Dee, Robin, and Parley are three gender-unspecific names.
Can you marry the correct name to each of these 3 actors?
Which one is Dee Hartford?
Which one is Robin Hughes?
Who is Parley Baer?
The man in the business suit was prolific at the business of acting. This is the only time I have seen the blond, blond. The bearded man, however, is often bearded in his roles.
Did you get them right?
Let’s look at the answers.
We begin with Dee Hartford, in the middle. She is probably most memorable as an unfulfilled – and disagreeable – wife and mother in the “Bewitchin’ Pool” episode on the original Twilight Zone, where her outlook was as dark as her hair. She sports a coifed mane here that is uncharacteristically blond and well-suited for her role on Batman as Miss Iceland. That was in 1966. Always composed in front of the camera, Hartford was married for seven years to famed film director Howard Hawkes. They had one child — producer, writer, and actor Grant Cramer. He is noted for (I don’t know how proudly) top billing in Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988). And, I hear, she had a sister who was married to Groucho Marks!
Parley Baer is at the top. It would almost be easier to name the TV series from the ’50s to the ’90s on which he did NOT appear than to list the ones on which he did. He worked constantly, having guest roles on practically everything from Dragnet to I Love Lucy, The Bill Cosby Show, Charlie’s Angels, and Perry Mason, of course. (All 3 of these actors appeared on that one!). Can’t leave out Beverly Hills 90210 and he even turned up, late in his career, in a recurring role on the only soap opera he ever did: The Young and the Restless. Surprisingly, his acting credits end in 1996 though he lived until almost the end of 2002, dying at age 88.
Of his plentiful TV appearances for over two decades, when I think of Robin Hughes, pictured at the bottom, I think first of him caged in a monastery in the “Howling Man” segment of the original Twilight Zone. As to the silver screen, a few years after playing a police sergeant in the classic Dial M for Murder and a number of other supporting parts in cinema, Robin was bumped up in billing to a title role. He plays a talking head – not a broadcast journalist, mind you, but an actual talking, severed head – in The Thing That Couldn’t Die (1958). I have seen it and, believe it or not, I look forward to seeing it again. Get me some popcorn, please!
~ FW