Trivia: Best remembered for his high-profile acting roles on two 1970s television sitcoms -- that of genial news writer Murray Slaughter on CBS's The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977) and that of sweet-natured Captain Merrill Stubing on ABC's The Love Boat (1977-1986), stage-trained actor Gavin MacLeod in fact began his career typecast as a villain. He landed parts in Hollywood features including The Sand Pebbles (1966), Deathwatch (1966), and The Comic (1969), and enjoyed a tenure as Joseph "Happy" Haines on the sitcom McHale's Navy from 1962 through 1964. After The Love Boat permanently laid anchor in the mid-'80s, MacLeod signed on as a spokesperson and pitchman for Princess Cruises and returned to regional theatrical work. He also tackled guest spots on programs including Touched by an Angel and (in a move that surprised everyone) the HBO prison drama Oz. Off-camera, MacLeod is an outspoken born-again Christian. He hosted a popular talk show on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, along with his wife, Patti (whom he divorced in 1982 and remarried three years later), called Back on Course, and personally funded many of the Greatest Adventure Stories from the Bible animated videos for children.

Trivia: Universally recognized as Ship's Doctor Adam Bricker on the blockbuster prime-time sitcom The Love Boat (1977-1986) -- a part he held for the entire nine-season run of the series -- actor Bernie Kopell entered the doors of show business via a most unlikely route. Born in Brooklyn, Kopell attended Erasmus High and then New York University (with a dramatic art major). After a stint at sea aboard the naval vessel USS Iowa, Kopell signed on to drive a taxicab in Southern California -- and achieved his big break on the day that Oregon Trail (1959) film producer Dick Einfeld hitched a ride in the back of his cab. In a span of minutes, Kopell reportedly managed to convince Einfeld that he was not really a cab driver but an actor in serious need of work. The effort paid off, and Kopell snagged his first part -- a two-line part in Oregon as an aide to president James K. Polk. In the early '60s, Kopell joined the Actors' Ring Theatre in Los Angeles, where he developed a knack for characterizations and voices; this led, in turn, to character-type roles on a myriad of television programs including The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Steve Allen Show, and My Favorite Martian (which often, though not always, cast the wiry Kopell as a Hispanic). By the early '70s, Kopell had landed steady assignments on Get Smart, Bewitched, That Girl, and other series. The Love Boat, however, embodied his breakthrough. He followed it up with an emcee assignment on The Travel Channel (hosting its Railway Adventures Across Europe) and a surge in theatrical work, with portrayals in regional productions of such plays as Rumors, A History of Shadows, and Death of a Salesman.

Trivia: Actor Fred Grandy enjoyed two distinct careers -- an initial career as an actor and a proverbial second wind on the political stage. As a thespian, Grandy signed for guest spots on early-'70s series including Maude and Phyllis, but built his reputation via his nine-season portrayal of Yeoman-Purser Burl "Gopher" Smith, right-hand man to Captain Merrill Stubing (Gavin MacLeod), on the popular television sitcom The Love Boat (1977-1986). He proved popular with audiences, but by the mid-'80s reportedly grew tired of acting and gravitated to the political arena because he found it more challenging. Indeed, in 1986 -- the year of Boat's cancelation -- Grandy was elected as a Republican member of the House of Representatives from Iowa.

Trivia: For millions of Americans, the prime-time situation comedy The Love Boat will be forever inseparable from the image of Ted Lange, an actor cast for nine seasons as the genial Isaac the Bartender on the Pacific Princess luxury liner and trademarked by his iconic "two-finger drop" greeting. Yet Lange's portrayal of Isaac scarcely hinted at the actor's dexterity or dramatic range. In truth, this actor received classical dramatic training at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and would go on, after the Princess took its final voyage in September 1986, to establish himself as a revered creative force in regional theater.Lange initially broke into films with many portrayals in Hollywood programmers during the early '70s, including Trick Baby (1972), Blade (1972), and Black Belt Jones (1974), and landed a regular role in the one-season ethnic sitcom That's My Mama (1974), as a streetwise philosopher opposite Clifton Davis (Amen) and Theresa Merritt. The Love Boat, of course, brought Lange his most widespread recognition; nonetheless (as indicated), he hearkened back to his theatrical roots beginning in the late '80s and divided his time between writing, directing, and stage acting roles. His resumé as a scribe sports at least 17 original plays including Lemon Meringue Facade, Behind the Mask -- An Evening with Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Evil Legacy -- The Story of Lucretia Borgia, while he has appeared dramatically in productions including Hair and Taming of the Shrew and has directed plays ranging from Othello to the rock & roll musical Born a Unicorn.

Trivia: Pennsylvania-born actress Lauren Tewes achieved broadest recognition for her stint as Cruise Director Julie McCoy on the long-running ABC situation comedy The Love Boat. Unfortunately, Tewes (unlike many of her fellow cast members) left the program prior to the final voyage of the Pacific Princess -- reportedly spiraling into a much-publicized bout of severe cocaine addiction from which she eventually fully recovered, but which cost her the role on the series. Tewes nevertheless demonstrated admirable resilience by returning for at least two Love Boat telemovies and remained active in television and film. Subsequent projects included guest appearances on the small-screen series dramas Hunter and Murder, She Wrote, and roles in features such as The Doom Generation (1995) and It Came From Outer Space 2 (1996).

Trivia: Twenty-two-year-old ex-stenographer and former nightclub singer Ethel Merman achieved overnight superstardom when, in 1930, she first belted out "I Got Rhythm" in the Broadway production of Girl Crazy. Merman's subsequent stage hits included Anything Goes, Red, Hot and Blue, Panama Hattie, Annie Get Your Gun, Call Me Madam, and Gypsy. While her Living Legend status was secure on the Great White Way, Merman was less fortunate in the movies. She was upstaged by Ed Wynn in Follow the Leader (1930), by Bing Crosby and Burns and Allen in We're Not Dressing (1934), by Eddie Cantor in Kid Millions (1934), and -- most ignominiously -- by the Ritz Brothers in Straight, Place and Show (1938). While she was permitted to repeat her stage roles in the movie versions Anything Goes (1936) and Call Me Madam (1954), she had to endure watching Betty Hutton wail her way through the film adaptations Red, Hot and Blue (1949) and Annie Get Your Gun (1950), and withstand the spectacle of a miscast Rosalind Russell misplaying the part of Mama Rose in the 1963 filmization Gypsy. Perhaps Merman's talents were too big and bombastic for the comparatively intimate medium of films; or perhaps she just didn't photograph well enough to suit the Hollywood higher-ups. Merman's best movie work includes the two Irving Berlin catalogues Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) and There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), and her character role as Milton Berle's behemoth mother-in-law in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). Ethel Merman's final film appearance was a cameo in Airplane! (1980): she played the unfortunate Lieutenant Hurwitz, who is confined to the psycho ward because he thinks he's Ethel Merman.

Trivia: The son of actress Eileen Bennett, Nicholas Hammond was 13 when he made his first movie appearance in Lord of the Flies (1963). Hammond's most visible screen role was as Friedrich von Trapp in the 1965 megahit The Sound of Music. After making the transition from juvenile to young leading man, he spent several seasons in daytime soaps. In 1978, a pumped-up Nicholas Hammond starred in the brief weekly TV adaptation of The Amazing Spider-Man.

Trivia: The daughter of British actor John Mills and playwright Mary Hayley Bell, Hayley Catherine Rose Vivien Mills made her first screen appearance as an infant in 1947's So Well Remembered. It wasn't until a decade later, however, that Hayley Mills made her formal film debut, portraying the preteen murder witness who is nearly destroyed by her connection to the criminal in 1959's Tiger Bay. Playing many scenes alongside her own father,Mills gave an uncannily affecting performance that won her the British Film Academy's Most Promising Newcomer Award. The movie also brought her to the attention of Walt Disney, ever on the lookout for talented child actors. In 1959, Mills entered Disney's orbit, and the producer placed her into the most meticulous and artistic live-action film in his studio's history up to that time: Pollyanna (1960). The movie transformed Mills from a precociously talented juvenile player into a full-fledged star, and earned her a special Academy Award for her performance. Ironically, Pollyanna was somewhat mis-marketed at the time as a film intended principally for younger girls and their mothers -- in actuality, it is a sentimental film whose dramatic content and visual craftsmanship place it closer in spirit to pictures like The Music Man, or even Shenandoah, perfectly suitable for general audiences; as a result, it was never as big a hit in theaters as it should have been, and Mills' biggest success for Disney turned out to be her next feature, The Parent Trap (1961). This movie, about a set of estranged identical twin sisters who conspire to get their divorced parents back together, gave the 15-year-old actress the chance to play two separate characters, with two distinctly different personalities. She was able to convince a major part of the audience that she was two different people (a gambit later picked up by the creators of The Patty Duke Show), and she also hit the pop music charts with a song from the film, called "Let's Get Together." In the years that followed, Mills' output for Disney proved somewhat uneven, The Moon-Spinners (1964) failing to impress critics, while the more dramatically demanding The Chalk Garden (1964), in which she played an emotionally crippled adolescent, was some of her best work, and reunited her onscreen with her father; and she excelled in the drama Whistle Down the Wind (1962), directed by Bryan Forbes and made for Rank, playing a girl who shelters an escaped criminal, who thinks he's Jesus. The advent of the British Invasion in popular music, which imparted an appeal to all things British in America for about two years, helped sustain Mills' popularity, and her final Disney film, That Darn Cat (1965), was a hit and one of her best comedies, though she was outshone (as she might well have been) by old hands like William Demarest. Her first film after leaving the Disney fold was Gypsy Girl (1966), which marked a break from the American producer's tendency toward light comedy -- directed by her father and written by her mother, it presented Mills in the role of a retarded teenager. She was engaged by John and Roy Boulting to star in The Family Way (1966), a comedy about close-quarter familiar relations (best remembered today because of its score, written by Paul McCartney) -- that picture exploded her lingering goody-two-shoes image by offering Mills in a well-publicized nude scene, and what the scene itself didn't accomplish in changing her image, her romance and marriage to director Roy Boulting, some 33 years her senior, did, and the two had a daughter before their divorce in 1976. Mills would also have a lengthy relationship and eventually a son with actor Leigh Lawson. Curtailing her film appearances in the early '70s, Mills devoted most of her time to television productions; in 1986, she came back to the Disney fold with a Parent Trap TV-movie sequel, and she earned a place in the hearts of a new generation with the title role on 1987's Good Morning, Miss Bliss, the TV precursor to Saved by the Bell. Mills would take a break during the 90's, but returned to TV full force in 2007 with a starring role on the series Wild at Heart.

Trivia: Was the son of Croatian immigrants. Was senior class president in high school. Served in the U.S. Air Force as a pilot and bombardier in WWII. Originally wanted to enter the entertainment industry in hopes of becoming an opera singer. Was given his first job in the entertainment field as a page for NBC. Prior to acting, co-hosted a morning radio show called Rayburn & Finch in NYC in the 1940s. Contended that his career came to a halt when he was 68 and Entertainment Tonight revealed his age as being older than many thought. Given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in October 1999, only a month before his death.

Trivia: Jill Whelan enjoyed an acting career as a child star, with a seven-season (1979-1986) portrayal of Vicki, Captain Merrill Stubing's young daughter, on the prime-time ABC situation comedy The Love Boat. After the series wrapped in 1986, Whelan returned for a number of Love Boat telemovies, acted in regional theater, and played a regular role on the daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless. Astute movie buffs may remember Whelan for a brief but memorable big-screen contribution that happened during her Love Boat tenure: she also portrayed Lisa Davis, the ailing child sent into convulsions when a singing nun knocks out her I.V., in the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker farce Airplane! (1980).