Trivia: American actor Ward Bond was a football player at the University of Southern California when, together with teammate and lifelong chum John Wayne, he was hired for extra work in the silent film Salute (1928), directed by John Ford. Both Bond and Wayne continued in films, but it was Wayne who ascended to stardom, while Bond would have to be content with bit roles and character parts throughout the 1930s. Mostly playing traffic cops, bus drivers and western heavies, Bond began getting better breaks after a showy role as the murderous Cass in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). Ford cast Bond in important roles all through the 1940s, usually contriving to include at least one scene per picture in which the camera would favor Bond's rather sizable posterior; it was an "inside" joke which delighted everyone on the set but Bond. A starring role in Ford's Wagonmaster (1950) led, somewhat indirectly, to Bond's most lasting professional achievement: His continuing part as trailmaster Seth Adams on the extremely popular NBC TV western, Wagon Train. No longer supporting anyone, Bond exerted considerable creative control over the series from its 1957 debut onward, even seeing to it that his old mentor John Ford would direct one episode in which John Wayne had a bit role, billed under his real name, Marion Michael Morrison. Finally achieving the wide popularity that had eluded him during his screen career, Bond stayed with Wagon Train for three years, during which time he became as famous for his offscreen clashes with his supporting cast and his ultra-conservative politics as he was for his acting. Wagon Train was still NBC's Number One series when, in November of 1960, Bond unexpectedly suffered a heart attack and died while taking a shower.

Trivia: Born Marie Marguerita Guadalupe Teresa Estela Bolado Castilla y O'Donnell, she began dancing professionally at age nine, receiving coaching from Eduardo Cansino, Rita Hayworth's father. Her uncle was Xavier Cugat, and she appeared with his band in Mexican nightclubs and traveled with them to New York; as their dancer, she helped the band in its triumphant introduction of the rumba to America. She began appearing on Broadway and in films in 1934. She danced in two or three of her films, but otherwise was usually cast as a tragic character. Somewhat busy as a screen actress from 1934-44, her film appearances afterwards were sporadic; altogether, she appeared in only 15 films. From 1937-40 Margo was married to actor Francis Lederer. From 1945 she was married to actor Eddie Albert; she was the mother of actor Edward Albert. In 1974 she was appointed Commissioner of Social Services for Los Angeles.

Trivia: One of the most versatile American movie actors of the mid-20th century, Eddie Albert missed out on stardom but, instead, enjoyed a 50-year-plus screen career that encompassed everything from light comedy and zany satire to the most savage war dramas. Born Edward Albert Heimberger in Rock Island, IL, he attended the University of Minnesota. After working as everything from soda jerk to a circus acrobat (with a short stint as a nightclub and radio singer), Albert headed for New York City, where he scored a hit in the play Brother Rat, portraying military cadet Bing Edwards. He also starred in Room Service on-stage before heading to Hollywood, where he was signed by Warner Bros. to recreate his stage role in the 1938 film Brother Rat. Albert was known for his comedic work during the early years of his career -- his other early major credits included The Boys From Syracuse and Boy Meets Girl on-stage and On Your Toes (1939) onscreen. When he did appear in dramas, such as A Dispatch From Reuters (1940), it was usually as a light, secondary lead or male ingénue, similar to the kinds of parts that Dick Powell played during his callow, youthful days. Albert had an independent streak that made him unusual among actors of his era -- he actually quit Warner Bros. at one point, preferring to work as a circus performer for eight dollars per day. The outbreak of World War II sent Albert into the U.S. Navy as a junior officer, and he distinguished himself during 1943 in the fighting on Tarawa. Assigned as the salvage officer in the shore party of the second landing wave (which engaged in heavy fighting with the Japanese), his job was to examine military equipment abandoned on the battlefield to see if it should be retrieved; but what he found were wounded men who had been left behind under heavy fire. Albert took them off the beach in a small launch not designed for that task, earning commendations for his bravery. A bona fide hero, he was sent home to support a War Bond drive (though he never traded on his war experiences, and didn't discussing them in detail on-camera until the 1990s). When Albert resumed his acting career in 1945, he had changed; he displayed a much more serious, intense screen persona, even when he was doing comedy. He was also a much better actor, though it took ten years, and directors Robert Aldrich and David Miller, to show the movie-going public just how good he was. Ironically, when Albert did return to films, the roles weren't really there for him, so he turned to television and theatrical work during the early '50s. His best movie from this period was The Dude Goes West (1948), an offbeat comedy-Western directed by Kurt Neumann in a vein similar to Along Came Jones. The mid-'50s saw Albert finally achieve recognition as a serious actor, first with his Oscar-nominated supporting performance in William Wyler's hit Roman Holiday (1953) and then, three years later, in Robert Aldrich's brutal World War II drama Attack!, in which he gave the performance of a lifetime as a cowardly, psychopathic army officer. From that point on, Albert got some of the choicest supporting dramatic parts in Hollywood, in high-profile movies such as The Longest Day and small-scale gems like David Miller's Captain Newman, M.D. Indeed, the latter film, in which he played a more sympathetic disturbed military officer, might represent his single best performance onscreen. His ability at comedy wasn't forgotten, however, and, in 1965, he took on the starring role of Oliver Wendell Douglas (opposite Eva Gabor) in the TV series Green Acres, in which he got to play the straight man to an array of top comic performers for six seasons. The show developed a cult following among viewers, ranging from small children to college students, and became a pop-culture institution. The movie business had changed by the time Albert re-entered films in 1971, but he still snagged an Oscar nomination for his work (in a difficult anti-Semitic role) in Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid (1972). He also remained one of Robert Aldrich's favorite actors, and, in 1974, the director gave him a choice role as the sadistic warden, in The Longest Yard. He had another hit series in the mid-'70s with Switch, in which he and Robert Wagner co-starred as a pair of private investigators whose specialty was scamming wrongdoers. Albert was still working steadily into the early '90s, when he was well into his eighties. From the mid-'40s, the actor had acquired a deep, personal interest in politics, and produced a series of educational films intended to introduce grade-school students to notions of democracy and tolerance. By the '60s, he was also deeply involved in the environmental movement. Albert was married for decades to the Mexican-American actress Margo (who died in 1985); their son is the actor Edward Albert.

Trivia: Redheaded leading man Robert Horton attended UCLA, served in the Coast Guard during World War II, and acted in California-based stage productions before making his entree into films in 1951. Horton's television career started off on a high note in 1955, when he was cast in the weekly-TV version of King's Row as Drake McHugh (the role essayed by Ronald Reagan in the 1942 film version). The series barely lasted three months, but better things were on the horizon: in 1957, Horton was hired to play frontier scout Flint McCullough in Wagon Train, which became the highest-rated western on TV. Horton remained with Wagon Train until 1962. He then did some more stage work before embarking on his third series, 1965's The Man Called Shenandoah. When this one-season wonder ran its course, Horton toured the dinner-theatre circuit, then in 1982 accepted a major role on the popular daytime soap opera As the World Turns. Horton continued acting until the late 1980s. He died in 2016, at age 91.

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.