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: After a healthy stage career, American actor Granville Van Dusen made his screen bow in 1971's The Statue. Van Dusen went on to character roles on TV, and in 1987 co-starred with Patty Duke in the Fox sitcom Karen's Song. He is also well known for his extensive cartoon and TV-commercial voiceover work. Sometimes billed as Sonny Van Dusen, Granville Van Dusen has been heard in such animated endeavors as Jonny Quest (1988 edition), in which he "younged up" his voice to essay the title role.

Trivia: An actor since the age of six, when he began appearing in TV commercials, Elden Henson got his first big break in 1998 when he was cast as a warm-hearted giant opposite Sharon Stone and Kieran Culkin in The Mighty. Often cast as social misfits, the red-haired, stocky actor was born in Rockville, MD, on August 30, 1977. Two years later he entered show business as a model, and at the age of six moved to Los Angeles with his family in order to better pursue his career.After getting bit parts in Jaws: The Revenge (1987) and Turner and Hooch (1989), Henson won a more substantial role in the 1992 preteen hockey comedy The Mighty Ducks, and also appeared in the film's 1994 and 1996 sequels. Following his recognition in The Mighty, which earned him some positive critical notices, he became part of the late-'90s teen flick trend when he was chosen for supporting roles in the Freddy Prinze Jr./Rachael Leigh Cook romantic comedy She's All That (1999) and Idle Hands (1999), a schlocky teen murder ditty that had the misfortune of being released in the wake of the Columbine High School massacre.In 2001, Henson won one of his most substantial roles to date in Manic, a teen-ensemble drama directed by first-time filmmaker Jordan Melamed. Set entirely in a teen psychiatric ward, it cast Henson as an angry young man in the company of Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, as well as the always reliable Don Cheadle. That same year he further increased his exposure by appearing opposite Julia Stiles, Josh Hartnett, and Mekhi Phifer in O, Tim Blake Nelson's modern-day prep school take on Shakespeare's Othello.

Trivia: Character actor Charles Woolf appeared in many feature films, on television, and on stage. He launched his career on radio during the 1940s. He switched to films with Scudda-Hoo! Scudda-Hay (1948). Woolf's subsequent film credits include Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1972), No Way Back (1976), and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (1988).