Trivia: "The velvet fog" was a professional singer at three, a radio personality at four, a published composer at 15, and a film actor at 18. Coming to Hollywood as a drummer in the Chico Marx Band, Mel Tormé made his film debut as a singing/dancing house servant in Higher and Higher (1943). While his celebrity status was assured with his oft-recorded ballad "The Christmas Song," Tormé remained a supporting actor throughout the 1940s in films like Junior Miss (1947) and Good News (1950). His dramatic ability was first tapped in the 1957 Playhouse 90 television drama, The Comedian, in which he played the jellyfish younger brother of dictatorial TV comic Mickey Rooney. Tormé then went on to play a villain in the inexpensive crime flick Girls Town (1957), before reverting to good guy and best friend assignments. Motion pictures have never really been Tormé's priority: he's been too busy writing songs, recording albums, and penning biographies of such contemporaries as Judy Garland and Buddy Rich. In the 1980s, Mel Tormé was a frequent guest star on the TV sitcom Night Court, an offshoot of the well-publicized fact that Tormé was the idol of that series star, Harry Anderson.

Trivia: Stand-up comic known for political, topical humor; he appeared in a few films from 1958.

Trivia: Blonde, loquacious American actress Joyce Van Patten was being sent out for modelling assignments at the age of eight months. Her stagestruck mother advertised Van Patten and older brother Dick as "the Van Patten Kids," ready and willing to step into any juvenile roles available. At age 5, Joyce made her Broadway debut in Love's Old Sweet Song, which also featured Dick. Joyce was nine years old when she won the Donaldson award for her performance in the stage drama Tomorrow the World. She interrupted her stage career for a brief marriage at age 16 (her equally brief second marriage was to actor Martin Balsam), then at 20 played her first adult role in the Broadway comedy Desk Set. Her first film assignment was an unbilled bit in the Manhattan-lensed Fourteen Hours (1951), and her first regular TV stint was on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns in the late '50s. Joyce has since been seen on a weekly basis in such TV series as The Danny Kaye Show (1963-66), The Good Guys (1968) (as Herb Edelman's good-natured wife), The Don Rickles Show (1972) (as Don's goodnatured wife) and The Mary Tyler Moore Hour (1979) (as Mary's personal secretary, yet again good-natured). Joyce Van Patten's films have included The Goddess (1958), I Love You Alice B. Toklas (1968), St. Elmo's Fire (1984), and a rare "bitchy" appearance as the antagonistic athletic coach in The Bad News Bears (1976).