, where she did quite well for herself. Though she did appear (at the producer's request) in a low-budget video film in 1991, Yvonne Craig elected not to play the Hollywood Game anymore, and was content to limit her public appearance to film-fan conventions and Batman retrospectives. In 2009, she returned to show business, voicing a character in the animated Olivia series. Craig died in 2015, at age 78.

Trivia: Ruth Shoecraft was born in Michigan and raised in Ohio, where her father served as a county sheriff. At 20, Shoecraft attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, but put her theatrical aspirations on the back burner when she married a Florida widower named Patrick John McDevitt. When her husband died in 1934, Shoecraft returned to the stage asRuth McDevitt, first in community theatre, then on Broadway and in radio. She made her first film in 1951, but for the most part steered clear of Hollywood, preferring to appear in such Manhattan-based plays as The Solid Gold Cadillac, Picnic, The Best Man and Absence of a Cello. McDevitt's entree into weekly television was on the classic early-1950s Wally Cox sitcom Mr. Peepers, in which she played Wally's mom. Her next series stint was as rifle-wielding Grandma Hanks in the short-lived 1967 western comedy Pistols and Petticoats. During the 1960s, she returned to films, usually playing a dotty little old lady with more on the ball than people suspected. Still going strong in the early 1970s, Shoecraft played recurring roles on the TV series All in the Family and Kolchak. Ruth McDevitt made her last appearance at age 80 in the made-for-TV feature One of My Wives is Missing (1976).

Trivia: "Everyman" American character actor Ross Elliot established himself on Broadway, served in World War II, returned to the stage, and made his film bow in 1948. Elliot's many movie appearances include minor roles in such science-fiction favorites as Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and Tarantula (1955). A prolific television performer, Elliot lost count of his video appearances after he passed the one-hundred mark. From 1967 to 1970, Ross Elliot was seen as Sheriff Abbott on the TV western The Virginian.

Trivia: Lead Reb Brown appeared onscreen from the early '70s.