Trivia: Michael Burns went from playing boyish male ingénues in the early '60s to a somewhat less successful career as a male lead in such offbeat movies as That Cold Day in the Park. Born in Mineola, NY, in 1947, he was raised in Yonkers, NY, and later in Beverly Hills, CA. His father, Frank Burns. had been a pioneering engineer in the field of television during the '30s and was later a director. It was through a chance encounter with the father of a classmate in his Beverly Hills school (who knew of an opening for a boy actor) that Michael Burns began a television career in August 1958 at the age of nine. His subsequent small-screen appearances included Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Loretta Young Show, The Twilight Zone, and G.E. Theatre before he landed the role of Barnaby West, a young orphan adopted by the crew of the wagon train, in the MCA-produced series Wagon Train. He later appeared in episodes of Bonanza and other dramatic series. In 1969, he graduated to adult roles in the drama That Cold Day in the Park, directed by Robert Altman, in which he was obliged to portray some sexual situations that would have been unheard of in movies at the time he entered the business. Despite pursuing his acting career into adulthood, Burns is best remembered for roles during his teenage years. He served in production capacities beginning in the '80s, notably as an executive producer of Monster's Ball in 2001.

Trivia: Born in Japan to American parents (her father was a career officer in the Air Force), brunette leading lady Victoria Principal spent her teen years in Florida, where she was elected Miss Miami in 1969. While studying acting at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Principal became romantically involved with a much-older British financier named Bernard Cornfield. Thanks to Cornfield's show-business connections, Principal was able to meet enough of the "right people" to begin a movie career in 1971. After appearing without distinction in such films as Earthquake (1971) and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), she tried to give her flagging career a shot in the arm by posing nude in Playboy magazine. She then quit acting for nearly three years, becoming a talent agent for other actors, all the while seeking out the right "comeback" vehicle for herself. In 1978 she found that vehicle when she was cast as Pamela Barnes Ewing on the internationally popular TV serial Dallas. During her early Dallas years, she briefly pursued a singing career in the company of her then-boyfriend Andy Gibb. This came to naught, but Principal's other business enterprises -- her clothing and cosmetic lines, her self-help books The Body Principal (1983), The Beauty Principal (1984) and The Diet Principal (1987) -- made her a millionaire many times over. Since leaving Dallas in 1987, Principal has, through an unbeatable combination of talent and persistence, transformed herself into the Queen of Made-for-TV Movies, far outflanking such possible competitors as Cheryl Ladd and Jane Seymour. Those credits include Sparks: The Price of Passion, River of Rage, Dancing in the Dark, and Love In Another Town.

Trivia: The daughter of actors Gene and Kathleen Lockhart, June Lockhart made her own acting bow at age 8. In 1938, the 12-year-old June appeared in her first film, A Christmas Carol (1938), in which her parents portrayed Mr. and Mrs. Bob Cratchit. Few of her ingenue roles of the 1940s were memorable, though Lockhart did get to play the title character in The She-Wolf of London (1945) (never mind that she turned out not to be a she-wolf by fadeout time). In 1958, Lockhart took over from a recalcitrant Cloris Leachman in the role of rural wife and mother Ruth Martin on the long-running TV series Lassie. Though she professed to despise the role, Lockhart remained with the series until 1964, and over 20 years later satirically reprised the character on an episode of It's Garry Shandling's Show. She went on to play the young matriarch of the "space family Robinson" on the Irwin Allen TV endeavor Lost in Space (1965-68), and portrayed a lady doctor on the last two seasons of the bucolic sitcom Petticoat Junction. In deliberate contrast to her TV image, Lockhart enjoyed a bohemian, kick-up-your-heels offscreen existence. At one juncture, she was fired from her co-hosting chores at the Miss USA pageant when it was revealed that (gasp!) she was living with a man much younger than herself. June Lockhart is the mother of Anne Lockhart, a prolific TV actress in her own right.

Trivia: The son of the Los Angeles Times' drama editor, William Schallert was, along with Sydney Chaplin, one of the co-founders of Hollywood's highly regarded Circle Theatre troupe. Sent to Great Britain on a Fulbright Fellowship to study British repertory theatre, Schallert guest-lectured at Oxford on several occasion before heading home. A character actor of almost intimidating versatility, Schallert began his long film and TV career in 1951. While he appeared in films of every variety, Schallert was most closely associated with the many doctors (mad or otherwise), lab technicians and scientific experts that he played in such science fiction endeavors as The Man From Planet X (1951), Gog (1954), Them! (1954) The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) and The Monolith Monsters (1959). Director Joe Dante paid homage to Schallert's prolific horror-flick work by casting the actor in his Matinee, where he played yet another dabbler in Things Man Is Not Meant to Know in the film-within-a-film "Mant." Schallert's hundreds television credits could fill a book in themselves; the Nickelodeon cable network once tried to put together a montage of the actor's guest star appearances, touching only the tip of the iceberg. He was a regular on such series as Dobie Gillis (as literature teacher Mr. Pomfrit, who always dismissed his class as though announcing the beginning of the Indy 500), Get Smart (as a senile 97-year-old Navy admiral), The Nancy Drew Mysteries (as Nancy's attorney father) The New Gidget (as Gidget's professor father) The Nancy Walker Show, Little Women and Santa Barbara. His most famous TV role was as Patty Lane's ever-patient newspaper-editor dad on The Patty Duke Show, which ran from 1963 through 1966; over twenty years later, Mr. Schallert and Ms. Duke were touchingly reunited--again as father and daughter--on an episode of The Torkelsons (1991-92). William Schallert once served as president of the Screen Actors' Guild, a position later held...by Patty Duke. Shallert continued acting until the early 2010s; he died in 2016, at age 93.

Trivia: The son of Rat Pack comedian Joey Bishop, actor/scribe Larry Bishop grew up in Southern California surrounded by the crème de la crème -- his close buddies included stars-to-be Rob Reiner and Richard Dreyfuss -- and attended prestigious Beverly Hills High School. For years, Bishop sustained himself with offbeat character roles, often in films populated by his friends, such as the AIP releases Wild in the Streets and The Savage Seven (both 1968) and the off-center comedy-mystery The Big Fix (1978), starring Dreyfuss. Bishop branched out into production in a big way by scripting and helming the low-budget yet star-populated gangster spoof Mad Dog Time (1996); with a script that gestated for eight years before the cameras rolled, the project came to life thanks to Dreyfuss, who produced, starred, and helped Bishop line up a once-in-a-lifetime supporting cast including heavyweights Burt Reynolds, Richard Pryor, Gabriel Byrne, Ellen Barkin,and Jeff Goldblum. The movie received wildly mixed reviews (The San Francisco Examiner praised it endlessly, while Roger Ebert felt it excruciatingly awful and gave it no stars), and, for better or worse, secured an extremely limited theatrical run, nearly going straight to video. Thereafter, Bishop took a lengthy break from production, but returned in full force around a decade later thanks to buddy Quentin Tarantino, who cast him in a small role in Kill Bill Vol. 2 and produced his next directorial effort, the retro biker flick Hell Ride (2008).

Trivia: American comic character actor James Millhollin worked on and off-Broadway, in feature films, and most frequently on television during the '60s and '70s.