Trivia: Actor/director/producer William Conrad started his professional career as a musician. After World War II service, he began building his reputation in films and on Hollywood-based radio programs. Due to his bulk and shifty-eyed appearance, he was cast in films as nasty heavies, notably in The Killers (1946) (his first film), Sorry Wrong Number (1948) and The Long Wait (1954). On radio, the versatile Conrad was a fixture on such moody anthologies as Escape and Suspense; he also worked frequently with Jack "Dragnet" Webb during this period, and as late as 1959 was ingesting the scenery in the Webb-directed film 30. Conrads most celebrated radio role was as Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke, which he played from 1952 through 1961 (the TV Gunsmoke, of course, went to James Arness, who physically matched the character that the portly Conrad had shaped aurally). In the late 1950s, Conrad went into the production end of the business at Warner Bros., keeping his hand in as a performer by providing the hilariously strident narration of the cartoon series Rocky and His Friends and its sequel The Bullwinkle Show. During the early 1960s, Conrad also directed such films as Two on a Guillotine (1964) and Brainstorm (1965). Easing back into acting in the early 1970s, Conrad enjoyed a lengthy run as the title character in the detective series Cannon (1971-76), then all too briefly starred as a more famous corpulent crime solver on the weekly Nero Wolfe. Conrad's final TV series was as one-half of Jake and the Fatman (Joe Penny was Jake), a crime show which ran from 1987 through 1991.

Trivia: Handsome, blond, and suave entertainer Jack Cassidy was the star of many Broadway musicals during the '50s and '60s. He also played supporting roles in films and on television. He first appeared as a dancer on the Great White Way at age 15 in Something for the Boys. In television, he guest starred on many shows and was a co-star on the short-lived sitcom He & She in 1967. In film he is best remembered for his portrayal of John Barrymore in W.C. Fields and Me (1976). Sadly, it was his final film role -- that year he was burned to death when his Los Angeles apartment caught fire. He had apparently fallen asleep while smoking a cigarette in bed. At the time, he was married to actress Shirley Jones. Cassidy is the father (by first marriage to actress Evelyn Ward) of singer/actor David Cassidy -- who became a teen idol appearing on the sitcom The Partridge Family in the '70s and went on to have a successful stage career -- actor/singer Shaun Cassidy and, by his second wife, Jones, actor Patrick Cassidy.

Trivia: If character actor Herb Edelman was one of the more successful stage and screen purveyors of "Everyman" roles, it was probably because he'd held down an astonishing array of meat-and-potato jobs before settling into acting. Edelman studied to be a veterinarian at Cornell University, but left during the first year. He took a tentative stab at journalism before toiling as an Armed Forces radio operator and announcer. While stationed in the Far East, Edelman entertained the notion of becoming a "Jewish Buddhist." He returned to his hometown to attend Brooklyn College, dropped out to become a hotel manager, was briefly the "straight" half of a comedy team, worked in advertising, drove a hack, and dropped back into college. Finally turning to acting full time in summer stock, Edelman began picking up small roles in New York productions, including the scene-stealing exhausted delivery man inNeil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1965), a role he recreated for the 1967 film version. Forming strong bonds with both Simon and with Barefoot star Robert Redford, Edelman would later appear in Simon's The Odd Couple and California Suite, and in the Redford/Barbara Streisand vehicle The Way We Were (1973). In 1968, Edelman co-starred with Bob Denver in the two-season TV sitcom The Good Guys. Nine years later, he starred as one-half of the title role in the weekly TV comedy/fantasy Big John, Little John (Robbie Rist was the "Little" one). Other TV series featuring Herb Edelman on a regular or recurring basis included Ladies Man, 9 to 5, Strike Force and Murder She Wrote. Fans of the sitcom The Golden Girls may remember Edelman for playing Stanley, Bea Arthur's irksome ex-husband. Edelman died of emphysema at the Motion Picture Hospital in Los Angeles on July 21, 1996; he was 62.

Trivia: Sandy Kenyon's name won't be familiar to too many people, but his face will be instantly recognizable to filmgoers and television viewers for the hundreds of roles that he has played -- cops and criminals, cowboys and government officials, and just about everything else that television or movies have had to offer since the late 1950s. Born in New York City on August 5, 1922, Kenyon served in the United States Army Air Force during World War II as a pilot, organizing shows in his spare time. He attended drama school on the G.I. Bill and formed the Town and Country Players with five friends in Hartford, CT, in 1946, performing eight seasons of summer stock work. His New York theater credits included Katherine Ann Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Sean O'Casey's Purple Dust, Ibsen's Peer Gynt, and Clifford Odets' Rocket to the Moon. Kenyon's screen career began in 1957 on television series such as Studio One, Kraft Playhouse, The Twilight Zone, Gunsmoke, and Have Gun, Will Travel. His movie debut took place in Al Capone (1959), in the role of Bones Corelli -- Kenyon's later screen credits have included roles in Nevada Smith (1966), Easy Come, Easy Go (1967), Something for a Lonely Man (1968), Rancho Deluxe (1975), and MacArthur (1977). He also got his first starring television role in 1958, working with Forrest Tucker in the adventure series Crunch and Des, based on the writings of Philip Wylie. In 1964, Kenyon made his Broadway debut as Pygmalion in Conversation at Midnight, which closed after only four performances. He is most familiar to audiences for his television work, which has included guest supporting roles on series ranging from All in the Family (as Dave the Cop in "Archie Is Worried About His Job") to Knots Landing; he was good at playing tough but fair-minded lunkheads, sleazy movie directors (Bracken's World), and single-minded public servants (Mod Squad). He has also done voice-over work in cartoons. The actor Sandy Kenyon is not to be confused with the entertainment correspondent of the same name.