Trivia: The son of an Oklahoma carpet layer, James Garner did stints in the Army and merchant marines before working as a model. His professional acting career began with a non-speaking part in the Broadway play The Caine Mutiny Court Martial (1954), in which he was also assigned to run lines with stars Lloyd Nolan, Henry Fonda, and John Hodiak. Given that talent roster, and the fact that the director was Charles Laughton, Garner managed to earn his salary and receive a crash course in acting at the same time. After a few television commercials, he was signed as a contract player by Warner Bros. in 1956. He barely had a part in his first film, The Girl He Left Behind (1956), though he was given special attention by director David Butler, who felt Garner had far more potential than the film's nominal star, Tab Hunter. Due in part to Butler's enthusiasm, Garner was cast in the Warner Bros. TV Western Maverick. The scriptwriters latched on to his gift for understated humor, and, before long, the show had as many laughs as shoot-outs. Garner was promoted to starring film roles during his Maverick run, but, by the third season, he chafed at his low salary and insisted on better treatment. The studio refused, so he walked out. Lawsuits and recriminations were exchanged, but the end result was that Garner was a free agent as of 1960. He did quite well as a freelance actor for several years, turning in commendable work in such films as Boys' Night Out (1962) and The Great Escape (1963), but was soon perceived by filmmakers as something of a less-expensive Rock Hudson, never more so than when he played Hudson-type parts opposite Doris Day in Move Over, Darling and The Thrill of It All! (both 1963).Garner fared rather better in variations of his Maverick persona in such Westerns as Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) and The Skin Game (1971), but he eventually tired of eating warmed-over stew; besides, being a cowboy star had made him a walking mass of injuries and broken bones. He tried to play a more peaceable Westerner in the TV series Nichols (1971), but when audiences failed to respond, his character was killed off and replaced by his more athletic twin brother (also Garner). The actor finally shed the Maverick cloak with his long-running TV series The Rockford Files (1974-1978), in which he played a John MacDonald-esque private eye who never seemed to meet anyone capable of telling the truth. Rockford resulted in even more injuries for the increasingly battered actor, and soon he was showing up on TV talk shows telling the world about the many physical activities which he could no longer perform. Rockford ended in a spirit of recrimination, when Garner, expecting a percentage of the profits, learned that "creative bookkeeping" had resulted in the series posting none. To the public, Garner was the rough-hewn but basically affable fellow they'd seen in his fictional roles and as Mariette Hartley's partner (not husband) in a series of Polaroid commercials. However, his later film and TV-movie roles had a dark edge to them, notably his likable but mercurial pharmacist in Murphy's Romance (1985), for which he received an Oscar nomination, and his multifaceted co-starring stints with James Woods in the TV movies Promise (1986) and My Name Is Bill W. (1989). In 1994, Garner came full circle in the profitable feature film Maverick (1994), in which the title role was played by Mel Gibson. With the exception of such lower-key efforts as the noir-ish Twilight (1998) and the made-for-TV thriller Dead Silence (1997), Garner's career in the '90s found the veteran actor once again tapping into his latent ability to provoke laughs in such efforts as Space Cowboys (2000) while maintaining a successful small-screen career by returning to the role of Jim Rockford in several made-for-TV movies. He provided a voice for the popular animatedfeature Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) and appeared in the comedy-drama The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002). Garner enjoyed a career resurgance in 2003, when he joined the cast of TV's 8 Simple Rules, acting as a sort of replacement for John Ritter, who had passed away at the beginning of the show's second season. He next appeared in The Notebook (2004), which earned Garner a Screen Actors Guild nomination and also poised him to win the Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award. His last on-screen role was a small supporting role in The Ultimate Gift (2007). In 2008, Garner suffered a stroke and retired acting. He died in 2014, at age 86.

Trivia: American actor Richard Romanus enjoyed an extensive stage career before making his entree into films in 1970. For the most part, Romanus has been seen in secondary roles, usually as Italian-Americans. In the Henry Jaglom-directed black comedy Sitting Ducks (1980), he co-starred as Moose and also wrote the film's musical score. His series-TV resumé includes such roles as Captain Vito Lombardi in Foul Play (1981), Lt. Charlie Gunzer in Strike Force (1981) and Vinnie in Johnny Bago (1993). Richard Romanus is related to actor Robert Romanus (Facts of Life, Fame).

Trivia: Actor Robert Alda studied architecture at NYU, briefly working in this field until choosing show business. He started performing in vaudeville, and in burlesque as a tenor and straight man; by 1934, he was well established on radio. He made a spectacular film debut in Warner Bros.' 1945 biopic Rhapsody in Blue (1945), essaying the role of George Gershwin over the objections of director Irving Rapper, who'd wanted to hold off production until Tyrone Power was available. Alda did as good a job as possible, given the banalities of the scripts, though his piano-playing sequences are obviously faked and tricked up. Alda's starring career faded out rather quickly; he was more successful with second leads and villainous roles, and in the early 1960s became a fixture of Italian sword-and-sandal and spy films. Returning to Broadway in 1950, Alda created the role of Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls, winning a Tony Award in the process. In 1954, he starred in the syndicated TV series Secret File USA. Robert Alda was the father of Alan Alda, with whom he appeared in a poignant MASH TV episode of the late 1970s.

Trivia: Supporting actor Gilbert Green first appeared onscreen in the '60s.

Trivia: Born in New York City while his father Noah Beery Sr. was appearing on-stage, Noah Beery Jr. was given his lifelong nickname, "Pidge," by Josie Cohan, sister of George M. Cohan "I was born in the business," Pidge Beery observed some 63 years later. "I couldn't have gotten out of it if I wanted to." In 1920, the younger Beery made his first screen appearance in Douglas Fairbanks' The Mark of Zorro (1920), which co-starred dad Noah as Sergeant Garcia. Thanks to a zoning mistake, Pidge attended the Hollywood School for Girls (his fellow "girls" included Doug Fairbanks Jr. and Jesse Lasky Jr.), then relocated with his family to a ranch in the San Fernando Valley, miles from Tinseltown. While some kids might have chafed at such isolation, Pidge loved the wide open spaces, and upon attaining manhood emulated his father by living as far away from Hollywood as possible. After attending military school, Pidge pursued film acting in earnest, appearing mostly in serials and Westerns, sometimes as the hero, but usually as the hero's bucolic sidekick. His more notable screen credits of the 1930s and '40s include Of Mice and Men (1939), Only Angels Have Wings (again 1939, this time as the obligatory doomed-from-the-start airplane pilot), Sergeant York (1941), We've Never Been Licked (1943), and Red River (1948). He also starred in a group of rustic 45-minute comedies produced by Hal Roach in the early '40s, and was featured in several popular B-Western series; one of these starred Buck Jones, whose daughter Maxine became Pidge's first wife. Perhaps out of a sense of self-preservation, Beery appeared with his camera-hogging uncle Wallace Beery only once, in 1940's 20 Mule Team. Children of the 1950s will remember Pidge as Joey the Clown on the weekly TV series Circus Boy (1956), while the more TV-addicted may recall Beery's obscure syndicated travelogue series, co-starring himself and his sons. The 1960s found Pidge featured in such A-list films as Inherit the Wind (1960) and as a regular on the series Riverboat and Hondo. He kicked off the 1970s in the role of Michael J. Pollard's dad (there was a resemblance) in Little Fauss and Big Halsey. Though Beery was first choice for the part of James Garner's father on the TV detective series The Rockford Files, Pidge was committed to the 1973 James Franciscus starrer Doc Elliot, so the Rockford producers went with actor Robert Donley in the pilot episode. By the time The Rockford Files was picked up on a weekly basis, Doc Elliot had tanked, thus Donley was dropped in favor of Beery, who stayed with the role until the series' cancellation in 1978. Pidge's weekly-TV manifest in the 1980s included Quest (1981) and The Yellow Rose (1983). After a brief illness, Noah Beery Jr. died at his Tehachapi, CA, ranch at the age of 81.

Trivia: When asked why he decided upon becoming an actor, Joe Santos tended to trot out the tried-and-true rationale "because I failed at everything else." While attending Fordham University, Santos excelled at football, but lost interest in the sport after a few semi-pro years. By the time he was 30, Santos had been remarkably unsuccessful in a variety of vocations, including railroad worker, tree cutter, automobile importer and tavern owner. While working a construction job in New York, Santos was invited by a friend to sit in on an acting class. This seemed like an easy way to make a living, so Santos began making the audition rounds, almost immediately landing a good part on a TV soap opera. This gig unfortunately led nowhere, and for the next year or so Santos drove a cab for 10 to 11 hours a day. The novice actor's first big break was a part in the 1971 film Panic in Needle Park, which he received at the recommendation of the film's star (and Santos' frequent softball partner) Al Pacino. With the plum part of Sergeant Cruz in the four-part TV drama The Blue Knight (1973), Santos inaugurated a fruitful, still-thriving career in "cop" roles, the best and longest-lasting of which was detective Dennis Becker on the James Garner series The Rockford Files (1974-80). Joe Santos' other series-TV credits include the top-billed part of deadbeat dad Norman Davis in Me and Maxx (1980), Hispanic nightclub comic Paul Rodriguez' disapproving father in AKA Pablo (1984), and Lieutenant Frank Harper in the 1985-86 episodes of Hardcastle and McCormick. One of his final roles was a recurring gig on The Sopranos. Santos died in 2016, at age 84.

Trivia: Tough-guy American actor James Luisi could usually be found playing cops or plainclothes detectives. Luisi spent four (1976-80) years in the role of Lt. Doug Chapman on TV's The Rockford Files, later repeating the characterization (now promoted to Captain) in two Rockford TV-movies of the mid-1990s. On daytime TV, he was seen as Phil Wainwright in Another World. James Luisi's TV resumé also included the roles of garage owner Harry Foreman in Harris and Company (1979) and police lieutenant Marciano in Renegades (1983).

Trivia: American singer/actress Janis Paige was singing in public from age 5 in local amateur shows. Journeying from her native Washington to Los Angeles after high school, Paige secured a job as vocalist at the Hollywood Canteen, a studio-sponsored gathering spot for servicemen. It was only logical, then, that her first feature film upon being signed by Warner Bros. would be Hollywood Canteen (1944). A few musicals aside, Paige didn't get to sing much in her subsequent films, appearing mostly as ingenues and second leads. She left for Broadway in 1950, where she scored a hit in the popular comedy-mystery Remains to Be Seen, in which she costarred with then-husband Jackie Cooper. A few seasons later, Paige enjoyed her biggest hit in the Tony-Winning musical comedy The Pajama Game. Back in Hollywood, Paige watched as her stage roles went to bigger actresses (the star of the filmization of Pajama Game was her old rival at Warners, Doris Day), but she managed to secure one memorable movie role as an Esther Williams-like aquatic movie star in 1957's Silk Stockings. Janis was permitted one strong number, "Stereophonic Sound," with costar Fred Astaire, and copped most of the film's laughs as she slapped herself in the head to get the water out of her ears during interviews. The actress was a fixture of television from the early '50s onward, starring in the sitcom It's Always Jan and featured in recurring roles on such series as Eight is Enough, Trapper John MD, and Lanigan's Rabbi. Perhaps her most conspicuous prime-time TV role was as the waitress who conducted a brief affair with Archie Bunker on All in the Family. Daytime TV fans have been treated to Paige's talents on such serials as General Hospital, Capitol, and Santa Barbara, while devotees of summer stock theatre will remember the actress as star of straw-hat productions of Gypsy and Pajama Game in the '60s. As busy off-camera as on, Janis Paige was the founder of the Sunset Plaza Civic Association; and after the death of her composer husband Ray Gilbert (who penned "Zip-i-dee-Doo-Dah"), Paige was placed in charge of Gilbert's Ipanema Music Company.

Trivia: French actor Maurice Sherbanee played character roles in a number of American feature films and television series during the 1970s. With his thick, black hair and moustache, Sherbanee was typically cast as an Arab or European fellow.

Trivia: Six feet tall by the time he was twelve, Richard Moll would eventually peak at 6'8". To ward off jokes about his height, Moll adopted the "class clown" pose in school, eventually developing a taste for play-acting. Moving from his hometown of Pasadena to Hollywood in 1968, Moll spent the next decade or so with various theatrical troupes, and for a while toured schools in the role of Abraham Lincoln. Whenever he made the movie and TV casting rounds, Moll was greeted with an astonished "What a monster!"; thus, a monster he became, playing a steady succession of "bikers and snake men and one-eyed mutants." He was one of the title characters in the 1972 TV movie Gargoyles, was seen as an abominable snowman in Caveman (1981), and played various and assorted hulking goons in such adventure flicks as Metalstorm (1982) and The Sword and the Sorceror (1984). He was finally allowed to exhibit his "human" side--not to mention his considerable flair for light comedy--as court guard Bull Shannon on the long-running (1984-92) TV sitcom Night Court. Back to monstrosities and villains again in the 1990s--this time by choice rather than necessity-- Richard Moll has continued appearing in sizeable (in more ways than one) TV guest-star roles, and has lent his vocal talents to the role of Harvey Dent, aka Two-Face, in Batman: The Animated Series.

Trivia: Forceful African American leading man Ivan Dixon first commanded notice from theatergoers for his performance in the 1957 Broadway play The Cave Dwellers. He entered films as Sidney Poiter's double and stand-in with Something of Value (1957) and The Defiant Ones (1958), ultimately sharing scenes with Poitier in Porgy and Bess (1959) and Raisin in the Sun (1961). In 1964's Nothing But a Man, Dixon starred as Duff Anderson, an irresponsible Alabama railroad worker whose late-blooming maturity forms the nucleus of the film. Dixon's TV work includes the role of Kinchloe on the POW sitcom Hogan's Heroes and his Emmy-nominated starring role on the 1967 dramatic special The Private War of Olly Winter. In his later years, Ivan Dixon remained active as a director and a performer: he helmed the theatrical features Trouble Man (1972) and The Spook Who Sat By the Door (1992), such TV movies as Love is Not Enough and Percy and Thunder, and several episodes of the TV adventure series Hawaiian Heat (1984). Dixon died at age 76 in March 2008.