Trivia: Tousle-haired child actor Jay North was the son of the West Coast regional director for AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), a performer's union. He began showing up on TV in 1958 and in films the following year. Selected from a group of 500 possibilities, he landed the title role in the TV series Dennis the Menace, which ran from 1959 to 1963. He went on to star in the single-season adventure weekly Maya (1966) and in such family oriented films as Zebra in the Kitchen. Reportedly mistreated and abused by his on-set guardians, North's career as a child star was less than pleasant; nor did he make a successful transition to adult roles in such trash as Teacher Teacher (1974). Eventually overcoming his past, he vowed to prevent others in his situation from suffering similar humiliations, and later spent much of his time offering advice, counsel, and moral support to preteen professional actors. Among Jay North's later acting appearances was the 1980 TV movie Scout's Honor, which featured several other former child TV performers in the cast.

Trivia: Perhaps best remembered for playing Henry Mitchell, the father of an energetic tow-headed boy in the popular television sitcom Dennis the Menace (1959-1963), tall, slender, and bespectacled character actor Herbert Anderson's career encompassed extensive experience on Broadway and in Hollywood films. Contracted to Warner Bros. around 1940, he made his film debut in Meet the Fleet (1940). His first two years were quite busy, but by mid-decade he was landing fewer roles. On stage, he appeared with Henry Fonda in a 1953 production of Caine Mutiny Court Martial. After the cancellation of Dennis the Menace, Anderson's film appearances became quite rare, though he made frequent guest appearances on other television shows, including Batman, Bewitched, and Dragnet. Heart trouble in the early '80s forced Anderson to retire.

Trivia: Actress Gloria Henry was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1923, and joined the roster of Columbia Pictures in the mid-1940s. She generally appeared in the studio's B-movie output, such as Sport of Kings (1947) and Rusty Saves A Life (1949), in the latter playing a key role in the plot. Her most widely seen screen work was in Fritz Lang's offbeat 1952 western Rancho Notorious -- her murder at the beginning of the movie propels the plot of the noir-ish western to its grim end. In 1958, Henry was chosen to play Alice Mitchell, the mother to Jay North's Dennis Mitchell in the sitcom Dennis The Menace, a role she portrayed until 1963 -- she worked opposite the slightly older Herbert Anderson, playing her husband Henry Mitchell. Although her lines were usually limited to expressions of joy or exasperation (TV moms were usually depicted in a simple way in those days . . . ), and all of the adults in the series were essentially second fiddle to North's Dennis and Joseph Kearns' Mr. Wilson, she did at least get to wear more attractive hair-styles and clothes as the series wore on. At the start of the 1960s, Henry also suggested to her gardener, a young man named Todd Armstrong, that he might consider doing a screen test for Columbia Pictures -- he agreed and she arranged it, and Armstrong ended up playing the hero in the classic Ray Harryhausen-produced fantasy film Jason And The Argonauts. Henry's own acting career resumed at a slower pace after the cancellation of Dennis The Menace, and she had pretty much retired by the 1970s.

Trivia: Sylvia Field's several-decades-long career encompassed performances on stage, screen, and television, where she was best known for playing the kindhearted Mrs. Wilson opposite crotchety Joseph Kearns and mischievous towhead Jay North on Dennis the Menace between 1959 and 1962. Born and raised in Boston, Field was 17 when she launched her professional career in a Broadway production of The Bluebird. She entered films in The Exalted Flapper (1929) and would appear in eight more features before retiring from movies in 1958 after appearing in Annette. Married to comedian Ernest Truex since the 1940s, she made her television debut along with him in Mr. Peepers. The show was produced in New York and ran three years before Field and her family decided to quit the show and move to Southern California. Following her departure from Dennis the Menace (which was precipitated by the death of Kearns), Field continued to appear as a television guest star on series such as Perry Mason and Father Knows Best.

Trivia: Hatchet-faced character actor Charles Lane has been one of the most instantly recognizable non-stars in Hollywood for more than half a century. Lane has been a familiar figure in movies (and, subsequently, on television) for 60 years, portraying crotchety, usually miserly, bad-tempered bankers and bureaucrats. Lane was born Charles Levison in San Francisco in 1899 (some sources give his year of birth as 1905). He learned the ropes of acting at the Pasadena Playhouse during the middle/late '20s, appearing in the works of Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Noel Coward before going to Hollywood in 1930, just as sound was fully taking hold. He was a good choice for character roles, usually playing annoying types with his high-pitched voice and fidgety persona, encompassing everything from skinflint accountants to sly, fast-talking confidence men -- think of an abrasive version of Bud Abbott. His major early roles included the stage manager Max Jacobs in Twentieth Century and the tax assessor in You Can't Take It With You. One of the busier character men in Hollywood, Lane was a particular favorite of Frank Capra's, and he appeared in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Arsenic and Old Lace, It's a Wonderful Life -- with a particularly important supporting part in the latter -- and State of the Union. He played in every kind of movie from screwball comedy like Ball of Fire to primordial film noir, such as I Wake Up Screaming. As Lane grew older, he tended toward more outrageously miserly parts, in movies and then on television, where he turned up Burns & Allen, I Love Lucy, and Dear Phoebe, among other series. Having successfully played a tight-fisted business manager hired by Ricky Ricardo to keep Lucy's spending in line in one episode of I Love Lucy (and, later, the U.S. border guard who nearly arrests the whole Ricardo clan and actor Charles Boyer at the Mexican border in an episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour), Lane was a natural choice to play Lucille Ball's nemesis on The Lucy Show. Her first choice for the money-grubbing banker would have been Gale Gordon, but as he was already contractually committed to the series Dennis the Menace, she hired Lane to play Mr. Barnsdahl, the tight-fisted administrator of her late-husband's estate during the first season of the show. Lane left the series after Gordon became available to play the part of Mr. Mooney, but in short order he moved right into the part that came very close to making him a star. The CBS country comedy series Petticoat Junction needed a semi-regular villain and Lane just fit the bill as Homer Bedloe, the greedy, bad-tempered railroad executive whose career goal was to shut down the Cannonball railroad that served the town of Hooterville. He became so well-known in the role, which he only played once or twice a season, that at one point Lane found himself in demand for personal appearance tours. In later years, he also turned up in roles on The Beverly Hillbillies, playing Jane Hathaway's unscrupulous landlord, and did an excruciatingly funny appearance on The Odd Couple in the mid-'70s, playing a manic, greedy patron at the apartment sale being run by Felix and Oscar. Lane also did his share of straight dramatic roles, portraying such parts as Tony Randall's nastily officious IRS boss in the comedy The Mating Game (1959), the crusty River City town constable in The Music Man (1962) (which put Lane into the middle of a huge musical production number), the wryly cynical, impatient judge in the James Garner comedy film The Wheeler-Dealers (1963), and portraying Admiral William Standley in The Winds of War (1983), based on Herman Wouk's novel. He was still working right up until the late '80s, and David Letterman booked the actor to appear on his NBC late-night show during the middle of that decade, though his appearance on the program was somewhat disappointing and sad; the actor, who was instantly recognized by the studio audience, was then in his early nineties and had apparently not done live television in many years (if ever), and apparently hadn't been adequately prepped. He seemed confused and unable to say much about his work, which was understandable -- the nature of his character parts involved hundreds of roles that were usually each completed in a matter or two or three days shooting, across almost 60 years. Lane died at 102, in July 2007 - about 20 years after his last major film appearance.