Trivia: Jockey turned singer/actor, Davy Jones played the adorable mop-top Davy on the mid-to-late '60s phenom television series, The Monkees. He and his fellow manufactured bandmates Peter Tork, Mickey Dolenz, and Michael Nesmith made one film together -- Head (1968). After the group's demise, Jones occasionally played himself as a guest star on television (Brady Bunch) and in commercials. In 1995, he again played himself in The Brady Bunch Movie. Jones and all the other Monkees, except Nesmith, periodically got back together for tours and reunion concerts.

Trivia: Starred in the 1950s series Circus Boy. Learned to play the drums after being cast as the Monkees' drummer. Played the first synthesizer on a rock recording (the Monkees' "Daily Nightly" from the 1967 album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.). Cowrote and directed the final episode of The Monkees. Voiced various characters on Saturday-morning cartoons during the 1970s, including The Funky Phantom and The Scooby-Doo Show. Auditioned for the role of Fonzie on Happy Days. Moved to London in 1977 to costar in Harry Nilsson's musical The Point! with fellow Monkee Davy Jones. Worked as a director-producer in England during the late 1970s and early '80s. His credits include a stage version of Bugsy Malone that starred a 14-year-old Catherine Zeta-Jones. Created-produced the early 1980s British children's show Luna. Studied physics during the 1970s and '80s at the Open University, a UK correspondence college.

Trivia: Learned to play piano at the age of 9. Was part of Edwin O. Smith High School's first graduating class. Landed his spot in the Monkees thanks to a recommendation from friend and fellow musician Stephen Stills. In 1972, he spent three months in jail for hashish possession. Portrayed Topanga Lawrence's father in episodes of the TV series Boy Meets World. Battled a rare form of cancer known as adenoid cystic carcinoma in 2009.

Trivia: Actor Hans Conried, whose public image was that of a Shakespearean ham, was born not in England but in Baltimore. Scrounging for work during the Depression era, Conried offered himself to a radio station as a performer, and at 18 became a professional. One of his earliest jobs was appearing in uncut radio adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, and before he was twenty he was able to recite many of the Bard's lengthier passages from memory. After several years in summer stock and radio, Conried made his screen debut in Dramatic School (1938). Conried's saturnine features and reedy voice made him indispensable for small character roles, and until he entered the service in World War II the actor fluctuated between movies and radio. Given a choice, Conried would have preferred to stay in radio, where the money was better and the parts larger, but despite the obscurity of much of his film work he managed to sandwich in memorable small (often unbilled) appearances in such "A" pictures as Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942), The Big Street (1942) and Passage to Marseilles (1944). While in the army, Conried was put in charge of Radio Tokyo in postwar Japan, where he began his lifelong hobby of collecting rare Japanese artifacts; the actor also had a near-encyclopedic knowledge of American Indian lore. As big-time radio began to fade during the late 1940s and early 1950s, Conried concentrated more on film work. He was awarded the starring role in the bizarre musical 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1952), written by his friend Dr. Seuss; unfortunately, the studio, not knowing how to handle this unorthodox project, cut it to ribbons, and the film was a failure. Later he was engaged for a choice co-starring role in Cole Porter's Broadway musical Can Can; in addition, he became a favorite guest on Jack Paar's late-night TV program, popped up frequently and hilariously as a game show contestant, and in 1957 made the first of many special-guest visits as the imperishable Uncle Tonoose on The Danny Thomas Show. Cartoon producers also relied heavily on Conried, notably Walt Disney, who cast the actor as the voice of Captain Hook in the animated feature Peter Pan, and Jay Ward, for whom Conried played Snidely Whiplash on The Bullwinkle Show and Uncle Waldo on Hoppity Hooper. In 1963, Jay Ward hired Conried as the supercilious host of the syndicated comedy series Fractured Flickers. Conried cut down on his TV show appearances in the 1970s and 1980s, preferring to devote his time to stage work; for well over a year, the actor co-starred with Phil Leeds in an Atlanta production of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys. Just before his death, Conried was cast in a recurring role on the "realistic" drama series American Dream, where he was permitted to drop the high-tone Shakespearean veneer in the gruff, down-to-earth part of Jewish oldster Abe Berlowitz.

Trivia: Multi-talented Michael Nesmith has come a long way from playing the quiet Monkee in the little wool cap on the popular 1960s sitcom The Monkees. Since then he has proven himself an innovator in musical genres and music videos -- his work in the latter area led to the creation of the MTV network. Nesmith is also a movie and television producer. Born in Houston, TX, Nesmith is the son of Bette Nesmith Graham, the woman who invented Liquid Paper correction fluid. Before auditioning for The Monkees in 1965, Nesmith had served a two-year stint in the Air Force, worked as a backup musician in Nashville, performed in a Los Angeles-based folk-rock duo with his friend John London, composed songs, including "Mary, Mary" and "Different Drum," and recorded a few singles. While with the Monkees, Nesmith wrote several of their hits and helped persuade the Monkees' "handlers" to allow them to produce their own records. He left the television group after completing their only feature film, Head (1968), to form his own band and then launched his solo career. In 1977, he designed a new television show called Popclips, in which he utilized live music clips while counting down the week's chart-toppers. The show is credited for inspiring the genesis of MTV. Nesmith's mother died in 1980 and left him half of her Liquid Paper fortune (worth over 20 million dollars). Nesmith then launched his own record and film production company, Pacific Arts, which became the number one source of American music videos in the '80s, and won the first Video Grammy for it in 1981. In the late '80s, Nesmith made his own filmmaking debut with the inventive music video "Elephant Parts." He reunited with the Monkees and continued to occasionally perform with them. In 1997, he and the group appeared in an hour-long television special and also released a new album, Justus.