Trivia: Red-headed, freckle-faced Martin Milner was only 15 when he made his screen debut in Life With Father (1947), and would continue to play wide-eyed high schoolers and college kids well into the next decade. His early film assignments included the teenaged Marine recruit in Lewis Milestone's The Halls of Montezuma (1951) and the obnoxious suitor of Jeanne Crain in Belles on Their Toes (1952). His first regular TV series was The Stu Erwin Show (1950-1955), in which he played the boyfriend (and later husband) of Stu's daughter Joyce. More mature roles came his way in Marjorie Morningstar (1957) as Natalie Wood's playwright sweetheart and in The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) as the jazz musician targeted for persecution by Winchell-esque columnist Burt Lancaster. Beginning in 1960, he enjoyed a four-year run as Corvette-driving Tod Stiles on TV's Route 66 (a statue of Milner and his co-star George Maharis currently stands at the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY). A longtime friend and associate of producer/director/actor Jack Webb, Milner was cast as veteran L.A.P.D. patrolman Pete Malloy on the Webb-produced TV weekly Adam-12, which ran from 1968 to 1975. His later TV work included a short-lived 1970s series based on Johan Wyss' Swiss Family Robinson. Later employed as a California radio personality, Martin Milner continued to make occasional TV guest appearances; one of these was in the 1989 TV movie Nashville Beat, in which he was reunited with his Adam-12 co-star Kent McCord. He made an appearance on the short-lived series The New Adam-12 and had recurring roles on shows like Life Goes On and Murder, She Wrote. Milner died in 2015, at age 83.

Trivia: Supporting actor Kent McCord is best known for co-starring in the long-running series Adam-12 (1968-1975). McCord made his film debut in the made-for-television movie The Outsider (1967). Following the demise of Adam-12, McCord continued appearing in TV films and in low-budget features such as Unsub (1985) and Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993).

Trivia: African-American actor Joel Fluellen was a respected stage performer in both all-black and integrated productions throughout the '40s. He was tentative about entering films due to the limited range of roles available for actors of his race. Certainly Fluellen had nothing to be ashamed of in such assignments as the title character's brother in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), but such parts were the exception rather than the rule. For the most part Fluellen found himself cast as noble natives in jungle-oriented films and TV programs, with the occasional worthwhile roles in films like Friendly Persuasion (1956). Not one to hide his opinions, especially in the '40s when non-white performers were expected to keep quiet and accept whatever was given them, Fluellen lobbied loud and long for better parts and working conditions for his fellow African-American performers, and was gratified to see the picture improving in the early '70s. Still, his own roles ranged from adequate to tiny, though he invariably made an indelible impression in such black-oriented films as A Raisin in the Sun (1962), The Learning Tree (1969) and The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars and Motor Kings (1975). After a long illness, Joel Fluellen died at age 81, of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Trivia: Leo Gordon cut one of the toughest, meanest, and most memorable figures on the screen of any character actor of his generation -- and he came by some of that tough-guy image naturally, having done time in prison for armed robbery. At 6 feet 2 inches tall, and with muscles to match, Gordon was an implicitly imposing screen presence, and most often played villains, although when he did play someone on the side of the angels he was equally memorable. Early in his adult life, Gordon did, indeed, serve a term at San Quentin for armed robbery; but after his release he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and was a working actor by the early 1950's. His first credited screen appearance (as Leo V. Gordon) was on television, in the Hallmark Hall of Fame production of "The Blue And White Lamp", with Frank Albertson and Earl Rowe, in 1952. His early feature film appearances included roles in China Venture (1953) and Gun Fury (1953), the latter marking the start of his long association with westerns, which was solidified with his villainous portrayal in the John Wayne vehicle Hondo (1953). It was in Don Siegel's Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), which was shot at San Quentin, that a lot of mainstream filmgoers discovered precisely how fearsome Gordon could be, in the role of "Crazy Mike Carnie." One of the most intimidating members of a cast that was overflowing with tough guys (and which used real cons as extras), Gordon's career was made after that. Movie work just exploded for the actor, and he was in dozens of pictures a year over the next few years, as well as working in a lot of better television shows, and he also earned a regular spot in the series Circus Boy, as Hank Miller. More typical, however, was his work in the second episode of the western series Bonanza, "Death on Sun Mountain", in which he played a murderous profiteer in Virginia City's boomtown days. Once in a while, directors triped to tap other sides of his screen persona, as in the western Black Patch (1957). And at the start of the next decade, Gordon got one of his rare (and best) non-villain parts in a movie when Roger Corman cast him in The Intruder (1962), in the role of Sam Griffin, an onlooker who takes it upon himself to break up a race riot in a small southern town torn by court-ordered school integration. But a year later, he was back in his usual villain mold -- and as good as ever at it -- in McLintock!; in one of the most famous scenes of his career, he played the angry homesteader whose attempt to lynch a Native American leads to a head-to-head battle with John Wayne, bringing about an extended fight featuring the whole cast in a huge mud-pit. Gordon was still very busy as an actor and sometime writer well into the 1980's and early 1990's. He played General Omar Bradley in the mini-series War And Remembrance, and made his final screen appearance as Wyatt Earp in the made-for-television vehicle The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Hollywood Follies. He passed away in 2000 of natural causes.

Trivia: African- American entertainer Scatman Crothers supported himself as a drummer throughout his high-school years. He formed a popular dance band, playing successful engagements even in the whitest of white communities, regaling audiences with his free-form "scat singing." In the formative years of television, Crothers became the first black performer to host a TV musical program in Los Angeles. He made his movie debut in the 1951 minstrel-show pastiche Yes Sir, Mr. Bones (1951). The best of his 1950s film appearances was as Dan Dailey's medicine-show partner in Meet Me at the Fair (1952). For the next three decades, Crother's movie roles varied in size; he was seen to best advantage as the concerned handyman in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). Adult TV fans will remember Scatman Crothers as Louie the garbageman on the 1970s sitcom Chico and the Man; Crothers also did voice-over work in the title role of the Saturday morning cartoon series Hong Kong Phooey.

Trivia: A graduate of New York's American Academy of Dramatic Art, sultry brunette Lynn Cartwright made quite a splash in the early films of producer/director Roger Corman, often in tandem with her husband, actor/writer Leo Gordon. Perhaps best remembered as the tough-talking switchboard operator Maureen Reardon in The Wasp Woman (1959), Cartwright, who also acted under the name of Danielle Carver, did her fair share of television work, as well, including guest stints on Maverick, Adam-12, and Little House on the Prairie. Her last film appearance was as the older Dottie in 1992's A League of Their Own. She died January 2, 2004.