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: Born in Indiana and raised in Texas, Andrew Duggan attended Indiana University on a speech and drama scholarship. He was starred there in Maxwell Anderson's The Eve of St. Mark, which was being given a nonprofessional pre-Broadway tryout; on the basis of this performance, Duggan was cast in the professional Chicago company of the Anderson play. Before rehearsals could start, however, Duggan was drafted into the army. After wartime service, Duggan began his acting career all over again, working at his uncle's Indiana farm in-between Broadway and stock engagements. In Hollywood in the late 1950s, Duggan was co-starred in the Warner Bros. TV series Bourbon Street Beat and was featured in such films as The Bravados (1958), Seven Days in May (1964) and In Like Flint (1967). He also was starred on the 1962 TV sitcom Room for One More and the 1968 video western Lancer. Because of his marked resemblance to Dwight D. Eisenhower, Duggan was frequently cast as generals and U.S. presidents. Andrew Duggan's last screen appearance was in The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover.

Trivia: German-born Hans Gudegast was still in his teens when he made his first film appearance in The Colossus of Rhodes (1957). Spending virtually his entire career in Hollywood, Gudegast achieved TV fame as the eternally outflanked Afrika Korps officer Hauptman on the weekly TV series The Rat Patrol (1967-1969). Sensing that he'd forever be typecast as a Nazi under his given name, Gudegast changed his professional cognomen to Eric Braeden in 1970 (he reportedly borrowed the name of his home town in Germany, though some sources indicate that he was actually born in Kiel). The actor's instincts were correct: under his new professional name, Braeden was afforded the opportunity to demonstrate his versatility as both leading man -- he was Charles Forbin in Colossus: The Forbin Project -- and villain. He was often called upon to convey insufferable arrogance, vide his memorable appearance as a media critic on an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show (that's the one where Braeden received a pie in the face, courtesy of Ted Knight). Eric Braeden's best-known characterization was as the smoothly sinister Victor Newman in the CBS daytime drama The Young and the Restless. Braeden played a small role as the wealthy John Jacob Astor in 1997's mega-hit Titanic, and co-starred in the comedy Meet the Deedles the following year. Following a long run on The Young and the Restless, Braeden co-starred with fellow Titanic alumni Billy Zane in The Man Who Came Back (2008), and took on the role of Robin Scherbatsky, Sr. for the television series How I Met Your Mother.

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.