Trivia: Fred Dryer has spent the bulk of his acting career on television, but he has also appeared in a few feature films, beginning with The Starmaker (1981). Prior to becoming a performer, Dryer had been a professional football player. On television, he is best remembered for two roles, that of Sam Malone's irritating buddy, Dave Richards, in three episodes of the NBC sitcom Cheers and as fearless Detective Sergeant Rick Hunter in the series Hunter (1984). Other film appearances include Cannonball Run II (1984) and Day of Reckoning (1994).

Trivia: Supporting actor Charles Hallahan played character roles on stage, television and in feature films. Fans of the Stephen J. Cannell police drama Hunter will know Hallahan for playing Captain Charlie Devane between 1986 and 1991. A Philadelphia native, Hallahan earned an undergraduate degree at Rutgers and a master's from Temple University six years before heading to Los Angeles in 1977. Hallahan had little trouble finding acting jobs. His stage credits include playing the lead in a long-running San Francisco production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest during the late '90s, roles in plays ranging from Equus to The Threepenny Opera. In 1976, Hallahan toured the Soviet Union in two classic plays. On television, Hallahan guest-starred on over 200 episodes of shows ranging from Lou Grant to The Paper Chase. He made his feature film debut in Nightwing (1979). He made his last film appearance playing Paul Dreyfuss in Dante's Peak (1997). Hallahan died during a car crash in which he apparently suffered a heart attack on November 25, 1997. He was 54.

Trivia: Joshua Shelley was one of the more enduring victims of Hollywood's blacklist, a fate that overtook him almost as soon as he'd made his big-screen debut. A New York native who began performing at the age of four (when he recited Lincoln's Gettysburg Address at a Brooklyn department store), he became a vaudeville bandleader while attending New York University (also working, in time, as a student journalist), and played in some touring shows before the war. Shelley was drafted in 1942 and served in a special services unit attached to the Tenth Mountain Division. After World War II, he was cast in the musical-fantasy One Touch of Venus, playing three roles in the stage production. In 1948, he was in the cast of Make Mine Manhattan, a hit stage revue written by Shelley's former NYU classmate Arnold B. Horwitt, with Oskar Homolka, Jessie Royce Landis, and Nancy Walker. Shelley's biggest role on stage during this period, however, was as Ozzie in On The Town (the part that Jules Munshin played in the movie). During the late '40s, Shelley also made hundreds of appearances on radio in dramatic roles, on programs such as Dick Tracy, Counterspy, and This Is Your F.B.I., and on early television, primarily in dramatic vehicles, including the ABC anthology series Actors' Studio. He also later served as a disc jockey on WINS. Shelley came to Hollywood in 1949, making his debut in the Universal Pictures college musical Yes Sir, That's my Baby (a sort of poor man's Good News). It was his second movie, however, in the role of Crazy Parrin in Maxwell Shane's City Across the River, that should have put Shelley on the map. He played a character who was both pathetic and terrifying: Crazy is a mildly retarded member of the street gang the Dukes, one minute vulnerable and exploited by the men and women around him, the next a knife-wielding would-be killer tormenting anyone, male or female, that he thinks has crossed him or the gang. Shelley gave the performance of a lifetime -- dominating every scene he is in from the opening shot -- but he was to reap precious little reward for it. He was named as a Communist after the movie's release, and that was to be his last film for more than 15 years. Shelley, who had played hundreds of radio and television parts, found the broadcast media closed to him as well, and he returned to theatrical work during the 1950s. Some of those theater projects were, themselves, fairly controversial and challenging, including the musical I Want You, staged by satirist Theodore J. Flicker (later the director of the films The Troublemaker and The President's Analyst). Later there were again television series like Barney Miller and Phoenix 55, a satire of the '50s middle class starring Shelley, Harvey Lembeck, and Nancy Walker. In the summer of 1955, Shelley was one of a group of witnesses (also including Lee Hays of the Weavers) called to testify before hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee, investigating supposed Communist infiltration of the entertainment industry. He never gave up on his career, despite the harassment that cut short his film and television work, and by the early '60s Shelley had re-emerged as a director, first on stage and then, as the influence of the Red Scare vanished, on television and in movies; he directed the extremely funny pilot to an unsold series called The Freudian Slip, written and created by Woody Allen, and co-directed the feature film release of The Perils of Pauline, starring Pat Boone and Pamela Austin. As an actor, he appeared in All The President's Men, Funny Lady, Billy Wilder's version of The Front Page, such TV movies as Kojak: The Marcus Nelson Murders, the mini-series Loose Change, and on series such as All In The Family and Kojak. He was also active as a director, on episodes of The Odd Couple, among other sitcoms. Shelley also gave a major supporting performance in Martin Ritt's comedy-drama about the blacklist era, The Front, starring Woody Allen and a cast of ex-blacklistees. In addition, he became a well-known teacher during the 1970s, and ironically, given the years of blacklisting, was given responsibility for training new acting talent at Columbia Pictures during the late '70s, in an attempt to revive the old Hollywood notion of contract players at the studio. Steven Spielberg and Martin Ritt were among the filmmakers who appeared as guest instructors under the program. Shelley died in his sleep, of a heart attack, early in 1990.