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: George Maharis was one of seven children of Greek immigrant parents. Though he could very easily have gone into his father's restaurant business, Maharis decided to try for a singing career. When his vocal chords were injured by overuse, Maharis switched to acting, studying at the Actors' Studio and making one of his earliest appearances as a Marlon Brando parody on the 1950s TV sitcom Mr. Peepers. Maharis was very active in the off-Broadway scene, appearing in Jean Genet's Deathwatch and Edward Albee's The Zoo Story. He gained a fan following (primarily female) through his weekly appearances as handsome drifter Buzz Murdock on the TV series Route 66. He played Buzz from 1960 to 1963, leaving the series for a variety of reasons, among them artistic differences and a bout of hepatitis. His subsequent film career failed to reach the heights of his TV work, and by 1970 Maharis was back in the weekly small-screen grind in the adventure series The Most Dangerous Game. When not performing in nightclubs, summer stock or films, George Maharis spent a good portion of the 1970s and 1980s indulging in his pet hobby, impressionistic painting.

Trivia: The son of a garage mechanic, Glenn Corbett was sent to live with his grandparents at the age of two. He later joined the Seabees and it was during his Navy years that he met his future wife, Judy, a speech major at Occidental College. With Judy's encouragement, Corbett began trying out for campus theatricals. His performance in Occidental's staging of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial led to his being signed by Columbia Pictures. After two year's worth of nondescript roles in films like The Mountain Road (1960) and Homicidal (1961), he landed the lead in the picturesque 1962 TV series It's a Man's World. Though the series lasted only 13 weeks, it gained enough of a cult following to assure Corbett's future stardom. In early 1963, he made a guest appearance as troublesome ex-G.I. Linc Case on the long-running series Route 66; by the fall of that year, he was appearing in that series on a weekly basis, as a replacement for defecting Route 66 star George Maharis. After the series ran its course in 1964, Corbett went on to co-star as Chance Reynolds in the prime-time Western The Road West, which lasted a single season (1966-1967). He kept busy in theatrical features, appearing with John Wayne in Chisum (1969) and Big Jake (1971), and starring in director Sam Fuller's West German-produced Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street (1972). He went on to play Paul Morgan during the 1983-1984 season of Dallas, returning to the role in 1988. In his last years, he occasionally worked as a dialogue director. Glenn Corbett died of lung cancer in 1993.

Trivia: To overcome a childhood bout with infantile paralysis, Alex Cord put himself on a rigorous athletic regimen. By the time he reached his late teens, Cord was an accomplished rodeo performer. After preparing for a theatrical career in New York and London, he made his film debut with a small part in 1962's The Chapman Report. Among his American starring features was the 1966 remake of Stagecoach and the 1978 Western Grayeagle, in which he essayed the title role. Most of his biggest and best screen opportunities came his way when he plunged into the European film scene of the 1970s. On television, Alex Cord has played ruthless network programming chief Jack Kiley on W.E.B. (1978), D.A. Mike Holland on the Angie Dickinson starrer Cassie and Company (1982), and the enigmatic, eye-patched Michael Archangel on Airwolf (1984-1986).

Trivia: Raised in the only Jewish family in his neighborhood, American actor Ed Asner grew up having to defend himself both vocally and physically. A born competitor, he played championship football in high school and organized a top-notch basketball team which toured most of liberated Europe. Asner's performing career got its start while he was announcing for his high school radio station; moving to Chicago in the '50s, the actor was briefly a member of the Playwrights Theatre Club until he went to New York to try his luck on Broadway. Asner starred for several years in the off-Broadway production Threepenny Opera, and, toward the end of the '50s, picked up an occasional check as a film actor for industrial short subjects and TV appearances. Between 1960 and 1965, he established himself as one of television's most reliable villains; thanks to his resemblance to certain Soviet politicians, the actor was particularly busy during the spy-show boom of the mid-'60s. He also showed up briefly as a regular on the New York-filmed dramatic series Slattery's People. And though his film roles became larger, it was in a relatively minor part as a cop in Elvis Presley's Change of Habit (1969) that Asner first worked with Mary Tyler Moore. In 1970, over Moore's initial hesitation (she wasn't certain he was funny enough), Asner was cast as Lou Grant, the irascible head of the WJM newsroom on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The popular series ran for seven seasons, during which time the actor received three Emmy awards. His new stardom allowed Asner a wider variety of select roles, including a continuing villainous appearance on the miniseries Roots -- which earned him another Emmy. When Moore ceased production in 1977, Asner took his Lou Grant character into an hour-long dramatic weekly about a Los Angeles newspaper. The show's title, of course, was Lou Grant, and its marked liberal stance seemed, to some viewers, to be an extension of Asner's real-life viewpoint. While Lou Grant was in production, Asner was twice elected head of the Screen Actors Guild, a position that he frequently utilized as a forum for his political opinions -- notably his opposition to U.S. involvement in Central America. When Asner suggested that each guild member contribute toward opposing the country's foreign policy, he clashed head to head with Charlton Heston, who wrested Asner's office from him in a highly publicized power play. Although no tangible proof has ever been offered, it was Asner's belief that CBS canceled Lou Grant in 1982 because of his politics and not dwindling ratings. The actor continued to prosper professionally after Lou Grant, however, and, during the remainder of the '80s and into the '90s, starred in several TV movies, had guest and recurring roles in a wide variety of both TV dramas and comedies, and headlining two regular series, Off the Rack and The Bronx Zoo. Slowed but hardly halted by health problems in the '90s, Asner managed to find time to appear in the weekly sitcoms Hearts Afire and Thunder Alley -- atypically cast in the latter show as an ineffective grouch who was easily brow-beaten by his daughter and grandchildren.