Trivia: Brooklyn-born actor John Joseph Patrick Ryan borrowed his stage name "Jack Lord" from a distant relative. Spending his immediate post-college years as a seafaring man, Lord worked as an engineer in Persia before returning to American shores to manage a Greenwich Village art school and paint original work; he flourished within that sphere (often signing his paintings "John J. Ryan,") and in fact exhibited the tableaux at an array of prestigious institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Modern Museum of Art. Lord switched to acting in the late 1940s, studying under Sanford Meisner at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. In films and television from 1949, Lord (a performer with stark features including deep-set eyes and high cheekbones) played his share of brutish villains and working stiffs before gaining TV fame as star of the critically acclaimed but low-rated rodeo series Stoney Burke (1962). At around the same time, Lord played CIA agent Felix Leiter in the first James Bond film, Dr. No. From 1968 through 1980, Lord starred on the weekly cop drama Hawaii Five-O; producers cast him as Steve McGarrett, a troubleshooter with the Hawaii State Police who spent his days cruising around the islands, cracking open individual cases, and taking on the movers and shakers in Hawaiian organized crime, particularly gangster Wo Fat (Khigh Dhiegh), who eluded capture until the program's final month on the air. Lord also wrote and directed several episodes. After Hawaii 5-0 folded, Jack Lord attempted another Hawaii-based TV series, but M Station: Hawaii (1980) never got any farther than a pilot film. Lord died of congestive heart failure in his Honolulu beachfront home at the age of 77, in January 1998. He was married to Marie Denarde for 50 years.

Trivia: Short-statured, pokerfaced nightclub comic John Byner rose to fame during the 1966 edition of TV's The Garry Moore Show. Byner went on to join the supporting ensemble on the 1967 summer-replacement weekly The Steve Allen Comedy Hour, and five years later headlined his own five-week summer series. He has appeared as a regular on the TV sitcoms The Practice (1976) and Soap (1977), and can be spotted in such lampoonish theatrical films as Transylvania 6-5000 (1985). An accomplished impressionist -- he provided the voice for the Jackie Mason-ish aardvark in DePatie-Freleng's Ant and the Aardvark cartoon shorts -- one of Byner's most enduring routines concerns a bad impressionist, whose concept of Walter Brennan consists of kicking the left leg in the air and screeching "Luke, the barn! Luke, the barn!" A Las Vegas headliner into the 1990s, John Byner's TV contributions have included a stint as host of a series of Bowery Boys films on the A&E cable network.

Trivia: Beloved by television audiences for his endearingly snippy portrayal of upstairs restaurant owner John Allen Hill on Cheers, Tony-winning stage actor Keene Curtis endeared himself to Broadway audiences as Annie's Daddy Warbucks before embarking on a successful career in television and film. Born in Salt Lake City, UT, and raised in nearby Bountiful, Curtis first realized his love for the stage while a student at the University of Utah. Though a three-year stint in the Navy put a brief halt to his education, Curtis returned to the University to study for his bachelor's and master's degrees and was subsequently discovered by Orson Welles when Welles directed a 1947 college production of Macbeth. So impressed with Curtis' performance was Welles that the popular filmmaker cast the burgeoning actor in a professional production of Macbeth the following year. With his stage career kicking into full gear, Curtis would pursue acting while simultaneously working as a stage manager at the Martha Graham Dance Company for the next 12 years. Equally adept in film, television, and the Broadway stage, Curtis also appeared in Welles' film version of Macbeth in addition to roles in such features as Heaven Can Wait (1978), The Buddy System (1984), and I.Q. (1994). Following his memorable performance in Annie, Curtis appeared in such Broadway productions as Twelfth Night, Saint Joan, and Comedians. 1971 found Curtis the recipient of a Tony for his multiple roles in the musical The Rothschilds. Though he was prolific in film and on-stage, it was on television that Curtis made a lasting impression with roles on such popular series as M*A*S*H, Benson, and The Pretender. Curtis also did voice-over work for Scooby and Scrappy-Doo and The Smurfs. Always concerned with helping aspiring actors realize their dreams, Curtis would later endow an acting scholarship, in addition to donating his Tony and other theater memorabilia, to his alma mater. On October 13, 2002, Keene Curtis died of Alzheimer's disease in Bountiful, UT. He was 79.

Trivia: AADA alumnus William Devane first came to the attention of critics while working with the New York Shakespeare Festival. In the angry off-Broadway satire MacBird (1967), Devane played the first of many sharkish young men on the make. His entree into films came by way of the 16-millimeter In Country (1969), after which he alternated between icewater villainy (Hitchcock's Family Plot [1976]) and unexpected heroics (Rolling Thunder [1977]). Much of Devane's best work was seen on television: his marked resemblance to the Kennedy clan has served him well as JFK in TV's The Missiles of October (1974) and the Teddy-like patriarch in the 1995 series The Monroes; and he brought just the right blend of aggression, indignation and confusion to his portrayal of blacklisted TV personality John Henry Faulk in Fear on Trial (1977). Devane has also starred as Sgt. Mike Warden on the TV-series version of From Here to Eternity (1979) and duplicitous state senator Gregory Sumner in Knot's Landing . In the following decades, Devane would continue to appear on both the large and small screens, most notably on What About Brian? and 24, as well as movies like Payback and Space Cowboys.