Trivia: A Brooklynite from head to toe, Dane Clark never completely forsook his streetwise pugnacity, not even while attending Cornell and John Hopkins, and earning a law degree from St. John's University. Clark held down several Depression-era jobs--road gang worker, boxer, ballplayer, magazine model--before making his first stage appearance in 1938. Four years later, he made his entree into films, at first using his given name of Bernard Zanville (sometimes spelled Zaneville). Signed by Warner Bros. in 1943, Clark was given a new professional name and purpose in life: as potential replacement for Warners' resident "tenement tough" John Garfield. Since there was plenty of life left in the original Garfield, however, Clark was largely confined to secondary roles, usually as the hero's best friend or the cocky troublemaker from Brooklyn. As the 1940s drew to a close, Clark was afforded a few leading roles by Warners, though it was while on loan-out to Republic that he delivered his finest performance, as emotionally overwrought accidental murderer Danny Hawkins in Moonrise (1948). His film appearances were fewer and farther between in the 1950s, as he sought out more rewarding roles on television and the Broadway stage. He did get to play Harlem Globetrotters maven Abe Saperstein in the 1954 feature Go, Man, Go, but he also had to produce the film himself. On TV, Clark starred as news correspondent Dan Miller on the weekly adventure series Wire Service (1956), and played hotel owner Slate Shannon on the 1959 TV version of the old Bogart-Bacall radio series Bold Venture. He also co-starred as Lt. Tragg on the ill-advised New Perry Mason (1973), and made innumerable guest appearances on such series as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, The Untouchables and Ellery Queen (1975 version).

Trivia: From adolescence on, Ben Cooper was an actor on both the stage and in radio. After attending Columbia University, Cooper began his film career with 1950's Side Street. A low-key actor, Cooper fluctuated between heroes and villains, mostly in westerns, until retiring from films in 1961. Ben Cooper also popped up in secondary roles on many TV anthologies of the so-called "Golden Era."

Trivia: New Mexico-born Lori Nelson spent much of her childhood in radio stations and photo studios as a juvenile actress and model. Signed by Universal in 1952, Nelson played opposite Jimmy Stewart, and also starred in Ma and Pa Kettle and Francis the Talking Mule, all within the space of one year. She freelanced in the mid-'50s, landing reasonably good roles in such films as Warners' I Died a Thousand Times (1955) and Paramount's Pardners (1956) before settling for Grade-Z drive-in fare like Hot Rod Girl. After a year of starring as Greta Lindquist in the syndicated TV sitcom How to Marry a Millionaire, Lori Nelson left the show in 1959 to seek out more challenging roles; when the calls stopped coming in, Nelson reinvented herself as a successful cosmetics manufacturer.

Trivia: One of the most popular--and overworked--second-echelon leading ladies of the 1930s and 1940s, Ellen Drew was the daughter of a Kansas City barber. She came to Hollywood after winning a beauty contest, playing bits under her given name of Terry Ray until she was promoted to leads in 1938. A fixture of Paramount Pictures from 1938 through 1943, Drew appeared in as many as six films per year; among her leading men were Ronald Colman, William Holden, Basil Rathbone, Dick Powell, Robert Preston, George Raft, and even Jack Benny. She moved to Paramount's next-door neighbor RKO in 1944, then free-lanced in the 1950s. Ellen Drew retired from films in 1957, though her fervent fans continued to besiege her with letters of appreciation.

Trivia: Rotund, moon-faced character actor Charles Watts made a mini-career out of portraying glad-handing politicians, voluble businessmen and salesmen, crafty bankers, and cheerful or cynical parents, uncles, family friends, and other supporting players. He never had a starring role, or even a co-starring role, in a motion picture, but his physical presence and voice made for some memorable moments. Born in Clarksville, TN, in 1912, Watts was a high-school teacher -- handling both business law and drama -- for a time during his mid-twenties, working in Chattanooga. He worked in local theater and tent shows early in his career, and after World War II was also in demand for industrial shows. Watts didn't start doing movie or television appearances until 1950, and in that first year he played small, uncredited roles in such serious dramas as The Killer That Stalked New York (1950), as a mailman, and Storm Warning (1951), as a lunch-counter proprietor -- and somewhat larger parts, as a sheriff, in three episodes of The Lone Ranger. Over the next 16 years, he was seen in nearly 100 movies and television shows. His most prominent big-screen role was that of Judge (and later United States Senator) Oliver Whiteside in George Stevens' Giant (1956), where his rich, melodious voice and cheerful demeanor were put to extensive use. Watts was also an uncredited man in the crowd in Stuart Heisler's I Died a Thousand Times, a police sergeant in Philip Dunne's The View From Pompey's Head (both 1955), and Mr. Schultz, the salesman from the suspender company, in Billy Wilder's The Spirit of St. Louis (1957). Watts even found his way into two big-scale musicals -- Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) and Jumbo (1962) -- a decade apart. When he had a role with dialogue of any length, he was often used -- or so it seemed -- for his tendency to speechify, and to make even ordinary words stand out in relief. As active on television as he was in movies, Watts was familiar to several generations of young viewers for his role as Bill Green, the skeptical anti-superstition league leader in the Adventures of Superman episode "The Lucky Cat" (1955). He also played a small but key role in the Father Knows Best episode "24 Hours in Tyrantland," done on behalf of the Treasury Department to sell U.S. Savings Bonds, as the Andersons' skeptical neighbor, whose brief, cynical talk to son Bud finally pushes Jim Anderson (Robert Young) to straighten his kids out about the importance of savings bonds. Watts remained busy into the mid-'60s, and died of cancer in 1966.

Trivia: Canadian-born general-purpose actor George Pembroke is perhaps best remembered as Dr. Saunders, the leader of the fifth columnists in Bela Lugosi's Black Dragons (1942) and as the police inspector posing as an art connoisseur in the semi-classic Bluebeard (1944). In Hollywood from 1937, Pembroke made serials somewhat of a specialty, appearing in Drums of Fu Manchu (1940), Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941), Perils of Nyoka (1942), Captain Midnight (1942), and Daredevils of the West (1943). He later became a frequent guest star on television's The Lone Ranger and Gene Autry.

Trivia: Throughout most of his career Scott Peters appeared in low-budget horror movies and actioners. Though primarily a supporting actor, Peters occasionally won leading roles in features like Attack of the Puppet People (1958) and The Girl Hunters (1963). In the mid-'70s, Peters played Detective Valencia in the television drama Get Christie Love (1974).

Trivia: A graduate of the Nashville Conservatory and the model for U.S. Navy recruiting posters, John Pickard entered films in 1946 following a four-year stint in the navy. Pickard played supporting roles in scores of Westerns and action dramas before reaching stardom as Captain Shank of the U. S. Cavalry on the NBC television Western series Boots and Saddles. Filmed entirely on location at Kanab, UT, the series enjoyed a two-season run (1957-1958) and also featured Gardner McKay as Lieutenant Kelly. Pickard earned a second stab at small-screen stardom in Gunslinger (1961) and played supporting roles in nearly every other popular television drama, from Gunsmoke to Simon and Simon. He was tragically killed by a rampant bull while vacationing on a family farm in his home state of Tennessee.