Trivia: Born Krekor Ohanian, American actor Mike Connors was born and raised in the heavily Armenian community of Fresno, California. He studied law at UCLA, but distinguished himself in sports (he'd gotten in on a basketball scholarship). While in the Air Force, Connors switched his career goals to acting on the advice of producer/director William Wellman, who'd remembered Connors' college athletic activities. Hollywood changed young Mr. Ohanian's last name to Connors, and since this was the era of "Rocks" and "Tabs" it was decided that the actor needed a suitably rugged first name. So Connors spent his first few acting years as Touch Connors, a nickname he'd gotten while playing college football. His first picture was the Joan Crawford vehicle Sudden Fear (1952) but handsome hunks were a glut on the market in the early '50s, so Connors found himself in "B" pictures, mostly at bargain-basement American International studios. Renaming himself "Mike," Connors was able to secure the lead role as an undercover agent on the 1959 detective series Tightrope. The series was a hit but was dropped from the network due to complaints about excessive violence, though it cleaned up in syndication for years afterward. After a few strong but non-starring roles in such films as Good Neighbor Sam (1963) and Where Love Has Gone (1964), Connors landed the title role in Mannix (1967), a weekly TV actioner about a trouble-prone private eye. For the next eight high-rated seasons, Connors' Joe Mannix was beaten up, shot at, cold-cocked and nearly run over in those ubiquitous underground parking lots each and every week. The series ran in over 70 foreign countries, allowing Connors a generous chunk of profits percentages in addition to his lofty weekly salary-- which became loftier each time that the actor announced plans to retire. Mike Connors has starred in the 1981 series Today's FBI and filmed a cop-show pilot titled Ohanian (playing a character with his own real name), but nothing has quite captured the public's fancy, or been as lucrative in reruns, as Connors' chef d'ouevre series Mannix.

Trivia: Born into a prosperous New York family, Jan Sterling was educated in private schools before heading to England, where she studied acting with Fay Compton. Billed as Jane Sterling, she made her first Broadway appearance at the age of fifteen; she went on to appear in such major stage offerings as Panama Hattie, Over 21 and Present Laughter. In 1947, she made her movie bow--billed as Jane Darian for the first and last time in her career--in RKO's Tycoon. Seldom cast in passive roles, Sterling was at her best in parts calling for hard-bitten, sometimes hard-boiled determination. In Billy Wilder's searing The Big Carnival (1951), she played Lorraine, the slatternly, opportunistic wife of cave-in victim Richard Benedict, summing up her philosophy of life with the classic line "I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons." In 1954, Jan was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of Sally McKee, a mail-order bride with a questionable past, in The High and the Mighty. In a prime example of giving one's all to one's art, Sterling submitted to having her eyebrows shaved off for a crucial scene; her brows never grew back, and she was required to pencil them in for the rest of her career. Also in 1954, Sterling travelled to England to play Julia in the first film version of George Orwell's 1984; though her character was a member of "The Anti-Sex League," Sterling was several months pregnant at the time. Having no qualms about shuttling between films and television, she showed up in nearly all the major live anthologies of the 1950s. She was also a panelist on such quiz programs as You're In the Picture (1961) and Made in America (1964). Married twice, Sterling's second husband was actor Paul Douglas. Jan Sterling retired from films in favor of the stage in 1969; she returned before the cameras in 1976 to portray Mrs. Herbert Hoover in the TV miniseries Backstairs at the White House.