Trivia: Parker Stevenson had been appearing in films and TV for five years before he was cast as teen-aged sleuth Frank Hardy on the 1977 TVer The Hardy Boys Mysteries. While the 25-year-old Stevenson was a skilled enough actor to convey his character's extreme youth, his contribution to the series was overshadowed by the teen-heartthrob attention afforded his 19-year-old co-star Shaun Cassidy. Cassidy's season in the sun was brief, but Stevenson has continued to flourish as a TV leading man. He has been blessed with the good fortune of being associated with three of the Small Screen's biggest hits: he played Joel McCarthy on Falcon Crest (1984-85 season), Craig Pomeroy on Baywatch (1989-90) and Steve McMillan on Melrose Place (1993 season only). Parker Stevenson was the husband of actress Kirstie Alley. In the years to come, Stevenson would remain active on screen, appearing on shows like Legend of the Seeker.

Trivia: Like his older half-brother, David Cassidy, big-eyed, boyish actor/singer Shaun Cassidy became one of the big teen idols of the 1970s. The son of actors Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones, he became a favorite pin-up boy of preadolescent girls after the release of his first hit single "Morning Girl." In 1977, he landed the co-lead in the popular television mystery series The Hardy Boys Mysteries (1977). The show lasted a season, and Cassidy continued on with his recording career -- which ended with the '70s -- while making only the occasional television appearance until he played the lead in another short-lived television series Breaking Away (1980-1981). After that, his acting career became more sporadic and he all but disappeared, but for the infrequent stage appearance. In 1995, Cassidy reappeared on television as the producer of the critically acclaimed but seldom-watched horror series American Gothic. In 1997, he returned with another series, Roar, which chronicles the adventures of the rebel who fought to create a united Ireland in ancient times.

Trivia: American actress Edith Atwater gained Broadway fame in 1939 as the original Maggie Cutler in Kaufman and Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner. This role was played in the film version of Dinner by Bette Davis; it was Edith Atwater's fate (not unusual among theatrical performers) to be ideal for leading roles on stage, but to be consigned to supporting roles in films. The actress began her stage career at age 15; she made her first film, We Went to College, in 1935. Her best known film appearance was producer Val Lewton's The Body Snatcher (1945), as the mother of a crippled child. Fans of the 1970s TV series The Hardy Boys will remember Ms. Atwater as the Hardy brothers' Aunt Gertrude. Edith Atwater was married to actor Kent Smith, whom she outlived by only one year.

Trivia: Born in the Middle East to American parents, Lisa Eilbacher was the sister of busy child actress Cindy Eilbacher. Likewise launching her career at an early age, Lisa made her film debut as Jason Robards Jr.'s teenage daughter in The War Between Men and Women (1972). Best remembered for her portrayal of pilot trainee Cory Seegar in An Officer and a Gentleman (1984) and for her work as Eddie Murphy's leading lady in Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Eilbacher also has the distinction of being the first actress to portray kidnaped heiress Patricia Hearst in the 1979 TV movie The Ordeal of Patty Hearst. Lisa Eilbacher's other TV work has included regular roles on such series as The Texas Wheelers, The Hardy Boys: Nancy Drew Mysteries and Ryan's Four, and the starring role in the 1985 private eye weekly Me and Mom (1985, as "Me").

Trivia: Film and television actor James Tupper made his screen debut with a bit part in the David Spade comedy Joe Dirt before moving on to establish a successful television career with appearances on such hit shows as Gilmore Girls, CSI: NY, and How I Met Your Mother. Roles in the Michael Landon Jr. Westerns Love's Long Journey and Love's Abiding Joy followed soon thereafter, and in 2005 Tupper earned his first writing credit with work on Loudmouth Soup -- an improvisational comedy shot over the course of just one night and detailing the boozy antics of a bourgeois Hollywood dinner party. Despite his increasing onscreen presence, it wasn't his acting that eventually landed Tupper in the headlines, but the announcement that his Men in Trees co-star Anne Heche was leaving her husband, Coleman Laffoon, in favor of pursuing a romance with the rugged up and comer.

Trivia: When leggy, 5'9" brunette actress Linda Thorson replaced Diana Rigg on the long-running British TV adventure series The Avengers, one critic summed up Thorson as "a cute trick, but not in Diana's league." Hold on there! Though Thorson was only 20, she was no mere bubble-headed starlet. The daughter of a Canadian math and physics teacher, she was a trained dancer and an alumnus of London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. She had previously won speaking and singing honors while in school, and was well on her way to a prestigious stage career when she was selected from a field of 200 actresses to play Tara King, the new partner of crimefighter John Steed(Patrick MacNee) on The Avengers. Some fans of the series have a low regard of Thorson's contributions, citing her misguided efforts to inject more sexual tension between Tara and Steed, and her tendency to react more fearfully to dangerous situations than the unflappable Rigg. In point of fact, Thorson was only following orders; the producers of The Avengers were responsible for the questionable "improvements" in their flagging property. After the series' cancellation in 1969, Thorson launched her stage career in earnest, racking up respectable credits on the British stage and in such films as Valentino (1977) and The Great Tycoon (1979). She won a Theatre World Award for her 1982 Broadway debut in Steaming, and proved a superb farceur in the Alan Ayckbourn stage comedy Noises Off. The mature, poised, wryly self-confident Linda Thorson who co-starred on the 1986 TV comedy series Marblehead Manor was a far cry from the slightly awkward, plucked-eyebrowed nymphet who co-starred in the waning days of The Avengers.