Trivia: Leading man and sex symbol, Selleck has a gentle, humorous manner. He attended college on an athletic scholarship, majoring in business. A drama coach suggested he become an actor; soon he began making the rounds of auditions. He won a part in the disastrous film Myra Breckinridge (1970), his screen debut, then appeared in small roles in a handful of films during the '70s. Meanwhile, Selleck was signed to a seven-year contract with Fox, leading to a great many TV roles, including appearances as a recurring character on the TV series "The Rockford Files." Eventually he was chosen as the lead for the TV series "Magnum P.I.;" the show became a hit, staying on the air from 1980-88, and he became a star and sex symbol, winning an Emmy, a Golden Globe award, and a star on Hollywood Boulevard. He suffered a serious career setback in 1981, when he was chosen to star in the Lucas-Spielberg blockbuster Raiders of the Lost Ark, but couldn't get released from his TV responsibilities. Beginning in 1983 he tried to break back into films, finally landing a major hit in a co-starring role in Three Men and a Baby (1987); although he appeared in a dozen films after 1983 he never firmly established himself as a screen star. He has also been active as a TV producer. He is married to English dancer Jillie Mack.

Trivia: Natty, mellifluous character actor John Hillerman may have spoken on screen with a pure Mayfair accent, but he hailed from Denison, Texas. Hillerman first gained notice for his fleeting appearances in the films of Peter Bogdanovich: The Last Picture Show (1971), What's Up Doc (1973), At Long Last Love (1975). He was also a semi-regular for director Mel Brooks, prominently cast in Blazing Saddles (1975) and History of the World, Part I (1981). A veteran of dozens of television series, John Hillerman was cast as the insufferable criminologist Simon Brimmer on Ellery Queen (1975), the star's director (and ex-husband) in The Betty White Show (1975), and most memorably as the ultra-correct Jonathan Quayle Higgins II, major domo to never-seen mystery writer Robin Masters, on Magnum PI (1980-88).

Trivia: Fresh out of Bryn Mawr college, American actress Mildred Natwick started the road to stage success in amateur shows in her native Baltimore. By 1932 Natwick was on Broadway in Carrie Nation; establishing what would become her standard operating procedure, the actress played a character much older than herself. In 1940, Natwick was introduced to movie audiences as the cockney "lady of the evening" in John Ford's The Long Voyage Home (1940) -- the first of several assignments for Ford, which included Three Godfathers (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1948) and The Quiet Man (1952). Seldom starring in a film role, Natwick nonetheless made the most of what she was given, as in her one-scene part as an advocate of birth control who inadvertently pitches her program to the parents of 12 children in Cheaper By the Dozen (1950). And it was Natwick who, as skulking sorceress Grizelda in Danny Kaye's The Court Jester (1956), inaugurates the side-splitting "The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle" routine. A frequent visitor to TV, Natwick briefly settled down on the tube in the mystery series "The Snoop Sisters," which costarred Helen Hayes. In films until 1988, Natwick was honored with a long-overdue Oscar nomination for her work as Jane Fonda's martyr mama in 1967's Barefoot in the Park.

Trivia: Actress/singer Darlene Carr was 14 when she was discovered for films by Walt Disney. Darlene's Disney credits include a juvenile role in Monkeys Go Home (1965), in which she sang a duet with Maurice Chevalier; Gallegher Goes West, a 1966 TV miniseries; and the animated The Jungle Book, as the voice of the Indian girl in the final scene. Free of her Disney obligations in 1967, Darlene quickly shed her goody-two-shoes image with the role of a bikinied high schooler in The Impossible Years (1968). A frequent visitor to television, Darlene was seen in the recurring role of Karl Malden's daughter on The Streets of San Francisco (1972-77), and was a regular on The John Forsythe Show (1965), The Smith Family (1971) and The Oregon Trail (1977). She also starred as the TV sitcom world's first unwed mother in 1979's Miss Winslow and Son. Darleen Carr is the sister of Charmian Carr, who played Liesl in The Sound of Music (1965).

Trivia: He was born John Williams, but there already was a John Williams in show business (several of them, in fact), so the Canadian-born actor selected John McLiam as his professional moniker. McLiam's man-on-the-street countenance could be molded into a vast array of characterizations, ranging from a cockney low-life (My Fair Lady) to a Southern redneck (Cool Hand Luke). The actor's bland normality was a key factor in his being cast as real-life murder victim Herbert Clutter in 1967's In Cold Blood. John McLiam accepted more TV guest-star assignments than can possibly be listed here; he was also a regular on the weekly series Men From Shiloh (1970) and Two Marriages (1983).

Trivia: Direct from the University of Michigan, actress Martha Scott made her first professional appearance with the Globe Theatre troupe, performing abridged versions of Shakespeare at the 1933-34 Chicago World's Fair. Scott then worked extensively in stock and on radio before making her celebrated Broadway bow as Emily Webb in the original 1938 production of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning Our Town. She repeated the role of Emily in the 1940 film version, earning an Oscar nomination despite the fact that the film's tacked-on happy ending rendered Scott's famous "back from the dead" monologue pointless. Scott's subsequent film assignments, notably Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941) and One Foot in Heaven (1941), found her portraying characters far older than herself with total credibility. Having previously played both the wife and the sister of Charlton Heston (nine years her junior) on stage and TV, Scott portrayed Heston's mother on the big screen in The Ten Commandments (1955) and Ben-Hur (1959). Her television resumé includes the 1954 anthology Modern Romance, which she hosted, and the roles of Mrs. Patricia Shepard and Margaret Millington in, respectively, Dallas and Secrets of Midland Heights. Her most intriguing TV assignment was the 1987 Murder She Wrote episode "Strangest of Bargains," wherein, with the help of extensive stock footage, Scott, Jeffrey Lynn and Harry Morgan reprised their roles from the 1949 film Strange Bargain. Dabbling in producing in the 1970s, Scott served as co-producer of the 1978 Broadway play First Monday in October, functioning in the same capacity when the play was turned into a film in 1981. Martha Scott was married for many years to musician Mel Powell.