Trivia: Red-headed, freckle-faced Martin Milner was only 15 when he made his screen debut in Life With Father (1947), and would continue to play wide-eyed high schoolers and college kids well into the next decade. His early film assignments included the teenaged Marine recruit in Lewis Milestone's The Halls of Montezuma (1951) and the obnoxious suitor of Jeanne Crain in Belles on Their Toes (1952). His first regular TV series was The Stu Erwin Show (1950-1955), in which he played the boyfriend (and later husband) of Stu's daughter Joyce. More mature roles came his way in Marjorie Morningstar (1957) as Natalie Wood's playwright sweetheart and in The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) as the jazz musician targeted for persecution by Winchell-esque columnist Burt Lancaster. Beginning in 1960, he enjoyed a four-year run as Corvette-driving Tod Stiles on TV's Route 66 (a statue of Milner and his co-star George Maharis currently stands at the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY). A longtime friend and associate of producer/director/actor Jack Webb, Milner was cast as veteran L.A.P.D. patrolman Pete Malloy on the Webb-produced TV weekly Adam-12, which ran from 1968 to 1975. His later TV work included a short-lived 1970s series based on Johan Wyss' Swiss Family Robinson. Later employed as a California radio personality, Martin Milner continued to make occasional TV guest appearances; one of these was in the 1989 TV movie Nashville Beat, in which he was reunited with his Adam-12 co-star Kent McCord. He made an appearance on the short-lived series The New Adam-12 and had recurring roles on shows like Life Goes On and Murder, She Wrote. Milner died in 2015, at age 83.

Trivia: Supporting actor Kent McCord is best known for co-starring in the long-running series Adam-12 (1968-1975). McCord made his film debut in the made-for-television movie The Outsider (1967). Following the demise of Adam-12, McCord continued appearing in TV films and in low-budget features such as Unsub (1985) and Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993).

Trivia: Pressured by his father to become a policemen like all five of his brothers, American actor Michael O'Shea defied his dad by dropping out of school at age 12, then entered vaudeville in an act with his idol, boxer Jack Johnson. Working the Prohibition years as a comic and emcee in speakeasies, O'Shea organized his own dance band, Michael O'Shea and His Stationary Gypsies. Adopting the professional name Eddie O'Shea, the actor spent the '30s in stock companies and in radio, until accruing good reviews for his 1942 Broadway appearance in The Eve of St. Mark. Somewhat reluctantly, O'Shea entered movies on the strength of his stage work; the one Michael O'Shea film that seems to get the most circulation today is Lady Of Burlesque (1943) in which he played a red-nosed burleyque comic who was the erstwhile boyfriend of stripper Barbara Stanwyck. Bouncing back and forth between Broadway and movies, O'Shea never quite became a star, though he did manage to marry one: Virginia Mayo, with whom he'd appeared in the 1943 film Jack London. O'Shea's film work in the '50s was acceptable, but he was shown to better advantage in the 1955 TV sitcom, It's A Great Life, which though no hit had a great second life in reruns. According to an interview given in 1972 Michael O'Shea fulfilled his father's "policeman" wishes after a fashion by working as an operative for the FBI in the mid '60s, helping to break up a gambling ring plaguing O'Shea's home turf of Ventura County, California.

Trivia: Tough-guy American actor James Luisi could usually be found playing cops or plainclothes detectives. Luisi spent four (1976-80) years in the role of Lt. Doug Chapman on TV's The Rockford Files, later repeating the characterization (now promoted to Captain) in two Rockford TV-movies of the mid-1990s. On daytime TV, he was seen as Phil Wainwright in Another World. James Luisi's TV resumé also included the roles of garage owner Harry Foreman in Harris and Company (1979) and police lieutenant Marciano in Renegades (1983).

Trivia: Robert Dowdell is mostly remembered on television for his portrayal of Lt. Commander Chip Morton, the executive officer of the submarine Seaview on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea for four seasons (1964-1968). During the late '50s and early '60s, however, Robert Dowdell was one of the busier and more promising up-and-coming actors on stage and television, with appearances onstage opposite performers such as Joanne Woodward, and on the small screen starring with the likes of Richard Burton. Born in Park Ridge, IL, Dowdell grew up in Chicago and set his sights on an acting career while attending Parker High School. He attended Wesleyan University and the University of Chicago before the army interrupted his studies, and later, after a number of jobs (including railroad brakeman and auto assembly line worker), he got his first break when he landed the lead role in an off-Broadway production of The Dybbuk. The latter experience brought to light his utter lack of professional training, and led to Dowdell's studying with renowned acting coach Wyn Handman, which resulted in his being cast in a small role in Time Limit, a Broadway drama set in the aftermath of the Korean War. It was after meeting producer/author Leslie Stevens that Dowdell was cast in Stevens' play The Lovers, working alongside Hurd Hatfield and a young Joanne Woodward. The play's director, Arthur Penn, in turn brought Dowdell to television when he began directing Studio One. He was back on Broadway in Love Me a Little, starring opposite Susan Kohner, and he followed this with a role in the John Frankenheimer-directed play The Midnight Sun. That led to Dowdell's appearance with Richard Burton in Frankenheimer's television presentation of The Fifth Column on CBS/Buick Electra Playhouse. Dowdell also worked with Buddy Hackett on Broadway in Viva Madison Avenue and portrayed the role of the German tutor in the road company production of Five Finger Exercise, starring Jessica Tandy. It was during the Los Angeles engagement of the latter show that he was offered a co-starring role of Cody Bristol on Stoney Burke, which was being produced by Leslie Stevens. It lasted one season but led to his being cast in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which kept him working for four seasons. Although many of the episodes didn't give Dowdell too much to do beyond relaying orders from other characters, the series' first two seasons allowed him some acting leeway that showed a real talent present beneath the bland dialogue and increasingly childish plots; and there were at least two programs in each of the last two seasons in which Chip Morton actually had scenes by himself or one-on-one with whatever force, alien or Earth-spawned, was threatening the ship. In the years since its cancellation, Dowdell has done some theatrical and film work, and reappeared on television occasionally, as recently as the mid-'90s.