Trivia: Prior to his first TV appearance on a 1961 episode of Dobie Gillis, Bill Bixby had been a college student (he dropped out of UC Berkeley in his senior year), a lifeguard, a male model, and a regional stock-company actor. Bixby went on to play small roles in films like Lonely Are the Brave and Irma La Douce, and was featured in the Broadway comedy Under the Yum Yum Tree. In 1963, he graduated to TV stardom with the role of Tim O'Hara on the popular sci-fi sitcom My Favorite Martian. Anxious to change his "wholesome" image after Martian ended its three-year run in 1966, Bixby accepted a small but flashy role as a cowardly villain in the big-screen Western Ride Beyond Vengeance (1966). Like it or not, however, Bixby's future lay in sympathetic parts on episodic television. In each of his subsequent starring series -- The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969-1972), The Magician (1973), The Incredible Hulk (1978-1982), True Confessions (1984), and Goodnight Beantown (1983) -- Bixby frequently did double-duty as actor and director. He also directed such made-for-TV movies as Barbary Coast (1974), Another Pair of Aces: Three of a Kind (1991), and the Roseanne/Tom Arnold vehicle The Woman Who Loved Elvis (1993). Long one of Hollywood's most eligible bachelors, Bixby finally took the marital plunge with actress Brenda Benet; the union ended tragically when Benet, distraught over the death of her son, Christopher, committed suicide. Bixby's second wife was Judith Kliban, daughter of magazine cartoonist B. Kliban. At the time of his death from prostate cancer, Bill Bixby was principal director of the TV series Blossom.

Trivia: Straight out of Dartmouth College, Alan Hewitt made his Broadway bow in the 1935 Lunt/Fontanne production of Taming of the Shrew (which featured another newcomer, Cameron Mitchell). The wiry, sneering-voiced Hewitt appeared in several Theatre Guild productions of the 1930s and 1940s and later supported Ethel Merman in the 1950 musical Call Me Madam. He also served for many years as an official of the Actor's Union Council. During the 1960s, Hewitt became one of the Disney Studios' favorite actors, playing stereotypical self-important officials in such comedies as The Absent-Minded Professor (1960), Son of Flubber (1963) and The Misadventures of Merlin Jones (1967). Fans of 1960s sitcoms will remember Alan Hewitt as the ever-suspicious detective Bill Brennan on My Favorite Martian.

Trivia: Supporting actor Gilbert Green first appeared onscreen in the '60s.

Trivia: American actor Jamie Farr was the only son of a Lebanese butcher living in Toledo, Ohio. An easy target for bullies due to his short stature and large nose, Farr became the neighborhood clown to save himself from physical abuse. Humor gave him confidence, and by the time Farr graduated from high school he was a top student, extremely popular and active in numerous extra-curricular activities. Always a big movie fan, Farr harbored dreams of being an actor, and to that end studied at the Pasadena Playhouse. In 1955, Farr was cast in his first film (still billed under his own name, Jameel Farrah), The Blackboard Jungle, playing a redeemable hoodlum named Santini; shortly thereafter, he was cast in the Broadway production of No Time for Sergeants, just before he was drafted. The two years in the Army upset the momentum of Farr's career, and he found himself from 1958 through 1971 rebuilding himself from the ground up in bits and supporting roles. (Farr was not in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians during this period, as has often been reported; the cast of that turkey included a Broadway actor named Al Nesor, who bore a startling resemblance to Farr and played many of the same type roles). One of Farr's one-day bits was for the sixth episode of the new TV series M*A*S*H in 1972; Farr had the almost wordless role of a GI who dressed in women's clothing in hopes of getting out of the Army. The character of "Corporal Klinger" was meant to be a onetime joke, but the producers of M*A*S*H sensed possibilities in the character. By Season Two of M*A*S*H, Farr became a full supporting character; by Season Three he was being given co-starring billing in the series' opening credits sequence. After misguidingly "camping" the character in the earliest rehearsals, Farr played Klinger "straight" in every sense of the word: Neither gay nor transvestite, Klinger was simply a guy who'd go to great extremes to get out of military service. Gradually the character began to become fashion conscious, and before the eighties were over Klinger was making several fashion lists as one of the best-dressed characters on TV! Farr's role was expanded when Gary Burghoff left M*A*S*H in 1979; promoted to company clerk, Klinger began to thrive in the military, and the outrageous costuming was allowed to lapse. By the time M*A*S*H left the air, Klinger had taken a Korean wife, and Jamie Farr had become a true-blue celebrity. Unfortunately neither Farr nor Klinger were able to extend their audience appeal into the sequel series After M*A*S*H, not even when the scripts contrived to have Klinger become a fugitive from justice in a move to repeat his "outsider" status on M*A*S*H. Nonetheless, Jamie Farr has kept busy in the years following the cancellation of After M*A*S*H in 1984 with TV guest spots and stage appearances in such roles as Ali Hakim in Oklahoma and Evil Eye Fleegle in Li'l Abner. Farr would continue to appear regularly on screen in the years to come, appearing in movies like Scrooged, and on TV shows like Diagnosis Murder and Mad About You.