Trivia: American actor Ward Bond was a football player at the University of Southern California when, together with teammate and lifelong chum John Wayne, he was hired for extra work in the silent film Salute (1928), directed by John Ford. Both Bond and Wayne continued in films, but it was Wayne who ascended to stardom, while Bond would have to be content with bit roles and character parts throughout the 1930s. Mostly playing traffic cops, bus drivers and western heavies, Bond began getting better breaks after a showy role as the murderous Cass in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). Ford cast Bond in important roles all through the 1940s, usually contriving to include at least one scene per picture in which the camera would favor Bond's rather sizable posterior; it was an "inside" joke which delighted everyone on the set but Bond. A starring role in Ford's Wagonmaster (1950) led, somewhat indirectly, to Bond's most lasting professional achievement: His continuing part as trailmaster Seth Adams on the extremely popular NBC TV western, Wagon Train. No longer supporting anyone, Bond exerted considerable creative control over the series from its 1957 debut onward, even seeing to it that his old mentor John Ford would direct one episode in which John Wayne had a bit role, billed under his real name, Marion Michael Morrison. Finally achieving the wide popularity that had eluded him during his screen career, Bond stayed with Wagon Train for three years, during which time he became as famous for his offscreen clashes with his supporting cast and his ultra-conservative politics as he was for his acting. Wagon Train was still NBC's Number One series when, in November of 1960, Bond unexpectedly suffered a heart attack and died while taking a shower.

Trivia: Redheaded leading man Robert Horton attended UCLA, served in the Coast Guard during World War II, and acted in California-based stage productions before making his entree into films in 1951. Horton's television career started off on a high note in 1955, when he was cast in the weekly-TV version of King's Row as Drake McHugh (the role essayed by Ronald Reagan in the 1942 film version). The series barely lasted three months, but better things were on the horizon: in 1957, Horton was hired to play frontier scout Flint McCullough in Wagon Train, which became the highest-rated western on TV. Horton remained with Wagon Train until 1962. He then did some more stage work before embarking on his third series, 1965's The Man Called Shenandoah. When this one-season wonder ran its course, Horton toured the dinner-theatre circuit, then in 1982 accepted a major role on the popular daytime soap opera As the World Turns. Horton continued acting until the late 1980s. He died in 2016, at age 91.

Trivia: The younger brother of Irish actor Barry Fitzgerald, Arthur Shields joined Fitzgerald at Dublin's famed Abbey as a Player in 1914, where he directed as well as acted. Though in films fitfully since 1910, Shield's formal movie career didn't begin until he joined several other Abbey veterans in the cast of John Ford's Plough and the Stars (1936). He went on to appear in several other Ford films, generally cast in more introverted roles than those offered his brother. Unlike his sibling, Shields was not confined to Irish parts; he often as not played Americans, and in 1943's Dr. Renault's Secret, he was seen as a French police inspector. Never as prominent a film personality as his brother, Arthur Shields nonetheless remained a dependable second-echelon character player into the 1960s.

Trivia: Iowa-born Bob Hopkins started out in show business in the early '40s with a mimickry act in which his most successful impersonation was that of Bing Crosby. He turned to acting in the mid-'40s and played in every kind of movie, from brutal crime pictures like Underworld U.S.A. to costume programmers such as Son of Sinbad (portraying a slave auctioneer) over the next 15 years. Outgoing, glib-tongued, and with a ready wit, he seemed at his best portraying roles out of his own stage background, especially hosts and masters-of-ceremony, in movies such as I'll Cry Tomorrow and the late-era Bowery Boys feature Crashing Las Vegas. He also did his share of television work, in straight acting roles on The Twilight Zone and Wagon Train, but his most memorable work may have been in one excruciatingly funny episode of The Abbott & Costello Show, as a character named "Bob Hopkins," the sarcastic host of a vicious parody of Beat the Clock called "Hold That Cuckoo." Hopkins was also a songwriter, credited with the compositions "Flight to Hong Kong" and "Angel's Kiss." He died of acute leukemia shortly after completing his work in the movie Papa's Delicate Condition.

Trivia: Down-to-earth American actor Charles Aidman brought his "everyman" personality to such realistic war films as Pork Chop Hill (1959) and War Hunt (1962). He has since been cast in roles of quiet unstressed authority in films like Countdown (1967), Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977) and Uncommon Valor (1983). Aidman has also guest-starred on practically every TV series ever made; comedy fans will remember his portrayal of the hypnotist who plants an embarrassing post-hypnotic suggestion in the mind of Rob Petrie on a 1963 Dick Van Dyke Show episode. From 1985 through 1987, Charles Aidman was narrator of the revived Twilight Zone TV anthology series.

Trivia: Robert Fuller spent his first decade in show business trying his best to avoid performing. After his film debut in 1952's Above and Beyond, Fuller studied acting with Sanford Meisner at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse but never exhibited any real dedication. He tried to become a dancer but gave that up as well, determining that dancing was "sissified." Fuller rose to nominal stardom fairly rapidly in the role of Jess Harper on the popular TV western Laramie (1959-63). Once he found his niche in cowboy attire, he stuck at it in another series, Wagon Train, turning down virtually all offers for "contemporary" roles. When westerns began dying out on television in the late 1960s, Fuller worked as a voiceover actor in commercials, earning some $65,000 per year (a tidy sum in 1969). On the strength of his performance in the Burt Topper-directed motorcycle flick The Hard Ride, Fuller was cast by producer Jack Webb as chief paramedic Kelly Brackett on the weekly TVer Emergency, which ran from 1972 through 1977. In 1994, Robert Fuller was one of several former TV western stars who showed up in cameo roles in the Mel Gibson movie vehicle Maverick.