Trivia: Former model Joan Hackett diligently studied acting under Lee Strasberg; proof that her diligence paid off was her critically acclaimed performance in the 1961 Broadway production Call Me By My Rightful Name. A versatile actress who successfully combined brains with beauty (not always the case with ingenues of the 1960s), Hackett made her film debut in 1966's The Group. Perhaps her best film performance was as the lonely frontier wife who is briefly attracted to drifter Charlton Heston in Will Penny (1968). Hackett's TV work included recurring roles on the dramatic weekly The Defenders in the early 1960s and the situation comedy Another Day in 1978. Ravaged by cancer in her last months, Hackett could take some small comfort in the knowledge that her penultimate movie appearance in Only When I Laugh (1981) had won her a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination. Joan Hackett was at one time the wife of actor Richard Mulligan.

Trivia: Kevin McCarthy and his older sister Mary Therese McCarthy both found careers in the entertainment industry, though in very different arenas -- Mary became a best-selling novelist, and Kevin became an actor after dabbling in student theatricals at the University of Minnesota. On Broadway from 1938 -- Kevin's first appearance was in Robert Sherwood's Abe Lincoln in Illinois -- McCarthy was critically hosannaed for his portrayal of Biff in the original 1948 production of Death of a Salesmen (who could tell that he was but three years younger than the actor playing his father, Lee J. Cobb?) In 1951, McCarthy re-created his Salesman role in the film version, launching a movie career that would thrive for four decades. The film assignment that won McCarthy the hearts of adolescent boys of all ages was his portrayal of Dr. Miles Bennell in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Bennell's losing battle against the invading pod people, and his climactic in-your-face warning "You're next!, " made so indelible an impression that it's surprising to discover that McCarthy's other sci-fi credits are relatively few. Reportedly, he resented the fact that Body Snatchers was the only film for which many viewers remembered him; if so, he has since come to terms with his discomfiture, to the extent of briefly reviving his "You're next!" admonition (he now screamed "They're here!" to passing motorists) in the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He has also shown up with regularity in the films of Body Snatchers aficionado Joe Dante, notably 1984's Twilight Zone: The Movie (McCarthy had earlier played the ageless title role in the 1959 Zone TV episode "Long Live Walter Jamieson") and 1993's Matinee, wherein an unbilled McCarthy appeared in the film-within-a-film Mant as General Ankrum (a tip of the cap to another Dante idol, horror-movie perennial Morris Ankrum). Kevin McCarthy would, of course, have had a healthy stage, screen and TV career without either Body Snatchers or Joe Dante; he continued showing up in films into the early 1990s, scored a personal theatrical triumph in the one-man show Give 'Em Hell, Harry!, and was starred in the TV series The Survivors (1969), Flamingo Road (1981), The Colbys (1983) and Bay City Blues (1984).

Trivia: American actor George Furth attended Northwestern University, a cradle of American acting talent. After getting his master's degree at Columbia, Furth sought out stage work: his first part was in the 1961 play A Cook for Mr. General. Most often cast in films as a bespectacled, nerdish, ineffectual type, Furth appeared in such films as The Best Man (1964) and Myra Breckenridge (1970). His most celebrated movie role was as Woodcock, the by-the-book railroad guard robbed twice by Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). On TV, Furth was seen regularly on Broadside, Tammy, The Good Guys and The Dumplings--situation comedies all. Broadway regulars will recognize the name George Furth less for his acting than for his considerable accomplishments as a playwright; in 1970, Furth wrote the book for Stephen Sondheim's Tony-winning musical Company.

Trivia: Actress Brenda Forbes had two film careers; the first as young leading and supporting lady during the '30s and '40s, and the second as an elderly character actress of the '80s and '90s. The London-born Forbes was the daughter of actress Mary Forbes. Her brother, Ralph Forbes, acted too. Forbes launched her own acting career shortly after she moved to Hollywood with her mother. The pretty teen made her debut on the Southern California stage. Forbes' early film credits include The Perfect Gentleman (1935) and The White Cliffs of Dover (1944). When film offers slowed, Forbes turned to the stage. She returned to sporadically appear in films in the mid-'80s. Credits from that period include a trio of television films in which she starred opposite Katharine Hepburn. Laura Lansing Slept Here (1988) is among that trilogy.