Trivia: Actor/director/producer William Conrad started his professional career as a musician. After World War II service, he began building his reputation in films and on Hollywood-based radio programs. Due to his bulk and shifty-eyed appearance, he was cast in films as nasty heavies, notably in The Killers (1946) (his first film), Sorry Wrong Number (1948) and The Long Wait (1954). On radio, the versatile Conrad was a fixture on such moody anthologies as Escape and Suspense; he also worked frequently with Jack "Dragnet" Webb during this period, and as late as 1959 was ingesting the scenery in the Webb-directed film 30. Conrads most celebrated radio role was as Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke, which he played from 1952 through 1961 (the TV Gunsmoke, of course, went to James Arness, who physically matched the character that the portly Conrad had shaped aurally). In the late 1950s, Conrad went into the production end of the business at Warner Bros., keeping his hand in as a performer by providing the hilariously strident narration of the cartoon series Rocky and His Friends and its sequel The Bullwinkle Show. During the early 1960s, Conrad also directed such films as Two on a Guillotine (1964) and Brainstorm (1965). Easing back into acting in the early 1970s, Conrad enjoyed a lengthy run as the title character in the detective series Cannon (1971-76), then all too briefly starred as a more famous corpulent crime solver on the weekly Nero Wolfe. Conrad's final TV series was as one-half of Jake and the Fatman (Joe Penny was Jake), a crime show which ran from 1987 through 1991.

Trivia: Along with his sisters, performed in their family's song-and-dance troupe, the Daniels Family, in New York. In his teens, he debuted on Broadway in Life With Father. Portrayed John Adams in the Broadway version of 1776 and reprised the role in the 1972 film. Worked hard to lose his Brooklyn accent, adopting an accent closer to that of his Boston-based character from the NBC medical drama St. Elsewhere. Won an Emmy in 1986 along with wife Bonnie Bartlett for St. Elsewhere, on which they portrayed Dr. and Mrs. Mark Craig. The couple also played husband and wife on the ABC sitcom Boy Meets World and the CBS drama Touched by an Angel. Elected president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1999, upsetting incumbent Richard Masur. Northwestern created the Willies—an annual awards ceremony for excellence in theater at his alma mater—in his name. The original voice of the talking car in NBC's Knight Rider, he reprised the voice of KITT for recordings on a Knight Rider GPS system created by Mio Technology.

Trivia: American stage leading man Linden Chiles made his first film appearance as Randy in the 1961 adaptation of William Faulkner's Sanctuary. When time came for Chiles to settle into character roles, he was most often cast as a businessman -- honest and otherwise -- and suburban father. His TV-series work includes the role of Chief Officer Steve Kirland in Convoy (1965) and the title character's dad in James at 15 (1978). Linden Chiles also spent several years as Edward Nichols on the NBC daytime drama Santa Barbara (1984-1992).

Trivia: Actress Louise Troy was best known for her work on Broadway, most notably for her Tony-nominated roles in Tovarich (1963) and Walking Happy (1966). Her signature stage role was that of the lead in High Spirits (1964). Troy occasionally guest starred on television series such as Hogan's Heroes (opposite her first husband Werner Klemperer who played Colonel Klink), Room 222, and Kate and Allie. Troy only appeared in two feature films, Yours, Mine and Ours (1968) and The Swimmer (1968). At the time of her death in 1994, Troy was married to actor Douglas Seale.

Trivia: In films from 1965, American actor Alex Rocco specialized in tough-guy roles, sometimes leavening his hard-bitten portrayals with a dash of roguish humor. Rocco's film assignments included such parts as gangster Legs Diamond in St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967) and Moe Greene in The Godfather (1974). He has been a regular or semi-regular on a number of television shows, beginning with 1975's Three for the Road, in which he starred as free-lance photographer (and full-time family man) Pete Karras. Alex Rocco has since been seen in such TVers as The Facts of Life as Mr. Polniaczek, Sibs as Howie Roscio, The Famous Teddy Z as Al Floss, and The George Carlin Show as Harry Rossetti. He played the father of Jennifer Lopez's character in The Wedding Planner (2001) and was a recurring character on the short-lived series Magic City (2012-13). Rocco died in 2015, at age 79.