A film, stage and television actor who traded the craft for the relative anonymity of the director's chair, Corey Allen was born in Cleveland on June 29, 1934. He earned his bachelor's degree in theater at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he starred as a Civil War-era Union soldier tasked with guarding a riverbank in the Oscar-winning short film A Time Out of War (1954).

As an actor, Allen is best known for losing a "chicken" race onscreen to James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). But after stepping behind the camera in the early 1960s, Allen became a respected -- and prolific -- television director. His credits include an Emmy-winning episode of "Hill Street Blues" (1983), along with installments of "Hawaii Five-O," "The Rockford Files" and "Magnum, P.I."

Allen died June 27, 2010, just two days shy of his 76th birthday.