Trivia: Handsome leading man Ray Danton trained for an acting career at Carnegie Tech. In films from 1952, Danton made an excellent impression as a hot-tempered Native American in Chief Crazy Horse (1954), but would not star in a film until Outside the Law (1956). Projecting an image of dangerous unpredictability, he was effectively cast in such roles as sex maniac Stan Hess in The Beat Generation (1959). During Hollywood's gangster cycle of the early '60s, Danton played the title roles in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960) and The George Raft Story (1960). As time went by, he began buoying his villainous characterizations with a wry sense of humor: Explaining his treachery to girlfriend Judi West in the 1965 Man From U.N.C.L.E. TV episode "The Discotheque Affair," Danton smoothly comments, "Darling, I forgot to tell you...I'm a cad." A more pleasant (but no less roguish) Danton was seen as one of the leads of the weekly Warner Bros. TVer The Alaskans (1959-1960). Unhappy at being typecast, Danton turned to directing in 1972 with the theatrical feature The Deathmaster. He later directed episodes of such TV weeklies as Cagney and Lacey, Fame, Quincy, and Dallas, and served a supervising producer of The New Mike Hammer (1984-1987). Ray Danton was married to Julie Adams, with whom he co-starred in Tarawa Beachhead (1958).

Trivia: German-born John Ericson trained for an acting career at New York's American Academy of the Dramatic Arts. Ericson possessed a brash, bristly personality and handsome, sensitive features. He appeared in a series of popular films including the outlaw drama Pretty Boy Floyd (1960) and the lyrical romances Teresa (1952) and Rhapsody (1953). In 1965, Ericson co-starred with Anne Francis on the TV private eye series Honey West.

Trivia: A professional magazine model at age four, American actress Anne Francis made some 3000 appearances on network radio before she was ten. She was under film contracts to both MGM and 20th Century-Fox as a teenager; in the days of publicity-agent pigeonholing, the actress was dubbed variously as "The Fragile Blonde with the Mona Lisa Smile" and "The Palomino Blonde," labels that she intensely despised. Usually cast in sullen bad-girl or troublemaker roles, Francis suffered from a volcanic private life; throughout these years her one source of comfort was her pet dog Smidgeon, whom she'd named after Walter Pidgeon, her co-star in the science-fiction film classic Forbidden Planet (1956). In 1965, Francis found herself with a more contentious pet, an ocelot named Bruce Biteabit, when she starred in the TV adventure series Honey West, in which she played a glamorous private detective. The series was meant to cash in on the gimmicky James Bond movies of the time (Honey West was a judo expert, had exploding earrings, and a microphone hidden in a martini olive), and like many such imitations, the program was on and off in a single year. Francis' film and TV career continued unabated after that, though a potentially good role in the 1968 movie musical Funny Girl was mostly consigned to the cutting-room floor in order to intensify the spotlight on the film's star, Barbra Streisand. Active in guest star spots into the early '90s, Anne Francis--billing herself in recent years as Anne-Lloyd Francis--enjoyed a brief co-starring turn as Mama Jo on the 1984 action series Riptide.