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: Actress/singer Cheryl Jean Stopelmoor billed herself as Cherie Moore when she performed as a backup singer on the 1970 Hanna-Barbera animated TVer Josie and the Pussycats. She reverted to her given name when appearing as a regular on the prime-time programs The Ken Berry WOW Show and Search (both 1972), and in various TV guest assignments. Stopelmoor was occasionally written up in fan and industry magazines of the period, more because of her unusual name than her acting skills (often, her last name was longer than the parts she played). Stopelmoor finally became a star when she adopted her married name of Ladd (her husband of many years was actor David Ladd, son of film luminary Alan Ladd) and replaced Farrah Fawcett on the highly-rated ABC "jiggle" show Charlie's Angels. She played blonde angel Kris Munroe from 1977 through 1981, then concentrated on made-for-TV films, wherein she was permitted plenty of creative input. Ladd's TV movies found her cast as both victim (A Death in California) and victimizer (When She Was Bad); arguably her best outing was the title role in the 1983 TV biopic Grace Kelly. She has since returned to series TV from time to time, playing Liane DeViller on Crossing (1986) and Holli Holliday on the syndicated Baywatch wannabe One West Waikiki (1994). Tirelessly active in civic and charitable endeavors, Cheryl Ladd was at one time Goodwill ambassador to Childhelp USA.

Trivia: A professional model since her teens, Shelley Hack made her film bow in Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977). She's the blonde passerby on the street who confesses to Woody that she's too shallow to understand what he's saying. We heard (and saw) a lot more from Hack when, in 1979, she replaced Kate Jackson on the long-running TV jigglefest Charlie's Angels. Shelley played Tiffany Welles for a single season, until she herself was replaced by Tanya Roberts. Shelley Hack survived on screen a lot longer than many people would have predicted back in 1980, co-starring in the TV weeklies Cutter to Houston (1983) and Jack and Mike (1986-87), and delivering an excellent performance in Martin Scorcese's controversial theatrical film King of Comedy (1982).

Trivia: What do actors Gig Young, Anne Shirley, and L.Q. Jones have in common? All of them lifted their show-biz names from characters they'd portrayed on screen. In 1955, University of Texas alumnus Justice McQueen made his film debut in Battle Cry, playing a laconic lieutenant named L.Q. Jones. McQueen liked his character so much that he remained L.Q. Jones offscreen ever after (though he never made it legal, still listing himself as Justice Ellis McQueen in the 1995 edition of Who's Who). A natural for westerns both vocally and physically, Jones played supporting roles in several big-screen oaters, and was seen on TV as Smitty on Cheyenne (1955-58) and as Belden on The Virginian (1964-67). Jones gained a measure of prominence in the films of Sam Peckinpah, notably Ride the High Country (1961) and The Wild Bunch (1969). Turning to the production side of the business in the early 1970s, L. Q. Jones produced and co-starred in the 1971 film Brotherhood of Satan; he also co-produced, directed, adapted and played a cameo (as a porn-movie actor!) in the fascinating 1975 cinemazation of Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog, a tour de force that won Jones a Hugo Award from America's science fiction writers.

Trivia: Born in Illinois, actor John Lupton was raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where his father was a writer with the Milwaukee Journal. Upon graduation from New York's American Acamedy of Dramatic Arts, Lupton secured immediate stage work, then was signed as a contract player with MGM in Hollywood. Few worthwhile parts came from this alliance; Lupton was lanky and handsome in a Jimmy Stewart or Henry Fonda sort of way, but wasn't permitted to develop much of an on-screen persona of his own. His best opportunity came in 1956, when he was cast as Tom Jeffords on the two-season TV series Broken Arrow -- though most of the critical plaudits were directed at his costar Michael Ansara, who played the more colorful part of Cochise. A journeyman actor throughout the '60s, Lupton became one of the rotating "repertory" cast members of the TV series of Jack Webb (Dragnet, Adam 12, et al.) He is best known to latter-day viewers for his 14 year run as Tommy Horton on the daytime serial Days of Our Lives. John Lupton's offscreen pursuits included extensive volunteer work for the Multiple Sclerosis Association and the Special Olympics.

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: 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: The memorable but fleeting appearance of American actor Tracey Walter as "Bob the Goon" in Batman was typical of Walter's career. In the grand tradition of such Hollywood character actors as Percy Helton, Dick Wessel and Louis Jean Heydt, Walter is in the "who is that?" category--familiar yet anonymous--and has developed a cult following amongst cinema buffs. The stage-trained Walters can be seen in such films as Repo Man (1984) City Slickers (1991), Pacific Heights (1992), and Philadelphia (1993). As far back as the 1984 critic's-darling sitcom Best of the West, Walter played Frog, the knuckle-dragging henchman of villain Leonard Frey.

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 experience as a model and off-Broadway actress, curvaceous Tanya Roberts began appearing in film roles that relied almost exclusively on his physical attributes. In 1979's Tourist Trap, for example, the camera took a near-fetishist interest in her long and well-toned legs. Even in her big-budget movie appearances, her acting was not her strong suit, nor was it expected to be, especially in such escapist fare as Beastmaster (1982) and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle (1984). In 1980, Roberts was hired to play streetwise Julie Rogers, the last of a long line of replacement actresses in TV's Charlie's Angels (she was replacing the recently departed Shelley Hack). After her single Angels season, Roberts went back to movies, primarily horror films and high-class, soft-focus erotica. Tanya Roberts exhibited an engaging flair for self-parody as luscious secretary Velda in the made-for-TV Mike Hammer: Murder Me, Murder You (1983); but when time came to develop the film into a series, Roberts had other commitments, and was replaced by Lindsay Bloom.