Trivia: At first intending to become a minister, actor/monologist Andy Griffith (born June 1st, 1926) became active with the Carolina Playmakers, the prestigious drama-and-music adjunct of the University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill. He spent several seasons portraying Sir Walter Raleigh in the summertime outdoor drama The Lost Colony, spending the rest of the years as a schoolteacher. Griffith continued performing fitfully as an after-dinner speaker on the men's club circuit, developing hilariously bucolic routines on subjects ranging from Shakespeare to football. Under the aegis of agent/producer Richard O. Linke, Griffith returned to acting, attaining stardom in the role of bumptious Air Force rookie Will Stockdale in the TV and Broadway productions of No Time For Sergeants. Before committing Sergeants to film, Griffith made his movie debut in director Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd, in which he portrayed an outwardly folksy but inwardly vicious TV personality (patterned, some say, after Arthur Godfrey).After filming Face in the Crowd, No Time for Sergeants and Onionhead for Warner Bros. during the years 1957 and 1958, Griffith starred in a 1959 Broadway musical version of Destry Rides Again; as an added source of income, Griffith ran a North Carolina supermarket. On February 15, 1960 he first appeared as Andy Taylor, the laid-back sheriff of Mayberry, North Carolina, on an episode of The Danny Thomas Show. This one-shot was of course the pilot film for the Emmy-winning The Andy Griffith Show, in which Griffith starred from 1960 through 1968. Eternally easygoing on camera, Griffith, who owned 50% of the series, ruled his sitcom set with an iron hand, though he was never as hard on the other actors as he was on himself; to this day, he remains close to fellow Griffith stars Don Knotts and Ron Howard. An unsuccessful return to films with 1969's Angel in My Pocket was followed by an equally unsuccessful 1970 TV series Headmaster. For the next 15 years, Griffith confined himself to guest-star appearances, often surprising his fans by accepting cold-blooded villainous roles. In 1985, he made a triumphal return to series television in Matlock, playing a folksy but very crafty Southern defense attorney. A life-threatening disease known as Gillian-Barre syndrome curtailed his activities in the late 1980s, but as of 1995 Andy Griffith was still raking in the ratings with his infrequent Matlock two-hour specials. The actor worked on and off throughout the late nineties and early 2000s, and co-starred with Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion in the romantic comedy Waitress in 2007.

Trivia: Having made her feature film debut in Sex and the College Girl (1964), blonde actress Julie Sommars went on to appear in television movies of the '70s and in the occasional feature film through the mid-'80s. Fans of the television drama Matlock (1986-1995) will recognize her for playing Julie March.

Trivia: Square-jawed American actor Mitchell Ryan was born in Cincinnati and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. During a 1951 Navy hitch, Ryan was assigned to a special services entertainment unit; he liked the experience so much that he decided to pursue acting as a civilian. He went to New York, accepting bit roles in over two dozen plays; he then moved on to leading roles at the Barter Theatre in Abington, Virginia. More New York work (under the direction of Joseph Papp) followed, and finally Ryan attained a small recurring role on the TV serial Dark Shadows (1966-70). A stage appearance with Irene Papas in Euripedes attracted critical attention and better jobs, including a supporting part in Monte Walsh (1970), Ryan's first film. Jack Webb utilized Ryan quite often in the '70s in his series O'Hara United States Treasury, then hired the actor as one of the four leads of the 1973 series Chase. In 1976 producers top-billed Ryan on the TV series Executive Suite. While the series didn't last, Mitchell Ryan subsequently received solid roles on such TV series as The Chisholms (1980) and High Performance (1983) and in such made-for-TV films as Flesh & Blood (1979) and Margaret Bourke-White (1989).

Trivia: French Canadian actor Daniel Pilon has played leading and supporting roles on television and in films. The brother of actor Donald Pilon, he made his film debut in In Trouble (1967). Fans of the defunct soap opera Ryan's Hope will remember Pilon as playing Max Dubjak between 1984 and 1987. He also appeared on Dallas during the 1984-1985 season as Ronaldo Marchetta.

Trivia: Connecticut native Linda Purl grew up in Japan, where her father, a Union Carbide executive, had been transferred. Under the watchful eye of her mother, a former ballerina, Purl began acting professionally in Japanese stage and TV productions at the age of seven. Ten years later, she made her American film debut in Jory (1972). Never a conventional ingenue, she has played everything from mentally retarded teens to rape victims to psychotic killers, as well as a few real-life personalities like Alice Roosevelt Longworth and globetrotting journalist Nellie Bly. Purl has the distinction of playing two different recurring characters on the same television series. During the 1974-75 season of Happy Days, she was seen as Richie Cunningham's (Ron Howard) high-school girlfriend Gloria; she returned to the series in 1982 as Ashler Pfister, a divorced mother with whom Fonzie (Henry Winkler) was briefly involved romantically. Linda has also appeared regularly on such series as The Secret Storm and Beacon Hill; more recently, she played an assistant DA put in charge of a group of young ex-convicts on the syndicated weekly adventure series Robin's Hoods (1994). Linda Purl was at one time married to Desi Arnaz Jr..

Trivia: Sturdy, reliable character player Kene Holliday specialized in portrayals of vociferous everymen, with a strong emphasis on television work. Holliday landed one of his first major roles in the small-screen blockbuster Roots: The Next Generations (as Detroit, one of the direct descendants of the iconic Kunta Kinte), and subsequently divided his time between occasional big-screen features (No Small Affair, The Philadelphia Experiment), series work (with many appearances on Matlock), and TV movies, such as the 1988 Dangerous Company. Holliday tackled a rare yet effective lead role in the much-anticipated 2007 drama Great World of Sound, as Clarence, a well-meaning record producer in training who discovers that his parent company isn't exactly all that it professes to be.

Trivia: Lead actor, onscreen from 1985.