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: Actress Lynda Day George was quite busy on TV in guest-starring roles throughout the 1960s. Before she officially changed her professional name from "Day" to "Day George" -- to acknowledge her marriage to actor Christopher George -- Day George was a regular on The Silent Force, a 1970 Mission: Impossible clone. Ironically, one year later she was cast on the real Mission: Impossible as undercover operative Casey, a role she retained until the series' cancellation in 1973. While she has appeared in the occasional theatrical film, most of Day George's best work could be seen in such small-screen miniseries as Rich Man, Poor Man, Once an Eagle, and Roots. In the early '80s, Lynda Day George began turning down network roles to devote her energies to religious television, remaining active in this field long after the death of her husband in 1983.

Trivia: "As familiar as a favorite leather easy chair" is how one magazine writer described the craggy, weather-beaten face of ineluctable character actor James Gregory. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any time in the past six decades that Gregory hasn't been seen on stage, on TV or on the big screen. There were those occasional periods during the 1930s and 1940s when he was working on Wall Street rather than acting, and there were those uniformed stints in the Marines and the Naval Reserve. Otherwise, Gregory remained a persistent showbiz presence from the time he first performed with a Pennsylvania-based travelling troupe in 1936. Three years later, he was on Broadway in Key Largo; he went on to appear in such stage hits as Dream Girl, All My Sons, Death of a Salesman and The Desperate Hours. In films from 1948, Gregory was repeatedly cast as crusty no-nonsense types: detectives, military officers, prosecuting attorneys and outlaw leaders. With his bravura performance as demagogic, dead-headed senator Johnny Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Gregory launched a second career of sorts, cornering the market in portraying braggadocio blowhards. One of his best characterizations in this vein was as the hard-shelled Inspector Luger in the TV sitcom Barney Miller. He played Luger for six seasons (1975-78, 1979-81), with time out for his own short-lived starring series, Detective School (1978). He also played Prohibition-era detective Barney Ruditsky on The Lawless Years (1959-61) and T. R. Scott in The Paul Lynde Show (1972), not to mention nearly 1000 guest appearances on other series. James Gregory has sometimes exhibited his sentimental streak by singing in his spare time: he has for many years been a member of the SPEBQSA, which as any fan of The Music Man can tell you is the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America.

Trivia: Born Boris Milanovich, Dexter was a square-jawed supporting player and former lead, often cast in tough character roles. As early as his first film, 1950's The Asphalt Jungle, the talented Dexter found himself overshadowed by the star power of Sterling Hayden, James Whitmore, Louis Calhern and Marilyn Monroe. Occasionally, Dexter was cast in a role that stuck in the memory banks, such as Bugsy Siegel in 1960's The George Raft Story. He also gained a degree of fame as the producer of such worthwhile films as The Naked Runner (1967) and The Lawyer (1970) and Little Fauss and big Halsy(1970); reportedly, he was able to gain a foothold as a producer thanks to Frank Sinatra, whom Dexter once saved from drowning. Brad Dexter married and divorced singer Peggy Lee.

Trivia: A hardworking actor who richly deserves cult-figure status, Charlie Dierkop has finessed his mashed-in countenance (his nose) and salty performing style into a 30-year career. Evidently he was a favorite of the Butch Cassidy triumvirate of actors Paul Newman and Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill as he was cast as Flat Nose Curry in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969); when these three worthies reteamed for The Sting (1973), Dierkop came along for the ride as two-bit hoodlum Floyd. Charles Dierkop is perhaps best known as gonzo undercover cop Pete Royster on the Angie Dickinson TV vehicle Police Woman (1974-1978).

Trivia: Bookish, walrus-mustached, character actor Woodrow Parfrey was usually cast as bureaucrats, bankers, distracted scientists, and frontier storekeepers. Evidently a favorite of Clint Eastwood, Parfrey was prominently featured in such Eastwood vehicles as Dirty Harry (1971), Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Broncho Billy (1980). While he seldom needed extensive makeup in his standard characterizations, Parfrey found himself buried under mounds of John Chambers' latex and spirit gum for his role as Maximus in Planet of the Apes (1968). Appearing in well over 100 TV roles, Woodrow Parfrey was seen as FDR's adviser Louis Howe in the 1976 miniseries Backstairs at the White House (1976), and as the otherworldly Ticket Clerk in the 1979 fantasy weekly Time Express.

Trivia: American character actor Douglas Henderson shifted his activities from stage to screen in 1952, when he appeared in Stanley Kramer's Eight Iron Men. Like many general purpose actors of the era, he was frequently cast in science fiction and horror films along the lines of King Dinosaur and Invasion of the Saucer Men. He was generally cast in authoritative or military roles: officers, congressmen, FBI agents, and the like. Douglas Henderson's final film assignment was the 1970 thriller Zigzag; eight years later, he committed suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning.