Trivia: One of the best child actors of the 1950s and 1960s, freckled-faced Billy Mumy performed with a directness and sincerity that put many an adult performer to shame. Before he was even ten years old, Mumy had played two of the most unforgettable juveniles in TV history: malevolently telekinetic Anthony Fremont on the 1961 Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life," and the pistol-toting protagonist of "Bang! You're Dead," an incredibly suspenseful 1962 installment of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, directed by Hitchcock himself. In films from 1963, Mumy's finest cinematic hour-and-a-half was as Erasmus Leaf, an 8-year-old math genius with an all-consuming crush on Brigitte Bardot, in 1965's Dear Brigette. From 1965 to 1968, Mumy appeared as Will Robinson on the popular TV sci-fi fantasy series Lost in Space. As Mumy matured, he found roles harder to come by, though he was given generous screen time in the 1971 Stanley Kramer production Bless the Beasts and Children and was a regular on the 1975 TV weekly Sunshine. He kept busy in the 1980s on the sci-fi convention lecture circuit and as a scriptwriter; he also played cameo roles in remakes of "It's a Good Life" (the middle section of the 1983 Twilight Zone feature film) and "Bang! You're Dead" (one of the components of the 1985 TV revival of Alfred Hitchcock Presents). The many fans of Bill Mumy's previous work in the realm of "fantastic television" were delighted in 1995 to find him playing the recurring role of Lennier on the syndicated TVer Babylon 5.

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: While few filmgoers or TV fans have ever seen June Foray, a healthy majority of them are quite familiar with her work. June Foray was one of the leading voice artists of the golden age of animation, working with both the Warner Bros. animation department and the Disney studios, and later gained her greatest fame as the voice of Rocket J. Squirrel on the classic television cartoon series The Bullwinkle Show. Born in Springfield, MA, on September 18, 1917, Foray began her career as an actress at the age of 12 -- appropriately enough, by appearing in a radio drama at a local station in Springfield directed by her voice teacher. By the time Foray was 15, she was a regular at Springfield's WBZA, and two years later she was living in Los Angeles, hoping to break into the big time as an actress. At 19, Foray was both writing and starring in a radio series for children, as Miss Makebelieve, and soon became a frequent guest performer on a number of top-rated radio shows, working with the likes of Danny Thomas and Jimmy Durante. It was in the mid-'40s that Foray finally broke into the movies, but while she scored occasional onscreen roles (most notably as High Priestess Marku in the exotic drama Sabaka), she soon discovered there was a ready market for her vocal talents in Hollywood. Her first animation voice work was for Paramount's Speaking of Animals comedy shorts, in which animated mouths were superimposed on live-action footage of animals. The Speaking of Animals shorts spawned a series of records for children, recorded with a number of other noted voice actors, including Daws Butler and Stan Freeberg. The records made her a hot property with casting agents for cartoon voice work, and she found herself working for many of the biggest names in animation. For Chuck Jones at Warner Bros., Foray provided the voice of Granny in the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons, as well as the cackling Witch Hazel and dozens of other female characters. She recorded voices for several Tex Avery cartoons at MGM, as well as some Woody the Woodpecker shorts for Walter Lantz. And she made her debut at Disney as Lucifer the Cat in Cinderella. With the rise of television in the 1950s, a new market for cartoons appeared, and Foray's career kicked into high gear. She was cast as Rocky on The Bullwinkle Show, and also voiced a number of female characters on the series (most notably the villainous Natasha); she was also the voice of sweet-natured Nell Fenwick on the show's side series Dudley Do-Right. Foray stayed busy doing voice work on a number of other cartoon series as well, including Hoppity Hooper, Yogi the Bear, George of the Jungle, and the new Tom and Jerry shorts produced for TV in 1965. In addition, Foray did occasional work on The Flintstones, though she was passed over for the role of Betty Rubble after voicing her in the show's pilot. (Foray also appeared, uncredited, as the voice of Cindy Lou Who in Chuck Jones' classic animated version of How The Grinch Stole Christmas). In the 1980s and 1990s, at an age when most actresses would consider retirement, Foray was still one of Hollywood's busiest vocal talents, recording voices for everything from The Smurfs and Garfield to Duck Tales and The Simpsons. Foray also made a return to prestigious big-screen animation as the voice of Grandmother Fa in Mulan, and revisited her most famous role with vocal work in 2000's mixture of live-action and computer animation, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. In semi-retirement (though she still takes the occasional job that strikes her fancy), Foray is an active member of the International Animated Film Society, as well as the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.