Trivia: Actor/director/producer William Conrad started his professional career as a musician. After World War II service, he began building his reputation in films and on Hollywood-based radio programs. Due to his bulk and shifty-eyed appearance, he was cast in films as nasty heavies, notably in The Killers (1946) (his first film), Sorry Wrong Number (1948) and The Long Wait (1954). On radio, the versatile Conrad was a fixture on such moody anthologies as Escape and Suspense; he also worked frequently with Jack "Dragnet" Webb during this period, and as late as 1959 was ingesting the scenery in the Webb-directed film 30. Conrads most celebrated radio role was as Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke, which he played from 1952 through 1961 (the TV Gunsmoke, of course, went to James Arness, who physically matched the character that the portly Conrad had shaped aurally). In the late 1950s, Conrad went into the production end of the business at Warner Bros., keeping his hand in as a performer by providing the hilariously strident narration of the cartoon series Rocky and His Friends and its sequel The Bullwinkle Show. During the early 1960s, Conrad also directed such films as Two on a Guillotine (1964) and Brainstorm (1965). Easing back into acting in the early 1970s, Conrad enjoyed a lengthy run as the title character in the detective series Cannon (1971-76), then all too briefly starred as a more famous corpulent crime solver on the weekly Nero Wolfe. Conrad's final TV series was as one-half of Jake and the Fatman (Joe Penny was Jake), a crime show which ran from 1987 through 1991.

Trivia: Filmgoers who have attributed the stardom of actress Sondra Locke to the "sponsorship" of her onetime soulmate Clint Eastwood are suffering from the dreaded SMS, or Short Memory Syndrome. These worthies have forgotten that Locke was Oscar-nominated for her portrayal of a suicidal small-town girl in Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968) while Eastwood was still grinding out spaghetti westerns. It is true that Locke's flagging screen career was regenerated by her appearance in Eastwood's The Outlaw Josey Wales. It is also probable that she would not have been afforded the opportunity to play everything from supercilious heiresses (Broncho Billy) to foul-mouthed Federal witnesses (The Gauntlet) to vengeful murderers (Sudden Impact) without Eastwood's support and encouragement. The acrimonious "palimony" suit that followed the breakup of Locke and Eastwood served only to perpetuate the myth that Locke was a blonde nonentity coasting on the reputation of her live-in lover. That such a notion is idiotic has been proven by Sondra Locke's artistic achievements as director of such low-profile theatrical features as Ratboy (1990) and Impulse (1990) and such TVers as Death in Small Doses (1995).

Trivia: American general purpose actor Tim O'Connor gained television fame for his portrayal of a character who was talked about but unseen for nearly half a television season. In 1965, O'Connor walked purposefully onto the set of Peyton Place, and into the role of Constance MacKenzie's long-lost husband Elliot Carson. His later TV-series assignments included Hub Hewitson in the 1979 miniseries Wheels and Dr. Huer during the first (1979-80) season of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. In films since 1970, Tim O'Connor has played reserved white-collar types in such productions as Groundstar Conspiracy (1972), Across 110th Street (1972) and Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991).

Trivia: The son of a Chicago minister, actor David Soul actually launched his career as a folk singer. Born David Richard Solbert on August 28, 1943 in Chicago, Illinois, David moved to Mexico during his youth, when his father took a lengthy assignment as diplomatic advisor for the U.S. State Department. The experience (and the Mexican environment) engendered in young Solberg a permanent love of indigenous folk music. For the remainder of his youth, the whole world was Soul's backyard as his father was transferred from post to post during the 1950s and early 1960s. The blossoming performer could never quite shake either his inbred wanderlust (he attended Augustana College in South Dakota, the University of the Americas in New Mexico, and the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis) or his musical inclinations. After impulsively deciding to become a stage performer, and studying with the legendary Uta Hagen in New York, Soul definitively opted to embark upon a singing career. From 1966 to 1967, the performer turned up as the hooded "mystery singer" on the syndicated television talkfest The Merv Griffin Show. At about the same time, Soul also landed gigs opening for musical acts including Frank Zappa, The Lovin' Spoonful and The Byrds. The singer's decision, not long after, to finally remove his "mask" on television and reveal himself to the public backfired; it took away the novelty, and made it eminently more difficult for Soul to book concerts. Taking this as a cue, the actor returned to television, and was cast as Joshua Bolt on the 1968 TV adventure series Here Come the Brides, co-starring with another promising vocalist, Bobby Sherman. While Sherman became an instant teen idol, Soul would not truly hit it big until 1976, when he was cast as urban cop David Starsky and teamed with Paul Michael Glaser on the cop series Starsky and Hutch (1975-79). During the series and immediately following its cancellation, Soul attempted to trade off of his tube success by revitalizing his recording career, but did so with intermittent success; his syrupy ballad "Don't Give Up on Us" (parodied by Owen Wilson years later during a scene in the 2004 big-screen movie Starsky & Hutch) peaked at #1 in 1977 and became an FM and then AM radio staple for decades, but his albums charted much lower and did little to further his musical success.The actor went on to star in the TV weeklies Casablanca (1983, in the Bogart role!), The Yellow Rose (1983-84), Unsub (1989), and the telemovie adventure Pentathalon (1994). He also made a cameo alongside Glaser at the conclusion of the aforementioned Starsky & Hutch movie. Married several times, Soul's ex-wives include Karen Carlson, Lynn Marta, and Julia Nickson.