Trivia: Bandleader/actor Frank DeVol began his professional career in 1931. The son of a Canton, Ohio, orchestra leader, DeVol worked with several bands as vocalist and arranger before organizing his own aggregation in 1935. That same year, he went on tour with the George Olsen-Ethel Shutta musical troupe, receiving his first acting experience fielding one-liners from the stars. He went on to network radio, conducting orchestras for such stars as Ginny Simms and Jack Carson. In 1954, he began a long association with Hollywood director Robert Aldrich, writing scores for Aldrich films ranging from World for Ransom (1954) to Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) to All the Marbles (1981). He received an Academy Award nomination for his work on Aldrich's Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (1965), and was also Oscar-nominated for Michael Gordon's Pillow Talk (1959), Elliot Silverstein's Cat Ballou (1965) and Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (1965). On TV, where he was frequently billed simply as "DeVol," he was musical director for The Rosemary Clooney Show (1957), The Betty White Show (1958), George Gobel Show (1958), and The Dinaah Shore Chevy Show (1961-62); in addition, he penned the well-known theme music for the long-running comedy series My Three Sons. In 1960, writer/director David Swift, an old friend from the radio days, hired the bald, dry-witted DeVol to play the role of a hapless camp counselor in The Parent Trap (1961). Frank DeVol scored so well in this brief appearance that he would thereafter evenly divide his time between acting and music: he went on to portray Bannister the Builder in the 1963 TV sitcom I'm Dickens, He's Fenster, a half-baked movie executive in Jerry Lewis' theatrical feature The Big Mouth (1967), and dour bandleader "Happy Kyne" on Norman Lear's talk-show satires Fernwood 2Night (1977) and America 2-Night (1978).

Trivia: Intending to become a dentist like his father, American actor Edgar Buchanan wound up with grades so bad in college that he was compelled to take an "easy" course to improve his average. Buchanan chose a course in play interpretation, and after listening to a few recitations of Shakespeare he was stagestruck. After completing dental school, Buchanan plied his oral surgery skills in the summertime, devoting the fall, winter and spring months to acting in stock companies and at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. He was given a screen test by Warner Bros. studios in 1940, received several bit roles, then worked himself up to supporting parts upon transferring to Columbia Pictures. Though still comparatively youthful, Buchanan specialized in grizzled old westerners, with a propensity towards villainy or at least larceny. The actor worked at every major studio (and not a few minor ones) over the next few years, still holding onto his dentist's license just in case he needed something to fall back on. Though he preferred movie work to the hurried pace of TV filming, Buchanan was quite busy in television's first decade, costarring with William Boyd on the immensely popular Hopalong Cassidy series, then receiving a starring series of his own, Judge Roy Bean, in 1954. Buchanan became an international success in 1963 thanks to his regular role as the lovably lazy Uncle Joe Carson on the classic sitcom Petticoat Junction, which ran until 1970. After that, the actor experienced a considerably shorter run on the adventure series Cade's County, which starred Buchanan's close friend Glenn Ford. Buchanan's last movie role was in Benji (1974), which reunited him with the titular doggie star, who had first appeared as the family mutt on Petticoat Junction.

Trivia: Balding, long-necked character actor Frank Cady was a stage actor of long standing when he moved into films in 1947. He was usually cast as a quiet, unassuming small town professional man, most memorably as the long-suffering husband of the grief-stricken alcoholic Mrs. Daigle (Eileen Heckart) in The Bad Seed (1957). A busy television actor, he spent much of the 1950s on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet as Ozzie Nelson's neighbor Doc Willard. The "TV Generation" of the 1960s knows Cady best as philosophical storekeeper Sam Drucker on the bucolic sitcoms Petticoat Junction (1963-1970) and Green Acres (1965-1971). Whenever he wanted to briefly escape series television and recharge his theatrical batteries, Frank Cady appeared with the repertory company at the prestigious Mark Taper's Forum.