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: Although his career stretches back half a century and includes over 100 films and countless TV programs, Leslie Nielsen gained true fame late in his career, when he starred in a series of comic spoofs beginning with 1980's Airplane!.The son of a Canadian Mountie and the brother of Canada's future Deputy Prime Minister, Nielsen was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, on February 11, 1926. He developed an early knack for acting when he was forced to lie to his disciplinarian father in order to avoid punishment, and he went on to become a radio announcer after serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force during WWII (despite being legally deaf, the result of a childhood illness). To prepare himself for his future career, Nielsen studied at Toronto's Academy of Radio Arts, which was run by CBC commentator and future Bonanza star Lorne Greene. After several years in radio, he won a scholarship to New York's Neighborhood Playhouse, where he studied acting under Sanford Meisner and dance under Martha Graham. He then spent five years appearing on such live television programs as Tales From Tomorrow before making his film bow in Ransom! (1956). With the exception of his starring roles in the sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet (1956) and the popular Debbie Reynolds-vehicle Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), much of Nielsen's early work was undistinguished; he was merely a handsome leading man in an industry overstocked with handsome leading men. An attempt to do a "Davy Crockett" by starring as Francis Marion in the Disney TV saga The Swamp Fox resulted in a nifty title tune but little else. Nielsen went on to star in such series as The New Breed, Bracken's World, and Hawaii Five-O (1968), but found he was more in demand as a heavy than as a hero.A notorious offscreen practical joker and cut-up, Nielsen was not given an onscreen conduit for this trait until he was cast in the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker spoof Airplane (1980). This led to his deadpan characterization of monumentally inept police lieutenant Frank Drebin on Z.A.Z.'s cult TV series Police Squad, which in turn spawned the 1988 hit The Naked Gun and two sequels. Nielsen also found success in a number of other film spoofs, so much, in fact, that those familiar only with his loopy comedy roles are invariably surprised that, once upon a time, he took himself deadly seriously in films like Harlow (1965) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972). Nielsen died at the age of 84, of pneumonia, in late November 2010.

Trivia: Swedish actor/director Alf Kjellin studied for a theatrical career, but was swept into movie stardom thanks to his appearance as a troubled student in the Ingmar Bergman-scripted film Hets (1944), released in the US after the war as Frenzy. Hailed as a "new discovery" (though he'd been in Swedish films since 1937), Kjellin was brought to Hollywood on the strength of Torment, making his American bow in MGM's Madame Bovary (1949). MGM wasn't fond of Kjellin's name, so he was billed as Christopher Kent for Bovary, reverting to his real moniker for such subsequent American films as My Six Convicts (1952). Feeling confined by the second leads and villains he played in Hollywood, Kjellin turned to directing with Girl in the Rain in 1957. Few of his films as a director were memorable, though Kjellin gained an excellent reputation directing such TV series as I Spy in the '60s and Columbo in the '70s. I Spy became something of a crusade for Kjellin; in tandem with director of photography Fouad Said, the director lobbied for the right to use more flexible hand-held cameras rather than the cumbersome boxes then required by the American Society of Cinematographers. (Kjellin was victorious, but the resultant bad photography on many TV shows of the '70s may have caused him second thoughts.) Even as his stock as a director rose in Tinseltown, Alf Kjellin took on the occasional acting role in such films as Ice Station Zebra (1968) and Zandy's Bride (1974).

Trivia: Tall, blonde leading-lady Joan Van Ark began making the guest-appearance rounds in TV programs of the early 1970s. Her first regular nighttime series work was in the sitcoms Temperatures Rising (73) and We've Got Each Other (77). Though adept at comedy, Joan is better known for her soap-opera work, first as Janene Whitney on the daytimer Days of Our Lives, then as Valerie Ewing on the nighttime serial Dallas. One year after her first 1978 appearance as Valerie, Joan carried the character over into the spin-off series Knot's Landing, appearing in both series until 1981. Joan Van Ark remained with Knot's Landing almost up to its cancellation in 1993; when she left to do a pilot for a TV sitcom, the producers contrived to have her character blown up in a car, effectively preventing Ms. Van Ark from harboring second thoughts. A little-known aspect of Joan Van Ark's career is her extensive work as a cartoon voiceover actress, notably as the leading character in the Saturday morning animated series Spiderwoman (79).

Trivia: James Keach is the son of actor/producer Stacy Keach Sr. and the younger brother of actor Stacy Keach Jr. An actor himself, Keach has appeared with his brother in PBS' The Wings of Kitty Hawk (as Orville Wright) and in the 1980 theatrical feature The Long Riders (as Jesse James). He also worked on the script of the last-named project. Emulating his father, Keach has concentrated on behind-the-camera work as a producer and director. In the latter capacity, he has helmed such projects as False Identity (1991) Sunstroke (1991), Stars Fell on Henrietta (1994). In addition, James Keach has directed several episodes of the popular CBS TV series Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, starring his then-wife, actress Jane Seymour.

Trivia: A product of New York's Professional Children's School, Alfred Ryder was making a living as an actor at the age of 8. In 1929, Ryder made his Broadway debut, playing "lost boy" Curly in Eva Le Galleine's production of Peter Pan. As a teenager and young adult, Ryder studied his craft with such masters as Benno Schneider, Robert Lewis and Lee Strasberg. He went on to appear in such plays as Awake and Sing and Yellow Jack, and for many years was heard as Sammy in the radio serial Rise of the Goldbergs. While serving in the military in 1944, he made his first film, Winged Victory, in which he was billed as "PFC Alfred Ryder." After the war, he returned to the stage, re-emerging in films in the late 1950s. His movie credits of the 1960s include significant character parts in Hotel (1967) and True Grit (1968). Ryder also made scores of TV guest-star appearances, including the role of Professor Carter in the opening Star Trek episode "The Man Trap" (1966). Alfred Ryder made his last film in 1976, thereafter concentrating on his stage activities as actor and director.