Trivia: The son of actors Bill Williams and Barbara Hale, curly-haired leading man William Katt is fond of noting that he made his movie "debut" while residing in his mother's womb during filming of Lorna Doone (1951). After attending Orange Coast College, Katt pursued a career as a musician. He then made his formal acting bow in summer stock and small TV roles. Among Katt's film credits are the role of the high-school jock date of telekinetic wallflower Sissy Spacek in Carrie (1977), and one-half of the title role in Butch and Sundance, The Early Days (1979). From 1981 through 1983, Katt played the reluctant-superhero protagonist (originally named Ralph Hinkley, redubbed Ralph Hanley after the '81 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan) on TV's Greatest American Hero. Beginning in 1987, Katt played the recurring role of detective Paul Drake Jr. in the periodic Perry Mason TV movies, co-starring with his mother Barbara Hale, who resumed her "Della Street" characterization from the original 1961-66 Mason run. Katt also worked on the scripts of several of these latter-day Masons. More recently, William Katt was a regular on the 1991 Farrah Fawcett-Ryan O'Neal TV sitcom Good Sports.

Trivia: American actor Arnold Stang was a professional almost all his life -- but unlike other "professional kids," he actively sought a career and wasn't strong-armed into it by ambitious parents. Winning an audition at age nine on radio's Horn and Hardart's Children's Hour, Stang launched a two-decade stint as one of radio's most stalwart supporting players. He appeared as a regular on Let's Pretend, and later was generously featured on Gertrude Berg's serialized family drama The Goldbergs. As his skills increased, Stang discovered he could get laughs, and worked steadily with such comedians as Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, and especially Milton Berle, with whom Stang continued his association on television. On the satirical Henry Morgan Show, Stang was a regular member of the comedy stock company, most often as a nerdy teenager named Gerard. Stang started doing cartoon voiceovers in the '40s, beginning with Popeye the Sailor's pal Shorty, then moving into a lengthy hitch as "Hoiman" the mouse in Paramount's Herman and Katnip series; he also performed in 24 episodes of Hanna-Barbera's 1961 cartoon series Top Cat, playing the title role in a "Phil Silvers" manner until the sponsors demanded less of Silvers and more of Stang. In films since 1942's My Sister Eileen, Stang had his best movie role in Man with the Golden Arm (1955) where he played Frank Sinatra's skuzzy but loyal pal Sparrow - a characterization eerily reminiscent of Dustin Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo in the much-later film Midnight Cowboy (1969). During the '50s, Stang was the TV spokesman for Chunky candy, fondly remembered by today's baby boomers for his enthusiastic "Chunky...what a chunk o' chocolate!" Still active in the '90s, the owlish, bespectacled Arnold Stang delighted his long-time fans with an amusing character role in the John Hughes film Dennis the Menace (1993). Stang died at age 91 in December 2009.

Trivia: California-born Jeanette Nolan racked up an impressive list of radio and stage credits in the 1930s, including a stint with Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre troupe. She made her film debut in 1948 in Welles' MacBeth; her stylized, Scottish-burred interpretation of Lady MacBeth was almost universally panned by contemporary critics, but her performance holds up superbly when seen today. Afterwards, Ms. Nolan flourished as a character actress, her range extending from society doyennes to waterfront hags. She appeared in countless TV programs, and played the rambunctious title role on the short-lived Western Dirty Sally (1974). Nolan made her final film appearance playing Robert Redford's mother in The Horse Whisperer (1998). From 1937, Jeanette Nolan was married to actor John McIntire, with whom she frequently co-starred; she was also the mother of actor Tim McIntire.

Trivia: Robert Fuller spent his first decade in show business trying his best to avoid performing. After his film debut in 1952's Above and Beyond, Fuller studied acting with Sanford Meisner at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse but never exhibited any real dedication. He tried to become a dancer but gave that up as well, determining that dancing was "sissified." Fuller rose to nominal stardom fairly rapidly in the role of Jess Harper on the popular TV western Laramie (1959-63). Once he found his niche in cowboy attire, he stuck at it in another series, Wagon Train, turning down virtually all offers for "contemporary" roles. When westerns began dying out on television in the late 1960s, Fuller worked as a voiceover actor in commercials, earning some $65,000 per year (a tidy sum in 1969). On the strength of his performance in the Burt Topper-directed motorcycle flick The Hard Ride, Fuller was cast by producer Jack Webb as chief paramedic Kelly Brackett on the weekly TVer Emergency, which ran from 1972 through 1977. In 1994, Robert Fuller was one of several former TV western stars who showed up in cameo roles in the Mel Gibson movie vehicle Maverick.

Trivia: Character and voice actor Bob Hastings is best known for his television work on series such as McHale's Navy and All in the Family, but he also appeared in some feature films. Born in New York in 1921, he was busy on the radio in his twenties, specializing in male ingenue and comedy roles, including portraying Archie Andrews in an NBC radio adaptations of Archie Comics in 1944. His first credited television appearance was in 1955, in the U.S. Steel Hour production of No Time for Sergeants. Hastings made his feature film debut in 1962 in the Disney production Moon Pilot, starring Tom Tryon, and that same year got his first regular series role as Lt. Elroy Carpenter, the obsequious aide to Joe Flynn's Captain Binghamton on McHale's Navy. He was with the series for four seasons, and it led to his subsequent big-screen work in the features McHale's Navy (1964) and McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force (1965). He also played Bert Ramsey on the daytime drama General Hospital and managed to work in occasional big-screen work, in pictures such as The Flim-Flam Man. In the 1970s, Hastings played the recurring character of Kelsey the tavern-keeper on All in the Family. Hastings' on-screen acting generally saw him cast as nervous, sycophantic mid-level bureaucrats, or, occasionally, as rough-hewn working-class types. But as a voice artist he has had a much wider range of portrayals, including heroes and authority figures, including the voice of Clark Kent in the 1960s Batman/Superman Hour and, in more recent decades, the voice of Commissioner Gordon on the animated Batman from Fox network. Bob Hastings is the older brother of actor Don Hastings, who is perhaps best remembered by viewers of one generation for his portrayal of the Video Ranger in Captain Video; Bob also appeared in the series, in a much less prominent role. He died in 2014, at age 89.