Eric Braeden is a German actor in America who began his career playing Nazis and eventually became a star of daytime soap operas. Born Hans Gudegast in Kiel, Germany, during the Second World War, he was a superb athlete who excelled in track-and-field events. As a teenager, he immigrated to the United States and worked in Texas and Montana as a translator, a cowhand, and a lumber millhand. His athleticism won him a scholarship to Montana State University. While attending college, he and friend Bob McKinnon made a film, The Riverbusters, about their successful attempt to be the first men to take a boat from the source to the mouth of the Salmon river and back again. He traveled to Los Angeles in hopes of finding a distributor for the documentary, but instead found that his handsome visage and accented English made him a valuable commodity as an actor. He appeared in small parts under his real name before landing the leading role of the antagonist, Captain Hans Dietrich, on the World War II television series The Rat Patrol (1966).
Scott was born Melody Ann Thomas in Los Angeles, California. Her first film credit was as a child actress in the 1964 Alfred Hitchcock movie, Marnie (1964). After bit parts in movies in the mid-'70s (most notably in John Wayne's final film, The Shootist (1976)), she was offered bit parts on nighttime series, such as The Waltons (1971), The Rockford Files (1974) and Charlie's Angels (1976).
