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: Pennsylvania-born actress Lauren Tewes achieved broadest recognition for her stint as Cruise Director Julie McCoy on the long-running ABC situation comedy The Love Boat. Unfortunately, Tewes (unlike many of her fellow cast members) left the program prior to the final voyage of the Pacific Princess -- reportedly spiraling into a much-publicized bout of severe cocaine addiction from which she eventually fully recovered, but which cost her the role on the series. Tewes nevertheless demonstrated admirable resilience by returning for at least two Love Boat telemovies and remained active in television and film. Subsequent projects included guest appearances on the small-screen series dramas Hunter and Murder, She Wrote, and roles in features such as The Doom Generation (1995) and It Came From Outer Space 2 (1996).

Trivia: The daughter of a Christian Science lecturer, Carol Channing endured the rigors of Bennington College for one year before dropping out to try her luck as an actress in New York. Channing made her first Broadway appearance in 1941's Never Take No for an Answer; two years later, she understudied Eve Arden in the musical hit Let's Face It. Developing her own inimitable personality -- the wide-eyed, raspy-voice soubrette who is neither as dumb nor as crazy as she seems -- she scored her first hit in the 1948 revue Lend an Ear, which won the New York Drama Critics Award. In 1949, she starred as Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, introducing the immortal golddigger's anthem "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend." She lost the Lorelei Lee role to Marilyn Monroe in the 1952 film version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and not without some justification: Like Bert Lahr, Fanny Brice, and other larger-than-life Broadway luminaries, Channing was simply too overpowering for the more intimate medium of film. Proof that her million-watt personality was best suited to the stage can be found in her one starring film, the unsuccessful The First Traveling Saleslady (1956). Though she remained an audience favorite in nightclub and review appearances throughout the 1950s and early '60s -- at one point, she was teamed with George Burns -- Channing would not find a Broadway vehicle to match the success of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes until 1963, when she was cast as Dolly Gallegher Levi in the blockbuster musical Hello, Dolly!. She won a Tony Award for her work in this production, repeating the role in periodic revivals and eventually toting up over 1,400 performances. Again, however, she was denied the opportunity to repeat her stage role onscreen; it was a young Barbra Streisand who starred in the 1970 film version of Hello, Dolly!. Channing was awarded an Emmy for the 1966 TV special An Evening With Carol Channing, and an Oscar nomination for her supporting performance in Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967). After co-starring in the Otto Preminger disappointment Skidoo (1969), Channing confined her big-screen activities to cartoon voice-over work (Shinbone Alley, Happily Ever After, and Thumbelina); she has also supplied voices for the animated TV series Where's Waldo?, The Addams Family, and The Magic School Bus. In 1995, Carol Channing was honored at the Tony Awards presentations with a lifetime achievement award. Channing would particupate in documentaries about Broadway and her life, like Carol Channing: Larger Than Life.

Trivia: Actress Betty White got her start in local Los Angeles television as the "telephone girl" for video emcee Al Jarvis. By early 1950 she was one of the stars of the daily, five-hour series Hollywood on Television. One of the highlights of this program was a husband and wife sketch titled "Life With Elizabeth," which when committed to film and syndicated nationally in 1953 became White's first starring TV sitcom. She went on to headline her own network variety series in 1954, then co-starred with Bill Williams in the weekly TV domestic comedy Date With the Angels (1957), which without Williams was retitled The Betty White Show in early 1958. For the next 15 years she made guest appearances on various variety and quiz show efforts, and toured the straw-hat theatrical circuit in such plays as Critics Choice and Who Was That Lady, often appearing opposite her husband, TV personality Allen Ludden. Two years after hosting the 1971 syndicated informational series The Pet Set, she guest-starred as libidinous "Happy Homemaker" Sue Ann Nivens on the fourth season opener of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. This Emmy-winning episode led to White being cast as an MTM regular; she remained with the series until its final episode in 1977. She then starred on her own short-lived sitcom (again titled The Betty White Show) before returning to the guest-star circuit. In 1985, she joined the cast of TV's The Golden Girls as middle-aged grief counselor Rose Nyland. This top-rated program lasted seven seasons before metamorphosing into the rather less successful Golden Palace (1992). White was a regular on the 1995 series Maybe This Time, and in 1997 she won an Emmy for her one-shot appearance on The John Laroquette Show. She was in the films Hard Rain and The Story of Us, as well as Lake Placid. In 2003 she was cast in Bringing Down the House, and in 2008 provided a voice for the American version of Ponyo. White developed a new generation in fans when she became the subject of a successful online campaign to get her to host Saturday Night Live - which she did in 2010, along with winning the SAG award for Life time Achievement. The year before, she had a part in the hit Sandra Bullock vehicle The Proposal. She also became the star of year another successful TV show when she was cast in the female-centric sitcom Hot in Cleveland. She lent her voice to the 2012 adaptation of The Lorax.

Trivia: Peter Marshall has been best-known, since the mid-'60s, as the popular host of The Hollywood Squares game show for 15 years. Audience members are, thus, surprised when they learn that Marshall was a legitimate actor for more than 15 years before he ever set foot on the set of The Hollywood Squares and came from a family that counts several well-known figures among its members. Born Pierre LaCock (or la Cocque) in 1927 in Huntington, WV, he was the son of a pharmacist and the younger brother of Joanne la Cocque, who moved from being a successful model to a movie star in the 1940s and 1950s under the name Joanne Dru. He began singing in big bands as a teenager during the 1940s, then took a job as a page at NBC, and moved through different varieties of employment before finding himself broke and in Los Angeles in 1949. He hooked up with a slightly older contemporary, Tommy Noonan, in a comedy duo called Noonan & Marshall; the duo made several appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show and got cast in a handful of films at the outset of the 1950s. Marshall's obvious talent for comedy was augmented by his good looks and he had a sporadically successful, busy career over the next 15 years as an actor, working in a variety of stage and film vehicles, among them a London production of Bye Bye Birdie and the abortive Warner Bros. sequel to Mister Roberts, Ensign Pulver. Perhaps his best performance was as the young officer trapped underground with a group of allied and enemy troops in Edgar G. Ulmer's World War II drama The Cavern. That film, made in 1965, was the last screen performance that Marshall was able to give as an anonymous working actor. In 1966, NBC and the sponsors were looking for a host for a new program called The Hollywood Squares, in which well-known actors and comedians were invited to give comical (and often comically wrong answers) to leading, sometimes double-entendre questions. Somebody at the network noticed Marshall's photograph on top of a pile of publicity materials, liked what they saw and the fact that he'd acted and had also done comedy, and called him in. Starting in October 1966, and lasting until 1981, he was the host of the extraordinarily popular program, which became a kind of pop culture fixture for decades. He ceased his career as a working actor, although he did co-write the screenplay for (and appear in) Maury Dexter's notorious 1968 anti-marijuana drama Maryjane, starring an overage Fabian. He also hosted a syndicated variety show during the 1970s and was a frequent guest as a host, singer, or dancer, on programs like The People's Choice Awards. Since The Hollywood Squares, he has appeared onscreen (usually as a game show host) and done comedy in films such as Annie, and poked fun at his own image on the Fox network comedy series In Living Color. He also has a recording career, and starred in HMS Pinafore with the London Symphony Orchestra. Marshall remains busy in his seventies and his son, Pete LaCock, is a well-known major league baseball player.

Trivia: Lead actress, onscreen from 1977.

Trivia: Lead actor Grant Goodeve first appeared onscreen in the '70s.

Trivia: Though she was best known as a young TV star, Angela Cartwright also appeared in perennial movie musical favorite The Sound of Music (1965). Born in England, Cartwright's family moved to Los Angeles when she was three. Cartwright soon made her film debut, at the ripe old age of three and a half, in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956). Cast in 1957 as stepdaughter Linda on Danny Thomas' TV hit Make Room for Daddy, retitled The Danny Thomas Show, Cartwright stayed with the series until it ended in 1964. It was Cartwright's two mid-'60s credits, though, that captured the most devoted fans. As The Sound of Music's pretty Brigitta Von Trapp, Cartwright became one of the seven children taught to sing and love life by buoyant nun/stepmother Julie Andrews. With its Rodgers & Hammerstein songs and unbridled sentiment, The Sound of Music broke box office records, becoming a beloved classic. Cartwright then joined the cast of Irwin Allen's low-tech TV series Lost in Space as young teen daughter Penny Robinson. Though the show only ran from 1965 to 1968, Lost in Space attracted a durable cult following; Cartwright had a cameo in the 1998 film version. After Lost in Space ended, Cartwright made sporadic appearances in films and TV in the subsequent decades, including Irwin Allen's disaster flick sequel Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979). Married since 1976, Cartwright has two children and made a career outside of acting as a photographer, writer, and boutique owner. Her older sister is actress Veronica Cartwright.

Trivia: Raised on a ranch near the Arizona border, American actress Lurene Tuttle took acting lessons in Phoenix while still a child. Feisty and naturally funny, she found work with Murphy's Comedians, a vaudeville troupe, then played traditional ingenues in a San Antonio stock company. Though she never appeared on Broadway, Tuttle was a busy stage actress throughout the '20s and '30s. When stock work dried up in the Depression, Ms. Tuttle entered radio, where she became one the busiest actresses in the business, playing everything from sugary high schoolers to hardbitten gun molls. Many of her fans feel that her best radio work was as Effie Perrine, the effusive and efficient secretary on The Adventures of Sam Spade, in which Howard Duff played private eye Spade. Concentrating on films and television as big-time radio faded, Tuttle played small character parts in several movies and was a regular on the TV sitcoms Life with Father, Father of the Bride and Julia. One of the actress' final performances was in the post-apocalyptic film drama Testament (1983), in which she was reunited with Leon Ames, her Life with Father and Father of the Bride costar. In private life, Lurene Tuttle was the wife of radio actor/announcer Mel Ruick, and the mother of musical comedy actress Barbara Ruick.