Trivia: Brooklyn-born actor John Joseph Patrick Ryan borrowed his stage name "Jack Lord" from a distant relative. Spending his immediate post-college years as a seafaring man, Lord worked as an engineer in Persia before returning to American shores to manage a Greenwich Village art school and paint original work; he flourished within that sphere (often signing his paintings "John J. Ryan,") and in fact exhibited the tableaux at an array of prestigious institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Modern Museum of Art. Lord switched to acting in the late 1940s, studying under Sanford Meisner at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. In films and television from 1949, Lord (a performer with stark features including deep-set eyes and high cheekbones) played his share of brutish villains and working stiffs before gaining TV fame as star of the critically acclaimed but low-rated rodeo series Stoney Burke (1962). At around the same time, Lord played CIA agent Felix Leiter in the first James Bond film, Dr. No. From 1968 through 1980, Lord starred on the weekly cop drama Hawaii Five-O; producers cast him as Steve McGarrett, a troubleshooter with the Hawaii State Police who spent his days cruising around the islands, cracking open individual cases, and taking on the movers and shakers in Hawaiian organized crime, particularly gangster Wo Fat (Khigh Dhiegh), who eluded capture until the program's final month on the air. Lord also wrote and directed several episodes. After Hawaii 5-0 folded, Jack Lord attempted another Hawaii-based TV series, but M Station: Hawaii (1980) never got any farther than a pilot film. Lord died of congestive heart failure in his Honolulu beachfront home at the age of 77, in January 1998. He was married to Marie Denarde for 50 years.

Trivia: "As familiar as a favorite leather easy chair" is how one magazine writer described the craggy, weather-beaten face of ineluctable character actor James Gregory. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any time in the past six decades that Gregory hasn't been seen on stage, on TV or on the big screen. There were those occasional periods during the 1930s and 1940s when he was working on Wall Street rather than acting, and there were those uniformed stints in the Marines and the Naval Reserve. Otherwise, Gregory remained a persistent showbiz presence from the time he first performed with a Pennsylvania-based travelling troupe in 1936. Three years later, he was on Broadway in Key Largo; he went on to appear in such stage hits as Dream Girl, All My Sons, Death of a Salesman and The Desperate Hours. In films from 1948, Gregory was repeatedly cast as crusty no-nonsense types: detectives, military officers, prosecuting attorneys and outlaw leaders. With his bravura performance as demagogic, dead-headed senator Johnny Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Gregory launched a second career of sorts, cornering the market in portraying braggadocio blowhards. One of his best characterizations in this vein was as the hard-shelled Inspector Luger in the TV sitcom Barney Miller. He played Luger for six seasons (1975-78, 1979-81), with time out for his own short-lived starring series, Detective School (1978). He also played Prohibition-era detective Barney Ruditsky on The Lawless Years (1959-61) and T. R. Scott in The Paul Lynde Show (1972), not to mention nearly 1000 guest appearances on other series. James Gregory has sometimes exhibited his sentimental streak by singing in his spare time: he has for many years been a member of the SPEBQSA, which as any fan of The Music Man can tell you is the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America.

Trivia: Most filmgoers and television viewers know Jason Evers for his performances on such series as The Guns of Will Sonnett, movies like The Green Berets, and guest-starring roles on programs such as Star Trek ("Wink of an Eye"). In reality, the actor has had a much longer career than those movie and television credits rooted in the 1960s and 1970s. Born Herbert Evers in the Bronx, NY, in 1922, he was the son of a theatrical ticket agent. Evers left De Witt Clinton High School before graduation in order to pursue an acting career and landed an apprenticeship with the Ethel Barrymore Colt Jitney Players, with whom he toured the country for two years at the end of the 1930s. In the early '40s, he was signed up by producer Brock Pemberton, who cast him in his breakthrough part, as Pvt. Dick Lawrence in the play Janie. That play established Evers as a handsome male ingenue, of a type similar to contemporaries such as Van Heflin, Van Johnson, and Bill Williams. He subsequently endured a series of flop plays, as well as two years in uniform. After returning to civilian life, Evers resumed his career, principally in road company productions, including a tour of I Am a Camera with Veronica Lake. By then Evers was married to actress Shirley Ballard and the two frequently found themselves struggling financially between roles. Strangely enough, their marriage ended just at a point when the two were working together in a successful Broadway play entitled Fair Game. By 1960, Evers was ready to make the jump to the potentially greener pastures of the West Coast, and possible film work. He landed the leading role in a summer replacement television series called Wrangler, portraying a rugged, laconic cowboy. In the bargain, he also traded in his first name for the smoother and more manly Jason Evers. The series wasn't picked up for the regular season but Evers was on the map, his new name and image working very much in his favor. Jason Evers was a fresh name and face, and he had also acquired an intense, edgy quality, in sharp contrast to the callow handsomeness of his image in the 1940s and 1950s. Herbert Evers seemed a slightly bland leading man, but Jason Evers, in name and image, conveyed intensity and even danger. He did a few small movie roles at the outset of the decade, and then got the only starring screen role of his career -- unfortunately, the latter was in the horror thriller The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962). The actor -- credited as Herb Evers -- played a scientist obsessed with the idea of keeping the severed head of his fiancée alive. Luckily, no one of any consequence in the entertainment industry ever saw the film (which has since been embraced by bad-movie cultists, and has turned up on Mystery Science Theater 3000), or tied "Herb Evers" up with Jason Evers. In 1964, he got another crack at a series with Channing, a topical drama set at a university -- a kind of collegiate answer to Mr. Novak -- co-starring Henry Jones. That program failed to find an audience, but by then, Evers was making a massive number of guest-star appearances, on series as different as Gunsmoke and Star Trek, often playing villains. He also played important supporting roles in feature films, including an excellent performance in The Green Berets, as the doomed Captain Coleman, the outgoing commander of the forward base where John Wayne's Colonel Kirby tries to make a stand. Evers landed what was arguably his best television role on the series The Guns of Will Sonnett, portraying Jim Sonnett, the gunslinger who is the object of a search through the West by his father (Walter Brennan) and son (Dack Rambo). Evers was perfect as Jim Sonnett, grim and taciturn and, yet, beneath his nasty veneer as a tired veteran gunman, concerned for the well-being of his father and son once he knows they are looking for him. The only problem with the role was that he hardly ever got to play it -- as the object of the quest at the center of the series' plot, he only actually appeared onscreen a handful of times during the two-year run of the series. Still, it was an actor's dream of a part, in the sense that his character was discussed prominently in every episode, and figured in virtually every plot complication and development; no performer could ask for a better lead-in than that to his actually taking the stage, and his appearances were memorable. Evers' career began to wind down during the 1970s, amid roles of varying size in such movies as Escape From the Planet of the Apes and Barracuda, and the horror-exploitation movie Claws. Evers has been in retirement since the mid-'80s, although he did briefly return to work, portraying a role in Basket Case 2 (1990).

Trivia: Frequently cast as Western heavies due to his steely gaze, longtime character actor Lyle Bettger traveled the well-worn path from stage to screen, making a name for himself on such small screen oaters as Rawhide and Bonanza before stepping into a more contemporary setting with frequent appearances on Hawaii Five-O. A Philadelphia native and graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, subsequent work in theater and summer stock eventually lead Bettger to Broadway, and later a contract with Paramount. In 1950, Bettger made his screen debut with the film noir drama No Man of Her Own,and the fruitful following decade found him building a solid resumé with roles in Union Station (1950) and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), among numerous others. Success followed the actor to the small screen, with Bettger donning his spurs as numerous baddies and even moving on to starring roles in the series The Court of Last Resort and The Grand Jury in the late '50s. Later work on Hawaii Five-O found the easygoing actor warming to the hospitable climate in which the show was set, and after appearing in the show's 1979 series finale, Bettger retired and made a home for himself in Paia. Lyle Bettger died of natural causes September 24, 2003, in Atascadero, CA. He was 88.