Trivia: One of the precious few actors of the "pretty boy" school to survive past the 1950s, Robert Wagner was the son of a Detroit steel executive. When his family moved to Los Angeles, Wagner's original intention of becoming a businessman took second place to his fascination with the film industry. Thanks to his dad's connections, he was able to make regular visits to the big studios. Inevitably, a talent scout took notice of Wagner's boyish handsomeness, impressive physique, and easygoing charm. After making his unbilled screen debut in The Happy Years (1950), Wagner was signed by 20th Century Fox, which carefully built him up toward stardom. He played romantic leads with ease, but it wasn't until he essayed the two scene role of a shellshocked war veteran in With a Song in My Heart (1952) that studio executives recognized his potential as a dramatic actor. He went on to play the title roles in Prince Valiant (1954) and The True Story of Jesse James (1956), and shocked his bobby-soxer fan following by effectively portraying a cold-blooded murderer in A Kiss Before Dying (1955). In the early '60s, however, Wagner suffered a series of personal and professional reverses. His "ideal" marriage to actress Natalie Wood had dissolved, and his film career skidded to a stop after The Pink Panther (1964). Two years of unemployment followed before Wagner made a respectable comeback as star of the lighthearted TV espionage series It Takes a Thief (1968-1970). For the rest of his career, Wagner would enjoy his greatest success on TV, first in the mid-'70s series Switch, then opposite Stefanie Powers in the internationally popular Hart to Hart, which ran from 1979 through 1983 and has since been sporadically revived in TV-movie form (a 1986 series, Lime Street, was quickly canceled due to the tragic death of Wagner's young co-star, Savannah Smith). On the domestic front, Wagner was briefly wed to actress Marion Marshall before remarrying Natalie Wood in 1972; after Wood's death in 1981, Wagner found lasting happiness with his third wife, Jill St. John, a longtime friend and co-worker. Considered one of Hollywood's nicest citizens, Robert Wagner has continued to successfully pursue a leading man career into his sixties; he has also launched a latter-day stage career, touring with his Hart to Hart co-star Stefanie Power in the "readers' theater" presentation Love Letters. He found success playing a henchman to Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies, and in 2007 he began playing Teddy, a recurring role on the hit CBS series Two and a Half Men.

Trivia: Actor Brett Halsey came into this world as Charles Oliver Hand, the son of a San Francisco contractor. Formerly a page at the CBS studios in Hollywood, the 20-year-old Halsey was signed to a Universal contract in 1953. His earliest film efforts include The Glass Web (1953) and Ma and Pa Kettle at Home (1954), in which he played one of the myriad of Kettle offspring. He went on to play leads in bottom-budget juvenile delinquent films, including the immortal 1958 howler Speed Crazy. Under contract to 20th Century-Fox in the late 1950s-early 1960s, Halsey starred in Return of the Fly (1959) and was seen on a weekly basis as swinging journalist Paul Templin in the TV series Follow the Sun (1961). He then packed his bags and headed to Italy, where he played leads in swashbucklers, spy films, and Westerns (occasionally under the pseudonym Montgomery Ford). His experiences as a journeyman actor in Europe were encapsulated in his novel Magnificent Strangers. Halsey returned to the U.S. in the early 1970s, where he acted in such TV daytime dramas as Love is a Many Splendored Thing, Search for Tomorrow and, General Hospital, as well as in feature films, including Francis Ford Coppolas' Godfather III (1990). Brett Halsey was at one time married to actress Luciana Paluzzi.

Trivia: Supporting actor, occasional lead, onscreen from the late '60s.

Trivia: Born Stefania Federkiewicz, she is a lead actress of routine Hollywood films of the '60s and '70s. Soon after graduating from Hollywood High, she debuted onscreen in 1961; early in her career she was billed as Taffy Paul. She starred in the TV series Girl from U.N.C.L.E. and Hart to Hart. From 1966-74 she was married to actor Gary Lockwood, then she became the constant companion of aging actor William Holden; following his death in 1981, she continued being active with the William Holden Wildlife Foundation, which worked to create a big-game preserve and study center in Kenya.

Trivia: Tall, bald and nearly always bearded, Sid Haig has provided hulking menace to many a low-budget exploitationer and high-priced actioner. A 1960 alumnus of the Pasadena Playhouse, Haig has been in films at least since 1964, when he played a lobotomized "poor relation" in the cult horror classic Spider Baby. He has proved quite valuable to such filmmakers as producer Roger Corman and director Jack Hill, playing abusive goons in such fare as The Big Doll House and The Big Bird Cage. Sid Haig's more "respectable" credits include George Lucas' THX 1138 and the 1970 James Bond opus Diamonds are Forever (he's the flunkey who tosses a topless Lana Wood from the window of a high-rise Vegas hotel).After decades of B-movie roles, Haig received a late-career boost in 1997, when he was given a small part in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown. In the ensuing years, he would again work with Tarantino in Kill Bill, Vol. 2, and show up in the Rob Zombie horror flicks House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects.

Trivia: Character actor Don Gordon was well into middle age when he made the transition from stage and TV to films. Gordon was most generally cast as a cop, though he also effectively portrayed gangland henchmen. His film credits included such gutsy fare as Bullitt (1968), Fuzz (1971), The Towering Inferno (1974), Lethal Weapon (1987) and Die Hard (1988). On television, he played Lt. Hank Bertelli on The Blue Angels (1960), Prentiss on Lucan (1977), and Harry on The Contender (1980). Gordon died in 2017, at age 90.

Trivia: Born Jack Golenor, this brawny, handsome leading man of Hollywood films appeared onscreen from 1956; he was once hyped as the next Rock Hudson. From 1952-56 he was an air intelligence officer with the Navy, specializing in Pan American Affairs. When a friend offered him a screen test, he was signed by Universal and played leads for a decade-plus, after which his film work decreased; he also served for a time as president of the Screen Actors Guild. After starring on the TV series Destry and Convoy, he debuted on Broadway in Seesaw in 1973. In 1981 Gavin was appointed by President Reagan as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, a position he held for five years. Besides his Navy service, he had other qualifications for the post: having been born to a Spanish mother, he spoke impeccable Spanish; he had studied Latin American issues in college; and during his years of screen stardom he served as special advisor to Jose Mora and Galo Plaza, secretaries general of the Organization of American States.

Trivia: Tom Mankiewicz came from a distinguished film family; his father, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, was a renowned director (All About Eve) and his uncle, Herman Mankiewicz, was also a highly respected screenwriter (Citizen Kane). Following studies at the Exeter Academy and Yale, Mankiewicz worked as a production associate on a 1964 film, The Best Man. A few years later, he became a screenwriter. In the early '80s, he directed some episodes of the television series Hart to Hart, and in 1987 he directed his first feature film, Dragnet. Mankiewicz also worked as a script consultant on a few James Bond films and on two of the Superman films. He died of cancer in late July 2010, at age 68.

Trivia: The film and television career of vulnerable-looking brunette leading-lady Karen Carlson commenced with a small recurring role on the 1968 TV series Here Come the Brides. Karen's later TV-series credits include An American Dream (1981), Two Marriages (1983) and Dallas (1987, as Mrs. Scottsfield) In films, Karen garnered good notices for her quietly effective performance as the wife of Bobby Kennedy-clone Robert Redford in 1973's The Candidate. More recently, she has guest-starred in made-for-TV movies like In the Heat of the Night: A Matter of Justice (1994). Karen Carlson was at one time married to Starsky and Hutch leading man David Soul.