Trivia: Rough-hewn American leading man Richard Boone was thrust into the cold cruel world when he was expelled from Stanford University, for a minor infraction. He worked as a oil-field laborer, boxer, painter and free-lance writer before settling upon acting as a profession. After serving in World War II, Boone used his GI Bill to finance his theatrical training at the Actors' Studio, making his belated Broadway debut at age 31, playing Jason in Judith Anderson's production of Medea. Signed to a 20th Century-Fox contract in 1951, Boone was given good billing in his first feature, Halls of Montezuma; among his Fox assignments was the brief but telling role of Pontius Pilate in The Robe (1953). Boone launched the TV-star phase of his career in the weekly semi-anthology Medic, playing Dr. Konrad Steiner. From 1957 through 1963, Boone portrayed Paladin, erudite western soldier of fortune, on the popular western series Have Gun, Will Travel. He directed several episodes of this series. Boone tackled a daring TV assignment in 1963, when in collaboration with playwright Clifford Odets, he appeared in the TV anthology series The Richard Boone Show. Unique among filmed dramatic programs, Boone's series featured a cast of eleven regulars (including Harry Morgan, Robert Blake, Jeanette Nolan, Bethel Leslie and Boone himself), who appeared in repertory, essaying different parts of varying sizes each week. The Richard Boone Show failed to catch on, and Boone went back to films. In 1972 he starred in another western series, this one produced by his old friend Jack Webb: Hec Ramsey, the saga of an old-fashioned sheriff coping with an increasingly industrialized West. In the last year of his life, Boone was appointed Florida's cultural ambassador. Richard Boone died at age 65 of throat cancer.

Trivia: It was while attending Colorado College that American actor/singer Ken Curtis discovered his talent for writing music. After an artistic apprenticeship on the staff of the NBC radio network's music department in the early '30s, Curtis was hired as male vocalist for the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, then went on to work for bandleader Shep Fields. Preferring country-western to swing, Curtis joined the Sons of the Pioneers singing group in the 1940s, and in this capacity appeared in several western films. Columbia Pictures felt that Curtis had star potential, and gave the singer his own series of westerns in 1945, but Ken seemed better suited to supporting roles. He worked a lot for director John Ford in the '40s and '50s, as both singer and actor, before earning starring status again on the 1961 TV adventure series Ripcord. That was the last we saw of the handsome, clean-shaven Ken Curtis; the Ken Curtis that most western fans are familiar with is the scraggly rustic deputy Festus Haggen on the long-running TV Western Gunsmoke. Ken was hired to replace Dennis Weaver (who'd played deputy Chester Good) in 1964, and remained with Gunsmoke until the series ended its 20-year run in 1975. After that, Ken Curtis retired to his spread in Fresno, California, stepping back into the spotlight on occasion for guest appearances at western-movie conventions.

Trivia: Though typecast as a dull-witted brute, Austrian-born Mike Mazurki was the holder of a Bachelor of Arts degree from Manhattan College. During the 1930s, he was a professional football and basketball player, as well as a heavyweight wrestler. His clock-stopping facial features enabled Mazurki to pick up bit and supporting roles in such films as The Shanghai Gesture (1941) and Dr.Renault's Secret (1943). Larger parts came his way after his indelible portrayal of psychotic brute Moose Malloy in 1944's Murder My Sweet. His trademarked slurred speech was reportedly the result of an injury to his Adam's apple, incurred during his wrestling days. While villainy was his bread and butter, Mazurki enjoyed working with comedians like Jerry Lewis and Lou Costello; he was particularly fond of the latter because the diminutive Costello treated him with dignity and respect, defending big Mike against people who treated the hulking actor like a big dumb lug. Mazurki's many TV appearances included a regular role on the short-lived 1971 sitcom The Chicago Teddy Bears. In 1976, Mike Mazurki was effectively cast as a kindly trapper in the family-oriented "four-waller" Challenge to Be Free, which ended up a cash cow for the veteran actor.

Trivia: Burly and athletic actor George Barrows seldom worried about being recognized on the street because he spent much of his long, busy career dressed up in a gorilla suit. Barrows created his first one shortly after doubling for Johnny Weismuller in Tarzan and His Mate (1934). When not performing in the gorilla suit himself, he rented it out to others. In one film, Robot Monster (1953), he put a diving helmet over his gorilla head to play a space alien. Other films in which Barrows played great apes include Gorilla at Large (1954), The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966), and Hillbillies in the Haunted House (1967). He began performing professionally as a child, but his film career quickly petered out as his size increased. He grew to be a such a large man that after he returned to film in Cleopatra (1934) he was often relegated to playing heavies and, of course, gorillas. In addition to film work, Barrows frequently guest starred on television. He also appeared in made-for-TV films, such as The President's Plane Is Missing (1971) and Donner Pass: The Road to Survival (1978).

Trivia: Following Korean War service as a paratrooper, Hal Needham drifted into movies as a bit player. His remarkable physical dexterity and willingness to "take it" enabled him to rise up the professional ladder from stuntman to stunt coordinator to 2nd unit director. A longtime chum of Burt Reynolds (himself an ex-stuntman), Needham was given his first chance to direct a theatrical feature with Reynolds' Smokey and the Bandit (1977); the film was a huge hit, assuring Needham future assignments as both director and scriptwriter. The 1980 Reynolds vehicle Hooper was widely recognized as Reynolds and Needham's tribute to the entire fraternity of Hollywood stunters. For television, Needham directed several installments 1989 Burt Reynolds adventure series B. L. Stryker (1989) and the pilot for the syndicated adventure semi-weekly Bandit (1994); there was also a 1992 animated cartoon series titled Stunt Dawgs, wherein the central character was named Needham. Founder of the troubleshooting aggregation Stunts Unlimited (which also served as the title of a 1980 TV movie), Needham has also served as chairman for another movie-industry organization, Camera Platforms International. In addition, Hal Needham is owner of the "world's fastest car," the Budweiser Rocket, now on display at the Smithsonian Institute. Needham was awarded an Honorary Oscar in 2012 for his innovations, just one year before he died at age 82.

Trivia: Bobby Barber was in at least 160-odd movies and television shows that we know about; there's no telling the actual number of films that this bit player -- who was almost more recognizable for his round face (topped with a bald head) and large, round, bulging eyes than for his voice -- actually showed up in. And for all of those dozens upon dozens of appearances, his only regular, prominent screen credits derived from his work in connection with a pair of comedians for whom he played a much more important role offscreen. Barber was a character actor and bit player, born in New York in 1894, who had some experience on-stage before coming to movies in the 1920s. His earliest known screen credit dates from 1926, in the Lloyd Hamilton feature Nobody's Business, directed by Norman Taurog; Taurog was also the director of the next movie in which Barber is known to have appeared, The Medicine Men (1929), starring the comedy team of Bobby Clark and Paul McCullough (which also included a young Sylvia Field and Symona Boniface). By the 1930s, Barber had moved up to bit parts in major films, including the Marx Brothers features Monkey Business (1931) and Horse Feathers (1932). Virtually all of Barber's work was uncredited, as he bounced between feature-film roles that involved perhaps a single scene and shorts -- the latter starring such popular funnymen of the time as Andy Clyde and Harry Langdon -- that gave him somewhat more to do. Sometimes Barber was little more than a face, albeit a funny, highly expressive face, in a crowd, as in his jail-cell scene in Pot o' Gold (1941). He played innumerable waiters and shopkeepers, sometimes with accents such as his thick Italian dialect in his one scene (albeit an important one) in Boris Ingster's Stranger on the Third Floor. In 1941, Barber began working with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, a pair of burlesque comics who had just burst to stardom on the screen. He shows up as one of the sailors in the finale of their movie In the Navy, and the radio engineer who gets a comical electric shock from Costello's antics in Who Done It? In later movies with the duo, Barber would even get a line or two, as in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), in which he plays a waiter in a scene with Lon Chaney Jr. But his work for the pair involved far more than these bit parts -- Barber was basically kept on the Abbott and Costello payroll to be their resident "stooge," to hang around and help them work out gags, and also to work gags on them and on anyone else working with and for them, so that the performances on film would never seem stale. Barber is highly visible in a pair of outtakes from Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, playing gags on Costello and also on Bela Lugosi. Barber and Costello (who was the more outgoing of the pair) had an especially close backstage friendship, whether playing cards or playing practical jokes on each other. This relationship eventually came to be reflected onscreen when The Abbott & Costello Show went into production in 1952. Barber was in most of the episodes, sometimes playing as many as three different roles in a single 25-minute show; he can also be spotted, from the back, no less -- his physique and walk being that distinctive -- in one episode ("Hillary's Birthday") in the establishing shot of the supermarket. Barber kept working in feature films during the later part of his career, again portraying countless waiters, bellhops, and even a cart driver in the high-profile MGM production Kim (1950). He could play sinister, as in The Adventures of Superman episode "Crime Wave," or just surly as in the underrated Western A Day of Fury. He moved on to working with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis as well, in Pardners (1956) (directed by Norman Taurog), and also showed up in serious dramas such as Career (1959) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as well as Elvis Presley's pictures (Blue Hawaii). But it was Barber's interactions with Lou Costello, right up to the latter's final film (The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock), with which he is most immortalized, especially on the two seasons of The Abbott & Costello Show (where his real name was even once used, in a comedic variant -- "Booby Barber" -- in a sketch that didn't involve him).