Trivia: Intending to become a dentist like his father, American actor Edgar Buchanan wound up with grades so bad in college that he was compelled to take an "easy" course to improve his average. Buchanan chose a course in play interpretation, and after listening to a few recitations of Shakespeare he was stagestruck. After completing dental school, Buchanan plied his oral surgery skills in the summertime, devoting the fall, winter and spring months to acting in stock companies and at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. He was given a screen test by Warner Bros. studios in 1940, received several bit roles, then worked himself up to supporting parts upon transferring to Columbia Pictures. Though still comparatively youthful, Buchanan specialized in grizzled old westerners, with a propensity towards villainy or at least larceny. The actor worked at every major studio (and not a few minor ones) over the next few years, still holding onto his dentist's license just in case he needed something to fall back on. Though he preferred movie work to the hurried pace of TV filming, Buchanan was quite busy in television's first decade, costarring with William Boyd on the immensely popular Hopalong Cassidy series, then receiving a starring series of his own, Judge Roy Bean, in 1954. Buchanan became an international success in 1963 thanks to his regular role as the lovably lazy Uncle Joe Carson on the classic sitcom Petticoat Junction, which ran until 1970. After that, the actor experienced a considerably shorter run on the adventure series Cade's County, which starred Buchanan's close friend Glenn Ford. Buchanan's last movie role was in Benji (1974), which reunited him with the titular doggie star, who had first appeared as the family mutt on Petticoat Junction.

Trivia: Character actor Bert Freed prepared for his theatrical career at Penn State. Freed made his first Broadway appearance in the forgotten 1942 production Johnny 2 X 4, then went on to such long-running efforts as Counterattack, One Touch of Venus and Annie Get Your Gun. In films from 1947, he was most often cast as big-city detectives and small-town sheriffs. Some of his more memorable movie roles include Sgt. Boulanger in Paths of Glory (1957), Christopher Jones' institutionalized father in Wild in the Streets (1968), and all-around meanie Stuart Posner in Billy Jack (1969). A busy television actor, Freed settled down to a weekly-series grind only once, as Rufe Ryker on the 1966 video version of Shane. Outside of his performing activities, Bert Freed was for many years a member of the Motion Picture Academy's Committee of Foreign Films.

Trivia: Comical American character actor Paul Garner was one of the Three Stooges back when they were a vaudeville act. He later went on to have a successful career as a solo act in nightclubs, on stage, television, and in films.

Trivia: After attending City College of New York, Marc Lawrence studied acting with Eva Le Gallienne. Among the many stage productions in which Lawrence appeared were Sour Mountain and Waiting for Lefty. First signed for films by Columbia in 1932, Lawrence's scarred face and growly voice made him indispensable for gangster parts, though he generally displayed an intelligence far higher than the average goon or gunman. Though usually limited to villainy, Lawrence was not always confined to urban roles, as witness his successful portrayals of a mountaineer in Shepherd of the Hills (1942) and a western saddle tramp in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). The actor's own favorite role was Corio in 1947's Captain from Castille. During the House UnAmerican Activities Committee investigations of the 1950s, Lawrence reluctantly offered testimony implicating several of his coworkers as alleged communist sympathizers; the experience virtually destroyed his American career and left him embittered and defensive (he would always refuse to be interviewed by historians of the "Blacklist" era, referring to them as "ghouls"). Lawrence was forced to seek out work in Europe, where he'd emerge in the early 1960s as a director of crime films and spaghetti westerns. Back in the U.S. in the 1980s, Lawrence made several TV appearances and showed up in such films as The Big Easy (1987) and Newsies (1992), typecast once more as gangsters. In 1993, Lawrence privately published his memoirs, in which for the first time in print he addressed his dark days as an HUAC "friendly witness."