Trivia: Christopher Hewett spent much of his four-decade acting career toiling in roles into which he could melt -- it was only when he found a part, near the end of his career, into which he could inject a large part of himself, that he became a star. Born in England in 1922, he was the son of a former actress, and at age seven made his stage debut, in Ireland, in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. He attended Wimbledon College and served in the Royal Air Force from 1938 until 1940. Hewett became an actor after his discharge, joining the Oxford Repertory Company, where he spent the next few years learning his craft in repertory work, eventually playing over 100 roles. In 1951, at the age of 29, he made his first screen appearance in Pool of London, and he was seen as a police detective later that same year in the classic Ealing comedy The Lavender Hill Mob. Hewett left England in 1954 and moved to New York, where he made his Broadway debut in the original cast of My Fair Lady two years later. He was primarily associated with New York theater for the next 20 years, apart from a notable screen appearance in Mel Brooks' The Producers, portraying Roger DeVries, the flamboyantly gay (and transvestite) director chosen by Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) to direct his production of "Springtime for Hitler." Hewett dominated most of the scenes in which he appeared with his flamboyant, brilliantly comic performance, and his scenes included the side-splittingly funny audition of the various Hitlers, and the scene introducing Dick Shawn's character, L.S.D. The movie was a modest success on its original release, but has since become a major cult hit and something of a pop-culture phenomenon, partly owing to the immense success of Brooks' theatrical adaptation of the same story. Hewett was delightfully looney and very visible in the role, but it was such an outre screen credit, and the movie itself such a cult item in its first decade or so in release, that it led to little else in film or television for years after. Brooks subsequently used Hewett in The Elephant Man, and he started getting occasional television work, in series such as the original E.R. (1984), and as a regular on Fantasy Island (1983-1984) for one season. Hewett, by then in his sixties and somewhat overweight, had developed a persona that could be comical or villainous, yet always seemingly jovial. In 1985, he won the title role in the series Mr. Belvedere, loosely based on the film Sitting Pretty. As prissy, fastidious housekeeper/valet Lynn Belvedere, taking care of the family that had hired him, Hewett endeared himself to millions of viewers for four seasons, and was regularly covered in the television gossip columns, his ballooning weight at times eliciting public expressions of concern from his fellow cast members. He also worked in one-off appearances on Murder, She Wrote and other series. When the series finished its run in 1990, he had achieved television stardom and name recognition far beyond anything he had known -- modern viewers were often startled to realize, on seeing The Producers, that it was Hewett playing the director of the seemingly ill-starred play. He continued to make occasional television and movie appearances for the next decade. Hewett died from complications of diabetes at the age of 79.

Trivia: Many know actress Andrea Barber as annoying neighbor Kimmy Gibbler on the family sitcom Full House. Barber's first foray into show business came in 1982, when she took on the role of Carrie Brady on the soap opera Days of Our Lives when she was just 6-years-old. She would make a smattering of other minor guest appearances on various TV shows over the following few years, before scoring the role of Kimmy in 1987. Barber would remain on Full House until its cancellation in 1995, after which she retired from show business, studied English at Whittier College, and later married and became a mother.

Trivia: The Standard Operating Procedure of those anonymous young lovelies chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month is to make an extremely brief flurry of au naturel movie appearances before rapidly fading into the sunset. Such was not the case of very blonde, very buxom Shannon Tweed. After being anointed Playmate of the Month and Playmate of the Year, the Canadian-born Tweed was able to sustain her film career for nearly two decades. Her come-hither looks, cascading blonde hair, and divine figure admittedly contributed to her durability, but her strongest suit was her genuine acting ability and willingness to poke fun at her image. The actress offered a comedy performance worthy of a Colbert or Lombard as the fetchingly undraped star of the Apocalypse Now spoof Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death (1990), while she was consistently superior to her material (and most of her co-stars, female and male) in the Night Eyes and Indecent Behavior films of the 1980s and 1990s. Somewhat more modestly garbed in her television appearances, Tweed has been a regular on the daytime soaper Days of Our Lives, the nighttime serial Falcon Crest (1981-1982 season only, as Diana Hunter), and the raunchy cable-TV sitcom First and Ten. In 1991, she starred as air-service proprietor Sally "Slick" Monroe on the diverting Canadian TV adventure weekly Fly By Night, which ran in rerun form on CBS until 1993. The sister of actress Tracy Tweed, Shannon Tweed has two children with Kiss musician Gene Simmons.

Trivia: Fans of the original action /espionage series Mission Impossible (1966-70) may recognize black actor Greg Morris for playing electronics wizard Barney Collier. Morris spent most of his career on television, appearing on such shows as Ben Casey, The Dick Van Dyck Show and The Twilight Zone. During the 1970s, Morris was a regular on Vega$ (1978-81), playing police officer Lt. David Neslon. A native of Cleveland who spent part of his childhood in New York City, his mother worked as a secretary for black labor leader A. Phillip Reynolds. Before becoming a television actor during the early '60s, Morris attended Ohio State University and the University of Iowa. Morris passed away at the age of 61 on August 27, 1996. The cause of death was unreported.