Trivia: Redheaded leading man Robert Horton attended UCLA, served in the Coast Guard during World War II, and acted in California-based stage productions before making his entree into films in 1951. Horton's television career started off on a high note in 1955, when he was cast in the weekly-TV version of King's Row as Drake McHugh (the role essayed by Ronald Reagan in the 1942 film version). The series barely lasted three months, but better things were on the horizon: in 1957, Horton was hired to play frontier scout Flint McCullough in Wagon Train, which became the highest-rated western on TV. Horton remained with Wagon Train until 1962. He then did some more stage work before embarking on his third series, 1965's The Man Called Shenandoah. When this one-season wonder ran its course, Horton toured the dinner-theatre circuit, then in 1982 accepted a major role on the popular daytime soap opera As the World Turns. Horton continued acting until the late 1980s. He died in 2016, at age 91.

Trivia: A third-generation actor, Harold J. Stone made his stage debut at age six with his father, Jacob Hochstein, in the Yiddish-language play White Slaves. Stone had one line--"Mama!"--which he managed to forget on opening night. He didn't act again until after his graduation from New York University. After gleaning valuable experience in radio, he returned to the stage in George Jessel's production of Little Old New York at the 1939 World's Fair. Stone made his Broadway bow shortly afterward in Sidney Kingsley's The World We Make, and thereafter was seldom unemployed. In 1952, he began the first of many TV-series gigs when he replaced Philip Loeb as Jake on The Goldbergs; within a decade, he was averaging 20 TV appearances per year. In films from 1956, the harsh-voiced, authoritative Stone was most often seen as big-city detective (as in Hitchcock's The Wrong Man), generals, and gangsters (he was Frank Nitti in 1967's St. Valentine's Day Massacre). Usually billed at the top of the supporting cast, Stone enjoyed a rare above-the-title starring assignment when he played investigator John Kennedy in the 1959 syndicated TV series Grand Jury. His other weekly-series roles included Hamilton Greeley (a character based on New Yorker maven Harold Ross) in My World and Welcome to It (1969) and Sam Steinberg in Bridget Loves Bernie (1972). In the latter stages of his career, Harold J. Stone unexpectedly found himself a favorite of Jerry Lewis, co-starring in Lewis' The Big Mouth (1967), Which Way to the Front? (1970) and Hardly Working (1980).

Trivia: American actress Diana Hyland took private acting lessons as a high school student, debuting professionally at age 17 at the Rabbit Run Theatre of Madison, Ohio. Once in New York, she worked part time as the switchboard operator of her apartment building, hitting pay dirt actingwise with an important role on TV's Robert Montgomery Presents. More TV work followed, as did summer stock appearances with the likes of Claudette Colbert and a tour with the stage play Look Back in Anger; Diana capped the '50s with a Broadway appearance in Sweet Bird of Youth, costarring Paul Newman and Geraldine Page. Like most New York-based actresses of the era, Diana did a soap opera stint (Young Dr. Malone), but after her character was abruptly killed off she headed for the ostensibly greener pastures of Hollywood. Her first job there, supporting Robert Redford in an Alcoa Premiere drama, earned Diana an Emmy nomination, leading to prolific guest-star work on such series as Dr. Kildare, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Twilight Zone. Undeniably talented, Diana was best known in studio circles for her impatience and outspokenness, and in fact was reprimanded in print for this trait by columnist Hedda Hopper. Her film career was far less interesting than her TV work: The Chase (1966) is the only Diana Hyland performance seen on a regular basis on television these days, and it's hardly worthy of her or anyone else in the cast (which included Marlon Brando, Robert Redford and Jane Fonda). Except for a recurring role on Peyton Place in the mid '60s, Diana avoid regular primetime series work until 1976, when she signed to play Dick Van Patten's wife on Eight is Enough. That same year, she costarred in the TV movie Boy in the Plastic Bubble with John Travolta. Diana fell in love with Travolta, 17 years her junior, and the two moved in together. Thus 1977 should have been a professional and personal high water mark for Diana Hyland. But on March 27 of that year, Diana died of cancer, which devastated not only Travolta but the entire Eight is Enough cast. The five completed episodes starring Diana Hyland began telecasting on March 15, a scant twelve days before her death.