Trivia: Before becoming a comic actor, Bob Denver had previously worked as an athletic coach and history and math teacher at Corpus Christi Children's School of Pacific Palisades, CA. The puckish Denver first gained popularity when, at age 24, he played half-baked hipster Maynard G. Krebs on TV's The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Before the first season was over, after completing only four episodes, "Maynard" would leave Dobie Gillis when he was drafted into the Army. This contingency was written into the Gillis series by having Maynard answer Uncle Sam's call to arms, and then by having Maynard return to the show after Denver was classified 4-F due to a neck injury. When Dobie Gillis was canceled in 1963, Denver let it be known that he was available for non-beatnik parts, only to be immediately cast as a young bongo-playing bohemian in the theatrical feature Take Her, She's Mine. The following year, Denver was finally able to shake the Maynard image when Jerry Van Dyke turned down the opportunity to play the lead in the simplistic sitcom Gilligan's Island. Denver stepped into the role of eternally bumbling castaway Gilligan, making it firmly and uniquely his own for the next three years.Denver's first post-Gilligan's Island project was the unsuccessful Phyllis Diller film vehicle Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Saleslady? (1968). In 1968, he was back to the weekly sitcom fold as cabdriver Rufus Butterworth, best pal and business partner of restaurateur Bert Gamus (Herb Edelman), on The Good Guys. This show ended after two seasons, whereupon Denver scored a personal and professional triumph as Woody Allen's replacement in the long-running Broadway comedy Play It Again, Sam. With Gilligan's Island attaining cult status in the early '70s, it was only natural that Denver cash in on the phenomenon, first as star of the Gilligan-like syndicated sitcom Dusty's Trail (1974), then as cohort to Chuck McCann on another "castaway comedy," the 1975 Saturday-morning kiddie show Far out Space Nuts. He also provided the voice to his animated likeness on a brace of cartoon series, The New Adventures of Gilligan (1974-1976) and Gilligan's Planet (1980), and reprised Gilligan in the flesh in a trio of made-for-TV features based on the original series. He also revived Maynard G. Krebs, older but no wiser, in a pair of abortive Dobie Gillis revival pilots.

Trivia: The son of a patent medicine manufacturer, American actor Alan Hale chose a theatrical career at a time when, according to his son Alan Hale Jr., boarding houses would post signs reading "No Dogs or Actors Allowed." Undaunted, Hale spent several years on stage after graduating from Philadelphia University, entering films as a slapstick comedian for Philly's Lubin Co. in 1911. Bolstering his acting income with odd jobs as a newspaperman and itinerant inventor (at one point he considered becoming an osteopath!), Hale finally enjoyed a measure of security as a much-in-demand character actor in the 1920s, usually as hard-hearted villains. One of his more benign roles was as Little John in Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood (1922), a role he would repeat opposite Errol Flynn in 1938 and John Derek in 1950. Talkies made Hale more popular than ever, especially in his many roles as Irishmen, blusterers and "best pals" for Warner Bros. Throughout his career, Hale never lost his love for inventing things, and reportedly patented or financed items as commonplace as auto brakes and as esoteric as greaseless potato chips. Alan Hale contracted pneumonia and died while working on the Warner Bros. western Montana (1950), which starred Hale's perennial screen cohort Errol Flynn.

Trivia: Ohio-born actor Jim Backus's stage career began in summer stock, where, according to his then-roommate Keenan Wynn, he was as well known for his prowess with the ladies as he was for his on-stage versatility. Backus continued acting in New York, vaudeville, and especially radio in the 1930s and 1940s. He was a regular on radio's The Alan Young Show, portraying Eastern Seaboard snob Hubert Updike III, the prototype for his "Thurston Howell III" characterization on the 1960s TV sitcom Gilligan's Island. In 1949, Backus provided the voice of the nearsighted Mr. Magoo for the first time in the UPA cartoon Ragtime Bear; the actor later claimed that he based this character on his own businessman father. Also in 1949, Backus made his first film appearance in Easy Living, which starred his childhood friend Victor Mature. Backus' most famous screen role was as James Dean's weak-willed, vacillating father in Rebel without a Cause. On television, Backus co-starred with Joan Davis on the I Love Lucy-like 1950s sitcom I Married Joan, and played the leading role of fast-talking news service editor Mike O'Toole on the 1960 syndicated series Hot Off the Wire (aka The Jim Backus Show). In the 1960s, Backus continued to provide the voice of Mr. Magoo in several TV projects, and was seen on-camera in the aforementioned Gilligan's Island, as well as the 1968 TV version of Blondie, wherein Backus played Mr. Dithers. Co-starring as Mrs. Dithers was Backus' wife Henny, who also collaborated with her husband on several amusing volumes of memoirs. Jim and Henny Backus' last two books, Backus Strikes Back and Forgive Us Our Digressions, commented humorously on a deadly serious subject: Parkinson's Disease, the ailment which would eventually cost Backus his life at the age of 76.

Trivia: Though born in New York, actress Natalie Schafer built her stage reputation upon playing British aristocrats. She entered films in 1944, co-starring with Lana Turner and Robert Walker in Marriage Is a Private Affair. Her most famous role was as social butterfly Lovey Howell on the zany TV sitcom Gilligan's Island, a part she essayed from 1964 through 1967, then reprised in the many Gilligan TV-movie and cartoon sequels of the 1970s and 1980s. From 1934 through 1942, Natalie Schafer was the wife of actor Louis Calhern.

Trivia: Having served as a bombardier in World War II, Russell Johnson used the GI Bill to finance his studies at the Actor's Lab. Between performing assignments, Johnson supported himself by driving a cab and working the assembly line at a ballpoint pen factory. His first movie break (indeed, his first movie) was in director Paul Henreid's For Men Only (1952), an exposé of barbaric college-fraternity initiation ceremonies; Johnson was suitably loathsome as the sadistic frat leader who is exposed as a snivelling coward in the climax. The balance of the 1950s found Johnson appearing in several fondly remembered science fiction efforts like It Came From Outer Space (1953), This Island Earth (1955), Attack of the Crab Monsters (1956) and The Space Children (1958). He carried over this relationship with the Unreal into his classic performance as an anguished time-traveller desperately attempting to prevent Lincoln's assassination in the 1961 Twilight Zone installment Back There. In 1964, Russell Johnson took his first steps into TV sitcom immortality when he assumed the role of "The Professor" (aka Roy Hinkley) in Gilligan's Island, a role that he'd continued to essay on and off for the next two decades in Gilligan cartoons and TV-movie spin-offs. Johnson worked in television through the 1980s and early '90s before retiring from acting; he died in 2014 at age 89.

Trivia: To an entire generation of viewers, actress Dawn Wells will forever be associated with her recurring portrayal of Mary Ann Summers, the sugar-sweet and open-faced country lass shipwrecked on a desert isle with one of the zaniest television ensembles of the '60s, on the sitcom Gilligan's Island (1964-1967). That part lasted for the entire three-season run of the program, and represented Wells' first career breakthrough (she had previously essayed a number of guest appearances on shows including 77 Sunset Strip, 87th Precinct, and Hawaiian Eye). Following Gilligan, Wells accepted parts in a string of B-movies such as Winterhawk (1975), The Town that Dreaded Sundown (1976), and Return to Boggy Creek (1977), and joined most of the Gilligan series cast for several reunion movies and specials, but devoted much of her time to founding and running the Wishing Wells Collection, a clothing line designed especially for the elderly and disabled.

Trivia: One look at Alan Hale Jr. and no one could ever assume he was adopted; Hale Jr. so closely resembled his father, veteran character actor Alan Hale Sr., that at times it appeared that the older fellow had returned to the land of the living. In films from 1933, Alan Jr. was originally cast in beefy, athletic good-guy roles (at 6'3", he could hardly play hen-pecked husbands). After the death of his father in 1950, Alan dropped the "Junior" from his professional name. He starred in a brace of TV action series, Biff Baker USA (1953) and Casey Jones (1957), before his he-man image melted into comedy parts. From 1964 through 1967, Hale played The Skipper (aka Jonas Grumby) on the low-brow but high-rated Gilligan's Island. Though he worked steadily after Gilligan's cancellation, he found that the blustery, slow-burning Skipper had typed him to the extent that he lost more roles than he won. In his last two decades, Alan Hale supplemented his acting income as the owner of a successful West Hollywood restaurant, the Lobster Barrel.

Trivia: Had he been in Hollywood in the 1930s or 1940s, Vincent Schiavelli's Halloween-mask countenance, shock of unkempt hair and baleful voice might have permanently consigned him to minor roles in horror or gangster pictures. As it happened, Schiavelli became an actor during the 1960s, a period when, thanks to unpretty stars like Elliott Gould and Dustin Hoffman, homeliness opened more career doors than it closed. After several seasons' worth of stage experience, Schiavelli made his first film appearance in Milos Forman's Taking Off (1971) playing a pot-smoking support group leader by the name of...Schiavelli. He would work with Forman again on several occasions, most memorably as Salieri's(F. Murray Abraham) phlegmatic valet in the opening scenes of Amadeus (1984). In 1972, Schiavelli played his first regular TV-series role, gay set designer Peter Panama in The Corner Bar. Fourteen years later, he could be seen as oddball science teacher Hector Vargas in the weekly sitcom Fast Times, repeating his role from the 1982 theatrical feature Fast Times at Ridgemont High. One of his best-known screen roles was the ill-tempered Subway Ghost, who teaches newly dead Patrick Swayze how to move solid objects with sheer "hate power" in the 1990 blockbuster Ghost. Tim Conway fans are most familiar with Schiavelli through his appearances as Conway's dull-witted assistant in the popular Dorf videocassettes. Previously married to actress Allyce Beasley, the couple would part ways in 1988 and Schiavelli would subsequently wed Carol Mukhalian.

Trivia: Supporting actor Norman Bartold appeared in numerous films of the 1970s. He also worked on television as a guest star and in television movies. He made his film debut in The Littlest Hobo (1958).

Trivia: John Wheeler, a bald-headed character actor of short stature, is most familiar from television, though he started his career in music. Born in Texas, he attended the University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA, where he earned a Bachelor of Music degree in 1952. After serving in the United States Army, he moved to New York City to pursue his master's degree. Possessed of a rich, powerful tenor voice, he sang with the City Center Opera in New York and also performed in Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel and Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green's Wonderful Town at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair, later repeating his role in the latter work in its television presentation that same year, which starred Rosalind Russell. On Broadway, he appeared in The Happiest Girl in the World, Kean, Cafe Crown, and I Had a Ball. He was also in the stage version of Sweet Charity, portraying Herman, the dance hall proprietor, a role that went to Stubby Kaye in the movie adaptation (Wheeler played a smaller role in the film and never had the chance to immortalize his voice on "I Love To Cry at Weddings"). Wheeler remained active into the 21st century, and is best known to television audiences for his work in episodes of such oft-rerun 1970s sitcoms as The Brady Bunch ("Dough Re Mi") and, most especially, The Odd Couple -- the latter series made use of Wheeler's vocal talents as well as his comedic acting ability as a bit player in a half dozen episodes, casting him as various characters (most often referred to as Fred Felscher) associated with Felix's opera club. He has also done numerous commercials.

Trivia: A paragon among character actors, the late American thesp Lewis Arquette faded smoothly and imperceptibly into his individual roles with such efficiency and success that many television devotees and filmgoers will sooner recognize the names of Arquette's craggily-voiced, cantankerous personages than his own name -- from Seinfeld's Leapin' Larry, the crippled furniture magnate whose establishment burns to the ground as the result of a freak accident, to retired taxidermist Clifford Wooley in Christopher Guest's uproarious mockumentary Waiting for Guffman (1996) to the pot-bellied law enforcement officer, Chief Louis Hartley, in Scream 2 (1997). The son of television personality Cliff Arquette (a Tonight Show mainstay), Lewis Arquette was born December 14, 1935. He launched his career as a Broadway stage actor, then returned home to the Windy City and enlisted with the infamous Second City troupe. As a member of that ensemble, Arquette fine-tuned his own aptitude for spur-of-the-moment improvisation -- a gift that, combined with Arquette's distinctive look, prompted Hollywood to summon him for numerous character roles. Arquette began on the small screen (on an uncharacteristically somber note) as J.D. Pickett in the melancholic, tragedy-laden seventh season of the hit CBS series The Waltons -- a role that lasted for several years, until the program wrapped in August 1981. Arquette spent the late '70s, '80s, and '90s filling his resumé with bit parts in alternately forgettable and memorable pictures. Roles (in addition to the aforementioned turns) included Hatcher in The China Syndrome (1979), the warden in the "coming attractions" parody Loose Shoes (1980), a foreman in Badge of the Assassin (1985), Mr. Stokes in the Lily Tomlin-Bette Midler comedy Big Business (1988), Herm in The Great Outdoors (1988), Wyler in Tango & Cash (1989), Sheriff Bugiere in Chopper Chicks in Zombietown (1991), Texas Joe in The Linguini Incident (1992), Mr. Ingersol in Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1993), and a cardinal in the Adam Sandler comedy-fantasy Little Nicky (2000). Arquette was still active onscreen when he died of congestive heart failure on February 10, 2001 -- just two months after his 65th birthday. Arquette was the father of actresses Rosanna and Patricia Arquette, as well as actors David Arquette, Alexis Arquette, and Richmond Arquette. He co-starred with his sons and daughters in many of his pictures.