Richard Jaeckel (1926-1997) was born Richard Hanley Jaeckel in Long Beach, New York. A short, but tough guy, he played a variety of characters in his 50 years in movies and television and became one of Hollywood's best known character actors. Jaeckel got his start in the business at the age of 17 while working as a mailboy at 20th Century Fox studios in Hollywood. A casting director audtioned him for a key role in the 1943 film Guadalcanal Diary, Jaeckel won the role and settled into a lengthy career in supporting parts. He served in the US Navy from 1944 to 1949, then starred in two of the most remembered war films of 1949, Battleground and Sands of Iwo Jima with John Wayne. Jaeckel's other films include The Gunfighter (1950); Come Back, Little Sheba (1952); 3:10 to Yuma (1957); The Gallant Hours (1960); Town Without Pity (1961); The Dirty Dozen (1967); Chisum (1970); Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973); Grizzly (1976); Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977); The Dark (1979); Cold River (1982); Starman (1984); Black Moon Rising (1986) and The Delta Force 2 (1990). The highlight of Jaeckel's career was in 1971, when he recieved an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Sometimes a Great Notion (1970). In his later years, Jaeckel was known to TV audiences as Lt. Ben Edwards on the series "Baywatch". Jaeckel died in 1997 after a three year battle with melanoma cancer at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.

Clifton James (1921- ). He perfected a convincing Southern drawl, however Clifton James was actually born in New York. He graduated from the Actors Studio and regularly appeared in guest roles on 1950's-60's TV shows including Gunsmoke (1955), Bonanza (1959) and The Virginian (1962). Blustery, stocky, loud although often genial character actor that created a niche for himself playing fast talking Southern characters, noticeably as "Sheriff J.W. Pepper" alongside Roger Moore in the James Bond spy adventure Live and Let Die (1973), plus his character returned to assist 007 again in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974). He graduated from the University of Oregon. He served five years with the U.S. Army during World War II.

Sid James (1913-1976) [The Lavender Hill Mob (1951); The 39 Steps (1959)] was born Sidney Joel Cohen in Natal, South Africa. During World War II, he enlisted in an entertainment unit which led to acting as a career. He went to Britain in 1946 on the back of his service gratuity. Initially he worked in repertory theater where he was later discovered by the nascent British post-war film industry.

Rick Jason (1923-2000) [This Is My Love (1954); Illegally Yours (1988)] was born Richard Jason in New York City, the only child of a stockbroker and well-to-do mother. Jason often described himself as "second-generation nouveau riche" and a born romantic. Friends say he was affable, charming, driven and a real Renaissance man. A good student, popular with classmates and teachers, Jason's hellish behavior got him expelled from eight prep schools before he managed to graduate from Rhodes School. His father bought him a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, but Rick sold the seat and enlisted in the Army Air Corps; serving 1943-1945. After the war he attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on the GI Bill. While attending a New York play actor-director Hume Cronyn spotted him and immediately cast him in Now I Lay me Down to Sleep. The role earned Rick a Theater World Award and a Hollywood contract with Columbia Pictures. In 1962 he exploded onto prime-time TV screens as the cool, calm and collected Lt. Gil Hanley in ABC's hit series Combat!. Five seasons and 152 episodes later, Jason was a household name. After Combat! Rick returned to the theater but he also made films in Japan and Israel. His TV career remained strong, and in the '70s and '80s he was guest star on numerous TV shows. He appeared as a regular on the soap opera The Young and the Restless (1973). After retirement he kept busy doing voice-overs for commercials and ran the Wine Locker, a 4,000-square-foot facility used to store fine wines under optimal conditions. Sadly, in October 2000 he died of a self-inflicted gunshot in Moorpark, California. [Excerpted and edited from IMDB]

Roy Jenson (1927-2007) [Law of the Lawless (1964); Will Penny (1968); Paint Your Wagon (1969)] was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada but moved to Los Angeles with his mother and brother, George, at age 7. He attended South Gate High School. He played football for UCLA, then professionally for the Calgary Stampeders and the Montreal Alouettes. He was the first man beaten up by Caine on "Kung Fu" (1972). He often doubled for Robert Mitchum. His first wife, Barbara Dionysius, was his college sweetheart. They had three children: Martin, Morgan and Sasha. He met his second wife, European actress Marina Petrova (aka Marina Petrowa), while filming The Great Escape (1963) in Germany. He had an affinity for the ocean -- fishing, camping, diving. In addition to his second wife, three sons and brother, he was survived by seven grandchildren and a great granddaughter. He played Roman Polanski's henchman in the famous knife-to-the-nose sequence with Jack Nicholson in Chinatown (1974). Joined the U.S. Navy at age 17 during World War II and served on a destroyer in the Pacific.

Richard Johnson (1927- ) was born in Upminster, Essex, England. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and then performed in John Gielgud's repertory company until joining the navy during World War II. After the war, he appeared successfully in the West End and made his film debut in the early 1950s. The debonair and handsome Johnson was a natural to portray playboy type characters, perhaps the most memorable being "Bulldog Drummond" in Deadlier Than the Male (1967) and Some Girls Do (1969). Later in his career, he turned to more serious roles, such as "Marc Antony" in Antony and Cleopatra (1974, TV), and also tried his hand at producing in the late 1980s. -- [Excerpted from IMDB]

Russell Johnson (1924- ) [The Professor on Gilligan's Island]. Earned a Purple Heart for injuries during battle when his B-24 Liberator bomber was shot down during a bombing run against Japanese targets in the Philippine Islands in March 1945.

Van Johnson (1916-2008) [A Guy Named Joe (1943); Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944); Battleground (1949)] was born Charles Van Johnson. He was an American character actor that starred in such films as Command Decision (1948) and The Caine Mutiny (1954). He did guest appearances on such TV shows as Batman during the 1960s. He had a road accident which left him with a metal plate in his head and the injury exempted him from military service. His acting career began in earnest in 1942, just as the United States was fully entering World War II.

Buck Jones (1891-1942) [A Rough Shod Fighter (1917); Dawn on the Great Divide (1942)], one of the greatest of the B-Western stars, was born in Indiana but reportedly (but disputedly) grew up on a ranch near Red Rock in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), and there learned the riding and shooting skills that would stand him in good stead as a hero of Westerns. He joined the army as a teenager and served on US-Mexican border before seeing service in the Moro uprising in the Philippines. He was wounded but recuperated and reenlisted, hoping to become a pilot. He was not accepted for pilot training and left the army in 1913. He took a menial job with the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West Show and soon became champion bronco buster. He moved on to the Julia Allen Show, but with the beginning of the First World War, Jones took work training horses for the Allied armies. After the war, he and his wife, Odelle Osborne -- whom he had met in the Miller Brothers show -- toured with the Ringling Brothers circus, then settled in Hollywood, where Jones got work in a number of Westerns starring Tom Mix and Franklyn Farnum. William Fox put Jones under contract and promoted him as a new Western star. He used the name Charles Jones at first, then Charles Buck Jones, before settling on his permanent stage name. He quickly climbed to the upper ranks of Western stardom and at one point was receiving more fan mail than any actor in the world. Months after America's entry into World War II, Jones participated in a war-bond-selling tour. On November 28, 1942, he was a guest of local citizens in Boston at the famed Coconut Grove nightclub. Fire broke out and nearly five hundred people died in one of the worst fire disasters on record. Jones was horribly burned and died two days later before his wife Dell could arrive to comfort him.

Dickie Jones (1927- ) [The Range Rider (1951); Buffalo Bill, Jr. (1955)] is an American actor with some success as a child and as a young adult, especially in B-Westerns and in television. Born in Snyder, Texas, the son of a newspaper editor, Jones was a prodigious horseman from infancy, billed at the age of four as the World's Youngest Trick Rider and Trick Roper. At age six, he was hired to perform riding and lariat tricks in the rodeo owned by western star Hoot Gibson. He served in the Army in Alaska during the final months of World War II.

Henry Jones (1912-1999) [The Lady Says No (1952); The Grifters (1990)] was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; he graduated from St. Jospeh's College. His Broadway debut was in 1938 in Maurice Evans' Hamlet (Reynaldo and the second gravedigger). He served in the army in World War II. His highly reviewed stage appearances included the murdered handyman in The Bad Seed, which he reprised in the film version (The Bad Seed (1956)), and the part of Louis Howe, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's confidant in Sunrise at Campobello (1960). Though very ordinary in appearance ("The casting directors didn't know what to do with me. I was never tall enough or good looking enough to play juvenile leads"), he had a long and varied career on Broadway, in movies and television.

Griffith Jones (1909-2007) [A Yank at Oxford (1938); Kill Her Gently (1957)]. Stalwart British character player of the classical stage screen and TV. Serving in the Army during WWII, he spent his service in an army concert party called Stars in Battle Dress and was accompanied on the tours by his wife, Irene Isaac, known to everyone as Robin.

Bobby Jordan (1923-1965) [Snakes Alive (1931); The Man Is Armed (1956)] was raised in Flatbush, Brooklyn. By the time he was four and a half, he could act, tap dance and play the Saxophone. He made his stage debut in 1930 and film debut at Universal Studios in 1933 where he appeared in short subjects and a bit part in the 1934 Eddie Cantor film, Kid Millions. He then appeared on Broadway in Dead End, which opened on October 28, 1935. He left the show in mid-November 1936 to appear in the The Samuel Goldwyn Company film version of Dead End. Warner Brothers studios signed all of the Dead End Kids to contracts. At the peak of his career, Bobby made $1,500 a week, owned a $150,000 home in Beverly Hills and was the sole support of his mother, two brothers a sister and a niece. In 1940, Bobby returned to Universal to appear with several other Dead End Kids in The Little Tough Guys series. Later the same year, Monogram featured him in his first East Side Kids film, Boys of the City. In 1943, Bobby was drafted. He served as a foot soldier in the 97th Infantry until 1945 with his only film appearance being the East Side Kid's Bowery Champs (1944), playing himself in a running gag.

Louis Jourdan (1919- ) [The Paradine Case (1947); Grand Larceny (1987)] is a French actor, known chiefly for his suave manner and good looks. Born Louis Gendre in Marseille, France, he was educated in France, Turkey and England and trained as an actor at the Ecole Dramatique. He made his film debut in 1939. Following the German occupation of France during World War II, he continued to make films but after refusing to participate in Nazi propaganda films, he joined the French Resistance. After the 1944 liberation of France by the Allies, Louis Jourdan married Berthe Frederique with whom he had a son.

Curt Jurgens (1915-1982) [The Longest Day (1962); The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)]. Critical of the Nazis in his native Germany, in 1944 he was shipped to a concentration camp for "political unreliables". Jurgens survived and after the war became an Austrian citizen. He continued with his acting career, becoming an international film star. His breakthrough screen role came in Des Teufels General (1955, The Devil's General) and he came to Hollywood following his appearance in the sensational 1956 Roger Vadim directed French film Et Dieu... créa la femme (And God Created Woman) starring Brigitte Bardot. In 1957, Jurgens made his first Hollywood film, The Enemy Below.