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: Saturnine character actor Martin Landau was a staff cartoonist for the New York Daily News before switching to acting. In 1955, his career got off to a promising beginning, when out of 2,000 applicants, only he and one other actor (Steve McQueen) were accepted by Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio. Extremely busy in the days of live, Manhattan-based television, Landau made his cinematic mark with his second film appearance, playing James Mason's henchman in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). In 1966, Landau and his wife Barbara Bain were both cast on the TV adventure/espionage series Mission: Impossible. For three years, Landau portrayed Rollin Hand, a master of disguise with the acute ability to impersonate virtually every villain who came down the pike (banana-republic despots were a specialty). Unhappy with changes in production personnel and budget cuts, Landau and Bain left the series in 1969. Six years later, they costarred in Space: 1999 a popular syndicated sci-fi series; the performances of Landau, Bain, and third lead Barry Morse helped to gloss over the glaring gaps in continuity and logic which characterized the show's two-year run. The couple would subsequently act together several times (The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island (1981) was one of the less distinguished occasions) before their marriage dissolved.Working steadily in various projects throughout the next few decades, Landau enjoyed a career renaissance with two consecutive Oscar nominations, the first for Francis Ford Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), and the second for Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). Landau finally won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton's 1994 Ed Wood; his refusal to cut his acceptance speech short was one of the high points of the 1995 Oscar ceremony. He would continue to work over the next several years, appearing in movies like City of Ember and Mysteria, as well as on TV shows like Without a Trace and Entourage.

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: A former University of Illinois sociology major, ash-blonde leading lady Barbara Bain studied for a theatrical career at New York's Actors Studio and Neighborhood Playhouse. While attending an actor's workshop in 1956, Barbara made the acquaintance of an intense young performer named Martin Landau. It was love at first sight, and they married in 1957. Landau and Bain strove to maintain separate careers, and while her husband tended to work more often than she did, Barbara was well-represented with guest appearances on such series as Richard Diamond, Private Detective, Get Smart and The Dick Van Dyke Show. In 1964, the Landaus worked together for the first time on an episode of The Greatest Show on Earth. They didn't care much for the experience, and vowed not to co-star again -- at least, not until producer Bruce Geller made them an offer they couldn't refuse with the weekly TV suspenser Mission: Impossible. Cast as silken espionage agent Cinammon Carter, Bain won three consecutive Emmies for her work on the series (if you're wondering why Cinammon never adopted elaborate disguises, as did practically everyone else on the program, it is because Bain suffered from claustrophobia, and could not abide being hemmed in by heavy makeup). Then, after three seasons' worth of Mission: Impossible, the Landaus quit the series in 1969, citing poor scripts and insufficient creative challenges. In later years, Bain would comment ruefully that leaving the show ruined her career. The record doesn't quite bear this out: indeed, during the early 1970s she racked up an impressive list of TV movie appearances, and was offered a great deal of money to reteam with Landau in the syndicated sci-fi TV series Space: 1999 (1975-77). In 1989, Bain appeared in her very first theatrical feature, Trust Me (1989), playing a truculent, dishonest art collector. Though long-divorced from Martin Landau, Barbara Bain did not express an aversion to the possibility of playing a cameo alongside her ex-husband in the 1996 film version of Mission: Impossible, should either one of them be asked to do so (alas, they weren't).

Trivia: Billy Crystal notwithstanding, Argentine actor Fernando Lamas did not spend his entire career saying "You...look...MAHHHHvelous". A well-established film star in his native Buenos Aires, Lamas was brought to Hollywood in 1950 with an MGM contract. He went on to play several variations on the standard "Latin Lover" type, with occasional opportunities to display his well-trained singing voice. Beginning with the 1961 Spanish film The Magic Fountain, Lamas entered a whole new phase of his career as a director. In this respect, he was busiest on television, directing episodes of such series as Mannix, Alias Smith and Jones, Gavilan, and Falcon Crest. This last-named series starred Lorenzo Lamas, the son of Fernando and his third wife Arlene Dahl. At the time of his death, Fernando Lamas was married to wife number four, aquatic film star Esther Williams.

Trivia: A product of New York's Professional Children's School, Alfred Ryder was making a living as an actor at the age of 8. In 1929, Ryder made his Broadway debut, playing "lost boy" Curly in Eva Le Galleine's production of Peter Pan. As a teenager and young adult, Ryder studied his craft with such masters as Benno Schneider, Robert Lewis and Lee Strasberg. He went on to appear in such plays as Awake and Sing and Yellow Jack, and for many years was heard as Sammy in the radio serial Rise of the Goldbergs. While serving in the military in 1944, he made his first film, Winged Victory, in which he was billed as "PFC Alfred Ryder." After the war, he returned to the stage, re-emerging in films in the late 1950s. His movie credits of the 1960s include significant character parts in Hotel (1967) and True Grit (1968). Ryder also made scores of TV guest-star appearances, including the role of Professor Carter in the opening Star Trek episode "The Man Trap" (1966). Alfred Ryder made his last film in 1976, thereafter concentrating on his stage activities as actor and director.

Trivia: Primarily a stage actress, Lee Grant has also been distinguished for her feature film and television work. She was born Lyova Rosenthal in New York City and received her training at Juilliard. The daughter of an actress and model, Grant was only four when she debuted in a show at the Metropolitan Opera. Grant joined the American Ballet at age 11, graduated from high school at 14, and then received a scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse where she was seen by stage director Sidney Kingsley who cast her as a young shoplifter in his 1949 Broadway production Detective Story. The role won Grant a Critics Circle Award. She reprised the role in the 1951 film version and earned an Oscar nomination and the Cannes Festival's Best Actress award. Her promising film career abruptly derailed when the House Un-American Activities Committee tried forcing Grant to testify against her already blacklisted playwright husband, Arnold Manoff. She refused and was promptly blacklisted. Though her stage career thrived, it would be 12 years before Grant would be able to get substantial roles in television or movies. By the time she returned to the media in the mid-'60s, she was relegated to character roles wherein she typically played ambitious, tough, and beautiful women. During the second season of the sudsy television drama Peyton Place (1964-1969), Grant won an Emmy for her portrayal of Stella Chernak. In 1970, Grant won her second Oscar nomination for Hal Ashby's The Landlord and her first Oscar for Shampoo (1975). But for yet another Oscar nomination in Voyage of the Damned (1976), Grant the actress spent the rest of the decade making cameo appearances in big-budget disaster pictures. She remained busy in films like Damien: Omen II, Little Miss Marker, Bare Essence, Teachers, and The Big Town. In the '90s, Albert Brooks cast her as a prosecuting attorney in the afterlife in Defending Your Life, and appeared in the well-regarded biopic Citizen Cohn. She continued to work steadily in projects such as It's My Party, Robert Altman's Dr. T & The Women, and David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. Grant became a movie director in 1980 with the moving Tell Me a Riddle. Subsequent directorial efforts include A Matter of Sex (1984) and Reunion (1994).

Trivia: Tall, bald and nearly always bearded, Sid Haig has provided hulking menace to many a low-budget exploitationer and high-priced actioner. A 1960 alumnus of the Pasadena Playhouse, Haig has been in films at least since 1964, when he played a lobotomized "poor relation" in the cult horror classic Spider Baby. He has proved quite valuable to such filmmakers as producer Roger Corman and director Jack Hill, playing abusive goons in such fare as The Big Doll House and The Big Bird Cage. Sid Haig's more "respectable" credits include George Lucas' THX 1138 and the 1970 James Bond opus Diamonds are Forever (he's the flunkey who tosses a topless Lana Wood from the window of a high-rise Vegas hotel).After decades of B-movie roles, Haig received a late-career boost in 1997, when he was given a small part in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown. In the ensuing years, he would again work with Tarantino in Kill Bill, Vol. 2, and show up in the Rob Zombie horror flicks House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects.

Trivia: A member of the early Our Gang group, child actor Monty O'Grady appeared in Our Gang (1922), A Pleasant Journey (1923), Dogs of War (1923), and Every Man for Himself (1924). O'Grady was Splutters, one of Mary Pickford's fellow orphans in Sparrows, and Lafe McKee's little son in the Western Baited Trap (1926). Although he disappears from film credits after 1927, apparently Monty O'Grady continued to appear in films (and later television) for the remainder of his life, mainly as an extra. He died at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA, oddly enough on the very same day as yet another silent screen child actor, Stanley Goethals.

Trivia: American actor Russ Conway was most at home in the raincoat of a detective or the uniform of a military officer. Making his movie bow in 1948, Conway worked in TV and films throughout the '50s and '60s. Some of his films include Larceny (1948), My Six Convicts (1952), Love Me Tender (1956) (as Ed Galt, in support of Elvis Presley) Fort Dobbs (1958) and Our Man Flint (1966). TV series featuring Conway in guest spots included The Beverly Hillbillies, The Munsters and Petticoat Junction. Russ Conway settled down in 1959 to play Lieutenant Pete Kyle on David Janssen's private eye TV weekly Richard Diamond.

Trivia: Actress Sally Yarnell appeared in numerous films of the late '40s through the late '50s, beginning with Winged Victory (1947).