Trivia: Born in Missouri, entertainer Dick Van Dyke was raised in Danville, Illinois, where repeated viewings of Laurel & Hardy comedies at his local movie palace inspired him to go into show business. Active in high school and community plays in his teens, Van Dyke briefly put his theatrical aspirations aside upon reaching college age. He toyed with the idea of becoming a Presbyterian minister; then, after serving in the Air Force during World War II, opened up a Danville advertising agency. When this venture failed, it was back to show biz, first as a radio announcer for local station WDAN, and later as half of a record-pantomime act called The Merry Mutes (the other half was a fellow named Philip Erickson). While hosting a TV morning show in New Orleans, Van Dyke was signed to a contract by the CBS network. He spent most of his time subbing for other CBS personalities and emceeing such forgotten endeavors as Cartoon Theatre. After making his acting debut as a hayseed baseball player on The Phil Silvers Show, Van Dyke left CBS to free-lance. He hosted a few TV game shows before his career breakthrough as co-star of the 1959 Broadway review The Girls Against the Boys. The following year, he starred in the musical comedy Bye Bye Birdie, winning a Tony Award for his portrayal of mother-dominated songwriter Albert Peterson (it would be his last Broadway show until the short-lived 1980 revival of The Music Man). In 1961, he was cast as comedy writer Rob Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show, which after a shaky start lasted five seasons and earned its star three Emmies.He made his movie bow in the 1963 filmization of Bye Bye Birdie, then entered into a flexible arrangement with Walt Disney Studios. His best known films from that era include Mary Poppins (1964), Lt. Robin Crusoe, USN and The Comic, in which he played an amalgam of several self-destructive silent movie comedians. His TV specials remained popular in the ratings, and it was this fact that led to the debut of The New Dick Van Dyke Show in 1971. Despite the creative input of the earlier Dick Van Dyke Show's maven Carl Reiner, the later series never caught on, and petered out after three seasons. A chronic "people pleaser," Van Dyke was loath to display anger or frustration around his co-workers or fans, so he began taking solace in liquor; by 1972, he had become a full-fledged alcoholic. Rather than lie to his admirers or himself any longer, he underwent treatment and publicly admitted his alcoholism -- one of the first major TV stars ever to do so. Van Dyke's public confession did little to hurt his "nice guy" public image, and, now fully and permanently sober, he continued to be sought out for guest-star assignments and talk shows. In 1974, he starred in the TV movie The Morning After, playing an ad executive who destroys his reputation, his marriage and his life thanks to booze. After that Van Dyke, further proved his versatility when he began accepting villainous roles, ranging from a cold-blooded wife murderer in a 1975 Columbo episode to the corrupt district attorney in the 1990 film Dick Tracy. He also made several stabs at returning to weekly television, none of which panned out--until 1993, when he starred as Dr. Mark Sloan in the popular mystery series Diagnosis Murder. He made a few more movie appearances after Diagnosis Murder came to an end, most notably as a retired security guard in the hit family film Night at the Museum. As gifted at writing and illustrating as he is at singing, dancing and clowning, Van Dyke has penned two books, Faith, Hope and Hilarity and Those Funny Kids. From 1992 to 1994, he served as chairman of the Nickelodeon cable service, which was then sweeping the ratings by running Dick Van Dyke Show reruns in prime time. Van Dyke is the brother of award-winning TV personality Jerry Van Dyke, and the father of actor Barry Van Dyke.

Trivia: Born in Brooklyn, NY, on December 29, 1936, actress/dancer/rubberfaced comedienne Mary Tyler Moore went on to star in the definitive television comedies of both the 1960s and the 1970s: The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966) and The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977). For her performances as Laura Petrie and Mary Richards, Moore won five Emmy Awards, in 1965, 1966, 1973, 1974, and 1976.Moore got her start in television commercials, acting as Happy Hotpoint, the Hotpoint Appliance Elf during The Ozzie and Harriet Show in 1955. She then progressed to a stint as the disembodied voice and legs of Sam, the answering service lady, on Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1957-1960). Three unsuccessful shows and a series of TV specials followed her more notable series: Mary (1978), the Mary Tyler Moore Hour (1979), and Mary (1985-1986). Her dramatic career took off in 1981, when she was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of the repressed mother in Ordinary People. Moore had Broadway success with Whose Life Is It Anyway?, appeared in the highly acclaimed Finnegan, Begin Again with Robert Preston on HBO, and won a CableACE Award in 1993 for her performance as an evil orphanage director in Stolen Babies. In 1996, Moore gained the appreciation of a new generation of fans with her hilarious turn as Ben Stiller's neurotic mother in David O. Russell's Flirting With Disaster. She also experienced a sort of renaissance through her mention in other films, notably Douglas Keeve's 1995 frockumentary Unzipped, which featured a beatific Isaac Mizrahi extolling the virtues of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and singing its theme song. In addition to her television and film work, Moore, as a well-known diabetic, has been a longtime representative of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. And though her film and television roles would become more sporadic moving into the new millennium, Moore could still be seen in the occasional theatrical release (Cheats, Against the Current) or made-for-television movie (Miss Lettie and Me, Snow Wonder) while making guest appearances in such popular sitcoms as That 70's Show and Hot in Cleveland. Moore died in 2017, at age 80.

Trivia: Sandy Kenyon's name won't be familiar to too many people, but his face will be instantly recognizable to filmgoers and television viewers for the hundreds of roles that he has played -- cops and criminals, cowboys and government officials, and just about everything else that television or movies have had to offer since the late 1950s. Born in New York City on August 5, 1922, Kenyon served in the United States Army Air Force during World War II as a pilot, organizing shows in his spare time. He attended drama school on the G.I. Bill and formed the Town and Country Players with five friends in Hartford, CT, in 1946, performing eight seasons of summer stock work. His New York theater credits included Katherine Ann Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Sean O'Casey's Purple Dust, Ibsen's Peer Gynt, and Clifford Odets' Rocket to the Moon. Kenyon's screen career began in 1957 on television series such as Studio One, Kraft Playhouse, The Twilight Zone, Gunsmoke, and Have Gun, Will Travel. His movie debut took place in Al Capone (1959), in the role of Bones Corelli -- Kenyon's later screen credits have included roles in Nevada Smith (1966), Easy Come, Easy Go (1967), Something for a Lonely Man (1968), Rancho Deluxe (1975), and MacArthur (1977). He also got his first starring television role in 1958, working with Forrest Tucker in the adventure series Crunch and Des, based on the writings of Philip Wylie. In 1964, Kenyon made his Broadway debut as Pygmalion in Conversation at Midnight, which closed after only four performances. He is most familiar to audiences for his television work, which has included guest supporting roles on series ranging from All in the Family (as Dave the Cop in "Archie Is Worried About His Job") to Knots Landing; he was good at playing tough but fair-minded lunkheads, sleazy movie directors (Bracken's World), and single-minded public servants (Mod Squad). He has also done voice-over work in cartoons. The actor Sandy Kenyon is not to be confused with the entertainment correspondent of the same name.

Trivia: One of the most prolific of the "Who IS that?"school of character actors, Dabbs Greer has been playing small-town doctors, bankers, merchants, druggists, mayors and ministers since at least 1950. His purse-lipped countenance and Midwestern twang was equally effective in taciturn villainous roles. Essentially a bit player in films of the 1950s (Diplomatic Courier, Deadline USA, Living It Up), Greer was given more screen time than usual as a New York detective in House of Wax (1953), while his surface normality served as excellent contrast to the extraterrestrial goings-on in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and It! The Terror from Beyond Space. A television actor since the dawn of the cathode-tube era, Greer has shown up in hundreds of TV supporting roles, including the "origin" episode of the original Superman series, in which he played the dangling dirigible worker rescued in mid-air by the Man of Steel. Greer also played the recurring roles of storekeeper Mr. Jones on Gunsmoke (1955-60) and Reverend Robert Alden on Little House on the Prairie (1974-83). Showing no signs of slowing down, Dabbs Greer continued accepting roles in such films as Two Moon Junction (1988) and Pacific Heights (1990) into the '90s. He died following a battle with kidney and heart disease, on April 28, 2007, not quite a month after his 90th birthday.