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: 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).

Trivia: Actress Pat Klous began her career in the 1970s as a Manhattan-area model, and graduated to dramatics when tapped by CBS to star opposite fellow neophytes Connie Sellecca and Kathryn Witt in the prime-time adventure drama Flying High (1978-1979). The series told of three young women and their exploits stewardessing for the apocryphal Sunwest Airlines. It failed to take off, however, and folded about four months after it initially debuted. Ironically (or perhaps not so, given the networks' tendencies to emulate one another), the program bore more than a passing resemblance to The Love Boat, which had scored major ratings when it debuted a season prior on ABC -- so it seemed wholly fitting that Boat's producers tapped Klous to star in their thematically similar sitcom Aloha Paradise (1981) and then, a few years later, to replace Love Boat stalwart Lauren Tewes when Tewes was dropped from that program amid a serious cocaine addiction. On The Love Boat, Klous portrayed Cruise Director Judy McCoy. She remained with the program from 1984 until it folded in 1986, then did occasional television work thereafter.

Trivia: Dividing his time more or less equally between big- and small-screen work, actor Ted McGinley enjoyed a considerably successful tenure as a character player, almost always appearing as beefcake heartthrob types. He began his career in the early '80s, with small roles in Garry Marshall's satirical farce Young Doctors in Love (1982) and the lurid Joan Collins telemovie Making of a Male Model (1983), but achieved his first significant break in the sitcom venue, as English teacher-cum-basketball coach Roger Phillips on the final four seasons of Happy Days (1980-1984). Fortuitously, at about the same time that Days folded, the producers of The Love Boat (on the same network, ABC) tapped McGinley to play photographer Ace Evans -- a last-ditch attempt to save the program from sagging ratings. The strategy ultimately failed when Boat ended its lengthy run in 1986, but in the meantime, McGinley landed what became a recurring role as jock Stan in the first three installments of Revenge of the Nerds. Eventually, McGinley also joined the cast of the long-running Married...With Children from 1991 through 1997, playing chauvinistic layabout Jefferson D'Arcy (second husband of the Bundys' neighbor Marcy Rhoades), and essayed roles in theatrical films including Physical Evidence (1989), Wayne's World 2 (1993), and Dick (1999). The late '90s and 2000s found McGinley evincing a heightened presence in television once again, first on Aaron Sorkin's critically worshipped yet short-lived seriocomedy Sports Night (1998-1999), then as Charley Shanowski on the sitcom Hope & Faith (2003-2006). In 2008 he competed in the reality program Dancing With the Stars, and in 2010 he appeared in the lighthearted, family-friendly Christmas with a Capital C. He would reach pop-culture immortality when the website Jumping the Shark named him as one of the signs that a TV show has run out of ideas.

Trivia: A renowned theater actress, Julie Harris also augmented her reputation with strong performances in a number of film and TV roles, despite her aversion to the Hollywood "glamour star" trip. Born to a well-to-do Grosse Pointe, Michigan, family, Harris opted to pursue acting at Yale Drama School rather than make her society debut at age 19. She landed her first Broadway part one year later. Harris' career was truly launched at age 25, however, by her star-making performance as troubled pre-teen tomboy Frankie in Carson McCullers' play The Member of the Wedding in 1950. Reprising her role in the film adaptation of The Member of the Wedding (1952), Harris scored an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in her first major film appearance. Though she did not win, she did win the first of five Tony Awards in 1952 for her Broadway turn as Berlin cabaret singer Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera. Along with the well-received film version of I Am a Camera in 1955, Harris starred in perhaps her best-known film that same year: Elia Kazan's East of Eden. As initially-coquettish Abra, Harris became a sensitive yet sensible romantic lead opposite an anguished James Dean in his legendary debut. With this trio of films, Harris became part of the 1950s cinematic turn toward performative "realism" exemplified by Method actor icons Dean and Marlon Brando (despite her own impatience with the Method after an Actors Studio stint).Harris continued to avoid typecasting by playing a number of different roles in TV, theater, and movie productions throughout the subsequent decades. On film, Harris showed her considerable range as a kindly social worker in the film version of Rod Serling's teleplay Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), one of the highly disturbed human guinea pigs in the original (and far superior) version of The Haunting (1963), a frustrated nightclub chanteuse in the Paul Newman p.i. vehicle Harper (1966), and a troubled wife in Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967). On stage, Harris' specialty became playing famous women throughout history, including Tony-award winning performances as Joan of Ark in The Lark (1956), Mary Todd Lincoln in The Last of Mrs. Lincoln (1973) (adapted for TV in 1976), and Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst (1977).After surviving a bout with cancer in 1981, Harris achieved considerable fame with a new audience by playing Lilimae Clements on the TV nighttime serial Knot's Landing from 1981 to 1988. After she left the show, Harris returned to films, after nearly a decade, as Sigourney Weaver's friend in Gorillas in the Mist (1988). Harris kept busy throughout the 1990s with supporting roles in several films, including Housesitter (1992) and the George A. Romero/Stephen King chiller The Dark Half (1993), as well as starring roles onstage and in TV films, including Ellen Foster (1997). She was awarded the National Medal of the Arts in 1994. Harris would continue to act throughout the decades to come, memorably appearing in TV movies like Little Surprises and Love is Strange. Harris retired from on-screen acting in 2009, and eventually passed away in 2013. She was 87.

Trivia: Redheaded leading lady Arlene Dahl was born, raised and educated in Minnesota. Supporting herself with innumerable day jobs, Dahl finally reached Broadway in 1945, the year before she was chosen New York's "Miss Rheingold." Her first film appearance in MGM's Life With Father (1947) was so fleeting as to be missable, but by 1948 Dahl was playing leads at MGM. In the tradition of such drop-dead-gorgeous redheads as Maureen O'Hara and Rhonda Fleming, Dahl often as not found herself cast in Technicolor swashbucklers, notably Caribbean (1952), Sangaree (1952) and Bengal Brigade (1953). In 1956 Dahl delivered an intimidatingly superb performance as a beautiful psycho in Allan Dwan's Slightly Scarlet. By the 1960s, Dahl was better known as a beauty-product promoter and glamour-advice columnist; her five marriages to such high-profile personalities as Fernando Lamas and Lex Barker also kept her in the public eye. Though her Arlene Dahl Enterprises cosmetics firm earned millions in its heyday, by the mid-1980s Dahl was broke, a fact which compelled her to resume her acting career. Arlene Dahl made her first film appearance in two decades in Night of the Warrior (1991); her co-star was her son, TV hearthrob Lorenzo Lamas.

Trivia: Brooklyn native Connie Stevens is the daughter of musician Teddy Stevens. She moved with her dad to L.A., where she enrolled at Sacred Professional School, sang professional, and appeared in local repertory productions. After several low-budget teen flicks, Stevens was given a break in an A-picture, Jerry Lewis' Rock-a-Bye Baby (1958). Soon afterward, she was signed by Warner Bros. to play bouncy nightclub thrush Cricket Blake on the TV detective series Hawaiian Eye. She also starred in such WB feature films as Susan Slade (1961), and became a popular recording artist with her rendition of the deathless "Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb." Warners suspended Stevens in 1962 over several bones of contention, one of which was her snit-fit after being denied a chance to audition for the lead in the studio's My Fair Lady. She patched up her differences with Warners long enough to play a Gracie Allen clone in the George Burns-produced sitcom Wendy and Me (1964). After her flurry of fame in the 1960s, Stevens kept busy with nightclub appearances and summer theater productions. She appeared in the Broadway production of The Star Spangled Girl, guested in such all-star movie efforts as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) and Grease 2, and accepted a regular role on the 1986 TV series Rowdies. Among Connie Stevens' three husbands were actors James Stacy and Eddie Fisher.

Trivia: After abandoning plans to be either a minister or a doctor, Canadian-born singer/actor Alan Thicke turned to sports writing, then typed out comedy material for the CBC television network. He moved to Hollywood, where he became a writer and sometime performer on the syndicated Norman Lear series Fernwood 2-Night. He returned to Canada in 1980 to replace talk host Alan Hamel on a popular daytime chatfest. He was successful enough in this endeavor to be invited by onetime network executive Fred Silverman to star in Silverman's first non-network effort, a nighttime variety show titled Thicke of the Night (1983). Despite an enormous publicity buildup, the show was a disaster, for which Thicke adopted a "mea culpa" stance. Also during this period, his marriage to singer/actress Gloria Loring broke up; thus Thicke felt himself a failure on all counts. He has credited his comeback to producer Ilene Berg, who cast Thicke in the 1984 TV movie The Calendar Girl Murders, which proved to skeptics that the man had talent as a straight actor. In 1985, Thicke originated the role of psychiatrist Jason Seaver in Growing Pains, a popular ABC sitcom which ran until 1994. The following year, Thicke showed up as a preening, bombastic talk show host (could this have been an act of attrition for Thicke of the Night?) on the NBC comedy series Hope and Gloria. Additionally, Thicke has hosted the children's series Animal Crack-Ups (1987-1990), and has composed the theme songs for several other TV series, notably The Facts of Life. Although he worked steadily in a variety of less than noteworthy projects, he did score a cameo as himself in the satire Teddy Bears' Picnic, and landed supporting roles in the comedies The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, and the 2012 Adam Sandler laugher That's My Boy.Alan Thicke's son is actor Brennan Thicke, best known for providing the voice of the TV cartoon character Dennis the Menace, and his other son, Robin Thicke, followed his father's musical interests and became a pop star. Thicke died in 2016, at age 69.

Trivia: After racking up impressive stage credits in Canada and the U.S., actor Lloyd Bochner familiarized himself with American televiewers in the supporting role of Captain Nicholas Lacey in the prime-time TV serial One Man's Family (1952). Dozens of guest-star assignments later, Bochner again showed up on a weekly basis as police chief Neil Campbell in Hong Kong (1960). His later TV series stints included The Richard Boone Show (1963, as a member of Boone's "repertory company"), and Dynasty (1981-1982 season, as Cecil Colby). In films from 1963's Drums of Africa, Bochner has been seen in such characterizations as Marc Peters in the Carol Lynley version of Harlow (1965) and Dr. Cory in The Dunwich Horror (1969). By far, Bochner's most memorable assignment was the 1962 Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man," as the scientist who learns all too late that "It's a cookbook!"; nearly 30 years later, he parodied this deathless moment in Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991). Lloyd Bochner is the father of Emmy-winning actor Hart Bochner.

Trivia: The younger brother of Gunsmoke star James Arness, American actor Peter Graves worked as a musician and radio actor before entering films with 1950's Rogue River. At first, it appeared that Graves would be the star of the family, since he was cast in leads while brother Jim languished in secondary roles. Then came Stalag 17 (1953), in which Graves was first-rate as a supposedly all-American POW who turned out to be a vicious Nazi spy. Trouble was, Graves played the part too well, and couldn't shake the Nazi stereotype in the eyes of most Hollywood producers. Suddenly the actor found himself in such secondary roles as Shelley Winters' doomed husband in Night of the Hunter (1955) (he was in and out of the picture after the first ten minutes), while sibling James Arness was riding high with Gunsmoke. Dissatisfied with his film career, Graves signed on in 1955 for a network kid's series about "a horse and the boy who loved him." Fury wasn't exactly Citizen Kane, but it ran five years and made Graves a wealthy man through rerun residuals--so much so that he claimed to be making more money from Fury than his brother did from Gunsmoke. In 1966, Peter Graves replaced Steven Hill as head honcho of the force on the weekly TV adventure series Mission: Impossible, a stint that lasted until 1973. Though a better than average actor, Graves gained something of a camp reputation for his stiff, straight-arrow film characters and was often cast in films that parodied his TV image. One of the best of these lampoonish appearances was in the Zucker-Abrahams comedy Airplane (1980), as a nutty airline pilot who asks outrageous questions to a young boy on the plane (a part the actor very nearly turned down, until he discovered that Leslie Nielsen was co-starring in the film). Peter Graves effortlessly maintained his reliable, authoritative movie persona into the '90s and 2000s, and hosted the Biography series on A&E, for which he won an Emmy; he also guest-starred on programs including Cold Case, House and American Dad. Graves died of natural causes in March 2010, at age 83.

Trivia: John Rubinstein was born in Los Angeles in 1946, the same year that his celebrated father, 59-year-old concert pianist Arthur B. Rubinstein, became an American citizen. A fine musician in his own right, John has worked on the scores of such films as The Candidate (1972) and Jeremiah Johnson (1972). The younger Rubinstein is, however, far better known as an actor. He made a well-received Broadway debut in the popular musical Pippin and later co-starred in Children of a Lesser God and A Soldier's Tale. A familiar TV and movie face since 1970, Rubinstein starred in the 1972 theatrical feature Pippin, was featured as Meredith Baxter's ex-husband in the Mike Nichols-produced TV series Family (1976-1980), and was cast as MGM mogul Irving Thalberg in the 1980 TV movie The Silent Lovers. He was most familiar for his three-season (1984-1986) portrayal of uptight attorney Harrison K. Fox on the tongue-in-cheek private eye weekly Crazy Like a Fox. John Rubinstein is married to actress Judy West.

Trivia: Marian Ross dreamed of stardom from childhood, going so far as to change the spelling of her first name to Marion because she thought it would look nicer on a marquee. When her family moved from Minnesota to California, the 16-year-old aspiring actress plunged into the busy world of amateur theatricals in the San Diego area. She was voted Outstanding Actress at San Diego State University in 1950, then went on to work at the prestigious La Jolla Playhouse. Mel Ferrer, La Jolla's resident director, recommended that Ross try her luck in Hollywood. She worked steadily in TV and films from 1953 onward, but stardom was still outside her reach. Ross played a succession of maids, nuns, nurses, and that nebulous classification, the Heroine's Best Friend. She showed up in small roles in such films as Forever Female (1953), Lust for Life (1955), and Operation Petticoat (1959), earning the respect of her fellow workers but very little in the way of public recognition. "I've always had a way of not attracting attention," she would note with resignation later in life. On television, Marion played unstressed recurring roles on such series as Life with Father, Mrs. G Goes to College and Mr. Novak. She finally achieved stardom as Marion Cunningham, mother of 1950s high-schooler Richie Cunningham, on the weekly sitcom Happy Days. What started out as a shaky midseason replacement in January of 1974 ended up ABC's number-one hit; Ross hitched her wagon to the ever-rising Happy Days star until its final episode in 1983. During this period, she reactivated her stage career, with considerably more success than she'd enjoyed in the 1950s. Ross' post-Happy Days TV gigs included a 1986 guest shot as the new bride of Captain Stubing (Gavin MacLeod) on The Love Boat and the brief 1989 series Living Dolls. In 1991, Marion Ross earned an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of archetypal Jewish mother Sophie Berger on the TV "dramedy" Brooklyn Bridge. In the decades to come, Ross would find ongoing success with recurring roles on TV series like The Drew Carey Show and Gilmore Girls, as well as providing voice acting for animated series such as SpongeBob SquarePants and Handy Manny.

Trivia: Though she played many diverse roles in films of the '50s before Leave It to Beaver (1957-1963), slim, blonde, and wholesome-looking Barbara Billingsley will always be best remembered as June Cleaver, one of the greatest mothers in the vast pantheon of television sitcom domestic goddesses. In addition to her filmwork, Billingsley also appeared on a number of television plays on such shows as Four Star Playhouse and Matinee Theater. Following the end of Beaver, Billingsley traveled extensively until the late '70s. She made her acting comeback playing the crazy "Jive Lady" in Airplane (1980). In 1983, she reprised her role as June Cleaver in the television reunion movie Still the Beaver, which spawned a television series by the same name two years later. In 1984, she gave voice to the character of Nanny in Jim Hanson's animated kids' show Muppet Babies. After that, she appeared occasionally in movies and made guest television appearances; in 1997, she played Aunt Martha in the big-screen version of Leave It to Beaver. Billingsley died in 2010 after a long illness.

Trivia: Though most of Ruth Buzzi's official biographies list her birthplace as Westerly, RI, she herself was fond of claiming that she was born in Wequetequock, CT, perhaps because it sounded funnier. Whatever the case, Buzzi was the daughter of an immigrant Italian stone sculptor who specialized in cemetery monuments. After attending dancing school, 17-year-old Buzzi studied for an acting career at the Pasadena Playhouse. A well-established West Coast character actress by 1959, Buzzi came to Broadway to appear in the short-lived revue Misguided Tour; it was here that she created the first of her many memorable "alter egos," half-witted magician's assistant Shakuntula. It was while playing the woebegone Agnes Gooch in a 1961 stock-company production of Auntie Mame that Buzzi developed the character that would reach full maturity as the whining schlumper Gladys Ormphby. In 1965, she joined the cast of the CBS TV variety series The Entertainers, and that same year provided the voice of Granny Goodwich on the Linus the Lionhearted cartoon weekly. She went to make recurring appearances on That Girl and the 1967 Steve Allen Comedy Hour; and in January of 1968, she began a seven-year hitch on the immensely popular Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. Together with Laugh-In co-star Arte Johnson, Buzzi provided the voice for her cartoon likeness in the 1977 Saturday morning animated series Baggy Pants and the Nitwits. Under the aegis of Sid and Marty Krofft, Buzzi starred on the weekend kiddie shows Far Out Space Nuts (1975) and The Krofft Supershow (1976). On the big screen, Ruth Buzzi has been seen in such Disney fare as Freaky Friday (1977), The North Avenue Irregulars (1978), and The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979).

Trivia: The daughter of a Christian Science lecturer, Carol Channing endured the rigors of Bennington College for one year before dropping out to try her luck as an actress in New York. Channing made her first Broadway appearance in 1941's Never Take No for an Answer; two years later, she understudied Eve Arden in the musical hit Let's Face It. Developing her own inimitable personality -- the wide-eyed, raspy-voice soubrette who is neither as dumb nor as crazy as she seems -- she scored her first hit in the 1948 revue Lend an Ear, which won the New York Drama Critics Award. In 1949, she starred as Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, introducing the immortal golddigger's anthem "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend." She lost the Lorelei Lee role to Marilyn Monroe in the 1952 film version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and not without some justification: Like Bert Lahr, Fanny Brice, and other larger-than-life Broadway luminaries, Channing was simply too overpowering for the more intimate medium of film. Proof that her million-watt personality was best suited to the stage can be found in her one starring film, the unsuccessful The First Traveling Saleslady (1956). Though she remained an audience favorite in nightclub and review appearances throughout the 1950s and early '60s -- at one point, she was teamed with George Burns -- Channing would not find a Broadway vehicle to match the success of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes until 1963, when she was cast as Dolly Gallegher Levi in the blockbuster musical Hello, Dolly!. She won a Tony Award for her work in this production, repeating the role in periodic revivals and eventually toting up over 1,400 performances. Again, however, she was denied the opportunity to repeat her stage role onscreen; it was a young Barbra Streisand who starred in the 1970 film version of Hello, Dolly!. Channing was awarded an Emmy for the 1966 TV special An Evening With Carol Channing, and an Oscar nomination for her supporting performance in Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967). After co-starring in the Otto Preminger disappointment Skidoo (1969), Channing confined her big-screen activities to cartoon voice-over work (Shinbone Alley, Happily Ever After, and Thumbelina); she has also supplied voices for the animated TV series Where's Waldo?, The Addams Family, and The Magic School Bus. In 1995, Carol Channing was honored at the Tony Awards presentations with a lifetime achievement award. Channing would particupate in documentaries about Broadway and her life, like Carol Channing: Larger Than Life.

Trivia: A veritable mainstay on mid-'70s U.S. television, Renaissance performer Charo (née María Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Baeza) began life in Murcia, Spain, in 1951 and commenced her foray into show business by learning the guitar at the hands of the legendary Latin jazz maestro Andrés Segovia. Her success in that sphere yielded a lucrative recording contract in Europe and a movie role in the feature Don Juan Tenerio. Her career further expanded when she met, fell in love with, and married the famed bandleader Xavier Cugat -- a man over 50 years her senior. In seemingly no time, Charo joined Cugat's stage act as a dancer, and the ensemble hit nightspots across the U.S. including Caesar's Palace, The Tropicana, and The Flamingo. Charo earned the nickname "The Cuchi-Cuchi Girl" for her trademark exclamation "Cuchi! Cuchi!" By the 1970s, Charo's reputation caught fire and she turned up as a small-screen regular on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (reportedly sitting on his guest couch in excess of 45 times), and on the prime-time situation comedy The Love Boat (1977-1986). Though Boat's producers never officially tapped Charo as a regular cast member, she set a record number of guest spots on that program, and expanded her acting resumé with work on such features as Airport '79: Concorde (1979), Moon Over Parador (1988), and Thumbelina (1994); she also participated in season three of MTV's The Surreal Life (2004), alongside Flavor Flav, Dave Coulier, and others. Charo temporarily retired from touring as a musical act when her son, Shel, reached the age of five. She divorced Cugat in 1978 and married her second husband, Swedish Kjell Rasten, that same year.

Trivia: American actor Bert Convy excelled in baseball while attending North Hollywood High School and was signed upon graduation by the Philadelphia Phillies. After two years' stagnation in the Phillies' farm system, Convy gave up baseball and attended UCLA, where he became a member of a briefly popular singing group called the Cheers. A 1959 stint with the songs-and-laughs Billy Barnes Revue led to small TV and movie parts, notably a brief bit as a murder victim in the Roger Corman "C minus" horror classic Bucket of Blood (1959). Convy's star ascended on Broadway in the 1960s, when he originated two memorable musical comedy roles: Perchik in Fiddler on the Roof, and Clifford Bradshaw in Cabaret. He was a popular variety-show guest star in that decade, but despite starring appearances in several TV pilots he was unable to get his own prime time series. However, thanks to his ingratiating personality and smooth speaking voice, Convy developed into the perfect daytime game show host, headlining such quizzers of the 1970s and 1980s as Tattletales (which won him an Emmy), Super Password, The Third Degree and Win, Lose or Draw. This last program was co-produced by Convy's close friend Burt Reynolds, who had previously arranged for Convy to obtain good secondary roles in several of Reynolds' films. Convy finally cracked prime time TV with a continuing role on the 1972 mystery series The Snoop Sisters; four years later, The Late Summer-Early Fall Bert Convy Show was briefly telecast by CBS, with Convy presiding over a motley crew of sketch comics. From 1977 to 1986, Convy was a frequent guest star on the long-running TV anthology series The Love Boat, seemingly popping up in every other episode when the series is rerun today. Convy co-starred in the very short-lived TV sitcom It's Not Easy in 1983, and hosted the 1984 Candid Camera clone People Do the Craziest Things. In 1989, the actor learned that he had a brain tumor, and in 1990 suffered a series of severe strokes. One year later, Bert Convy was dead at the age of 58.

Trivia: Elinor Donahue's mother, a theatrical costumer, moonlighted as a department store saleswoman in order to pay for her daughter's dancing lessons. Appearing in dancing-chorus film roles from the age of five, Donahue was at one point a ballet-school classmate of future Fred Astaire partner Barrie Chase. Striking out on her own at 12, Donahue attained work as a Las Vegas showgirl at 14; the fact that she was underage was discreetly covered by her agent and her co-workers, who took a paternal interest in the impressionable young dancer's career. Breaking her ankle at 16, Donahue decided to forego dancing in favor of acting; she was almost immediately cast in the role of sensitive teenager Betty Anderson in the long-running (1954-60) sitcom Father Knows Best. It was the first of many TV stints for Donahue; over the next three decades she would appear as a regular on such series as The Andy Griffith Show, Many Happy Returns, The Odd Couple, Mulligan's Stew, Please Stand By and Doctor's Private Lives. She became a special favorite of writer/director Savage Steve Holland, who cast Donahue as the ditsy mother of a teen-aged secret agent on the 1987 Fox network series The New Adventures of Beans Baxter, and as the voice of a suburban mom who spends her waking hours trying to learn an indecipherable foreign language on Holland's cartoon series Eek! The Cat. This fey, eccentric quality was carried over into Donahue's performance as the eternally bathrobe-clad wife of Bob Elliot and mother of 30-year-old paperboy Chris Elliot on the 1990 Fox sitcom Get a Life. Donahue's film appearances have been less frequent; when she showed up in a cameo as a department store clerk in Gary Marshall's Pretty Women (1987), there was an audible appreciative sigh of recognition from movie audiences everywhere. Elinor Donahue was the wife of Columbia TV executive Harry Ackerman from 1961 to Ackerman's death in 1991.

Trivia: While growing up in Chicago, Tom Bosley dreamed of becoming the star left-fielder for the Cubs. As it turned out, the closest Bosley got to organized athletics was a sportscasting class at DePauw University. After additional training at the Radio Institute of Chicago and two years' practical experience in various dramatic radio programs and stock companies, he left for New York in 1950. Five years of odd jobs and summer-theater stints later, he landed his first off-Broadway role, playing Dupont-Dufort in Jean Anouilh's Thieves' Carnival. Steadier work followed at the Arena Theatre in Washington, D.C.; then in 1959, Bosley landed the starring role in the Broadway musical Fiorello!, picking up a Tony Award, an ANTA Award, and the New York Drama Critics Award in the bargain. In 1963, he made his film bow as Natalie Wood's "safe and secure" suitor Anthony Colombo in Love With the Proper Stranger. Occasionally cast as two-bit criminals or pathetic losers (he sold his eyes to blind millionairess Joan Crawford in the Spielberg-directed Night Gallery TV movie), Bosley was most often seen as a harried suburban father. After recurring roles on such TV series as That Was the Week That Was, The Debbie Reynolds Show, and The Sandy Duncan Show, Bosley was hired by Hanna-Barbera to provide the voice of flustered patriarch Howard Boyle on the animated sitcom Wait Til Your Father Gets Home (1972-1973). This served as a dry run of sorts for his most famous series-TV assignment: Howard Cunningham, aka "Mr. C," on the immensely popular Happy Days (1974-1983). The warm, familial ambience of the Happy Days set enabled Bosley to weather the tragic death of his first wife, former dancer Jean Elliot, in 1978. In addition to his Happy Days duties, Bosley was narrator of the syndicated documentary That's Hollywood (1977-1981). From 1989 to 1991, he starred on the weekly series The Father Dowling Mysteries, and thereafter was seen on an occasional basis as down-to-earth Cabot Cove sheriff Amos Tupper on Murder, She Wrote. Reportedly as kind, generous, and giving as his Happy Days character, Tom Bosley has over the last 20 years received numerous honors for his many civic and charitable activities.

Trivia: Tony Dow is best remembered for playing Wally Cleaver, the clean-cut and much wiser older brother of Beaver on the classic family sitcom Leave It to Beaver (1957-1963). Since the show's demise, he has appeared sporadically in a couple feature films and in a few television movies. He reprised the role of Wally in the 1980s in the made-for-TV reunion film Still the Beaver (1983) and in the series it spawned. In 1965, Dow starred in the short-lived series Never Too Young. After a final feature-film appearance as a judge in the good-natured, nostalgic spoof of the Beach Party movies Back to the Beach (1987), Dow disappeared for a few years and then re-emerged as a director of television episodes for such series as Babylon 5 (1993) and as a producer of films such as It Came From Outer Space II (1996).

Trivia: Ever since the '50s, each generation has had its definitive sitcom mom, the one woman who symbolizes the attitudes and ideals of the American household (at least according to the major networks). In the late '50s, it was Barbara Billingsley; Donna Reed ruled the '60s; Roseanne repped the '80s; and Florence Henderson was queen of the '70s. As Carol Brady, she was the polyester-clad personification of the "have a nice day" mentality on the Brady Bunch (1969-1974). Prior to becoming Mrs. Brady, Henderson had worked on television during the '50s, getting her start as the "Today Girl" on Today (1952) and as a regular on Sing Along (1958). She also made frequent appearances on the Tonight Show through the early '60s. Henderson was a successful star of Broadway musicals and in 1970, she starred in the musical feature-film biography of Scandinavian composer Edvard Grieg, Song of Norway (1970). Since the end of the Brady Bunch series, Henderson has basically made her living portraying and sometimes spoofing Carol Brady. There was a blessedly short-lived variety show sequel to the program, The Brady Bunch Hour (1977), and Brady Bunch reunion TV movies, such as The Brady Girls Get Married (1981) and A Very Brady Christmas (1988). The show that wouldn't die also spawned two more sequel series, The Brady Brides (1981) and the downbeat drama The Bradys (1990). In 1995, Henderson played a feisty grandmother, the antithesis of Carol, in the feature-film spoof The Brady Bunch Movie. She continued to appear on TV and in movies such as Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, and the documentary Get Bruce!. In 2006 she was cast in season 6 of The Surreal Life, and in 2010 she returned to the small screen yet again to compete in the eleventh season of Dancing With the Stars. Henderson died in 2016, at age 82.

Trivia: An amiable American character actor with Midwest sensibilities, Gordon Jump spent most of his career appearing on television. A native of Centerville, OH, he got his start on the radio at station WIBW, Topeka following studies in broadcasting and communication at Kansas State University. While at the station, Jump wore many hats, including the hat of WIB the Clown, the host of a local children's show. He later worked on radio in Ohio until 1963 when he decided to move to Hollywood to launch an acting career. Through the '60s and '70s, he appeared on numerous series including Green Acres. In 1978, Gordon Jump was selected to play sweet-natured, slightly befuddled radio station manager Arthur Carlson on the classic sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. When the series ended in the early '80s, Jump returned to making guest appearances on other shows. Between 1991 and 1993, he reprised his role of Carlson on The New WKRP in Cincinnati. In 1997, Jump found steady work playing the "Lonely Repairman" in TV commercials for Maytag appliances. In addition to television, Jump also made occasional film appearances.

Trivia: While a still scrawny, undersized pre-teen in Morgantown, WV, Don Knotts dreamed of becoming an entertainer, but was too nervous to offer himself as a "single." Purchasing a dummy named Danny, Knotts worked up a ventriloquist act (admittedly stolen from Edgar Bergen) and headed to New York to seek his fortune. After flunking out twice on Major Bowes' Amateur Hour, Knotts returned to Morgantown. He attended West Virginia University as a speech major, intending to become a teacher. He was given a second opportunity to hone his entertaining skills while in Special Services during World War II. He continued pursuing ventriloquism until the fateful night that he threw his dummy into the ocean: "I wanted to get the laughs," Knotts would explain later. And laughs he got as a monologist from both GI and civilian audiences. Never completely conquering his stage fright, Knotts incorporated his nervousness into his act, impersonating such tremulous creatures as a novice TV weatherman and a tongue-tied sportcaster. In New York after the war, Knotts secured work on a local children's show before spending several years on the daytime soap opera Search for Tomorrow. In 1955, Knotts was cast in two small roles in the Broadway play No Time for Sergeants, which starred another teacher-turned-monologist named Andy Griffith, who would become Knotts' lifelong friend and co-worker. From 1955 through 1960, Knotts was a regular on The Steve Allen Show, provoking uncontrollable bursts of laughter as the bug-eyed, quivering "man on the street." He made his screen debut in the 1958 film version of No Time for Sergeants, re-creating his stage role of the squeaky-voiced coordination therapist. In 1960, he was cast as uptight, self-important, overzealous, magnificently inept deputy Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show. This was the role that won Knotts seven Emmies: five during his five-year tenure on the series, and two more when he returned to the show as a guest star in 1966 and 1967. Knotts left the Griffith Show when his contract expired in 1965, hoping to achieve movie stardom. From 1966 through 1971, Knotts ground out a series of inexpensive comedies for Universal (called "regionals" because they played primarily in non-urban and rural theaters). Panned or ignored by the critics on their first release, many of Knotts's starring films, especially The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966) and Shakiest Gun in the West (1967), became fan favorites. Arguably, however, the best of Knotts' 1960s films was made at Warner Bros. while he was still an Andy Griffith regular: The Incredible Mr. Limpet, a blend of animation and live-action wherein Knotts was ideally cast as a henpecked husband who metamorphosed into a war-hero fish.In 1970, Knotts starred in his own TV variety series, which opened to good ratings but ran out of gas after a single season. He resumed his film career, first at Disney, then teamed with Tim Conway in a handful of cheap but amusing B-grade features (The Private Eyes, The Prize Fighter). He also returned to television as self-styled roué Mr. Furley on Three's Company (1979-1984) and as gung-ho principal Bud McPherson on the syndicated What a Country! (1986). That same year, Knotts reprised his most venerable role of Deputy Fife in the made-for-TV movie, Return to Mayberry, the last act of which saw the character becoming the sheriff of Mayberry, NC.Despite his advancing age, Knotts' output increased in the 1990s and early 2000s. He appeared as a school principal in the Rick Moranis/Tom Arnold comedy Big Bully (1996). Additional roles included a television repairman in Big scribe Gary Ross's 1998 directorial debut, Pleasantville; the voice of T.W. Turtle in Cats Don't Dance, the voice of Turkey Lurkey in the 2005 Disney comedy Chicken Little, and a turn as "The Landlord" on an episode of That '70s Show that represented a deliberate throwback to Three's Company. Knotts spent much of his final decade teaming up with his old friend and co-star, Tim Conway, on the voiceovers for the Hermie and Friends series, contemporary Christian animated videos about a bunch of colorful insects. The world lost Don Knotts on February 25, 2006; he died in Beverly Hills, CA. In his final years, Knotts's appearances on the big or the small screen were greeted with the sort of appreciative laughter and applause that is afforded only to a genuine television icon.

Trivia: Leading lady of television and films, Judy Landers made her feature-film debut in The Yum-Yum Girls (1976) and appeared in her first television show, Happy Days (in 1974), as a guest star. Landers spent the bulk of her career in low-budget films. TV series in which she was a regular include Vega$ (1978) and B.J. and the Bear (1981). She and her sister, Audrey Landers, have appeared together in two films, The Tennessee Stallion (1978) and Ghost Writer (1989).

Trivia: "Titian-haired" is the manner in which actress Tina Louise is usually described. Despite her numerous comic performances, she prefers to be regarded as a serious actress; according to some of her co-workers, her preference in this manner often takes the form of an ultimatum. Louise was born near Brooklyn, where her father ran a candy store. She studied drama at Miami University, the Neighborhood Playhouse, and the Actors' Studio. A nightclub singer in the mid-1950s, Louise came to Broadway as Appasionatta von Climax in the original 1956 production of the musical Li'l Abner. Two years later she made her first film, the then-torrid God's Little Acre. By the early 1960s, Louise was shuttling between Hollywood and Europe, often appearing in productions of the shoestring variety. Louise is fondly remembered for her three-year (1964 through 1967) stint as Marilynesque movie star Ginger Grant on Gilligan's Island, though she despised the role and made no secret of it on the set. Nor did she wish to have anything to do with the Gilligan cartoon and TV movie follow-ups of the 1970s and 1980s, choosing instead to carve a reputation as a versatile, no-nonsense actress, though she eventually capitulated and appeared in The Castaways on Gilligan's Island. Though she would go on to make other film and TV appearances in the decades to come, even penning a children's book and earning her helicopter pilot's license, Louise would forever remain the most well known for the role of Ginger.

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from the early '70s.

Trivia: Child actor Jerry Mathers began picking up modeling work at the age of two. His first TV appearance was on Ed Wynn's variety show in 1950. Among Mather's larger film roles were the son of Shirley MacLaine in Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry (1955) and the son of Bob Hopeand Eva Marie Saint in That Certain Feeling (1955). In 1956, Mathers was cast as all-American kid Theodore "Beaver" Clever in It's a Small World, an unsold pilot film that showed up on the syndicated anthology Studio 57. One year later, a heavily revamped and recast It's a Small World re-emerged as the weekly sitcom Leave It to Beaver, with Mathers in the title role. He starred in 234 episodes of Beaver from 1957 through 1963, literally growing up before the eyes of the nation. Unable to sustain his acting career into his teen years, Mathers quit show business for nearly a decade, attending UCLA, selling real estate, and denying rumors that he'd been killed in Vietnam. In 1983, Mathers starred in the "retro" made-for-TV film Still the Beaver, which evolved into a moderately successful weekly cable series, The New Leave It to Beaver (1985-89), Essentially, Mathers played himself: a middle-aged divorced father, wondering just what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. Jerry Mathers' professional life in the 1990s has been a maelstrom of personal appearances, TV guest shots, and punchline bits on Jay Leno's Tonight Show.

Trivia: Louis (pronounced Louie) Nye was an American comic actor equally at home in theatre, movies or television. His basic characterization as a somewhat fey country-club bon vivant was established when he was a regular on the various '50s TV programs starring Steve Allen. Nye's chipper "Hi, ho, Steverino" became a national catchphrase, and his ability to reduce Allen to helpless giggles with in-joke adlibs remains among the treasured memories of TV's golden age. At the height of his popularity, Nye recorded a few comedy LPs, in which he essayed a variety of characterizations (he was just as persuasive at playing tough hoodlums and peppery senior citizens as he was portraying effeminate swingers). Movies seldom utilized Nye for more than a few minutes at a time, reasoning perhaps that a little of him went a long way; still, he had some prime vignettes in The Facts of Life (1960), The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961), and especially Good Neighbor Sam (1963), in which he played a gadget-laden private eye. Outside of his extensive work with Steve Allen, Nye had regular TV stints on The Ann Sothern Show (1958-61) as dentist Delbert Gray; on Happy Days (1970), not the famous Fonzie-ized sitcom but a summer variety series spoofing the '30s; and on Needles and Pins (1973), as the intrusive brother-in-law of series star Norman Fell. In 1985, Louis Nye popped up as The Carpenter (as in "The Walrus and...") in the all-star TV movie adaptation of Alice in Wonderland.

Trivia: Though many casual observers perceive that comic actor Tom Poston was "discovered" by Steve Allen in 1956, Poston had in fact been a performer long before Allen ever set foot on a stage. At age 9, Poston was a member of the Flying Zebleys, an acrobatic troupe. After Air Force service in World War II, he began his formal acting training at the AADA. Poston made his "legit" New York stage debut in Jose Ferrer's Cyrano de Bergerac (1947). With several years of stage work under his belt, Poston was engaged to host the local New York TV variety series Entertainment (1955), and it was this effort that brought him to the attention of Steve Allen. The story goes that Poston was so flustered at his audition for Allen's TV variety series that he forgot his own name when asked. From 1956 through 1960, Poston was seen along with Louis Nye and Don Knotts as a member of the Allen stock company; appropriately, he was most often cast as a "man on the street" interviewee who could never remember his name. Poston won an Emmy for his work on Allen's show in 1959, and that same year hosted the weekday TV game show Split Personality; this gig led to a long tenure as a guest panelist on other quiz programs. In films from 1953, Poston starred in a pair of offbeat William Castle-directed comedies, Zotz (1962) and The Old Dark House (1963). Poston's TV sitcom credits include such roles as prison guard Sullivan on On the Rocks (1975), absentminded Damon Jerome on We've Got Each Other (1977), cantankerous neighbor Franklin Delano Bickley on Mork and Mindy and Ringo Crowley on Good Grief (1990). In 1982, Poston beat out Jerry Van Dyke for his most famous prime-time TV role: caretaker George Utley on Newhart. Poston died at age 85 in April 2007, of undisclosed causes. Until the time of his death, he was married to Suzanne Pleshette of The Bob Newhart Show.

Trivia: A striking beauty, famed for her long, slender and well-formed legs, dancer/actress Juliet Prowse was at the peak of her popularity as a film and television actress during the 1960s. After that, she made her name on stage and in Las Vegas. Born in Bombay, and raised in South Africa, she studied to be a dancer from the age of 4. Prowse was accepted for the Festival Ballet of Johannesburg at age 14, but at a height of 6 feet she was much too large for the rather strict requirements of the ballet world. A less prestigious but likely more lucrative engagement followed when Juliet signed on as a chorus dancer for the London Palladium. She went to dance at a Parisian nightclub, then toured Europe as a member of a modern dance troupe. Hollywood choreographer Hermes Pan spotted one of Prowse's performances and cast her as the Snake in the "Adam and Eve" number for the 1959 film musical Can Can. While visiting the set of this film, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev took a long look at Juliet and denounced the production for its depravity. Whatever shortcoming Khrushchev might have had as a dance critic, as a press agent he was tops -- within weeks after his denunciation, Prowse was appearing on virtually every magazine cover in the U.S. As an added fillip to her newfound fame, Prowse fell in love with the star of Can Can, Frank Sinatra. Prowse next co-starred opposite Elvis Presley in G.I. Blues and before production finished, rumors flew that she and the King were romantically entangled. Still she and Sinatra announced their engagement in 1962. The marriage never took place, but the publicity value to Prowse was invaluable, resulting in a high-playing Las Vegas nightclub engagement. The show was panned by the papers (again for supposed bad taste) but still raked in a fortune. At the behest of her agent, Prowse next attempted to become the "new Lucille Ball" in the 1965 NBC sitcom Mona McCluskey. The premise: Prowse was a movie star who willingly lived on her military-officer husband's meager monthly wages. Despite the hype surrounding the show, Mona McCluskey was off the air in 13 weeks. As her first blush of notoriety faded, Juliet Prowse maintained her nightclub career with success, supplementing her income with innumerable TV commercial endorsements for cosmetics and panty hose - and experiencing a few heart-stopping moments when an 80-pound leopard mauled her during a rehearsal for a Circus of the Stars TV special in 1989. A real trooper, Prowse recovered enough to complete her part of the show. A few months later she was getting ready to make a promotional appearance with the leopard on The Tonight Show. Unfortunately, the big cat's temper had not significantly improved and it attacked her again just before they were to go on. From 1986 through the mid '90s, Prowse hosted the "Championship Ballroom Dance Competition" on PBS. Throughout her career she has earned several awards including the Professional Dancer's Society "Gypsy" award, a Best Actress of the Year from the London Evening Standard and the Las Vegas Performer of the Year award for a stage version of Sweet Charity. In 1994, Prowse was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She made her final public appearance in a 10-week summer run of Sugar Babies opposite Mickey Rooney in Las Vegas in 1995. Prowse passed away on September 14, 1996.

Trivia: A classically-trained lead actor, Robert Reed appeared onscreen from 1958. His most famous role was as the father on the TV series The Brady Bunch.

Trivia: Fresh from the Marquette University drama department, Charles Siebert continued his theatrical studies at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. Upon his graduation, Siebert and his wife had become so enchanted with England that he attempted to extend his visa by claiming that he'd gotten a job as a jazz-dancing teacher--a ruse that worked for a full year before he was found out. Following his professional debut in a Morristown, New Jersey production of Oedipus Rex, Siebert sought out work on Broadway, paying the rent by appearing in such TV daytime dramas as Search for Tomorrow and As the World Turns, and accepting roles in what Siebert would later describe as "The God Shows:" Sunday-morning religious anthologies like Lamp Unto My Feet, Look Up and Live and The Eternal Light. In the late 1960s, he bemusedly found himself the subject of media attention when he appeared in the play The Changing Room, which featured one of Broadway's first all-male nude scenes. Moving to Hollywood in 1976, Siebert quickly became a member in good standing of producer Norman Lear's talent pool, guesting on such series as All in the Family and Maude and appearing regularly as Mr. Davenport on One Day at a Time. While he has appeared in a number of films and had recurring roles on several weekly series, Charles Siebert is best known for his work as ivy-league doctor Stanley Riverside II on the TV medical drama Trapper John MD (1979-1986).

Trivia: While still a high schooler in her Texas home town, Josephine Cottle won a "Gateway to Hollywood" contest sponsored by film producer Jesse Lasky. Cottle was rechristened "Gale Storm" at the suggestion of a movie-magazine fan, and was promptly cast in 1940's Tom Brown's School Days. A brief RKO contract led nowhere, and soon Gale Storm was the sweetheart of Monogram Pictures, starring in several of that low-budget studio's musical "specials." Towards the end of the 1940s, Gale appeared in a number of Republic westerns opposite Roy Rogers. When actress Wanda Hendrix turned down the opportunity to star in the upcoming TV sitcom My Little Margie in 1951, Gale Storm jumped at the chance; like Hendrix, Gale didn't think much of the project at first, but was convinced that it could only get better. Whether or not My Little Margie ever truly evinced signs of improvement is a moot point: Storm became a bonafide star in the role of spunky 21-year-old Margie Belmont. The series' popularity increased tenfold when it left prime time in 1954 and entered the syndicated-rerun market. Capitalizing on her new-found celebrity, she pursued a successful nightclub career, and in 1955 cut a pair of Top Ten record singles, "Teenage Prayer" and "I Hear You Knocking." One year later, she launched a second successful TV series, Oh, Susanna (aka The Gale Storm Show) in which, for four seasons, she filled the role of Susanna Pomeroy, scatterbrained social director on the luxury liner S.S. Ocean Queen. Following her series' cancellation in 1960, Storm returned to nightclubs and played the straw-hat circuit in such musicals as Annie Get Your Gun and then went into semi-retirement, devoting her time to her husband Lee Bonnell (a fellow "Gateway to Hollywood" winner who had long since abandoned acting for the insurance business) and her children. In the late 1970s, Storm re-emerged in the public's consciousness when she announced that she'd been an alcoholic for several years; this was followed by a return to TV as spokesperson for a substance-abuse rehabilitation center in the Northwest. In 1981, Gale Storm published her biography, I Ain't Down Yet.

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: Buxom, blonde Charlene Tilton is best known for playing Lucy Ewing on the long-running nighttime soap Dallas from 1978 to 1985 and again from 1988 to 1991. Tilton made her feature film debut in Disney's Freaky Friday (1976) and then had a starring role in the low-budget sex farce Sweater Girls (1978). Since the demise of the television series, Tilton's film career has been sporadic.

Trivia: A musical career came virtually by inheritance to African-American entertainer Leslie Uggams. Her father sang with the Hall Johnson Choir, and her mother was a chorus dancer. At age 6, Leslie was appearing with Ethel Waters in the TV sitcom The Beulah Show; at eight, she was featured on Paul Whiteman's TV Teen Club; and from eight to twelve, she sang on tour in big-city theatres and showed up in guests spots on shows starring the likes of Arthur Godfrey, Milton Berle and Garry Moore. A graduate of the Professional Children's School of New York, Uggams "retired" from show business at age 12--only to reemerge as a contestant (and singer) on the TV game show Name That Tune. Later on in 1960, Uggams was showcased to perfection as the offscreen singer of "Old Time Religion" in the opening scenes of the movie Inherit the Wind. While a student at Julliard in 1961, Ms. Uggams was hired to be regular female vocalist on Sing Along With Mitch, an otherwise all-male (and all-white) songfest hosted by Mitch Miller. A major star by 1969, Uggams became the first black female performer to host her own TV series since Hazel Scott in the '50s; alas, The Leslie Uggams Show became the latest in a long list of casualties to its powerhouse competition Bonanza. The next two decades were a kaleidescope of lofty heights and dismal depths for Uggams. But when she triumphed, it was big-time: She was brilliant as Kizzy in the groundbreaking 1977 TV saga Roots, and no less superb in a key role on a 1979 mini-series, Backstairs at the White House. Leslie Uggams' last regular television stint was as cohost of a nighttime audience participation series, Fantasy, in 1983. The series didn't last, but Uggams managed to grab an Emmy award for her efforts.

Trivia: Endearing herself to television audiences as the devoted sitcom wife of Robert Young on Father Knows Best, petite brunette actress Jane Wyatt also essayed frequent big-screen roles highlighted by memorable performances in such films as Lost Horizon (1937), in which she plays Sondra, the lover of Robert Conway (Ronald Colman). Born in Campgaw, NJ, on August 12, 1910, to an investment banker father and a drama critic mother, and raised as a Manhattanite from age three, Wyatt received her formal education at the Chapin School and -- very briefly -- at New York City's Barnard College, where she spent two listless years. Following the irresistible call of the stage, Wyatt bucked university life in favor of honing her acting skills at Berkshire Playhouse in the western Massachusetts community of Stockbridge. Shortly after this, she accepted a position as understudy to Rose Hobart in a Broadway production of Trade Winds. Universal soon took note of Wyatt's talents and offered her a film role, in Frankenstein director James Whale's One More River (1934). Wyatt embarked on a lucrative screen career following her impressive debut, and many consider the performance in Lost Horizon her crowning achievement, though additional cinematic work throughout the 1940s proved both steady and rewarding. Following memorable performances in Clifford Odets' None But the Lonely Heart (1944) (alongside Cary Grant) and Elia Kazan's Gentleman's Agreement (1947, with Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire), the now-established actress transitioned smoothly into television in the early '50s, given her standing role as the matriarch of the Anderson family (mother of Bud, Princess, and Kitten, and wife of Jim) on the long-running CBS sitcom Father Knows Best. Wyatt deservedly won three Emmys for that role, and remained with the program over the course of its six-year run of original episodes. (Riding the crest of high ratings, CBS stretched prime-time reruns into the spring of 1963.) This marked the only major recurring prime-time role of Wyatt's career, though (alongside the work of others such as Barbara Billingsley and Harriet Nelson) it did much to establish the now-iconic image of the "archetypal 1950s sitcom mother," and earned the actress a beloved spot in American pop-culture history. In addition to this, Wyatt made occasional appearances, during the Father Knows Best run, on a dramatic anthology series headlined by her small-screen husband, Robert Montgomery Presents (NBC, 1950-1957). Six years after new episodes of Father wrapped, Star Trek landed on NBC, and Wyatt turned up occasionally on that program, as Mr. Spock's mother, Amanda Spock. She also made a guest appearance, alongside the late Bob Cummings, on the early-'70s comedic anthology series Love, American Style (the two play parents who are overanxious about their daughter's decision to embark on a European "swingers' holiday" with a boyfriend). If the preponderance of Wyatt's roles in the '70s, '80s, and '90s were largely supporting turns, it certainly said nothing about the actress' talent. She remained in the public eye as a fixture of such made-for-television features as You'll Never See Me Again (1973) and Amelia Earhart (1976). Though she entered semi-retirement in the late '70s, Wyatt later appeared (very infrequently) as an occasional supporting character in television's St. Elsewhere and reprised her role as Spock's mother in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).On October 20, 2006, after years of inactivity, Jane Wyatt died of natural causes in her sleep, at her home in Bel Air, CA. She was 96.

Trivia: Few American comedians have had so aggressive a "stage mother" as did Milton Berle. Berle's mother Sarah dragged her son to New Jersey's Edison movie studios in 1914 to do extra work, then finessed the lad into supporting roles, including the part of a newsboy in the first-ever feature-length comedy, Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), which starred Charlie Chaplin. Under Sarah's powerhouse tutelage, Berle moved into vaudeville, making his debut at the prestigious Palace Theatre in 1921. Berle continued as a vaudeville headliner, with occasional stopovers on Broadway and in Hollywood, into the World War II years. His lengthy starring stint in the 1943 edition of Broadway's Ziegfeld Follies established Berle as a brash, broad, wisecracking comedian par excellence, whose carefully publicized propensity for "lifting" other comedians' material earned him the nickname "the Thief of Bad Gags." After only moderate success on radio and in films, Berle made a spectacular television debut as star of NBC's Texaco Star Theatre in 1948, which was the single most popular comedy/variety series of TV's earliest years and earned the comedian one of the industry's first Emmy Awards. So valuable was Berle to NBC that the network signed him to a 30-year "lifetime contract" in 1951, which paid him 100,000 dollars annually whether he performed or not (Berle managed to outlive the contract). Though his TV stardom waned in the late '50s, Berle was still very much in demand as an emcee, lecturer, author, TV guest star, motion picture character actor, and nightclub comedian -- still using essentially the same material and delivery which made him a star over 60 years ago. Berle died March 27, 2002 of colon cancer, he was 93.

Trivia: Although sandy-voiced character actor David Doyle sometimes gave the onscreen impression of being an unprepossessing, slow-on-the-uptake "little man," in truth Doyle stood six feet tall, weighed 200 pounds, and had an I.Q. of 148. Born into a family of lawyers, Doyle was drawn to amateur theatricals at the age of ten. In an effort to please both his parents and his own muse, he attended pre-law classes at the University of Nebraska, all the while taking acting lessons at Virginia's Barter Theatre and New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. His first theatrical break came in 1956, when he replaced Walter Matthau in the Broadway hit Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? He subsequently spent several seasons as an actor/director in a Midwestern traveling stock company, then returned to New York, where he appeared in S.J. Perelman's The Beauty Part and seven other Broadway plays. After a decade's worth of film and TV supporting appearances and commercials, Doyle was cast in the recurring role of Walt Fitzgerald in the 1972 sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie; that same year, he made semi-weekly visits to The New Dick Van Dyke Show in the role of Ted Atwater. From 1976 and 1981, Doyle had the enviable task of playing John Bosley, liaison man between unseen private eye Charlie and the gorgeous female stars of TV's Charlie's Angels. Since that time, David Doyle has been seen as Frank Macklin on the short-lived 1987 series Sweet Surrender, and heard as the voice of Grandpa Pickles on the Nickleodeon cable network's animated series Rugrats (1991- ). Doyle died of heart failure at age 67 on February 27, 1997. One of his last feature film performances was that of the voice of Pepe in The Adventures of Pinocchio (1996).

Trivia: Diminutive (5'4"), bespectacled, sandy-haired Arte Johnson built up his early reputation in musical comedy revues. He began toting up film and TV credits in 1955, usually playing goggle-eyed nerds. Johnson was a regular and semi-regular in several sitcoms of the 1950s and 1960s, including It's Always Jan (1955), Sally (1958), Hennessey (1959-62) and Don't Call Me Charlie (1962). Though established as a comedian, Johnson found himself taking more and more villainous supporting roles as the '60s progressed, in films like The Third Day (1965) and The President's Analyst (1967). Considering himself washed up by 1967, Johnson accepted a slight salary cut to appear as a regular in a new NBC TV project called Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. Within a year, Johnson was a bigger name than ever before, fracturing audiences with a seemingly inexhaustible variety of characterizations, ranging from his helmeted, chain-smoking German soldier ("Verrrrry interesting") to hirsute, overcoated dirty old man Tyrone Horneigh ("Wanna walnetto?"). In 1970, Johnson starred in his own TV special, spotlighting his "other selves," and in later years revived many of his Laugh-In characters in such summer-stock productions as Little Me. Though his popularity dipped dramatically following the cancellation of Laugh-In in 1973, Johnson has never wanted for work, be it such movies as Love at First Bite (1979, in which Johnson played Dracula's number one toady Renfield) or such TV series as The Love Boat, Fame, Glitter and Games People Play. He also provided the voice for his "Tyrone" character in the 1977 Saturday morning animated weekly Baggy Pants and the Nitwits. In 1996, Arte Johnson was reunited with several of his Laugh-In colleagues on an episode of the TV sitcom Mad About You.

Trivia: The son of American vaudeville entertainers, bespectacled American comedian Steve Allen led a peripatetic childhood, shunted off from one relative or boarding school to another. As a balm to his loneliness, Allen became a voracious reader, providing himself with a wide and varied intellectual base. Breaking into showbiz as a radio disc jockey, Allen soon learned that inserting humor here and there would draw a lot more attention than merely announcing the records and reading the stockyard reports. In order to supply himself with an endless stream of material, Allen memorized every joke book and "college humor" magazine that he could get his hands on; the result was his uncanny ability to conjure up precisely the right wisecrack at the right time. Developing a strong following while hosting a radio program on Los Angeles' KNX in 1948, Allen received his first network exposure in 1949, and was also featured in several films, including Down Memory Lane (1949) and I'll Get By (1950). In 1953, Allen was hired to host a local late-night program on New York's WNBC-TV, which later developed into the NBC network's Tonight Show. Extraordinarily busy during the years 1956 and 1957, Allen hosted Tonight, headlined his own hour-long weekend variety TV series, starred as the title character in The Benny Goodman Story (1956), composed several popular songs (his piano skills were shown to excellent advantage on his TV programs), and filled up his spare time by writing books, plays, and magazine articles. He left Tonight in 1957 and closed out his NBC weekender in 1960. One year later, he was back with a Wednesday-night hour on ABC, which had the misfortune of being scheduled opposite Wagon Train. In 1962, Allen launched a syndicated 90-minute "madness and music" nightly series, a fondly remembered effort which lasted until 1964; a second syndicated nightly followed in 1968.During his heyday, Allen helped develop and nurture such talents as Tom Poston, Louis Nye, Don Knotts, Bill Dana, Gabe Dell, Tim Conway, Steve Lawrence, and Eydie Gorme. He kept busy in television throughout the 1970s and 1980s with such highly praised projects as PBS' Meeting of Minds, wherein Allen would host round-table discussions with actors posing as the great leaders and intellects of history. Long married to actress Jayne Meadows, Steve Allen showed no signs of slowing down in his early seventies (despite a well-publicized bout with cancer), as he continued to write books on a multitude of subjects, accept TV and movie guest-star appearances, make SRO personal appearances, and even occasionally return to his roots by hosting TV and radio talkfests.

Trivia: Former cheerleader for the Los Angeles Rams, Jenilee Harrison's blonde hair and bubbly personality made her a shoe-in to replace Suzanne Somers on the hit TV show Three's Company in 1983. Playing the equally blonde and adorable cousin of Somers' character, Harrison stayed with the show until it ended and then assumed the role of Jamie Ewing Barnes on the hit show Dallas. She stayed with the series until 1986, when her character was killed off for a second time (after the first turned out to be a dream sequence). Harrison then moved on to participate in various projects, like the horror flick Curse III: Blood Sacrifice in 1991 and Illicit Behavior in 1992, as well as numerous infomercials.

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: 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.