Trivia: Tousle-haired child actor Jay North was the son of the West Coast regional director for AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), a performer's union. He began showing up on TV in 1958 and in films the following year. Selected from a group of 500 possibilities, he landed the title role in the TV series Dennis the Menace, which ran from 1959 to 1963. He went on to star in the single-season adventure weekly Maya (1966) and in such family oriented films as Zebra in the Kitchen. Reportedly mistreated and abused by his on-set guardians, North's career as a child star was less than pleasant; nor did he make a successful transition to adult roles in such trash as Teacher Teacher (1974). Eventually overcoming his past, he vowed to prevent others in his situation from suffering similar humiliations, and later spent much of his time offering advice, counsel, and moral support to preteen professional actors. Among Jay North's later acting appearances was the 1980 TV movie Scout's Honor, which featured several other former child TV performers in the cast.

Trivia: Perhaps best remembered for playing Henry Mitchell, the father of an energetic tow-headed boy in the popular television sitcom Dennis the Menace (1959-1963), tall, slender, and bespectacled character actor Herbert Anderson's career encompassed extensive experience on Broadway and in Hollywood films. Contracted to Warner Bros. around 1940, he made his film debut in Meet the Fleet (1940). His first two years were quite busy, but by mid-decade he was landing fewer roles. On stage, he appeared with Henry Fonda in a 1953 production of Caine Mutiny Court Martial. After the cancellation of Dennis the Menace, Anderson's film appearances became quite rare, though he made frequent guest appearances on other television shows, including Batman, Bewitched, and Dragnet. Heart trouble in the early '80s forced Anderson to retire.

Trivia: Actress Gloria Henry was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1923, and joined the roster of Columbia Pictures in the mid-1940s. She generally appeared in the studio's B-movie output, such as Sport of Kings (1947) and Rusty Saves A Life (1949), in the latter playing a key role in the plot. Her most widely seen screen work was in Fritz Lang's offbeat 1952 western Rancho Notorious -- her murder at the beginning of the movie propels the plot of the noir-ish western to its grim end. In 1958, Henry was chosen to play Alice Mitchell, the mother to Jay North's Dennis Mitchell in the sitcom Dennis The Menace, a role she portrayed until 1963 -- she worked opposite the slightly older Herbert Anderson, playing her husband Henry Mitchell. Although her lines were usually limited to expressions of joy or exasperation (TV moms were usually depicted in a simple way in those days . . . ), and all of the adults in the series were essentially second fiddle to North's Dennis and Joseph Kearns' Mr. Wilson, she did at least get to wear more attractive hair-styles and clothes as the series wore on. At the start of the 1960s, Henry also suggested to her gardener, a young man named Todd Armstrong, that he might consider doing a screen test for Columbia Pictures -- he agreed and she arranged it, and Armstrong ended up playing the hero in the classic Ray Harryhausen-produced fantasy film Jason And The Argonauts. Henry's own acting career resumed at a slower pace after the cancellation of Dennis The Menace, and she had pretty much retired by the 1970s.

Trivia: As a screen performer, Vinton Hayworth had an evolution similar to that of his older contemporary, Ernest Truex, beginning in weasley and milquetoast roles (often as good-natured but conniving husbands) and aging into dignified character parts; screen work, however, was only a small part of his career. Born Vinton Haworth in Washington, D.C., in 1906, he began acting in his late teens. Possessed of a melodious voice, he was a pioneering radio announcer in the early '20s, first in Washington, later in New York, and then in Chicago, where he became familiar to the public as one of the first identifiable newscasters in the new medium. Subsequently, he also appeared on numerous radio programs in various roles. Hayworth entered movies in 1933, under the stage name Jack Arnold (not to be confused with the movie director of that name), and made appearances in small roles under that name, as well as under his real name. He usually played comically good-natured, sneaky characters, such as nervous husbands trying to get a night out away from the wife. His appearances as Jack Arnold ended in the early '40s and he did a two-year stint on Broadway, from 1942 to 1944, in the cast of Doughgirls before returning to California. His appearances in film from the late '50s onward, usually in crafty but dignified roles, were under his own name, to which he added the "y" to the spelling in the mid-'60s. By that time, Hayworth, sporting a dignified moustache and thinning, elegant silvery hair, had settled into avuncular character parts, in anthology series such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and on programs like Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, Dennis The Menace, Petticoat Junction, Hazel, and The Munsters. On Green Acres, he played Dr. Faber, the long-suffering New York phyisican to Eddie Albert's Oliver Wendell Douglas. He is best remembered for his portrayal of General Schaeffer, Tony Nelson's commanding officer in I Dream of Jeannie for the series' final two seasons. Haworth, who had been a leading anti-communist spokesman for his profession during the 1930's and 1940's, became notorious during the early/mid-1950s for his participation in the blacklist while an officer of AFTRA and also a leader of Aware, Inc., an anti-communist "screening" organization that regularly named members of the acting profession as suspect. He and the slate that he headed within the union organized against accused and alleged communists and also moderates who were opposed to the warfare between the right and the left, and Haworth became so well-known for his political activities that he was considered unemployable by many producers, this in a time when anti-communism was in the ascent. His career recovered somewhat in the 1960's as the passions over this issue died down. Haworth passed away in 1970, at the age of 63. His wife, the former Jean Owens, was the aunt of actress Ginger Rogers.

Trivia: Sylvia Field's several-decades-long career encompassed performances on stage, screen, and television, where she was best known for playing the kindhearted Mrs. Wilson opposite crotchety Joseph Kearns and mischievous towhead Jay North on Dennis the Menace between 1959 and 1962. Born and raised in Boston, Field was 17 when she launched her professional career in a Broadway production of The Bluebird. She entered films in The Exalted Flapper (1929) and would appear in eight more features before retiring from movies in 1958 after appearing in Annette. Married to comedian Ernest Truex since the 1940s, she made her television debut along with him in Mr. Peepers. The show was produced in New York and ran three years before Field and her family decided to quit the show and move to Southern California. Following her departure from Dennis the Menace (which was precipitated by the death of Kearns), Field continued to appear as a television guest star on series such as Perry Mason and Father Knows Best.