Received his first taste of theater life at college when the drama club was performing "Arsenic and Old Lace", and needed someone to pack up the bodies from the cellar for the play's curtain call.
Served in the Korean War, a first sergeant with the 45th Oklahoma Division.
Started and owned the Bonanza steak house restaurant chain.
Taught high school in West Texas before becoming an actor.
Taught history in Sonora (TX) High School from 1953~58, appeared in a school play there where he played a bride at the altar. Sonora is located on I-10 in west Texas with a population of about 2000.
Took his family on a summer vacation by car from Sonora, TX, to Hollywood and was discovered while making phone calls in a sidewalk phone booth and dressed in western garb, wearing heeled cowboy boots with spurs, a gaudy western shirt and a big straw cowboy hat. His wife and kids were sitting in the station wagon parked at the curb when he was noticed by an agent.
Was enrolled at the Texas Military Institute in San Antonio when he was 13 years old and weighed 200 lbs.
Weighing in at 14 lbs. at birth, Dan was the largest baby ever born in Bowie County, Texas.
With some repertory theater experience at the time, the Korean War interrupted his fledgling career. He instead returned to teaching school after his military discharge and went to work on his Ph.D at the University of Calfornia in Los Angeles. Finances were a problem at the time and it was then that he fell back into acting and found TV work.