Trivia: Willowy brunette actress Kate Jackson spent her early adulthood in summer stock, in training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and as a page and tour guide at the NBC studios in Rockefeller Center. Anxious to burst forth with reams of dialogue as a film and TV actress, Jackson found herself in the utterly non-speaking role of a glamorous ghost on the mid-1960s daytime TV serial Dark Shadows. She was allowed to flap her gums a little more often as Jill Danko on TV's The Rookies (1973-76). Full stardom arrived for Jackson when she was cast as Sabrina Duncan, "the smart one" on the prime time jigglefest Charlie's Angels; she remained with this series from 1976 through 1979. Her last regular weekly TV effort was Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983-1987) in which she played an average housewife who moonlighted as a secret agent. Though Jackson has made sporadic film appearances, it is safe to say that her greater fame rests upon her small-screen work. Jackson received an outpouring of industry sympathy and support when she battled breast cancer in the early 1990s. Kate Jackson has been a prolific and popular TV commercial spokesperson, and narrated Trouble in Mind, a series documenting the effects of mental illness, from 1999 to 2000.

Trivia: After attending Trinity University and the University of San Antonio, brunette Jaclyn Smith flourished as a model and cover girl. Making her first film appearance in 1969, Smith endured such negligible movie projects as The Moonshiners (1974) before achieving stardom as Kelly Garrett, showgirl-turned-PI, on the spectacularly successful TV series Charlie's Angels. She was the only member of the original Angels to remain with the series from its debut in 1976 to its final telecast in 1981. Like her Charlie's Angels cohorts Cheryl Ladd and Farrah Fawcett, Smith went on to a busy career in made-for-TV movies, efficiently playing the title roles in Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (1982) and Florence Nightingale (1985). In 1989, she returned to the weekly-TV grind as star of the mystery series Christine Cromwell. That same year, a random sampling of Hollywood insiders (technicians, grips, "gofers", etc.) voted Smith as one of the nicest and most cooperative actresses in the business (parenthetically, her Charlie's Angels co-star Kate Jackson was elected one of the least likeable performers in Tinseltown). Jaclyn Smith was previously married to actors Roger Davis and Dennis Cole, and cinematographer Tony Richmond. Her fourth marriage was to Dr. Bradley Allen in 1998.

Trivia: Although sandy-voiced character actor David Doyle sometimes gave the onscreen impression of being an unprepossessing, slow-on-the-uptake "little man," in truth Doyle stood six feet tall, weighed 200 pounds, and had an I.Q. of 148. Born into a family of lawyers, Doyle was drawn to amateur theatricals at the age of ten. In an effort to please both his parents and his own muse, he attended pre-law classes at the University of Nebraska, all the while taking acting lessons at Virginia's Barter Theatre and New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. His first theatrical break came in 1956, when he replaced Walter Matthau in the Broadway hit Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? He subsequently spent several seasons as an actor/director in a Midwestern traveling stock company, then returned to New York, where he appeared in S.J. Perelman's The Beauty Part and seven other Broadway plays. After a decade's worth of film and TV supporting appearances and commercials, Doyle was cast in the recurring role of Walt Fitzgerald in the 1972 sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie; that same year, he made semi-weekly visits to The New Dick Van Dyke Show in the role of Ted Atwater. From 1976 and 1981, Doyle had the enviable task of playing John Bosley, liaison man between unseen private eye Charlie and the gorgeous female stars of TV's Charlie's Angels. Since that time, David Doyle has been seen as Frank Macklin on the short-lived 1987 series Sweet Surrender, and heard as the voice of Grandpa Pickles on the Nickleodeon cable network's animated series Rugrats (1991- ). Doyle died of heart failure at age 67 on February 27, 1997. One of his last feature film performances was that of the voice of Pepe in The Adventures of Pinocchio (1996).

Trivia: American actor Richard Romanus enjoyed an extensive stage career before making his entree into films in 1970. For the most part, Romanus has been seen in secondary roles, usually as Italian-Americans. In the Henry Jaglom-directed black comedy Sitting Ducks (1980), he co-starred as Moose and also wrote the film's musical score. His series-TV resumé includes such roles as Captain Vito Lombardi in Foul Play (1981), Lt. Charlie Gunzer in Strike Force (1981) and Vinnie in Johnny Bago (1993). Richard Romanus is related to actor Robert Romanus (Facts of Life, Fame).

Trivia: Though he made his first film appearance in 1959's Pork Chop Hill, American character actor Bert Remsen did not achieve prominence until the 1980s. On TV, Remsen was seen as Mario the Chef in It's a Living (1980-81) and as wildcat oil man Harrison "Dandy" Dandridge during the 1987-88 season of Dallas. In films, he was featured in several Robert Altman productions, and also essayed the title character in Daddy's Dyin'...Who's Got the Will? (1990). In addition, he occasionally worked as a Hollywood casting director. Bert Remsen's most recent credit (as of 1996) was as one of the "expert witnesses" during the Bruno Richard Hauptmann trial in the made-for-cable Crime of the Century.

Trivia: Supporting actor Norman Bartold appeared in numerous films of the 1970s. He also worked on television as a guest star and in television movies. He made his film debut in The Littlest Hobo (1958).

Trivia: American actress Farrah Fawcett was an art student at the University of Texas before she deduced that she could make more money posing for pictures than painting them. A supermodel before that phrase had fallen into common usage, Fawcett moved from Wella Balsam shampoo ads into acting, making her first film Myra Breckenridge in 1970. She worked in TV bits and full supporting parts, obtaining steady employment in 1974 with a small recurring role on the cop series Harry O, but true stardom was still some two years down the road. In 1976, producer Aaron Spelling cast Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Jaclyn Smith in a pilot for an adventure series titled Charlie's Angels. The pilot graduated to a series, and the rest was TV history; during her Charlie's Angels tenure Fawcett was the most visible of the three actresses, adorning magazine covers and pin-up posters (including one particularly iconic image), which set sales records. There were even Farrah Fawcett dolls before the first season of Charlie's Angels was over.Now in the hands of high-profile agents and advisors, Fawcett (billed Farrah Fawcett-Majors after her marriage to Lee Majors) decided she'd outgrown Angels and left the series, even though she had another year on her contract. While the studio drew up legal papers to block her move, she was replaced by Cheryl Ladd. Fawcett settled her dispute by agreeing to a set number of guest appearances on the program. Some industry cynics suggested that Fawcett would have problems sustaining her popularity. Certainly such lukewarm film projects as Sunburn (1979), Somebody Killed Her Husband (1978) and Saturn 3 (1980) seemed to bear this theory out. But Fawcett took matters into her own hands and decided to make her own opportunities--and like many other performers who strive to be taken seriously, she chose the most extreme, demanding method of proving her acting mettle. Playing a vengeful rape victim in both the play and 1986 film version of Extremities (an apt title) and making a meal of her role as a battered wife who murders her husband out of self-defense in the TV movie The Burning Bed (1984), Fawcett confounded her detractors and demonstrated she was a more-than-capable actress. Other TV movie appearances of varying quality cast her as everything from a child killer to a Nazi hunter to famed LIFE photographer Margaret Bourke-White. Never as big a name as she was in 1976, Fawcett nonetheless affirmed her reputation as an actress of importance. Her fans were even willing to forgive her misbegotten fling at situation comedy in the 1991 series Good Sports, in which she co-starred with her longtime "significant other" Ryan O'Neal. Fawcett died in 2009 at age 62, following a lengthy and well-publicized battle with cancer.

Trivia: African-American actor/director Georg Stanford Brown was seven-years-old when his family moved from Havana to Harlem. Chronically absent during his high school years, Brown was invited to drop out by his frustrated teachers. At 15, he organized a singing group called the Parthenons, which broke up after a single network TV appearance. He moved to Los Angeles at 17, where, after passing the college entrance exam, he enrolled in the L.A. City College theater program. "I just wanted to take something easy," he explained later, "but after a while I really got to like it." He liked it well enough to study further at New York's American Musical and Dramatic Academy. Making his professional stage debut in Joseph Papp's Central Park Shakespearean productions, Brown headed back to L.A., certain that his theatrical credits would assure him steady work in films and TV, which they did, though at a molasses-slow pace. After increasingly larger roles in such films as The Comedians (1967), Bullitt (1968), and Colossus: The Forbin Project (1971), Brown was cast as officer Terry Webster on the Aaron Spelling-produced TV series The Rookies, which ran from 1972 to 1976. After Rookies, Brown began curtailing his acting in favor of directing. He helmed several episodes of TV's Hill Street Blues, as well as such made-for-TV movies as Grambling's White Tiger (1981), Miracle of the Heart: A Boys' Town Story (1986), Stuck With Each Other (1989), Father and Son: Dangerous Relations (1992), and The Last POW: The Bobby Garwood Story (1993). In 1986, Georg Stanford Brown won an Emmy for his direction of the Cagney and Lacey episode "Parting Shots," which starred his then-wife Tyne Daly.

Trivia: Actor Norman Palmer appeared in a few films of the late '70s and early '80s. He also made frequent guest appearances on television series.

Trivia: Former president and long-time board member of the Screen Extras Guild (1963-1967), Tony Regan began his lengthy film career in 1926 working in Paramount Pictures' mailroom. He eventually rose to become the head of outer casting. In 1958, Regan left Paramount to become an extra in such films as Follow Me, Boys! (1966).

Trivia: Though he has logged many impressive credits as an actor, Vienna-born Theodore Bikel preferred to think of himself -- and bill himself -- as a folksinger. Emigrating to Palestine in the 1930s, Bikel supported himself with his music, and also acted with Tel Aviv's Habimah Theatre in Sholem Alecheim's Tevye the Milkman. A quick study in several languages, Bikel honed his acting skills with Britain's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Three years after his London stage debut, Bikel made his first film, playing a German naval officer (the first of many villainous roles) in The African Queen (1951). In 1958, he was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting appearance in The Defiant Ones. One year later, he costarred with Mary Martin on Broadway, originating the role of Captain Von Trapp in Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music. Active in many political causes ranging from Jewish relief to the Democratic Party, Bikel served as president of Actor's Equity from 1973 until 1982. In a mid-1980s interview, Theodore Bikel noted with amusement that, in spite of his many stage and screen appearances, many fans remembered him best for his brief unsympathetic appearance as a Russian officer in the otherwise forgettable 1957 film Fraulein. Bikel continued working well into his advanced years, both on screen and on stage. He died in 2015, at age 91.

Trivia: Specializing in middle-aged characters even in his twenties, American actor Charles Cyphers has been a familiar face on the TV-movie landscape since the early '70s. Cyphers was particularly well served by director John Carpenter, who cast the actor in Assault on Precinct 13 (1975), Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), and Escape From New York (1981). Carpenter also featured Cyphers as Sam Phillips in the made-for-TV Elvis (1979). Perhaps it's coincidence, or perhaps a private joke between actor and director: Whatever the case, Cyphers' character names in his Carpenter films are often lifted from real life. For example, he played Dan O'Bannon in The Fog (screenwriter O'Bannon is Carpenter's most frequent collaborator) and Leigh Brackett in Halloween (Brackett, a female screenwriter, worked on such films as Rio Bravo, which Carpenter remade as Assault on Precinct 13). On TV, Charles Cyphers was seen on The Betty White Show (1975), as Hugo Muncy, White's cross-dressing stunt double.

Trivia: American character actor Albert Paulsen has been in films from 1961. Paulsen has more often than not been cast as sinister, foreign-accented secret agents, which kept him very busy during the "Bond craze" of the 1960s. A baggy suit and furtively darting eyes were "de rigeur" for such characters as communist spy Zilkov in The Manchurian Candidate. On television, Albert Paulsen played two different Nazi officers on three different episodes of Combat, and was a guest villain on no fewer than five Mission: Impossible installments.