Trivia: Born in a multicultural New York City neighborhood, comedian Don Adams joined the Marines upon the outbreak of World War II. After Guadalcanal, Adams saw little action due to a life-threatening bout of blackwater fever (malaria) that kept him out of commission until the end of the war. As a civilian, Adams tried at first to carve out a career as a professional artist, taking outside jobs to support himself and his family. Blessed with a gift for mimicry, Adams and a friend teamed up for a comedy act but response was minimal, and soon Adams was involved in the cartographic and engineering business. Then in 1954, on a whim, he auditioned for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts; his routine went over, and he was on his way. Collaborating with his close friend Bill Dana, Adams developed a topnotch act full of "inside" showbiz references that fortunately never went over the heads of the audience. His best monologue was "The Defense Attorney," wherein Adams adopted the clipped speech cadence of actor William Powell. Though he would be seen in a variety of sketches during his nightclub years and his early-1960s stint as a regular on The Perry Como Show, it was the Powell imitation that scored highest. Adams would use this voice for the cartoon character of Tennessee Tuxedo in 1963, and that same year expanded on the impression in the role of inept house detective Byron Glick on The Bill Dana Show. The "spy cycle" of 1965 enabled Adams to refine the Byron Glick character into the magnificently self-confident but monumentally inept secret-agent Maxwell Smart on the hit TV sitcom Get Smart, which ran until 1970. In addition to providing Adams a conduit for his beloved movie parodies, the series also gave him an opportunity to direct. In 1971, Adams moved onto another genre-spoof TV series, The Partners, in which he played police detective Lennie Crook. Hampered by weak scripts and a death-valley timeslot opposite All in the Family, The Partners perished after thirteen weeks. After this debacle, Adams found the going rough for a while, though he made a comfortable living with nightclub appearances and guest spots on such TV series as The Love Boat. He made no fewer than three attempts to revive Get Smart between 1980 and 1994, one of which actually resulted in a (very short-lived) weekly Fox network sitcom. Adams is best known to children of the 1980s as the voice of cartoondom's bionic blockhead, Inspector Gadget. Don Adams was the brother of another comic actor, the late Richard Yarmy; Adams' cousin Robert Karvelas played secret agent Larrabee on Get Smart.

Trivia: American actress Barbara Feldon claimed to be a lonely child, one whose escape from loneliness took the form of books and ballet. While studying drama at Carnegie Tech, she became an expert in Shakespeare, and in this capacity made her TV debut as a contestant on The $64,000 Question (kinescopes exist of this appearance; Barbara is instantly recognizable, though she hasn't quite lost all her baby fat). Feldon worked as a chorus girl in New York, then slimmed down considerably and became a high-priced fashion model. Commercials followed, in which Feldon pitched deodorant pads and--most famously--men's cologne. Few males who were going through adolescence in the early '60s will forget Feldon pitching Top Brass cologne to the "tigers" in the audience, staring into the camera with almost unbearable sultriness (the actress insisted that her come-hither glare was a result of nearsightedness). After doing the guest-star round on several TV dramatic programs, Feldon won the role of statuesque Agent 99 on the spy sitcom Get Smart. Part of the fun on this program was watching Feldon try to avoid revealing that she was a few inches taller than co-star Don Adams (in some scenes he was standing on an incline, as proven when the Nickelodeon cable network put together a montage of "who's taller?" scenes from Get Smart in the early '90s). Get Smart ran from 1965 through 1970, but Feldon has occasionally re-created Agent 99, once in a Smart TV-movie reunion, and more recently in a "return" series for the Fox Network, again starring with Don Adams. Feldon's film career has been less remarkable, save for her brilliant interpretation of a near-fanatic beauty contest organizer in the 1975 satirical comedy Smile. In the last few years, Barbara Feldon has distinguished herself as an expert voiceover artist in commercials and TV specials; she can be heard as the narrator of the PBS series Dinosaurs.

Trivia: American character actor Edward Platt is best remembered as the eternally exasperated Chief on the Get Smart series. Before making his screen debut in the mid-'50s, he worked as a singer for a band. In feature films, he was typically cast as generals and bosses.

Trivia: Actor Michael Dante was first seen in a secondary role in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956). A bit too "threatening" for romantic leads, Dante was more effectively cast in antagonistic roles, notably Chief Crazy Horse in the 1967 TV series Custer and the 1990 theatrical feature Crazy Horse and Custer: The Untold Story. Even when ostensibly cast as a good guy in Samuel Fuller's The Naked Kiss (1965), he turned out to be a heel in the film's final scenes. Star Trek devotees will recall Michael Dante as Maab in the 1967 episode "Friday's Child."

Trivia: While studying art in his native London, John Abbott relaxed between classes by watching rehearsals of a student play. When one of the actors fell ill, Abbott was invited to replace him, and at that point he switched majors. He became a professional actor in 1934, joined the Old Vic in 1936, and made his first film, Mademoiselle Docteur, in 1937; later that same year he made his first BBC television appearance. Turned down for military service during World War II, Abbott joined the Foreign Office, working as a decoder in the British Embassy in Stockholm and working in similar capacities in Russia and Canada. In 1941, he took a vacation in New York, leaving his resumé and photo with various producers, just in case something turned up. On the very last day of his vacation, he was hired for a small role in Josef von Sternberg's The Shanghai Gesture (1941), thus launching the Hollywood phase of his career. Generally cast as a fussy eccentric, Abbott was seen at his very best as whining hypochondriac Frederick Fairlie in Warner Bros.' The Woman in White (1948). He also received at least one bona fide starring role in the 1943 quickie London Blackout Murders. In the late '40s, Abbott began amassing some impressive Broadway credits in such productions as He Who Gets Slapped, Monserrat, and Waltz of the Toreadors. He also appeared in 1950's Auto da Fe, which was specifically written for him by Tennessee Williams. Though still active in films and TV into the 1980s (he played Dr. Frankenstein in the ill-fated 1984 cinemadaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick), John Abbott spent most of his twilight years as an acting teacher. Abbott died in a Los Angeles hospital on May 24, 1996, after a prolonged illness.

Trivia: American character actor Milton Selzer trafficked in bookish types, sometimes with an undercurrent of menace. An ineluctable TV presence, Selzer guest-starred on virtually every major program of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. He was a regular on Needles and Pins (1973) and The Famous Teddy Z (1989, second-billed as showbiz agent Abe Werkfinder); and on the popular spy spoof Get Smart (1965-70), he was brilliantly cast as a nervous special-weapons expert, who suffered a mild coronary every time dunderheaded Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) inadvertently destroyed Selzer's latest inventions. In films from 1959, Milton Selzer was given ample opportunity to shine as a sharkish movie mogul in Legend of Lylah Clare (1968) and as Nancy Spungen's grandfather in Sid and Nancy (1986).