Lane Bradford

For over 30 years, there was no escaping Lane Bradford's face; the prolific actor appeared in nearly 300 films and TV shows during his career, many of them Westerns and family adventure series. Bradford, the son of the similarly prolific actor John Merton, got his start in the '40s with small roles in B-movie Westerns like "Shadow Valley," starring country-singer-turned-cowboy-actor Eddie Dean, and "Death Valley Gunfighter"; many of his roles during this time were named either "Henchman" or "Cowhand," and lasted no more than a few scenes. By the '50s he had added sci-fi and monster movies to the mix; he appeared as a virtuous hero in the "The Invisible Monster" and played a traitorous scientist conspiring with invading Martians in "Zombies of the Stratosphere." As the Western migrated from the big screen to television during the latter half of the decade, so did Bradford; he appeared in almost every major Western series, including "Gunsmoke," "The Lone Ranger," and "Maverick," portraying a variety of criminals, villains, and general ne'er-do-wells. He also branched out with supporting roles on shows like the long-running "Lassie," about the adventures of a gentle collie in a small farming town, and "The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin," another dog-centric series set at an Arizona army outpost.