Trivia: Best remembered for his high-profile acting roles on two 1970s television sitcoms -- that of genial news writer Murray Slaughter on CBS's The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977) and that of sweet-natured Captain Merrill Stubing on ABC's The Love Boat (1977-1986), stage-trained actor Gavin MacLeod in fact began his career typecast as a villain. He landed parts in Hollywood features including The Sand Pebbles (1966), Deathwatch (1966), and The Comic (1969), and enjoyed a tenure as Joseph "Happy" Haines on the sitcom McHale's Navy from 1962 through 1964. After The Love Boat permanently laid anchor in the mid-'80s, MacLeod signed on as a spokesperson and pitchman for Princess Cruises and returned to regional theatrical work. He also tackled guest spots on programs including Touched by an Angel and (in a move that surprised everyone) the HBO prison drama Oz. Off-camera, MacLeod is an outspoken born-again Christian. He hosted a popular talk show on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, along with his wife, Patti (whom he divorced in 1982 and remarried three years later), called Back on Course, and personally funded many of the Greatest Adventure Stories from the Bible animated videos for children.

Trivia: Universally recognized as Ship's Doctor Adam Bricker on the blockbuster prime-time sitcom The Love Boat (1977-1986) -- a part he held for the entire nine-season run of the series -- actor Bernie Kopell entered the doors of show business via a most unlikely route. Born in Brooklyn, Kopell attended Erasmus High and then New York University (with a dramatic art major). After a stint at sea aboard the naval vessel USS Iowa, Kopell signed on to drive a taxicab in Southern California -- and achieved his big break on the day that Oregon Trail (1959) film producer Dick Einfeld hitched a ride in the back of his cab. In a span of minutes, Kopell reportedly managed to convince Einfeld that he was not really a cab driver but an actor in serious need of work. The effort paid off, and Kopell snagged his first part -- a two-line part in Oregon as an aide to president James K. Polk. In the early '60s, Kopell joined the Actors' Ring Theatre in Los Angeles, where he developed a knack for characterizations and voices; this led, in turn, to character-type roles on a myriad of television programs including The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Steve Allen Show, and My Favorite Martian (which often, though not always, cast the wiry Kopell as a Hispanic). By the early '70s, Kopell had landed steady assignments on Get Smart, Bewitched, That Girl, and other series. The Love Boat, however, embodied his breakthrough. He followed it up with an emcee assignment on The Travel Channel (hosting its Railway Adventures Across Europe) and a surge in theatrical work, with portrayals in regional productions of such plays as Rumors, A History of Shadows, and Death of a Salesman.

Trivia: Actor Fred Grandy enjoyed two distinct careers -- an initial career as an actor and a proverbial second wind on the political stage. As a thespian, Grandy signed for guest spots on early-'70s series including Maude and Phyllis, but built his reputation via his nine-season portrayal of Yeoman-Purser Burl "Gopher" Smith, right-hand man to Captain Merrill Stubing (Gavin MacLeod), on the popular television sitcom The Love Boat (1977-1986). He proved popular with audiences, but by the mid-'80s reportedly grew tired of acting and gravitated to the political arena because he found it more challenging. Indeed, in 1986 -- the year of Boat's cancelation -- Grandy was elected as a Republican member of the House of Representatives from Iowa.

Trivia: For millions of Americans, the prime-time situation comedy The Love Boat will be forever inseparable from the image of Ted Lange, an actor cast for nine seasons as the genial Isaac the Bartender on the Pacific Princess luxury liner and trademarked by his iconic "two-finger drop" greeting. Yet Lange's portrayal of Isaac scarcely hinted at the actor's dexterity or dramatic range. In truth, this actor received classical dramatic training at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and would go on, after the Princess took its final voyage in September 1986, to establish himself as a revered creative force in regional theater.Lange initially broke into films with many portrayals in Hollywood programmers during the early '70s, including Trick Baby (1972), Blade (1972), and Black Belt Jones (1974), and landed a regular role in the one-season ethnic sitcom That's My Mama (1974), as a streetwise philosopher opposite Clifton Davis (Amen) and Theresa Merritt. The Love Boat, of course, brought Lange his most widespread recognition; nonetheless (as indicated), he hearkened back to his theatrical roots beginning in the late '80s and divided his time between writing, directing, and stage acting roles. His resumé as a scribe sports at least 17 original plays including Lemon Meringue Facade, Behind the Mask -- An Evening with Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Evil Legacy -- The Story of Lucretia Borgia, while he has appeared dramatically in productions including Hair and Taming of the Shrew and has directed plays ranging from Othello to the rock & roll musical Born a Unicorn.

Trivia: Pennsylvania-born actress Lauren Tewes achieved broadest recognition for her stint as Cruise Director Julie McCoy on the long-running ABC situation comedy The Love Boat. Unfortunately, Tewes (unlike many of her fellow cast members) left the program prior to the final voyage of the Pacific Princess -- reportedly spiraling into a much-publicized bout of severe cocaine addiction from which she eventually fully recovered, but which cost her the role on the series. Tewes nevertheless demonstrated admirable resilience by returning for at least two Love Boat telemovies and remained active in television and film. Subsequent projects included guest appearances on the small-screen series dramas Hunter and Murder, She Wrote, and roles in features such as The Doom Generation (1995) and It Came From Outer Space 2 (1996).

Trivia: Though Leslie Easterbrook has only one major feature film role to her credit, it happens to come courtesy of one of the most durable comedy franchises of the 1980s (and briefly into the 1990s). Playing off her looks, Easterbrook first gained notice as Marilyn Monroe-wannabe Rhonda Lee on the hit sitcom Laverne and Shirley from 1980 to 1983. Along with a supporting role in the sex comedy Private Resort (1984), Easterbrook further made her bombshell mark as Sgt. Callahan in the hit misfit comedy Police Academy that same year. Though she returned to TV on the daytime serial Ryan's Hope from 1985 to 1987 and played a substantial part in the TV docudrama The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Derickson Story (1988), Easterbrook also reprised the role of Callahan in all six of the Police Academy sequels. After the franchise ended in 1994, Easterbrook continued to appear frequently as a guest star on primetime TV, acted in the TV movie Two Voices (1997), and displayed her vocal talents in musical theater.

Trivia: Born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland, Joan Fontaine began her acting career in her late teens with various West Coast stage companies under the name Joan Burfield. She also used that name when she made her 1935 feature film debut in No More Ladies, in which she had a minor role. The daughter of '40s actress Lilian Fontaine, she returned to the screen as Joan Fontaine after two more years of stage work, although appearing primarily in B-movies. Two exceptions were A Damsel in Distress (1937) opposite Fred Astaire and Gunga Din (1939) with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Her career took off in the early '40s due largely to leads in two Alfred Hitchcock films. Fontaine received Best Actress Oscar nominations for her work in the director's Rebecca (1940) and The Constant Nymph (1943), and won an Oscar for her performance in Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941). She starred in many subsequent films, at first playing innocent, well-bred types, but later maturing into roles as sophisticated, worldly, often hot-headed or maliciously calculating women. Appearing in few films after 1958, Fontaine was also a licensed pilot, champion balloonist, prize-winning tuna fisherman, expert golfer, licensed interior decorator, and Cordon Bleu cook. The sister of actress Olivia de Havilland (with whom she supposedly had many feuds), the first three of Fontaine's four husbands were actor Brian Aherne, producer William Dozier, and producer/screenwriter Collier Young. She published an autobiography, No Bed of Roses, in 1978 and made two rare TV movie and miniseries appearances in 1986. Joan Fontaine's final big-screen appearance was the intelligent British horror/drama The Devil's Own; her last TV work was in the 1994 production Good King Wenceslas. She died in 2013 at age 96.

Trivia: Richard Basehart was too much of an actor (and almost too good an actor) to ever be a movie star -- his range was sufficient to allow him to play murderers, psychopaths, sociopaths, and would-be suicides in 20 years' worth of theatrical films in totally convincing fashion, but also to portray a hero in the longest-running science fiction/adventure series on network television. Without ever achieving stardom, he became one of the most respected performers of his generation in theater, film, and television. Born John Richard Basehart in Zanesville, OH, in 1914, he spent a part of his childhood in an orphanage after the death of his mother, when his father, Harry Basehart, found himself unable to look after the four children left in his care. The younger Basehart considered a career in journalism like his father, but when he was 13, he began acting in small roles in a local theater company and came to enjoy performing. In the mid-'30s, he joined Jasper Deeter's famed Hedgerow Theater company in Rose Valley, PA. By the end of the 1930s, he'd set his sights on a Broadway career and moved to New York. During the 1939 season, while working in stock, Basehart met an actress named Stephanie Klein, and the two were married in early 1940. He continued trying to establish a foothold in New York and in 1942, joined Margaret Webster's theater company. Basehart's breakthrough role came during 1945 in the play The Hasty Heart, in which director Bretaigne Windust cast him in the central role of the proud, dying young Scottish soldier. Basehart won the 1945 New York Drama Critics Award for his performance and was named the most promising newcomer of the season. Not only did Broadway producers take notice of Basehart but so did Hollywood, and he was soon signed to a movie contract. Thus began a screen career that lasted nearly 40 years, starting with Repeat Performance (1947), a thriller starring Joan Leslie. He followed this with Cry Wolf (1947), an adventure yarn also starring Barbara Stanwyck, Errol Flynn, and Geraldine Brooks. Basehart was unusually careful as a new Hollywood performer to vary his roles and avoid getting typecast. His first of what proved a string of memorable portrayals was in He Walked By Night (1948), a fact-based thriller in which the actor played a brilliant but sociopathic electronics expert, responsible for a string of burglaries and for killing a police officer. Viewers who grew up knowing Basehart as the heroic figure on the series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in the 1960s are often startled to see him 20 years earlier in He Walked By Night as an almost feral presence, quietly fierce, threatening and stealthy in his efforts to escape detection and capture. Over the next two years, Basehart essayed a multitude of roles, in contemporary dramatic subjects and period dramas, the most interesting of which was Anthony Mann's Reign of Terror (1949), in which he portrayed Maximilien Robespierre, one of the chief architects of the bloodbath that followed in the wake of the French Revolution. In 1950, Basehart played one of the most difficult film roles of his career when he was cast in the fact-based movie Fourteen Hours, playing a young man who spends 14 hours on the ledge of an office building, threatening to jump. It was during the shooting of this movie that Basehart's wife, Stephanie, was taken ill with what proved to be a brain tumor, and died very suddenly. He finished work on the film and then left the United States, going to Italy where he began putting his life back together. This began when he met the actress Valentina Cortese, whom he married in 1951. The two worked together in one movie, The House on Telegraph Hill, directed by Robert Wise at 20th Century Fox, in which Basehart played the villain trying to murder Cortese for her estate. Basehart returned to Hollywood only intermittently for the next nine years, and his next appearance in an American movie wasn't until 1953, when he worked in Titanic, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Clifton Webb. It was during the decade that Basehart made his home in Europe that the actor became multilingual, and developed a serious following over there as a leading man; while other, older American performers were entering the final legs of their careers making pictures in France, Italy, or England, he was making important pictures and playing great roles, as the doomed, gentle clown in Federico Fellini's La Strada; a basically honest man driven into crime in The Good Die Young; the movie director threatened by a blackmailer in Joseph Losey's Finger of Guilt, and even an action-adventure hero in an Italian-made version of Cartouche (1957). John Huston specifically chose Basehart for the central role of Ishmael in his superb 1956 film version of Moby Dick. In 1957, Basehart tried reestablishing his Hollywood acting credentials with his portrayal of a conscience-stricken American officer in the movie Time Limit, which got good notices but proved to be a one-off American screen credit. In 1960, the actor divorced his second wife and left Italy behind. He returned to live permanently in America and restart his career, and began a new life, marrying again in 1962. He found that film roles weren't easily forthcoming, however -- the only part that came his way was the title role in Stuart Heisler's 1962 drama Hitler, in which Basehart gave an unusually complex, cerebral portrayal of the Nazi leader. He made numerous appearances in dramatic series such as Combat and Naked City, and television anthology shows including Playhouse 90 and Hallmark Hall of Fame. In 1964, Basehart accepted the offer of a starring role on a television series, beginning a four-year run on the Irwin Allen-produced Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, portraying Admiral Harriman Nelson. Thus began the steadiest work of his career, more than 100 episodes made Basehart a television star. He appeared in one movie during this period, John Sturges' thriller The Satan Bug (1965), in which he played the villain. Following the cancellation of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Basehart returned to acting on-stage, interspersed with work in made-for-television movies and occasional feature films, such as Rage (1972), directed by George C. Scott. He won critical acclaim for his work in the drama The Andersonville Trial, directed by George C. Scott, portraying Lt. Col. Henry Wirz, the commandant of the notorious Confederate prisoner of war camp, and made the rounds of guest star roles in television shows, perhaps most memorably the "Dagger of the Mind" episode of Columbo. Basehart and his third wife, Diana, also became known for their dedication to the cause of animal rights, founding the organization Actors and Others for Animals. During the final years of his life, he did some acting on television series such as Knight Rider and appeared in movies such as the hit Being There, but he was also very much in demand as a narrator, working on Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War (1980), among other projects. It was as a narrator that he made his final public appearance, at the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics. Basehart suffered a series of strokes, and passed away soon after.

Trivia: Jill Whelan enjoyed an acting career as a child star, with a seven-season (1979-1986) portrayal of Vicki, Captain Merrill Stubing's young daughter, on the prime-time ABC situation comedy The Love Boat. After the series wrapped in 1986, Whelan returned for a number of Love Boat telemovies, acted in regional theater, and played a regular role on the daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless. Astute movie buffs may remember Whelan for a brief but memorable big-screen contribution that happened during her Love Boat tenure: she also portrayed Lisa Davis, the ailing child sent into convulsions when a singing nun knocks out her I.V., in the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker farce Airplane! (1980).