Trivia: The son of a Wall Street broker, towering (6'5") actor Fred Gwynne was born sucking on the proverbial silver spoon. Gwynne attended the prestigious Groton prep school, where he made his acting bow in a student production of Henry V. He then attended Harvard, where he studying drawing with artist R.S. Merryman and was active in dramatics and as a staffer of the Harvard Crimson. Upon graduation, Gwynne played Shakespeare with the Cambridge repertory before heading to New York City. He appeared in such Broadway plays as Mrs. McThing and was cast in a bit role in the Oscar-winning film On the Waterfront, but for many years his principal source of income was as a book illustrator and commercial artist (his first published work was titled The Best in Show). In 1961, Gwynne was co-starring in the Broadway musical Irma La Douce when TV producer/writer Nat Hiken, who'd cast Gwynne in a handful of guest roles on the 1950s sitcom Sgt. Bilko, hired the actor to play NYPD officer Francis Muldoon on the weekly comedy Car 54, Where are You? A year after the series' cancellation, Gwynne was starred in his most famous TV role: bolt-necked, soft-hearted Herman Munster in The Munsters (1964-66). Afterwards, Gwynne distanced himself from television for the most part. In the 1970s and 1980s, he distinguished himself on Broadway in powerful dramatic roles, often playing autocratic Southerners (e.g. Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and an elderly Klansman in Texas Trilogy). Fred Gwynne also returned to films during this period, playing key roles in such major productions as The Cotton Club (1984) and Shadows and Fog (1992); he died of pancreatic cancer shortly after completing his critically acclaimed role of the judge in My Cousin Vinny (1993).

Trivia: Born Peggy Yvonne Middleton, Yvonne De Carlo began studying dance in childhood, and in her teens appeared in nightclubs and on-stage. She debuted onscreen in 1942, going on to a number of secondary roles. Finally she was cast in the title role of Salome -- Where She Danced (1945) and played leads in The Song of Scheherazade and Slave Girl (both 1947), after which she was typecast as an Arabian Nights-type temptress in harem attire; she also appeared frequently in Westerns, and occasionally showed talent in comedies. De Carlo was a co-star of the '60s TV sitcom The Munsters. In 1971 she appeared on Broadway in the musical Follies. She married and divorced stuntman and actor Robert Morgan. She continued appearing in occasional films through the '90s and authored Yvonne: An Autobiography (1987). De Carlo died of unspecified causes at age 84 on January 8, 2007.

Trivia: There is more to character actor Al Lewis than meets the eye. Best known to baby boomers for playing the roles of Officer Schnauzer in Car 54 Where Are You? and Grandpa in The Munsters, he holds a doctorate in child psychology from Columbia University, has penned two children's books, produced a kid-oriented home video, and once hosted a series of Saturday morning television shows on WTBS. He has also been a circus performer, a school teacher, and a vaudevillian. Lewis became an actor after earning his degree, teaching, and writing his books. He studied with the Paul Mann Actor's Workshop in New York. On television, he first appeared in "Trouble-In-Law" on The U.S. Steel Hour (1959). The following year, Lewis appeared in the feature film Naked City and then was cast opposite Fred Gwynne in Car 54, Where Are You? The show ran until 1963 and within a year, he was playing the vampiric Grandpa against Gwynne's Frankenstein, Herman Munster. Though The Munsters lasted two years, it has developed a cult following and has re-aired endlessly in syndication and spawned a feature-length sequel, Munster Go Home (1964), and a made-for-TV reunion movie, Munster's Revenge (1981). In 1994, he reprised his role as Schnauzer for the TV-movie version of Car 54 Where Are You? Lewis has gone on to continue making occasional guest appearances on television and a sporadic movie career. In addition to his other endeavors, Lewis has been a high school basketball scout and the owner of a restaurant in New York.

Trivia: First acting gig was a Kellogg's commercial in 1960. Formed a band called Eddie and the Monsters, who released a single in 1983, recalling his role as Eddie (who looked like a wolf boy) on the 1964-66 sitcom, The Munsters. "Whatever Happened to Eddie?" was followed, in 2007, by another song, "It's Only Halloween." Took part in a motorcycling event in Carthage, NY, in 2010 to benefit the blind. Has frequently appeared at Halloween events in his Eddie Munster costume.

Trivia: Her mother worked as treasurer of the U.S. from 1953 to '61. While living in Washington, D.C., she was chosen by a national magazine as one of the capital's "10 most beautiful women." Appeared in commercials for Nestle ice tea and Purina dog food, among others. Made her film debut playing a student in the James Dean classic East of Eden (1955). Left show business in 1985 after moving to Idaho with her husband. She opened her own antique shop there. Once owned Elvis Presley's 1967 El Dorado convertible. Was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2001; has been in remission since 2002.

Trivia: Believe it or don't: comedian Don Rickles--the "Merchant of Venom," "The Caliph of Calumny," "Mister Warmth"--was once a dedicated student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. As a movie-struck kid, Rickles aspired to share the Big Screen with such idols as Clark Gable and James Cagney. He got his wish in his first film, 1958's Run Silent Run Deep, wherein Gable topped the cast. Rickles went on to receive critical plaudits for his villainous performance in 1960's The Rat Race, and also popped up with regularity on such TV series as The Thin Man and The Twilight Zone. But truly good roles for a short, baldpated young character actor were relatively few and far between. During a long period between acting assignments, Rickles decided to work up a nightclub act. He began as a traditional stand-up comic, but when annoyed by hecklers, he instinctively insulted the insulters back as a defense mechanism. Audiences laughed harder at his impromptu insults than his prepared material, and thus the dye was cast for Rickle's show-business future. The story goes that, upon spotting Frank Sinatra in one of his audiences, Rickles impulsively cried out "Come right in, Frank. Make yourself at home. Hit somebody." The normally combative Sinatra exploded with laughter, and from that point on Rickles was "in." While the bulk of his fame and fortune rested upon his nightclub work, Rickles still kept a hand in acting, playing guest spots on TV programs like F Troop, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy and Run for Your Life (he was particularly good in the last-named series as a washed-up comedian facing a statutory rape charge). As his own vitriolic "self" (though rumors persist that Rickles is a pussycat off-camera), he convulsed the stars of such variety series as The Dean Martin Show and The Andy Williams Show. When Dean Martin altered his series to a "roast" format in the early 1970s, Rickles could always be counted upon for a steady stream of hilarious invectives; conversely, he took it as well as he dished it out when the Friar's Club elected him Entertainer of the Year in 1974. The one sore spot in Rickles' latter-day career was his failure to sustain a weekly TV series. The 1968 variety outing The Don Rickles Show was axed after thirteen weeks, while a 1972 sitcom of the same name barely survived the season. He had better luck as star of the 1976 comedy series C.P.O. Sharkey, which lasted two years; but in 1993, Daddy Dearest, which co-starred Rickles with "neurotic" comedian Richard Lewis, was on and off in only two months. In comparison, Rickles has done quite well in films, with choice secondary roles in such productions as Where It's At?, Kelly's Heroes (1970) and several of the "Beach Party" frivolities. In 1995, after several years away from films, Don Rickles resurfaced with a solid supporting part in Martin Scorsese's Casino, and as the voice of a singularly abrasive Mr. Potato Head in the animated Toy Story. He had a brief but memorable cameo in the comedy Dirty Work, and was the subject of his own documentary, Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project. He returned to voice Mr. Potato Head in two Toy Story sequels as well as a number of Pixar shorts, and he gave voice to one of the animals in the Kevin James vehicle Zookeeper. Rickles died in 2017, at age 90.

Trivia: Joyce Jameson was a classic example of the professional "dumb blonde" with a diametrically opposite off-screen personality. Entering films as a chorus member in the 1951 version of Showboat, Jameson honed her musical comedy talents in several satirical revues staged by her onetime husband Billy Barnes. Intelligent, sensitive, and extremely well read, Jameson nonetheless found herself perpetually cast as an airhead or golddigger. In films, she was seen in such roles as a Marilyn Monroe wannabe in The Apartment (1960) and a call-girl who runs screaming from her room when she thinks Jack Lemmon is about to paint her body in Good Neighbor Sam (1963). One of her more unorthodox film assignments was as the vulgar, unfaithful wife of Peter Lorre in Roger Corman's Tales of Terror (1963), in which she and her paramour Vincent Price are walled up in Lorre's wine cellar. One year later, she was reteamed with Lorre and Price in the raucous A Comedy of Terrors (1963), where she was more typically cast as a nitwit. Her later films include The Outlaw Josie Wales (1976) and Hardbodies (1981). Joyce Jameson was a fixture of 1950s and 1960s TV, playing a variety of buxom "straight women" for such comedians as Steve Allen, Red Skelton and Danny Kaye.

Trivia: Character and voice actor Bob Hastings is best known for his television work on series such as McHale's Navy and All in the Family, but he also appeared in some feature films. Born in New York in 1921, he was busy on the radio in his twenties, specializing in male ingenue and comedy roles, including portraying Archie Andrews in an NBC radio adaptations of Archie Comics in 1944. His first credited television appearance was in 1955, in the U.S. Steel Hour production of No Time for Sergeants. Hastings made his feature film debut in 1962 in the Disney production Moon Pilot, starring Tom Tryon, and that same year got his first regular series role as Lt. Elroy Carpenter, the obsequious aide to Joe Flynn's Captain Binghamton on McHale's Navy. He was with the series for four seasons, and it led to his subsequent big-screen work in the features McHale's Navy (1964) and McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force (1965). He also played Bert Ramsey on the daytime drama General Hospital and managed to work in occasional big-screen work, in pictures such as The Flim-Flam Man. In the 1970s, Hastings played the recurring character of Kelsey the tavern-keeper on All in the Family. Hastings' on-screen acting generally saw him cast as nervous, sycophantic mid-level bureaucrats, or, occasionally, as rough-hewn working-class types. But as a voice artist he has had a much wider range of portrayals, including heroes and authority figures, including the voice of Clark Kent in the 1960s Batman/Superman Hour and, in more recent decades, the voice of Commissioner Gordon on the animated Batman from Fox network. Bob Hastings is the older brother of actor Don Hastings, who is perhaps best remembered by viewers of one generation for his portrayal of the Video Ranger in Captain Video; Bob also appeared in the series, in a much less prominent role. He died in 2014, at age 89.