Trivia: Actor/director/producer William Conrad started his professional career as a musician. After World War II service, he began building his reputation in films and on Hollywood-based radio programs. Due to his bulk and shifty-eyed appearance, he was cast in films as nasty heavies, notably in The Killers (1946) (his first film), Sorry Wrong Number (1948) and The Long Wait (1954). On radio, the versatile Conrad was a fixture on such moody anthologies as Escape and Suspense; he also worked frequently with Jack "Dragnet" Webb during this period, and as late as 1959 was ingesting the scenery in the Webb-directed film 30. Conrads most celebrated radio role was as Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke, which he played from 1952 through 1961 (the TV Gunsmoke, of course, went to James Arness, who physically matched the character that the portly Conrad had shaped aurally). In the late 1950s, Conrad went into the production end of the business at Warner Bros., keeping his hand in as a performer by providing the hilariously strident narration of the cartoon series Rocky and His Friends and its sequel The Bullwinkle Show. During the early 1960s, Conrad also directed such films as Two on a Guillotine (1964) and Brainstorm (1965). Easing back into acting in the early 1970s, Conrad enjoyed a lengthy run as the title character in the detective series Cannon (1971-76), then all too briefly starred as a more famous corpulent crime solver on the weekly Nero Wolfe. Conrad's final TV series was as one-half of Jake and the Fatman (Joe Penny was Jake), a crime show which ran from 1987 through 1991.

Trivia: Coleman attended a Virginia military school before studying law and serving in the army. While attending the University of Texas, Coleman became attracted to acting, and headed to New York, where he studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse. After stage experience and TV work, Coleman made his movie debut in 1965's The Slender Thread. Minus his trademarked mustache for the most part in the mid-1960s, Coleman specialized in secondary character roles. He began to branch into comedy during his supporting stint as obstetrician Leon Bessemer on the Marlo Thomas sitcom That Girl, but his most memorable role would come in 1980 as the nasty, chauvinistic boss in 9 to 5. He would go on to appear in other films, like On Golden Pond [1981], The Beverly Hillbillies [1993], You've Got Mail [1998], and Moonlight Mile, but the actor found more success in television, appearing on a few cult hits that were tragically cancelled, like Drexell's Class and Madman of the People, as well as The Guardian, Courting Alex, Heartland, and Boardwalk Empire.

Trivia: After a goodly number of stage appearances, Charles Haid made his TV-movie bow in 1974's The Execution of Private Slovik. A year later, he was cast in his first weekly-series role, playing the priest/attorney brother of lawyer Anne Meara in Kate McShane; he followed this with a one-year hitch on the detective series Delvecchio. In 1977, he made his big-screen entree in The Choirboys. In 1981, Haid played good-ole-boy police officer Andy Renko in the TV series Hill Street Blues, a role he essayed until the series' cancellation in 1987 (Renko was shot down and presumed killed in the opening episode, but audience reaction to Haid was so positive that he was resurrected in episode #2). Having directed several Hill Street episodes, Haid was well prepared for his feature-length directorial debut, the cable-TV production Cooperstown; Haid has since directed Iron Will (1994), a seriocomedy about dogsledding, for the big screen. Charles Haid is married to actress Deborah Richter. Charles Haid is the cousin of talk-show host Merv Griffin.

Trivia: Supporting actor John Considine, first appearing on screen in the '60s, is the brother of actor Tim Considine.