Trivia: The younger brother of Gunsmoke star James Arness, American actor Peter Graves worked as a musician and radio actor before entering films with 1950's Rogue River. At first, it appeared that Graves would be the star of the family, since he was cast in leads while brother Jim languished in secondary roles. Then came Stalag 17 (1953), in which Graves was first-rate as a supposedly all-American POW who turned out to be a vicious Nazi spy. Trouble was, Graves played the part too well, and couldn't shake the Nazi stereotype in the eyes of most Hollywood producers. Suddenly the actor found himself in such secondary roles as Shelley Winters' doomed husband in Night of the Hunter (1955) (he was in and out of the picture after the first ten minutes), while sibling James Arness was riding high with Gunsmoke. Dissatisfied with his film career, Graves signed on in 1955 for a network kid's series about "a horse and the boy who loved him." Fury wasn't exactly Citizen Kane, but it ran five years and made Graves a wealthy man through rerun residuals--so much so that he claimed to be making more money from Fury than his brother did from Gunsmoke. In 1966, Peter Graves replaced Steven Hill as head honcho of the force on the weekly TV adventure series Mission: Impossible, a stint that lasted until 1973. Though a better than average actor, Graves gained something of a camp reputation for his stiff, straight-arrow film characters and was often cast in films that parodied his TV image. One of the best of these lampoonish appearances was in the Zucker-Abrahams comedy Airplane (1980), as a nutty airline pilot who asks outrageous questions to a young boy on the plane (a part the actor very nearly turned down, until he discovered that Leslie Nielsen was co-starring in the film). Peter Graves effortlessly maintained his reliable, authoritative movie persona into the '90s and 2000s, and hosted the Biography series on A&E, for which he won an Emmy; he also guest-starred on programs including Cold Case, House and American Dad. Graves died of natural causes in March 2010, at age 83.

Trivia: Fans of the original action /espionage series Mission Impossible (1966-70) may recognize black actor Greg Morris for playing electronics wizard Barney Collier. Morris spent most of his career on television, appearing on such shows as Ben Casey, The Dick Van Dyck Show and The Twilight Zone. During the 1970s, Morris was a regular on Vega$ (1978-81), playing police officer Lt. David Neslon. A native of Cleveland who spent part of his childhood in New York City, his mother worked as a secretary for black labor leader A. Phillip Reynolds. Before becoming a television actor during the early '60s, Morris attended Ohio State University and the University of Iowa. Morris passed away at the age of 61 on August 27, 1996. The cause of death was unreported.

Trivia: The son of a Boston barber, Leonard Nimoy was a star at the age of 8, when he played Hansel in a children's theatre production of Hansel and Gretel. Nimoy remained with his local kiddie theater troupe until 16 (one of his directors during this period was Boris Sagal). After studying drama at Boston College and Antioch College, he took acting lessons from Jeff Corey at the Pasadena Playhouse. In films from 1950, Nimoy played the title character in the low-budget Kid Monk Baroni and essayed bits and minor roles in such productions as Zombies of the Stratosphere (1951), Rhubarb (1951) and Them! (1954). In between acting assignments, he held down a dizzying variety of jobs: soda jerk, newspaper carrier, vacuum-cleaner salesman, vending machine mechanic, pet-shop clerk, cabbie and acting coach. During his 18 months in Special Services at Fort McPherson, Georgia, he acted with Atlanta Theater Guild when he could spare the time. Back in Hollywood in 1956, he became virtually a regular at the Ziv TV studios, playing villains in programs like Highway Patrol and Sea Hunt. For a short while, he specialized in the plays of Jean Genet, appearing in both the stage and film productions of The Balcony and Deathwatch. Impressed by Nimoy's guest turn on a 1963 episode of The Lieutenant, producer Gene Roddenberry vowed to cast the saturnine, mellow-voiced actor as an extraterrestrial if ever given the chance. That chance came two years later, when Roddenberry signed Nimoy to play Vulcanian science officer Spock on Star Trek. At first pleased at the assignment, Nimoy came to resent the apparent fact that the public perceived him as Spock and nothing else: indeed, one of his many written works was the slim autobiography I Am Not Spock. After Star Trek's cancellation, Nimoy joined the cast of Mission: Impossible in the role of "master of disguise" Paris (he replaced the series' previous master of disguise Martin Landau, who ironically had originally been slated to play Spock). In the early 1970s, Nimoy began racking up directorial credits on such series as Night Gallery. He also made his first Broadway appearance in 1973's Full Circle. And, perhaps inevitably, he returned to Spock, thanks to the popular demand engendered by the then-burgeoning Star Trek cult. His initial reacquaintance with the role was as voiceover artist on the 1973 Saturday-morning cartoon version of Star Trek. Then Spock went on the back burner again as Nimoy devoted himself to his theatrical commitments (a touring production of Sherlock Holmes, his one-man show Vincent), his writing and directing activities, and his hosting chores on the long-running (1976-82) TV documentary series In Search Of.... Finally in 1978, Nimoy was back in his Enterprise uniform in the first of several Star Trek theatrical features. The Spock character was killed off in the second Trek picture The Wrath of Khan, but Nimoy stayed with the franchise as director of the next two feature-length Trek entries (PS: Spock also came back to life). He went on to direct such non-Trek filmic endeavors as 3 Men and a Baby (1987), The Good Mother (1988), Funny About Love (1990) and Holy Matrimony (1994). He also produced and acted in the 1991 TV movie Never Forget, and served as executive producer of the 1995 UPN network series Deadly Games. Perhaps because he will always have dozens of professional irons in the fire, Leonard Nimoy now seems resigned to being forever associated with the role that brought him international fame; his most recent autobiographical work was aptly titled I Am Spock. In 2009 he returned to his iconic role portraying Spock in J.J. Abrams smash-hit reboot of the Star Trek franchise. He next took on a recurring role in the sci-fi series Fringe, playing scientist William Bell. Nimoy made a final cameo appearance in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). He died in 2015, at age 83.

Trivia: Publicity notwithstanding, Lesley Ann Warren did not exactly burst fully grown into the world in 1966 to star in the Rodgers and Hammerstein TV special Cinderella. Trained at New York's Professional Children's School, Lesley Ann studied under Lee Strasberg before making her Broadway debut in 110 in the Shade, the 1964 musical version of The Rainmaker. On the strength of Cinderella, Lesley Ann was signed to a Disney contract; but after starring in The Happiest Millionaire (1966) and The One and Only Genuine Original Family Band, she rebelled against her studio-imposed sweetness-'n'-light image. Upon replacing Barbara Bain in the long-running espionage TVer Mission: Impossible in 1970, Warren publicly emphasized that her character, Dana Lambert, was a "now" person, wise in the ways of sex. She stayed with Mission for only a year, after which she established herself as a leading light in the made-for-TV movie field, frequently cast as an older woman involved romantically with a much-younger man. She earned an Academy Award nomination for her hilarious performance as bleach-blond gangster's moll Norma in Victor/Victoria (1981), then starred in a couple of intriguing Alan Rudolph-directed dramas, Choose Me (1984) and The Songwriter (1986). Her more recent roles include Molly, the homeless woman in Mel Brooks' Life Stinks(1991), who goes into a "death throes" act whenever she feels like it, and the barracuda booking agent for c-and-w star George Strait in Pure Country (1994). For nearly a decade, Lesley Ann Warren was the wife of producer/hairstylist Jon Peters.

Trivia: Short and intense Sal Mineo was a sad-eyed juvenile and adult actor with black curls. At age eight his misbehavior caused him to be kicked out of a parochial school; he went on to attend dancing classes and two years later was cast in Broadway's The Rose Tattoo, moving from there to a prominent adolescent role in The King and I with Yul Brynner. Mineo debuted onscreen in 1955 and for the next decade he was a busy screen actor, first in juvenile roles and then in youthful leads; his characters were often troubled. For his work at age 16 in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), his third feature, he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination; he was nominated in the same category for Exodus (1960). His film work began to dry up after the mid-'60s and Mineo turned to TV and the stage. He directed the play Fortune and Men's Eyes on the West Coast and on Broadway. He was stabbed to death on the street in 1976.

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: Brusque character actor Dana Elcar was usually assigned roles calling for blunt imperiousness. He became especially handy in films and TV shows of the 1970s, portraying curt, dour, meticulously groomed authority figures at odds with dishevelled "hippie" and "gonzo" types. Elcar's first film after many years' stage work was 1968's Pendulum; other film credits include Soldier Blue (1969), W.C.Fields and Me (1976), and The Nude Bomb (1980). In 1985, Dana Elcar was cast as Peter Thornton, boss of troubleshooting Richard Dean Anderson, on the TV series MacGiver; Elcar continued playing the role into the 1990s, at which time the actor's real-life blindness required him to incorporate dark glasses and a cane into his characterization.

Trivia: Kasey Rogers is best known for her four seasons portraying Louise Tate, the wife of advertising-agency boss Larry Tate (David White), on Bewitched. Between 1949 and 1964, however, she also appeared in nearly two dozen movies under the name Laura Elliot, ranging from leading roles to uncredited support parts, by filmmakers from Alfred Hitchcock down. Additionally, she was in over 200 episodes of the prime-time soap opera Peyton Place between 1964 and 1968. She was born Imogene Rogers in Morehouse, MO, in 1926, and began studying acting, elocution, and music at age seven. For a time, however, Rogers' most visible attribute was her prowess with a baseball bat, which earned her the nickname "Casey." It stuck, with a little change in the spelling, and she continued using it as an adult. Shortly after World War II, Rogers was spotted by a talent scout and got a screen test at Paramount Pictures. She was signed up, given the name Laura Elliot (sometimes spelled Laura Elliott), and put into her first movie a week later. Her early appearances included such major films as Chicago Deadline, Samson and Delilah, and The File on Thelma Jordan; she also got a leading role, on loan-out, in the fantasy adventure film Two Lost Worlds (1950), in which she played the female lead opposite James Arness. Rogers later recalled that film (which mixed a pirate story and dinosaurs) as being every bit as confusing to make as it is to watch, with one of the characters' names even changing midway through. As it happened, 1951 was Rogers' big year in movies; she got her biggest role in the most enduringly popular film of her career, playing Farley Granger's estranged wife in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train. Her character, wearing glasses with lenses as thick as the base of shot glasses (so thick that, 50 years later, she recalled not even being able to see through them), is murdered by the cold-blooded psychopath portrayed by Robert Walker. She also appeared in George Stevens' A Place in the Sun, Rudolph Maté's classic sci-fi drama When Worlds Collide, the Bob Hope vehicle My Favorite Spy, and the Western Silver City. From there, however, Rogers receded to lesser movies such as The French Line and About Mrs. Leslie (both 1954). Starting in 1955, she was making regular appearances on television, alternating between the names Laura Elliot (or Elliott) and Kasey Rogers, across a range of programming that included Westerns such as Lawman, Bat Masterson, Trackdown, and Wanted: Dead or Alive, the dramatic anthology series Alcoa Presents, Goodyear Theater, and Stage 7, and the crime dramas Perry Mason and Richard Diamond, Private Detective. Rogers' first regular television role was on the night-time drama Peyton Place (1964-1968) as Julie Anderson, the mother of Barbara Parkins' Betty Anderson, the soap opera's resident bad girl. Rogers left the series in 1968 and was immediately offered the role of Louise Tate on Bewitched, which had previously been played by Irene Vernon. She was forced to cover her dark auburn hair with a black wig for the first few seasons so that she resembled her predecessor, and it was only at the end of the run that her own hair was revealed. Regardless of her coloring, however, she made a charming, funny, gorgeous, and unique TV "trophy wife" amid a decade of pretty, wholesome TV moms. Rogers has remained active intermittently as an actress and has pursued a writing career as well, including screenplays and a cookbook built around Bewitched as a thematic link. She appears at nostalgia conventions under both of her screen names, using Laura Elliot (the name under which she did most of her oaters) at Western shows and Kasey Rogers at television-oriented events.

Trivia: The remarkably named Joy Bang was a memorable cult figure across a string of movies and television shows of the late 1960s and early 1970s, usually typecast as "hippie" chicks who were free and easy-going in their sexuality. Born Joy Wener in Kansas City, Missouri in 1945, she was raised in New York City, and turned to acting in the 1960s, working under the name Joy Bang. Her screen debut came with a small role in Jack Bond's drama Separation (1968). At the turn of the 1960s into the 1970s, Bang appeared in a string of low-budget movies such as Maidstone and The Sky Pirate. At one point, she also briefly became part of Don Kirshner's extended stable of talent when she was cast in the pilot for a proposed musical/western series called The Kowboys. The series, co-starring a young Michael Martin Murphey and Boomer Castleman, both of the band the Lewis & Clark Expedition, was an odd western/musical adventure series, sort of The Monkees meets Here Come The Brides, and failed to sell, though the pilot did air in the summer of 1970. Bang resumed her career as a perennial guest star, working in television dramas (Mission Impossible, The Bold Ones, The Young Lawyers, Hawaii Five-0) before returning to feature film work in Red Sky At Morning and Pretty Maids All In A Row. In most of these movies, and in her television work in a toned-down manner, Bang usually played a gentle free-spirited girl, evocative of the popular perception of the "hippie" ethos, seemingly innocent about yet cognizant of her youthful sexuality, and all the more provocative for that combination of attributes. As a point of reference, Carly Simon had achieved something of a similar portrayal with her on-screen acting/performing appearance in Milos Forman's Taking Off at just about this same time. And with her image, innocent looks, and inherently provocative name, Bang should have been a natural for the talk-show circuit (one can just imagine Johnny Carson, in his "Art Fern/Tea-Time Movie" voice, having merciless fun announcing her as a guest) and media stardom. But it never quite happened that way, and she remained a working actress with a small (but growing) cult following.Bang did move up to a better class of movie and much larger big-screen roles in 1972, in Bill L. Norton's Cisco Pike and Paul Williams' Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues, before making what should have been a career-defining appearance in Woody Allen's film of his own stage hit Play It Again, Sam (1972), as Julie, the willowy, free-loving girl that Allen's nebish-y protagonist takes out on a disastrous date. (Ironically, Diane Keaton, who co-starred in the movie Play It Again, Sam and the original play, had been up for the role that Bang won in The Kowboys pilot). That same year, she had a co-starring role in Night Of The Cobra Woman, a low-budget Philippines-made horror picture in which Bang -- playing a research scientist -- battles a supernatural menace. This picture, rather than Allen's movie, seemed to define the path of her career -- by the following year, she was co-starring in the horror film Messiah Of Evil (which earned her screen credits alongside the likes of Elisha Cook, Jr. and Royal Dano). These pictures weren't enough to sustain a career, however -- horror stardom at that production level wouldn't become a route to enduring work until the following decade, and the advent of made-for-cable and direct-to-video genre films -- and after appearances in episodes of Adam-12 and Police Story she retired from acting. As of the start of the twenty-first century, she reportedly was working as a professional in the health-care field.