Trivia: Born in a multicultural New York City neighborhood, comedian Don Adams joined the Marines upon the outbreak of World War II. After Guadalcanal, Adams saw little action due to a life-threatening bout of blackwater fever (malaria) that kept him out of commission until the end of the war. As a civilian, Adams tried at first to carve out a career as a professional artist, taking outside jobs to support himself and his family. Blessed with a gift for mimicry, Adams and a friend teamed up for a comedy act but response was minimal, and soon Adams was involved in the cartographic and engineering business. Then in 1954, on a whim, he auditioned for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts; his routine went over, and he was on his way. Collaborating with his close friend Bill Dana, Adams developed a topnotch act full of "inside" showbiz references that fortunately never went over the heads of the audience. His best monologue was "The Defense Attorney," wherein Adams adopted the clipped speech cadence of actor William Powell. Though he would be seen in a variety of sketches during his nightclub years and his early-1960s stint as a regular on The Perry Como Show, it was the Powell imitation that scored highest. Adams would use this voice for the cartoon character of Tennessee Tuxedo in 1963, and that same year expanded on the impression in the role of inept house detective Byron Glick on The Bill Dana Show. The "spy cycle" of 1965 enabled Adams to refine the Byron Glick character into the magnificently self-confident but monumentally inept secret-agent Maxwell Smart on the hit TV sitcom Get Smart, which ran until 1970. In addition to providing Adams a conduit for his beloved movie parodies, the series also gave him an opportunity to direct. In 1971, Adams moved onto another genre-spoof TV series, The Partners, in which he played police detective Lennie Crook. Hampered by weak scripts and a death-valley timeslot opposite All in the Family, The Partners perished after thirteen weeks. After this debacle, Adams found the going rough for a while, though he made a comfortable living with nightclub appearances and guest spots on such TV series as The Love Boat. He made no fewer than three attempts to revive Get Smart between 1980 and 1994, one of which actually resulted in a (very short-lived) weekly Fox network sitcom. Adams is best known to children of the 1980s as the voice of cartoondom's bionic blockhead, Inspector Gadget. Don Adams was the brother of another comic actor, the late Richard Yarmy; Adams' cousin Robert Karvelas played secret agent Larrabee on Get Smart.

Trivia: American actress Barbara Feldon claimed to be a lonely child, one whose escape from loneliness took the form of books and ballet. While studying drama at Carnegie Tech, she became an expert in Shakespeare, and in this capacity made her TV debut as a contestant on The $64,000 Question (kinescopes exist of this appearance; Barbara is instantly recognizable, though she hasn't quite lost all her baby fat). Feldon worked as a chorus girl in New York, then slimmed down considerably and became a high-priced fashion model. Commercials followed, in which Feldon pitched deodorant pads and--most famously--men's cologne. Few males who were going through adolescence in the early '60s will forget Feldon pitching Top Brass cologne to the "tigers" in the audience, staring into the camera with almost unbearable sultriness (the actress insisted that her come-hither glare was a result of nearsightedness). After doing the guest-star round on several TV dramatic programs, Feldon won the role of statuesque Agent 99 on the spy sitcom Get Smart. Part of the fun on this program was watching Feldon try to avoid revealing that she was a few inches taller than co-star Don Adams (in some scenes he was standing on an incline, as proven when the Nickelodeon cable network put together a montage of "who's taller?" scenes from Get Smart in the early '90s). Get Smart ran from 1965 through 1970, but Feldon has occasionally re-created Agent 99, once in a Smart TV-movie reunion, and more recently in a "return" series for the Fox Network, again starring with Don Adams. Feldon's film career has been less remarkable, save for her brilliant interpretation of a near-fanatic beauty contest organizer in the 1975 satirical comedy Smile. In the last few years, Barbara Feldon has distinguished herself as an expert voiceover artist in commercials and TV specials; she can be heard as the narrator of the PBS series Dinosaurs.

Trivia: American character actor Edward Platt is best remembered as the eternally exasperated Chief on the Get Smart series. Before making his screen debut in the mid-'50s, he worked as a singer for a band. In feature films, he was typically cast as generals and bosses.

Trivia: American actress Julie Newmar's father was a college instructor and her mother was a former Ziegfeld dancer. This odd mix may explain why Julie complemented her dancing and acting career with offscreen intellectual pursuits. A lifelong student of ballet, Newmar was accepted as a dancer by the Los Angeles Opera Comany at age 15, and before her UCLA enrollment was under way she'd left college to try her luck in films. A stint as a gold-painted exotic dancer in Serpent of the Nile (1954) was usually conveniently ignored by Newmar's biographers, who preferred to list Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) as her screen debut. From here it was on to Broadway for a featured dance in the musical Can-Can, then to the sizable but nonspeaking role of Stupefyin' Jones in Li'l Abner. It was for Newmar's performance as a Swedish sexpot in the genteel farce The Marriage-Go-Round that the actress attained true stardom - and also won a Tony Award. Recreating her stage roles for the film versions of Li'l Abner (1959) and Marriage-Go-Round (1961), Newmar spent the next few years dividing her time between stage work and TV guest spots (she played the Devil in the 1963 "Twilight Zone" episode "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville"). In 1964, Newmar was cast as a beautiful robot on the TV sitcom "My Living Doll," a series that languished opposite "Bonanza" and barely got through the season. According to Newmar, she accepted her best-remembered TV role, that of Catwoman on the weekly series Batman on the advice of her brother, a Harvard fellow in Physics who, along with his classmates, was a rabid Batman fan. Newmar played Catwoman for two seasons, but contractual committments kept her from appearing in the 1966 feature film version of Batman, wherein her role was taken over by Lee Meriwether. For diverse reasons, Newmar wasn't back as Catwoman for the final "Batman" season, so Eartha Kitt essayed the role. Newmar's film career peaked with MacKenna's Gold (1968) and The Maltese Bippy (1969), after which she was consigned to such deathless projects as Hysterical (1983), Nudity Required (1990) and Ghosts Can't Do It (1991). In 1995 she returned to the big screen playing herself in the cross-dressing comedy To Wong Foo, Thanks for everything, Julie Newmar. In the mid 1980s, Julie Newmar began making the personal-appearance rounds thanks to the publicity attending the 20th anniversary of the "Batman" series, and in 1992 Julie was again an interview subject as a byproduct of Michelle Pfeiffer's unforgettable Catwoman stint in the 1992 feature film Batman Returns.

Trivia: Born in Utah, actor Leonard Strong specialized in Asian roles. From Little Tokyo, U.S.A. (1942) to the end of WWII, Strong trafficked in villainous "Jap" stereotypes, never speaking when hissing would do. One of his best-remembered postwar film roles was the obsequious Siamese interpreter in both Anna and the King of Siam (1946) and its musical remake The King and I (1956). A busy TV performer, Leonard Strong was seen from time to time as the Dr. No-like enemy agent the Claw ("No, not 'Craw!'") on the satirical sitcom Get Smart (1965-1970).