Trivia: The son of a Jewish movie-publicist father and an Irish Catholic musical-comedy actress, Michael Landon grew up in a predominantly Protestant New Jersey neighborhood. The social pressures brought to bear on young Michael, both at home and in the schoolyard, led to an acute bedwetting problem, which he would later dramatize (very discreetly) in the 1976 TV movie The Loneliest Runner. Determined to better his lot in life, Landon excelled in high school athletics; his prowess at javelin throwing won him a scholarship at the University of Southern California, but a torn ligament during his freshman year ended his college career. Taking a series of manual labor jobs, Landon had no real direction in life until he agreed to help a friend audition for the Warners Bros. acting school. The friend didn't get the job, but Landon did, launching a career that would eventually span nearly four decades. Michael's first film lead was in the now-legendary I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), widely derided at the time but later reassessed as one of the better examples of the late-'50s "drive-in horror" genre. The actor received his first good reviews for his performance as an albino in God's Little Acre. This led to his attaining the title role in 1959's The Legend of Tom Dooley, which in turn was instrumental in his being cast as Little Joe Cartwright on the popular TV western Bonanza. During his fourteen-year Bonanza stint, Landon was given the opportunity to write and direct a few episodes. He carried over these newfound skills into his next TV project, Little House on the Prairie, which ran from 1974 to 1982 (just before Little House, Landon made his TV-movie directorial bow with It's Good to Be Alive, the biopic of baseball great Roy Campanella). Landon also oversaw two spinoff series, Little House: The New Beginning (1982-83) and Father Murphy (1984). Landon kept up his career momentum with a third long-running TV series, Highway to Heaven (1984-89) wherein the actor/producer/director/writer played guardian angel Jonathan Smith. One of the most popular TV personalities of the '70s and '80s, Landon was not universally beloved by his Hollywood contemporaries, what with his dictatorial on-set behavior and his tendency to shed his wives whenever they matured past childbearing age. Still, for every detractor, there was a friend, family member or coworker who felt that Landon was the salt of the earth. In early 1991, Landon began work on his fourth TV series, Us, when he began experiencing stomach pains. In April of that same year, the actor was informed that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. The courage and dignity with which Michael Landon lived his final months on earth resulted in a public outpouring of love, affection and support, the like of which was seldom witnessed in the cynical, self-involved '90s. Michael Landon died in his Malibu home on July 1, 1991, with his third wife Cindy at his side.

Trivia: The son of a movie stunt man, Victor French made his screen entree in westerns, where his unkempt beard and scowling countenance made him a perfect heavy. He carried over his robbin' and rustlin' activities into television, making multiple appearances on such series as Gunsmoke and Bonanza. It was former Bonanza star Michael Landon, a great friend of French's, who "humanized" the veteran screen villain with the role of farmer Isiah Edwards in the weekly TV drama Little House on the Prairie. French temporarily left Little House in 1977 to star in his own sitcom, Carter Country, in which he played an affable Southern sheriff who tried his best to accommodate the ever-changing racial relationships of the 1970s. In 1984, Landon cast French as ex-cop Michael Gordon, whose bitterness at the world was softened by the presence of a guardian angel (Landon), in the popular TV series Highway to Heaven. French directed every third episode of this series, extending his directorial activities to the Los Angeles theatre scene, where he won a Critics Circle award for his staging of 12 Angry Men. In contrast to his earlier bad-guy roles, French went out of his way in the 1980s to avoid parts that required him to exhibit cruelty or inhumanity. Victor French died in 1989, shortly after completing work on the final season of Highway to Heaven.

Trivia: The Standard Operating Procedure of those anonymous young lovelies chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month is to make an extremely brief flurry of au naturel movie appearances before rapidly fading into the sunset. Such was not the case of very blonde, very buxom Shannon Tweed. After being anointed Playmate of the Month and Playmate of the Year, the Canadian-born Tweed was able to sustain her film career for nearly two decades. Her come-hither looks, cascading blonde hair, and divine figure admittedly contributed to her durability, but her strongest suit was her genuine acting ability and willingness to poke fun at her image. The actress offered a comedy performance worthy of a Colbert or Lombard as the fetchingly undraped star of the Apocalypse Now spoof Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death (1990), while she was consistently superior to her material (and most of her co-stars, female and male) in the Night Eyes and Indecent Behavior films of the 1980s and 1990s. Somewhat more modestly garbed in her television appearances, Tweed has been a regular on the daytime soaper Days of Our Lives, the nighttime serial Falcon Crest (1981-1982 season only, as Diana Hunter), and the raunchy cable-TV sitcom First and Ten. In 1991, she starred as air-service proprietor Sally "Slick" Monroe on the diverting Canadian TV adventure weekly Fly By Night, which ran in rerun form on CBS until 1993. The sister of actress Tracy Tweed, Shannon Tweed has two children with Kiss musician Gene Simmons.

Trivia: During his formative years, Roy Thinnes had wanted to become a doctor or football player--or, if one wants to believe his early press releases, both. Having made his professional acting debut as a teen-aged firebug in a 1957 pilot for the never-sold TV series Chicago 212, Thinnes spent several lean years "between engagements," working as a hotel clerk, vitamin salesman and copy boy to Chicago Sun Times columnist Irv Kupcinet. His first regular TV work was as Phil Brewer on the daytime soap opera General Hospital; during this period, the young actor became the television equivalent of a matinee idol, sparking a barrage of protest mail when he briefly left GH in pursuit of other acting jobs. Aggressively campaigning for the starring role of Ben Quick on the 1965 weekly-TV version of the 1958 film Long Hot Summer, Thinnes won the part, as well as a whole new crop of adoring female fans. While Summer was unsuccessful, Thinnes enjoyed a longer run as David Vincent on the Fugitive-like sci-fi series The Invaders (1967-68). Though he'd occasionally show up in such theatrical features as Hindenburg (1975), Airport 75 (1975) and Blue Bayou (1990), Thinnes would remain essentially a TV star for the rest of his career. Among Roy Thinnes' post-Invaders TV-series roles was Dr. James Whitman on The Psychiatrist (1971), Capt (and later Major) Holms on From Here to Eternity (1979-80), Nick Hogan on Falcon Crest (who, in 1983, married Victoria Gioberti [Jamie Rose] in a highly-rated ceremony) and the dual role of Roger Collins and Reverend Trask in the 1991 prime-time revival of Dark Shadows.

Trivia: Commanding African American actor Thalmus Rasulala launched his film career in such blaxploitationers of the 1960s and 1970s as Cool Breeze, Blacula, Bucktown and Friday Foster. He was prominently cast in the Emmy-winning made-for-TV feature The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, played Omro in the 1977 miniseries Roots, and was one of the nine stars of the 1981 multipart drama The Sophisticated Gents. Rasulala's series-TV manifest included the occasional role of Mabel King's ex-husband on What's Happening!! (1976-79), and a substantial run on the daytime drama One Life to Live. In the 1991 TV movie Above the Law, Rasulala played a character named Crowder, which happened to be his given name. Thalmus Rasulala died of heart failure and leukemia at the age of 51; his last film, Mom and Dad Save the World (1992), was released posthumously.

Trivia: Basketball injuries in high school ended his college-basketball aspirations. Studied restaurant management before dropping out of college to pursue an acting career. Worked at a clothing store while trying to make it as a struggling actor. Appeared in a national commercial for Jack Link's beef jerky. Cowrote a screenplay titled Danny Boy. Plays basketball in the NBA Entertainment League, comprised of actors who play exhibition games for charity.