Trivia: American comic actor Henry Gibson acted professionally since childhood, but didn't gain prominence until his discovery by Jerry Lewis for a role in The Nutty Professor (1963). Gibson quickly developed a comedy act for TV variety shows, in which he passed himself off as a fey, Southern-accented "blank verse" poet. So convincing was this persona that many viewers believed Gibson was a genuine Southerner, though he actually hailed from Pennsylvania. He played a cruder variation of his yokel character as a patron of the "Belly Button" bar in Billy Wilder's Kiss Me Stupid (1964), and was hilarious as a hip-talking Indian in the Three Stooges' feature film The Outlaws is Coming (1965). Gibson might have continued in small roles indefinitely had he not been catapulted to stardom in 1968 as part of the ensemble on TV's Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, where his introductory "A poem...by Henry Gibson" became a national catchphrase. Gibson stayed with Laugh-In until 1971, whereupon he launched a reasonably successful career as a straight character actor. One of his best film roles of the '70s was Haven Hamilton, a hard-driving, flag-waving country-western star in Nashville (1975). Gibson not only delivered an expert performance but also co-wrote the songs sung by Haven Hamilton, including the deliberately banal Bicentennial ballad, "200 Years", in one of the film's early scenes. Henry Gibson continued throughout the next two decades playing strong movie character parts (the neo-Nazi commander in 1980's The Blues Brothers) and bright little cameos (the closet-smoking security guard in 1990's Gremlins 2). Gibson was also ubiquitously available as a guest star on such cable-TV reruns as Bewitched (he played a leprechaun) and F Troop (he was jinxed Private Wrongo Starr). He died of cancer in September 2009, about a week before his 74th birthday.

Trivia: Portly, tight-jawed John McGiver had intended to become a professional actor upon graduating from Catholic University in Washington D.C., but he became an English teacher at New York's Christopher Columbus High School instead. One day in the mid-1950s, McGiver bumped into one of his old Catholic University classmates, who'd become an off-Broadway producer; the star of the producer's newest play had just walked out, and would McGiver be interested in taking his place? This little favor led to a 20-year career in TV and films for the balding, bookish McGiver. He was featured in such films as Love in the Afternoon (1957), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Mame (1974). McGiver's funniest screen portrayal was the thick-eared landscaper in The Gazebo (1959), who insisted upon referring to the title object as a "GAZE-bow". In 1964, John McGiver starred as Walter Burnley, supervisor of a department store complaint department, on the weekly TV sitcom Many Happy Returns.