Trivia: Inextricably associated with the 1980s for her memorable, seven-season portrayal of bookish teen Carol Seaver on the family-oriented sitcom Growing Pains (1985-1992), actress Tracey Gold grew up in a show-business family. The older sister of Missy Gold (Benson), Brandy Gold (Wildcats), and Jessie Gold (A Crime of Passion), Tracey signed for her first part at the age of seven in the miniseries Captains and the Kings. Major projects during the early '80s included a key supporting role in Alan Parker's critically acclaimed, divorce-themed psychodrama Shoot the Moon (1982, as one of the central couple's daughters) and a stint on the short-lived sitcom Goodnight, Beantown as the daughter of single working mom Mariette Hartley. Growing Pains, of course, represented Gold's major career break. She experienced difficulty around the end of the program by enduring and surviving a well-publicized bout with anorexia nervosa. After the sitcom wrapped, Gold began tackling parts in occasional telemovies that would come to shape and define her career in the years to follow. These included For the Love of Nancy (1994, which dramatized the story of a girl suffering from anorexia), Lady Killer (1995), Dirty Little Secret (1998), and Wildfire 7: The Inferno (2002). Gold made television headlines in 2004 when cast in the fourth season of the reality series The Mole, which featured celebrity participants.

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: American actress Dorothy McGuire made her stage debut at age 13 in A Kiss For Cinderella in her home town of Omaha, opposite fellow aspiring actor and Omaha native Henry Fonda. McGuire went to Broadway in 1938 to understudy Martha Scott in the role of Emily Webb in Our Town, eventually taking over the part; she also underwent an ingenue's ordeal by fire, acting opposite the dissipated John Barrymore in My Dear Children. Claudia, produced in 1941, was Dorothy's first starring stage vehicle. On the strength of this play, she was put under contract by film producer David O. Selznick, whose first move was to lend the actress out to 20th Century-Fox to recreate her role as the immature newlywed in the 1943 filmization of Claudia. So popular was this film that a followup was made three years later, again starring McGuire, titled Claudia and David (1946). In the meantime she had played a far more mature role as the beleagured wife of alcoholic James Dunn in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), then finally made a film for Selznick, portraying an imperiled mute girl in The Spiral Staircase (1946). Always a star and never a starlet, McGuire refused to pose for cheesecake stills, turned down attempts to publicize her private life, and vetoed wearing makeup for her role as an extremely homely woman in The Enchanted Cottage (1945), opting (wisely) to convey the homeliness through facial expressions and lighting. The actress was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Gregory Peck's fiancee in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), but Oscars went instead to supporting actress Celeste Holm and to the picture itself. Alone among actresses her age, McGuire was able to fluctuate from romantic leads in such films as Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) to character parts in films like Friendly Persuasion (1956), relying neither on actor's affectations in the younger roles nor age makeup in the older ones. At age 46, she was still able to successfully portray the Virgin Mary in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). Living reclusively with her wealthy husband John Swope, McGuire chose her roles slowly and carefully in the latter part of her career, making quality appearances in such made-for-TV dramas as Rich Man Poor Man (1976) and Little Women (1979).

Trivia: Craig Stevens abandoned all plans for a career in dentistry when he became involved in student productions at the University of Kansas. Trained at Pasadena Playhouse and Paramount's acting school, Stevens was signed to a stock Warner Bros. contract in 1941. He was well showcased as a soft-hearted gangster in At the Stroke of Twelve, a 1941 two-reel adaptation of Damon Runyon's The Old Doll's House, but his feature film roles were merely adequate at best. By 1950, Stevens was reduced to playing a standard mustachioed villain in the Bowery Boys epic Blues Busters. His saving turnaround came about when Stevens was cast in the title role of the 1958 Blake Edwards-produced TV private eye series Peter Gunn. Though obviously imitating Cary Grant in the early episodes of this three-season hit, Stevens eventually developed a hard-edged acting style all his own. He later re-created his TV role in the 1967 theatrical feature Gunn. Subsequent TV-series assignments for Stevens included the British-filmed weekly Man of the World (1962) and CBS' Mr. Broadway (1964). Craig Stevens was married to actress Alexis Smith (with whom he toured in such stage productions as Critic's Choice) from 1944 until her death in 1993.