Trivia: Best remembered for his high-profile acting roles on two 1970s television sitcoms -- that of genial news writer Murray Slaughter on CBS's The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977) and that of sweet-natured Captain Merrill Stubing on ABC's The Love Boat (1977-1986), stage-trained actor Gavin MacLeod in fact began his career typecast as a villain. He landed parts in Hollywood features including The Sand Pebbles (1966), Deathwatch (1966), and The Comic (1969), and enjoyed a tenure as Joseph "Happy" Haines on the sitcom McHale's Navy from 1962 through 1964. After The Love Boat permanently laid anchor in the mid-'80s, MacLeod signed on as a spokesperson and pitchman for Princess Cruises and returned to regional theatrical work. He also tackled guest spots on programs including Touched by an Angel and (in a move that surprised everyone) the HBO prison drama Oz. Off-camera, MacLeod is an outspoken born-again Christian. He hosted a popular talk show on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, along with his wife, Patti (whom he divorced in 1982 and remarried three years later), called Back on Course, and personally funded many of the Greatest Adventure Stories from the Bible animated videos for children.

Trivia: Universally recognized as Ship's Doctor Adam Bricker on the blockbuster prime-time sitcom The Love Boat (1977-1986) -- a part he held for the entire nine-season run of the series -- actor Bernie Kopell entered the doors of show business via a most unlikely route. Born in Brooklyn, Kopell attended Erasmus High and then New York University (with a dramatic art major). After a stint at sea aboard the naval vessel USS Iowa, Kopell signed on to drive a taxicab in Southern California -- and achieved his big break on the day that Oregon Trail (1959) film producer Dick Einfeld hitched a ride in the back of his cab. In a span of minutes, Kopell reportedly managed to convince Einfeld that he was not really a cab driver but an actor in serious need of work. The effort paid off, and Kopell snagged his first part -- a two-line part in Oregon as an aide to president James K. Polk. In the early '60s, Kopell joined the Actors' Ring Theatre in Los Angeles, where he developed a knack for characterizations and voices; this led, in turn, to character-type roles on a myriad of television programs including The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Steve Allen Show, and My Favorite Martian (which often, though not always, cast the wiry Kopell as a Hispanic). By the early '70s, Kopell had landed steady assignments on Get Smart, Bewitched, That Girl, and other series. The Love Boat, however, embodied his breakthrough. He followed it up with an emcee assignment on The Travel Channel (hosting its Railway Adventures Across Europe) and a surge in theatrical work, with portrayals in regional productions of such plays as Rumors, A History of Shadows, and Death of a Salesman.

Trivia: Actor Fred Grandy enjoyed two distinct careers -- an initial career as an actor and a proverbial second wind on the political stage. As a thespian, Grandy signed for guest spots on early-'70s series including Maude and Phyllis, but built his reputation via his nine-season portrayal of Yeoman-Purser Burl "Gopher" Smith, right-hand man to Captain Merrill Stubing (Gavin MacLeod), on the popular television sitcom The Love Boat (1977-1986). He proved popular with audiences, but by the mid-'80s reportedly grew tired of acting and gravitated to the political arena because he found it more challenging. Indeed, in 1986 -- the year of Boat's cancelation -- Grandy was elected as a Republican member of the House of Representatives from Iowa.

Trivia: For millions of Americans, the prime-time situation comedy The Love Boat will be forever inseparable from the image of Ted Lange, an actor cast for nine seasons as the genial Isaac the Bartender on the Pacific Princess luxury liner and trademarked by his iconic "two-finger drop" greeting. Yet Lange's portrayal of Isaac scarcely hinted at the actor's dexterity or dramatic range. In truth, this actor received classical dramatic training at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and would go on, after the Princess took its final voyage in September 1986, to establish himself as a revered creative force in regional theater.Lange initially broke into films with many portrayals in Hollywood programmers during the early '70s, including Trick Baby (1972), Blade (1972), and Black Belt Jones (1974), and landed a regular role in the one-season ethnic sitcom That's My Mama (1974), as a streetwise philosopher opposite Clifton Davis (Amen) and Theresa Merritt. The Love Boat, of course, brought Lange his most widespread recognition; nonetheless (as indicated), he hearkened back to his theatrical roots beginning in the late '80s and divided his time between writing, directing, and stage acting roles. His resumé as a scribe sports at least 17 original plays including Lemon Meringue Facade, Behind the Mask -- An Evening with Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Evil Legacy -- The Story of Lucretia Borgia, while he has appeared dramatically in productions including Hair and Taming of the Shrew and has directed plays ranging from Othello to the rock & roll musical Born a Unicorn.

Trivia: The son of a Dallas wholesale coal dealer, American actor James Noble spent much of his youth attending pool halls and movie houses. Noble retained his expertise with a pool cue throughout his life, while his stronger interest in acting (fueled by movies) manifested itself in local stage productions and drama studies at Southern Methodist University. Following Navy service in World War II, Noble went to New York to study at the Actors Studio, then went on to a stage revival of Pygmalion wherein he met his future wife, actress Carolyn Coates. The actor appeared on such TV soap operas as As the World Turns, The Doctors, A World Apart and such Broadway productions as 1776, spending much of his spare time in psychotherapy to handle his ongoing feelings of self-doubt. In films from the mid '70s, Noble principally played small roles as authority figures and politicians (Being There, The Nude Bomb), with occasional larger roles such as Bo Derek's father in 10 (1978). In 1981 Noble was cast as the genially absent-minded Governor Gene Gatling on the Robert Guillaume sitcom Benson, a role in which he remained until the series' 1986 cancellation. Two years later, James Noble resurfaced on TV in the role of a Nebraska-based recording engineer on the very short-lived situation comedy First Impressions. Noble continued to act, sticking to mostly guest roles on shows like Perfect Strangers and Law & Order, through the 1990s, and then appeared only sporadically onscreen in the next decade, though he kept up his stage work during that time. Noble died in 2016, at age 94.

Trivia: Born in England, Alan Young was raised in Canada, where his precocious talents won him work on network radio while he was still a teenager. Already quite popular in his adopted country, Young was given an ABC network radio program in the States in 1944, which confined his wide-ranging talent for music and mimicry in a standard sitcom format. Still youthful looking enough to pass for a high school kid, Young's screen debut was in the teen romance Margie (1946), which led to several years of collegiate roles (he was a college senior in Mr. Belvedere Goes to College, even though he was 30 at the time). In 1950, the actor headlined a comedy-variety TV series, CBS' The Alan Young Show, which spotlighted his pantomime skills; unfortunately, the series degenerated into yet another situation comedy when it returned to CBS in 1953 after an 11-month hiatus. In the mid-'50s, Young was offered the lead in a comedy series about a talking horse, but turned it down cold; after several years of relative inactivity, Young was more responsive to the offer, and in 1961 began a five-year run on Mister Ed as the horse's bemused master, Wilbur Post. Upon Ed's cancellation in 1965, Young turned his back on show business to devote himself to the Christian Science movement. By 1980, the actor and the Movement had come to a parting of the ways, and he was free to accept performing work again. Very little happened until Young was hired to provide the voice of Scrooge McDuck in the 1983 Disney cartoon short Mickey's Christmas Carol. He did so well with this assignment that he became the permanent voice of Scrooge in the TV cartoon series Duck Tales, which ran from 1987 through 1990 and yielded 100 episodes. In 1988, Alan Young could be seen as well as heard in Coming of Age, a CBS sitcom set in an Arizona retirement community -- the closest Young ever come to true and full retirement. He continued to voice Scrooge McDuck in various Disney shows and video games until the end of his life. Young died in 2016, at age 96.

Trivia: Philadelphia-born actress Holland Taylor majored in drama at Bennington College, and arrived in New York in 1966, hoping to take the theater world by storm. That didn't quite happen, despite Taylor making her Broadway debut in The Devils, starring Anne Bancroft, and working with Alan Bates in Butley (she was also in that notorious failure, Moose Murders). A protégée of legendary acting teacher Stella Adler, Taylor endured 14 years of disappointments interspersed with the occasional success, and played in one heavily hyped television series (CBS's Beacon Hill) that failed in less than a season, all of it broken up by work in the daytime drama The Edge of Night. Finally, in 1980, lightning struck when Taylor was cast in the series Bosom Buddies in the role of Ruth Dunbar, the acid-tongued advertising agency executive employing the two protagonists of the program, played by Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari. Taylor accepted the part despite some initial reluctance, mostly thanks to Adler's urging, but she proved almost as much of a breakout personality onscreen as Hanks and Scolari. Taylor took lines written with venom and added her own wry twists to their meanings and inflections, and made all of her scenes memorable. The series only lasted two full seasons, but when it folded, Taylor was being offered television and movie roles on a steady basis. Most of her subsequent series didn't last more than a season each, but Taylor's parts, usually as charmingly acerbic middle-aged women, stayed big and got larger, up through programs such as The Naked Truth, starring Téa Leoni. Taylor's big-screen appearances have included supporting roles in such diverse films as The Truman Show, Spy Kids 2, Legally Blonde, George of the Jungle, Romancing the Stone, The Jewel of the Nile, How to Make an American Quilt, Fame, She's Having a Baby, and To Die For. She's also had some choice parts in made-for-television movies, including playing Nancy Reagan in The Day Reagan Was Shot, but Taylor's most successful medium remains the television series. In recent years, she has proved a mainstay of producer David E. Kelley's stable of actors, taking on the recurring role of Judge Roberta Kittleson, a Boston jurist whose sex-drive is a match for her legal intellect, in the series The Practice (with a cross-over appearance in the same role on Ally McBeal), winning an Emmy for her work on the show's 1999 season. That series, which has included an episode featuring Taylor in a semi-nude scene, has not only given the middle-aged actress a chance to explore sides of her screen persona that other producers never even considered, but has transformed her into a sex symbol among the ranks of mature actresses, right up there with Kathleen Turner as Mrs. Robinson in the stage version of The Graduate.As the new century began she continued to work steadily in both movies and TV in projects such as Happy Accidents, playing the first-lady in The Day Reagan Was Shot, Legally Blonde, and Spy Kids 2. She returned to series television with a recurring role on Two and a Half Men, which was the most-watched sitcom on TV during part of its successful run. She also appeared in the big screen comedy Baby Mama.

Trivia: Whitman College graduate Adam West began getting his first acting breaks in 1959. That was the year that West, newly signed to a Warner Bros. contract, was cast in the small but pivotal role of Diane Brewster's impotent husband in The Young Philadelphians. After two years' worth of guest-star assignments in Warners' TV product (he was hung by his heels and humiliated by James Garner in a memorable Maverick episode), West accepted the role of Sergeant Steve Nelson on the weekly TVer Robert Taylor's Detectives. In 1962, the series was cancelled, compelling West to free-lance in such films as Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964, as the astronaut who doesn't make it back) and Island of the Blue Dolphins (1964). In 1965, he landed his biggest and best role to date: Millionaire Bruce Wayne, aka the "Caped Crusader", on the smash TV series Batman. Approaching the role with the seriousness and sobriety usually afforded MacBeth or Hamlet, West struck the happy medium between "camp" and conviction. Though in recent years West has apparently basked in the adulation he has received for his two-year stint as Batman, at the time the series was cancelled in 1968, he vowed to distance himself as far from the character as possible, accepting villainous TV and film roles and even fitfully pursuing a singing career. His movie projects ranged from sublime (Marriage of a Young Stockbroker, Hooper) to ridiculous (The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington); no matter what the role, however, West's performance was invariably compared to his Batman work. Finally adopting an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" stance, West began making appearances at nostalgia conventions, supplied his vocal talents to the 1977 animated series The New Adventures of Batman, and publicly expressed disappointment that he was not offered a cameo role in the 1989 big-screen blockbuster Batman (he did however, provide a voice-over for the 1992 Fox TV series Batman: The New Adventures, not as Batman but as a washed-up superhero called the Gray Ghost). Adam West's most recent TV projects have included the weekly series The Last Precinct (1986) and Danger Theatre (1993); he also served as a spokesperson for the Nickelodeon cable network, a service specializing in nostalgia-inducing reruns.He continued to work steadily, often trading in on his own history as a caped crusader. He appeared in the comedy The New Age and Drop Dead Gorgeous. At the dawn of the 21st century he took a regular gig voicing the role of Mayor Adam West on the animated series The Family Guy., a gig that led to more animated work in projects such as Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons. He spoofed his superhero history yet again in 2008's Super Capers and appeared as himself on an episode of The Big Bang Theory. West died in 2017, at age 88.

Trivia: A scion of one of the most powerful television families in Hollywood and a repeatedly maligned starlet, Tori Spelling spent years in television purgatory before finally getting respect for her acting in films such as The House of Yes and Trick. Weathering assorted rumors and attacks on her acting and appearance, Spelling has proven that, while nepotism may provide a convenient entrance into Hollywood, endurance and a sense of humor are necessities for long-term survival.Born Victoria Davey Spelling on May 16, 1973, Spelling made her Hollywood debut in 1989, first with a small role in (appropriately enough) Troop Beverly Hills and then on the TV sitcom Saved by the Bell. In 1990, Spelling was cast in the role that would make her famous, that of Donna on Beverly Hills 90210. With fame came the widespread speculation the Spelling was hired because of her father's position as producer of the show, although Aaron Spelling claimed this was not the case. Whether truth or fiction, the allegations kicked off a series of unfavorable comments made about Spelling over the next few years, comments that were hardly made better by the dubious television programs in which she was repeatedly cast.1997 marked a change in direction for Spelling's career. With 90210 in decline, she started acting in films, appearing in the small but well-respected The House of Yes and in Scream 2, in which she poked fun at her image with her appearance as herself. A further sign that she was gaining positive attention was her casting in Trick (1999), a critically acclaimed film that took a lighthearted and unconventional look at gay love and lust in the 1990s. With Sundance credibility firmly in hand, Spelling finally appeared ready to move forward and leave her image as a 90210 casualty behind her. Unfortunately that was easier said than done, and after failing to find her footing in film and television in the early 2000s, Spelling reprised her most famous role not once but twice -- first in Seth MacFarlane's straight-to-video feature Family Guy Presents Stewis Griffin: The Untold Story, and later in the flesh when 90210 was resurrected in 2008. Her greatest success outside of that famous zipcode, however, would come when she and husband Dean McDermott became the subjects of their own reality television show in 2007. Cleverly titled Tori and Dean: Inn Love, the series followed the photogenic couple as they became the owners and operators of their very own California bed and breakfast while starting a family as the entire world looked on.