Trivia: Jim Nabors, he of the vacuous expression and the dumbstruck expletives "Gawwwleee" and "Shazzayam," graduated from the University of Alabama with a degree in business administration. Nabors' first TV job was as an apprentice film cutter; shortly afterward, he launched a fitfully successful career as a cabaret singer. In 1963, he was hired to play the one-shot role of gas station attendant Gomer Pyle on the top-rated The Andy Griffith Show. Essentially a build-up to a punchline (Griffith explained to a nonplused stranger that the goofy Gomer planned to become a brain surgeon), Nabor's hayseed character proved so popular that he became a regular on the series. In 1964, with Griffith's manager Richard O. Linke calling the shots, Nabors was spun off into his own weekly sitcom, Gomer Pyle USMC, which ran for five successful seasons. Televiewers got their first inkling that there was more to Nabors than Gomer when, on a 1964 Danny Kaye Show, he revealed his rich, well-modulated baritone singing voice. He went on to record 16 popular record albums, utilizing his high-pitched Gomer voice in only one of them (1965's Shazzam). Nabors' larynx was further deployed on his TV variety series The Jim Nabors Show (1969-72), on the 1967 opening episode (and every subsequent season opener) of The Carol Burnett Show, and in countless personal appearances all over the world. Additionally, Nabors starred in such 1970s Saturday morning kiddie efforts as Krofft Supershow, The Lost Saucer and Buford and the Galloping Ghost (voice only). He played his first serious role as a vengeful hillbilly on a 1973 episode of TVs The Rookies, and essayed comic supporting parts in such good-ole-boy films as Cannonball Run (1978) and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), both starring his close friend Burt Reynolds. Because Nabors never married, he found himself the target of numerous ugly and unfounded rumors concerning his private life. When he became deathly ill in the mid-1980s, there were those who jumped to the conclusion that Nabors had contacted AIDS. In fact, he had fallen victim to a particularly vicious form of hepatitis, picked up (according to Nabors) when he cut himself while shaving in India. Nabors recovered from his ailment after a highly publicized liver transplant saved his life.

Trivia: With his bald-headed, slightly toothy appearance, and New York accent, Bernie West was born to play comedy on-stage and in movies, and he later graduated to writing and producing it on television. The Bronx-born actor emerged on-stage in the 1950s, then made a feature film, the Arthur Freed-produced, Vincente Minnelli-directed adaptation of Bells Are Ringing at MGM, starring Judy Holliday. He played a rather prominent role as one of the Holliday character's more eccentric answering service clients, Dr. Joe Kitchell, a dentist who composes songs on his office's air hose. West also appeared in the role of Feinschveiger in the 1962 musical All-American, but it was on television that he was most visible in the 1960s, surfacing in small comedic roles on series such as Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.. In the early '70s, he entered into association with television producer Norman Lear. West served as a producer on All in the Family and also appeared onscreen, portraying a repairman in the pilot episode for the series Maude. He was later the producer of the Maude spin-off series Good Times, and then one of the co-creators and producers of the All in the Family spin-off The Jeffersons. West left Lear's orbit later in the 1970s to work with producer Donald Taffner, first serving as executive producer of Three's Company and later its spin-off series The Ropers. As a producer, he is sometimes credited as Bernard West. He later became one of the most frequently interviewed figures involved with television comedy of the 1970s and early '80s, and appeared in various documentaries about entertainment and popular culture, prior to his death from Alzheimer's-related complications in 2010.