Trivia: Though perhaps best remembered for playing the suave, mysterious Mr. Roarke on the popular television series Fantasy Island (1978-1984), and for his car commercials in which he seductively exhorted the pleasures of the upholstery ("Rich, Corinthian leather") in his distinctive Spanish accent, Ricardo Montalban once played romantic leads in major features of the '40s and '50s. He also had a successful career on-stage. Born Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalban y Merino in Mexico City, Montalban spent part of his youth in the U.S. The tall, dark, handsome, and curly haired actor first worked as a bit player on Broadway before returning to Mexico in the early '40s and launching a film career there. By 1947, he had returned to the States and signed with MGM. That year, Montalban played his first leading role opposite Cyd Charisse in the romantic musical Fiesta (1947). It would be the first of many roles in which he would play a passionate singing and dancing "Latin Lover." He and Charisse again teamed up as dancers in the Esther Williams musical water extravaganza in On an Island With You (1948). At one point, it was a toss-up between Montalban and fellow MGM "LL" Fernando Lamas as to which was more popular. It would not be until 1949 before Montalban had the opportunity to play a non-romantic role as a border agent who gets revenge upon the killers of his partner in Border Incident. His second serious role in Battleground (1949) ranks among his best performances. By the late '50s, he had become a character actor, often cast in ethnic roles, notably that of a genteel Japanese Kabuki actor in Sayonara (1957). He had occasionally appeared on television since the late '50s, but did not appear regularly until the mid-'70s. In 1976, Montalban earned an Emmy for his portrayal of a Sioux chief in the television miniseries How the West Was Won. In the early '70s he was part of a touring troupe that read dramatic excerpts from Shaw's Don Juan in Hell. In 1982, Montalban reprised a role he had made famous on the original Star Trek TV series as the ruthless Khan to star in the second Star Trek feature, The Wrath of Khan. In the '80s, Montalban only sporadically appeared in feature films. His television career also slowed, though he occasionally appeared on series such as The Colbys (1985-1987) and Heaven Help Us! (1994). Montalban has written an autobiography, Reflections: A Life in Two Worlds (1980). Confined to a wheelchair after a 1993 spinal operation left him paralyzed from the waist down, Montalban remiained in good health despite being in constant pain, and continued to play an active role in promoting Nostros - a non-profit organization founded by Montalban in 1970 and dedicated to improving the image of Latinos within the entertainment industry. In the late 1990s and early 2000s Moltalban's career recieved something of a second wind when he began performing vocal work on such animated television series' as Freakazoid!, Dora the Explorer, and Kim Possible, with a role as the kindly grandfather in Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams and Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over even giving the wheelchair-bound actor an opportunity to triumphantly rise once again thanks to the magic of special effects. Additional vocal work in the 2006 animated family adventure The Ant Bully continued to keep Montalban busy despite his physical limitations. His brother, Carlos Montalban, was also an actor.

Trivia: A beloved comedic actress whose breakthrough performance in the Mary Tyler Moore Show helped convince a disgruntled Ted Knight to stick with the series despite disappointment with his character, Georgia Engel's golden comic talents are only matched by her unmistakable blonde locks and remarkable zeal for her craft. A native of Washington, D.C., who studied her craft at The University of Hawaii, Engel appeared in Milos Forman's Taking Off and Jacques Deray's The Outside Man before joining the cast of The Mary Tyler Moore Show in a one-time role that was quickly expanded when producers made note of her comic abilities. Engel remained with the series until the end of its run in 1977, during which time she was nominated for two Emmy awards for her winning performances. If subsequent appearances on such short-lived sitcoms as The Betty White Show and Goodtime Girls found Engel's career floundering somewhat in the late-'70s/early-'80s, post-Mary Tyler Moore era, a six-year stint in the popular television series Coach in the early '90s found her back in top form. Of course that was only the beginning to Engel's comeback period, and following the cancellation of Coach in 1997, her success carried over into the new millennium with a recurring role on Everybody Loves Raymond. Minor voice work in Dr. Dolittle 2 preceded a return to the big screen in the 2002 comedy The Sweetest Thing, after which she made an appearance in theater opposite I Dream of Jeannie's Barbara Eden in The Odd Couple: The Female Version.

Trivia: Supporting and character actor Herve Villechaize appeared in 13 feature films, but he is best remembered for playing Tattoo, Ricardo Montalban's chirpy sidekick on Fantasy Island (1978-1983). Born to a French father and English mother, Villechaize was a dwarf who stopped growing taller after hitting 3'9". Before becoming an actor, Villechaize studied art in Paris and New York. Deciding acting was the better venue, he studied under drama teacher Julie Bovasso. He made his feature film debut in The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight (1971) and went on to play small "novelty" roles in exploitation and cult movies such as Malatesta's Carnival and Oliver Stone's Seizure (1974). One of his more notable roles was that of an evil dwarf in the James Bond thriller The Man With the Golden Gun (1974). Villechaize was married three times. On September 4, 1993, he fatally shot himself, allegedly to escape his many health problems.

Trivia: Born to a Syrian-Lebanese family in Brooklyn, Victor Tayback grew up learning how to aggressively defend himself and those he cared about, qualities that he'd later carry over into his acting work. Moving to California with his family, the 16-year-old Tayback made the varsity football team at Burbank High. Despite numerous injuries, he continued his gridiron activities at Glendale Community College, until he quit school over a matter of principle (he refused to apologize to his coach for breaking curfew). After four years in the navy, Tayback enrolled at the Frederick A. Speare School of Radio and TV Broadcasting, hoping to become a sportscaster. Instead, he was sidetracked into acting, working as a cab driver, bank teller and even a "Kelly Girl" between performing gigs. Shortly after forming a little-theatre group called the Company of Angels, Tayback made his movie debut in Door-to-Door Maniac (1961), a fact he tended to exclude from his resumé in later years. His professional life began to improve in 1967, when he won an audition to play Sid Caesar's look-alike in a TV pilot. Throughout the early 1970s the bulging, bald-domed actor made a comfortable living in TV commercials and TV guest-star assignments, and as a regular on the detective series Griff (1973) and Khan (1975). In 1975, he was cast in the secondary role of Mel Sharples, the potty-mouthed short-fused owner of a greasy spoon diner, in the theatrical feature Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. When the film evolved into the weekly TV sitcom Alice in 1976, Tayback was engaged to recreate his "Mel" characterization. He remained with the program for the next nine years. In contrast to his gruff, abusive screen character, Tayback was dearly loved by the rest of the Alice cast, who regarded him a Big Brother and Father Confessor rolled into one. Five years after Alice's cancellation, Vic Tayback died of cancer at the age of 61; one of his last screen assignments was the voice of Carface in the animated feature All Dogs Go to Heaven.

Trivia: The daughter of Episcopal missionaries, Jayne Meadows was born in China; she spoke nothing but Chinese until her parents returned to America in the early 1930s. The sister of Honeymooners co-star Audrey Meadows, Jayne Meadows began her film career in the mid-1940s as a contract player at MGM. Her velvety voice and self-confident bearing ruled out her being cast as simpering ingénues: Meadows excelled as cold-blooded "other women," vitriolic divorcees, and neurotic murderesses. Her best screen role was the double- and triple-crossing Mildred Haveland in Lady in the Lake (1946). For nearly five decades, Jayne was harmoniously married to her second husband, TV personality Steve Allen, with whom she has co-starred on dozens of variety programs and game shows, as well as Steve Allen's memorable PBS miniseries Meeting of Minds. Both she and her husband were nominated for Emmy Awards for their joint guest appearance on the TV series LA Law. Her more regular TV work included the third-billed role of Nurse Chambers on Medical Center (1969-73) and the part of Ken Howard's mother on the 1983 "dramedy" It's Not Easy. Meadows made an indelible impression through the power of her voice alone as Billy Crystal's gushing, unseen mom in the two City Slickers film comedies of the 1990s. She continued acting and appearing on-screen until the late 2000s; she died in 2015, at age 95.

Trivia: Because the two actresses tended to play the same type of overwrought roles in the mid-1950s, juvenile stars Patty McCormick and Patty Duke were sometimes mistaken for one another during this period. But once seen in her starmaking role as the homicidal preteen Rhoda Penmark in The Bad Seed (in which she starred on Broadway in 1954 and in the film version in 1956), Patty McCormick can never be confused with anyone else. A pro from the age of four, McCormick was in films from 1951 and TV from 1953. After Bad Seed, she was second-billed as a bratty child star in the theatrical-film Kathy O' (1957) and was headlined in her own 1958 sitcom, Peck's Bad Girl. The uniqueness that characterized McCormick's appearances as a child evaporated when she reached maturity; though she was more than competent playing disturbed teenagers in films like The Miniskirt Mob (1967) and The Young Runaways (1968), these were parts that could have been played equally well by a dozen other young actresses. She acted sporadically into the 1970s and 1980s, her longest assignment being the role of Jeffrey Tambor's upwardly mobile wife on the TV sitcom The Ropers. In 1995, Patty McCormick starred in the direct-to-video Mommy, playing a grown-up edition of the murderous Rhoda from The Bad Seed.

Trivia: An alumnus of City College-Los Angeles, Earl Bellamy spent the immediate postwar years in various secondary Hollywood production capacities. A film director from 1955, Bellamy specialized in second-feature westerns. He was also extremely busy in all facets of filmed television: his most fondly remembered TV association was with the tongue-in-cheek western series Laredo (1965-67).