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| The Mystery of the Hollywood
Phantom |
| Guest Star Info |
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Casey
Kasem |
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Born in Detroit on April 27, 1932 as
Kemal Kesam, Kasem is probably best known as a radio host of
several popular Weekly Top 40 radio programs. Kasem has also
occasionally appeared in feature films such as Ghostbusters,
Mr. Wrong, and Undercover Angel.
In addition, he is also a well-known voice actor whose most
famous cartoon characterization is that of Shaggy from the Scooby
Doo series. He has also lent his voice to such cartoon series
as The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, Josie and the
Pussycats, Batman, Superman, Seame Street,
The Flintstones, The Rugrats and the 1971 Rankin
and Bass classic holiday special Here Comes Peter Cottontail.
He has also done some guest starring roles, both playing himself
and various characters on such television shows as Hawaii Five-O,
Charlie's Angels, Matt Houston, Amen, Saved By the Bell, Saturday
Night Live, Sister Sister, and The Martin Short Show. Casey
met his wife, Jean Kasem, in 1984 on the set of Ghostbusters.
She is also an actress, and is best known as Rhea Perlman's
relative, Loretta Tortelli from several episodes of Cheers!
and a short lived spin-off The Tortelli's. |
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Edmund Gilbert |
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Edmund Gilbert was born in June of 1931
in Chicago. He was raised in both Europe and in the American
midwest. After attending the University of Chicago he served
in the Korean war. After his tour of duty was finished, he lived
in the Florida Keys, working as a diver, fishing guide, and
artist, and developed an interest in acting, performing in the
theater at night, working with such well-known theatrical people
as Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder, and Elmer Rice. During
more than forty years of working as an actor on stage, and in
television, film, radio and commercials, Ed has played roles
in more than 150 television episodes and motion pictures. His
television worked started with a guest role in 1963 on Combat!.
He would go on to guest in shows like, Ben Casey, The
Wild Wild West, Mannix, Knight Rider, Three's
Company, The Iron Man, and Superman. His work
also included the regular role as Fenton Hardy in The Hardy
Boys, and the host of PBS's The New Literacy. During
these years his face was most familiar to the public, though,
from his roles as an on-camera commercial spokesman, under long
term contract at various times to such corporate names as The
American Bankers Association, American Airlines, Mutual of Omaha,
Goodyear, RCA, Chevrolet, and Zenith. His also did the voice
characterization of Baloo, the lead character in Disney's Tale
Spin series, and is a veteran of more than 600 cartoon episodes,
including regular roles in 15 series, and more than a dozen
animated features including The Little Mermaid,
Tom and Jerry..The Movie, The Rescuers
Down Under and Batman. When not in front
of a microphone or a camera, Gilbert kept busy with his other
career as a biologist, doing field research on insects in the
Central and South American forests. This work has also made
use of his old skills as an artist, since he also illustrates
articles which describe previously unknown species. He has named
over 100 newly discovered species. Gilbert died in May of 1999
from lung cancer. |
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J.D.
Cannon |
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Born in April of 1922, J.D. Cannon
, could pass as a good-natured cabbie or down-to-earth dockworker
with his chiseled features and gravelly voice. Cannon has played
more than his share of villains, some of them psychotic in nature.
A stage actor in the 1950s and 1960s, Cannon was first seen
on the big screen in 1966's The American Dream.
His breakthrough role in films was road-gang convict Society
Red in Cool Hand Luke. His other film roles included
appearances in Scorpio, Raise the Titanic,
and Death Wish II. On television, Cannon was seen
as hard-nosed Chief of Detectives Peter B. Clifford on the Dennis
Weaver series McCloud (Weaver made a cameo appearance
in the same Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries episode Cannon
appeared in), and as General Hampton on Call to Glory.
He would also appear in guest starring roles on such television
shows as Remington Steele, Murder, She Wrote,
Fantasy Island, The Mod Squad, Gunsmoke,
The Defender, Bonaza, Rawhide and Voyage
to the Bottom of the Sea. |
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Clive
Revill |
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Born in New Zealand, comic actor Clive
Revill attended that country's Rongotai College, then made his
first stage appearance in Auckland at age 20. After appearing
on Broadway in the 1952 musical Mr. Pickwick,
Revill spent three years with Britain's Ipswich Repertory. He
was nominated for Tony Awards for his performances in Broadway's
Irma La Douce and Oliver!; his later New
York appearances included the starring roles of Sheridan Whiteside
in Sherry, the 1972 musicalization of The
Man Who Came to Dinner, and playwright/critic Max Beerbohm
in The Incomparable Max. In films, Revill essayed
"campy" characterizations in such 1960s projects as Modesty
Blaise, Fathom, and The Private
Life of Sherlock Holmes. On television, he was cast
as Charlie Chaplin in the 1980 TV movie The Scarlet O'Hara
Wars, and portrayed "black arts" purveyor Vector in the
1983 series Wizards and Warriors. Clive Revill's most
recent credits include a cameo as the Sherwood Forest fire marshal
in Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and
the voice of Alfred the Butler on the Fox Television Network's
Batman: The Animated Series. |
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| Special Star Cameos |
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Jaclyn
Smith |
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Born in October of 1947, Jaclyn
Smith attended Trinity University and the University of
San Antonio. Smith Smith flourished as a model and cover
girl. Making her first film appearance in 1969, Smith
endured such negligible movie projects as The Moonshiners
before achieving stardom as Kelly Garrett, showgirl-turned-PI,
on the TV series Charlie's Angels. She was the
only member of the original Angels to remain with the
series from its debut in
1976 to its final telecast in
1981. Like her Charlie's Angels cohorts Cheryl
Ladd and Farrah Fawcett, Smith went on to a busy career
in made-for-TV movies, efficiently playing the title roles
in The Users, The Night They Saved Christmas,
both Rage of Angels mini-series, Family Album
,Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy,
and Florence Nightingale. In 1989, she returned
to the weekly-TV grind as star of the mystery series Christine
Cromwell. That same year, a random sampling of Hollywood
insiders (technicians, grips, "gofers", etc.) voted Smith
as one of the nicest and most cooperative actresses in
the business (parenthetically, her Charlie's Angels co-star
Kate Jackson was elected one of the least likeable performers
in Tinseltown). Smith also would make guest starring appearances
in The Partridge Family, McCloud, Switch, The Love Boat,
and The District. In 2003 she would make an appearance
as Kelly Garrett in the big screen version of Charlie's
Angels: Full Throttle. |
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Robert
Wagner |
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One of the precious few actors
of the "pretty boy" school to survive past the 1950s,
Robert Wagner was the son of a Detroit steel executive.
When his family moved to Los Angeles, Wagner's original
intention of becoming a businessman took second place
to his fascination with the film industry. Thanks to his
dad's connections, he was able to make regular visits
to the big studios. Inevitably, a talent scout took notice
of Wagner's boyish handsomeness, impressive physique,
and easygoing charm. After making his unbilled screen
debut in The Happy Years, Wagner was signed
by 20th Century Fox, which carefully built him up toward
stardom. He played romantic leads with ease, but it wasn't
until he essayed the two scene role of a shellshocked
war veteran in With a Song in My Heart that
studio executives recognized his potential as a dramatic
actor. He went on to
play the title roles in Prince Valiant and
The True Story of Jesse James, and shocked
his bobby-soxer fan following by effectively portraying
a cold-blooded murderer in
A Kiss Before
Dying.
In the early '60s, however, Wagner suffered a series of
personal and professional reverses. His "ideal" marriage
to actress Natalie Wood had dissolved, and his film career
skidded to a stop after The Pink Panther.
Two years of unemployment followed before Wagner made
a respectable comeback as star of the lighthearted TV
espionage series It Takes a Thief. For the rest
of his career, Wagner would enjoy his greatest success
on TV, first in the mid-'70s series Switch, then
opposite Stefanie Powers in the internationally popular
Hart to Hart, which ran from 1979 through 1983
and has since been sporadically revived in TV-movie form.
On the domestic front, Wagner was briefly wed to actress
Marion Marshall before remarrying Natalie Wood in 1972;
after Wood's death in 1981, Wagner found lasting happiness
with his third wife, Jill St. John, a longtime friend
and co-worker. Considered one of Hollywood's nicest citizens,
Robert Wagner has continued to successfully pursue a leading
man career into his sixties; he has also launched a latter-day
stage career, touring with his Hart to Hart co-star
Stefanie Power in the "readers' theater" presentation
Love Letters. He also has recently appeared
in several of the Austin Powers films.
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Dennis
Weaver |
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A track star at the University
of Oklahoma, Dennis Weaver went on to serve as a Navy
Pilot during World War II. After failing to make the 1948
U.S. decathalon Olympic team, Weaver accepted the invitation
of his college chum Lonny Chapman to give the New York
theatre world a try. He understudied Chapman as "Turk
Fisher" in the Broadway production Come Back Little
Sheba, eventually taking over the role in the
national company. Deciding that acting was to his liking,
Weaver enrolled at the Actors' Studio, supporting his
family by selling vacuum cleaners, tricycles and ladies'
hosiery. On the recommendation of his Actors' Studio classmate
Shelley Winters, Weaver was signed to a contract at Universal
studios in 1952, where he made his film debut in The
Redhead From Wyoming. Though his acting work increased
steadily over the next three years, he still had to take
odd jobs to make ends meet. He was making a delivery for
the florist's job where he worked when he was informed
that he'd won the role of deputy Chester Goode on the
TV adult western Gunsmoke. So as not to be continually
upstaged by his co-star James Arness (who, at 6'7", was
five inches taller than the gangly Weaver), he adopted
a limp for his character--a limp which, along with Chester's
reedy signature line "Mis-ter Diillon" and the deputy's
infamously bad coffee, brought Weaver fame, adulation
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and a 1959 Emmy Award. Though
proud of his work on Gunsmoke Weaver began feeling
trapped by Chester sometime around the series' fifth season.
Having already proven his versatility in his film work
(notably his portrayal of the neurotic motel night clerk
in Orson Welles' Touch of Evil [1958]), Weaver saw to
it that the Gunsmoke producers permitted him to accept
as many "outside" TV assignments as his schedule would
allow. Twice during his run as Chester, Weaver quit the
series to pursue other projects. He left Gunsmoke permanently
in 1964, whereupon he was starred in the one-season "dramedy"
series Kentucky Jones (1965). In 1967, he headlined a
somewhat more successful weekly, Gentle Ben (1967-69)
in which he and everyone else in the cast played second
fiddle to a trained bear (commenting upon his relationship
with his "co-star", Weaver replied "I liked him, but it
was a cold relationship...Ben didn't know me from a bag
of doughnuts.") The most successful of Weaver's post-Gunsmoke
TV series was McCloud, in which, from 1970 to 1977, he
played deputy marshal Sam McCloud, a New Mexico lawman
transplanted to the Big Apple. In addition to his series
work, Weaver has starred in several made-for-TV movies
over the past 25 years, the most famous of which was the
Steven Spielberg-directed nailbiter Duel (1971). Dennis
Weaver is the father of actor Robby Weaver, who co-starred
with his dad on the 1980 TV series Stone. |
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