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: Robert Dowdell is mostly remembered on television for his portrayal of Lt. Commander Chip Morton, the executive officer of the submarine Seaview on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea for four seasons (1964-1968). During the late '50s and early '60s, however, Robert Dowdell was one of the busier and more promising up-and-coming actors on stage and television, with appearances onstage opposite performers such as Joanne Woodward, and on the small screen starring with the likes of Richard Burton. Born in Park Ridge, IL, Dowdell grew up in Chicago and set his sights on an acting career while attending Parker High School. He attended Wesleyan University and the University of Chicago before the army interrupted his studies, and later, after a number of jobs (including railroad brakeman and auto assembly line worker), he got his first break when he landed the lead role in an off-Broadway production of The Dybbuk. The latter experience brought to light his utter lack of professional training, and led to Dowdell's studying with renowned acting coach Wyn Handman, which resulted in his being cast in a small role in Time Limit, a Broadway drama set in the aftermath of the Korean War. It was after meeting producer/author Leslie Stevens that Dowdell was cast in Stevens' play The Lovers, working alongside Hurd Hatfield and a young Joanne Woodward. The play's director, Arthur Penn, in turn brought Dowdell to television when he began directing Studio One. He was back on Broadway in Love Me a Little, starring opposite Susan Kohner, and he followed this with a role in the John Frankenheimer-directed play The Midnight Sun. That led to Dowdell's appearance with Richard Burton in Frankenheimer's television presentation of The Fifth Column on CBS/Buick Electra Playhouse. Dowdell also worked with Buddy Hackett on Broadway in Viva Madison Avenue and portrayed the role of the German tutor in the road company production of Five Finger Exercise, starring Jessica Tandy. It was during the Los Angeles engagement of the latter show that he was offered a co-starring role of Cody Bristol on Stoney Burke, which was being produced by Leslie Stevens. It lasted one season but led to his being cast in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which kept him working for four seasons. Although many of the episodes didn't give Dowdell too much to do beyond relaying orders from other characters, the series' first two seasons allowed him some acting leeway that showed a real talent present beneath the bland dialogue and increasingly childish plots; and there were at least two programs in each of the last two seasons in which Chip Morton actually had scenes by himself or one-on-one with whatever force, alien or Earth-spawned, was threatening the ship. In the years since its cancellation, Dowdell has done some theatrical and film work, and reappeared on television occasionally, as recently as the mid-'90s.

Trivia: Oates first acted in a student play while attending the University of Louisville. He moved to New York in 1954, hoping to find work on the stage or TV; instead he had a series of odd jobs. Eventually he appeared in a few live TV dramas, and when this work slowed down he moved to Hollywood; there he became a stock villain in many TV and film Westerns. Over the years he gained respect as an excellent character actor; by the early '70s he was appearing in both unusual, unglamorous leads and significant supporting roles. His breakthrough role was in In the Heat of the Night (1967). He played the title role in Dillinger (1973).