Trivia: From the end of the '50s until the mid-'60s, perky, buxom Joan O'Brien was one of Hollywood's most promising leading ladies, specializing in comedic roles. Born in Cambridge, MA, she was raised in Southern California and started singing at an early age. At 15, she was discovered by Tennessee Ernie Ford's manager, Cliffie Stone, and was signed up as a regular performer on the local television country music showcase Hometown Jamboree. By 1953, at 17, she had moved to the CBS network as a singer on The Bob Crosby Show, an engagement that lasted four years. She was married very briefly during this period to guitarist Billy Strange, with whom she had one son. O'Brien took her first screen test in 1957 at MGM and earned a co-starring role opposite Dean Jones in David Friedkin's crime drama Handle With Care (1958). By that time, O'Brien was on her second marriage and was pregnant, so she put her fledgling movie career on hold for almost two years. She tested for Blake Edwards' Operation Petticoat (1959) and was cast alongside Cary Grant and Tony Curtis. Though the movie made ample use of her 38-inch bosom as part of its plot (about army nurses and an all-male navy crew), it also gave O'Brien a chance to show off her comedic skills as the accident-prone Lt. Crandall, who wins the heart of Cary Grant's character by the movie's end. She later played a role in John Wayne's historical epic The Alamo (1960), but it was soon after her work in this film that O'Brien's personal problems began slowing her career momentum. She continued doing television over the next few years, including episodes of Wagon Train, Bachelor Father, and other television series; however, her performances attracted less attention than her stormy marital problems and other serious personal difficulties. With her looks and comedic skills, O'Brien could easily have been a rival to Barbara Eden, but instead she receded from public life following performances on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Perry Mason in late 1964. Her final big-screen appearances were in the Elvis Presley film It Happened at the World's Fair (1963) and MGM's jukebox movie Get Yourself a College Girl (1964).

Trivia: Character actor James Bell has appeared in many films during his 40-year film career. He was usually cast as a sympathetic character. The Virginia-born Bell first attended the Virginia Polytechnic Institute before making his theatrical debut in 1921. Eleven years later he made his film debut in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. Most of the films he appeared in were made during the '40s and '50s.

Trivia: Handsome Hollywood "second lead" Donald Woods came from the stage to films in 1934. He played a few unremarkable roles before rising to prominence as Charles Darnay in the 1935 version of A Tale of Two Cities. He spent the 1940s and 1950s heading the cast of B-productions and serials and essaying supporting roles in top-of-the-bill features. On television, Woods played the title role in the 1952 syndicated series Craig Kennedy, Criminologist, hosted the 1955 anthology The Damon Runyon Theatre, and played a dignified recurring role on the 1965 sitcom Tammy; he also acted as "goodwill ambassador" for the latter program, making personal appearances and taping local promos. Throughout his career, Donald Woods supplemented his acting income as a real estate broker -- which indeed would have been an excellent film role for the businesslike Woods.

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: 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.