Mary Anissa Jones (March 11, 1958 – August 28, 1976) was an American child actress known for her role as Buffy on the CBS sitcom Family Affair. She died from combined drug intoxication at the age of 18.

Jones was born in West Lafayette, Indiana. Her maternal grandparents were Lebanese; her middle name means little friend in Arabic (rhyming with Lisa, rather than Melissa). Her parents were students at Purdue University at the time of her birth and they soon moved to Playa Del Rey, California. When she was two years old her mother enrolled Jones in dance classes. In 1964 when she was six, Jones's mother took her to an open audition for a breakfast cereal commercial, which became her first television appearance. She attended Paseo Del Rey Grammar School (and later, Orville Wright Junior High School).

Jones was eight when her acting skills drew the attention of television producers and she was cast as Elizabeth "Buffy" Patterson Davis on the CBS sitcom Family Affair (1966). In the opening plotline her character was one of three siblings sent to live with her Uncle Bill (Brian Keith) and his valet Mr. French (Sebastian Cabot) after the children's parents died in a car accident. By July 1969 the series was a hit and Jones became a popular child celebrity. That year she also had a small role in the Elvis Presley comedy film The Trouble with Girls.

Kathleen Marie "Kathy" Garver (born December 13, 1945) is an American film, television, voice-over and character actress of stage, most widely known for playing Uncle Bill Davis's (played by Brian Keith) teenaged niece, Catherine "Cissy" Davis, on the popular 1960s sitcom, Family Affair. Before that, she played a slave in The Ten Commandments. Garver authored The Family Affair Cookbook and has been a TV host (Backstage with Barry and Kathy).

Garver was born in Long Beach, California, and is the daughter of Rosemary and Hayes Gilbert Garver. She was raised Roman Catholic and she attended Catholic primary school.^{[citation needed]} When she was 9, she tried her hand at acting and was cast in I'll Cry Tomorrow, but her most famous movie role was that of one of the young slaves in The Ten Commandments, and she has been acting ever since.

Between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, the young actress worked with such actors as Marvin Miller, Chuck Connors, Peter Graves, Scott Forbes, Dan O'Herlihy, Kurt Russell, Fess Parker, Vince Edwards, Richard Chamberlain, Patty Duke, Anne Lockhart, and James Franciscus. She also worked with another Hollywood legend, Brian Keith, who would star with Garver in Family Affair.

Johnny Whitaker (born December 13, 1959) is an American actor and singer notable for several performances for film and television during his childhood. The naturally redheaded Whitaker is best known for his role as Brian Keith's 6-year-old nephew, Jody Davis, on Family Affair from 1966–1971, originated the role of Scotty Baldwin on General Hospital in 1965, played the lead in Hallmark's 1969 The Littlest Angel, and portrayed the title character in the 1973 musical version of Tom Sawyer. Two of his siblings, Billy and Dora, provided the voices of the rabbits Skippy and Tagalong for Disney's animated film Robin Hood in that same year.

Whitaker was born as John Orson Whitaker, Jr. in Van Nuys, California, the fifth of eight children to Thelma and John O. Whitaker, Sr. and started his professional acting career at the age of three by appearing in a television commercial for a local used car dealer. In 1965, he originated the character of the young Scotty Baldwin in the soap opera General Hospital. In 1966 he acted in a major feature film, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming which also starred Brian Keith, the actor who would later play Whitaker's uncle in the television series, Family Affair.

James Francis "Jimmy" Durante (February 10, 1893 – January 29, 1980) was an American singer, pianist, comedian and actor. His distinctive clipped gravelly speech, comic language butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and large nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s. His jokes about his nose included referring to it as a "Schnozzola", and the word became his nickname.

Durante was born on the Lower East Side of New York City. He was the youngest of four children born to Bartolomeo Durante and his mail-order bride Rosa, both of whom were immigrants from Salerno, Italy. Bartolomeo was a barber, and his wife Rosa was the sister of a woman who lived in the same boarding house. Jimmy Durante served as an altar boy at Saint Malachy's Roman Catholic Church, known as the Actor's Chapel.

Durante dropped out of school in eighth grade to become a full-time ragtime pianist. He first played with his cousin, whose name was also "Jimmy Durante." It was a family act, but he was too professional for his cousin. He continued working the city's piano bar circuit and earned the nickname "Ragtime Jimmy," before he joined one of the first recognizable jazz bands in New York, the Original New Orleans Jazz Band. Durante was the only member not from New Orleans. His routine of breaking into a song to deliver a joke, with band or orchestra chord punctuation after each line, became a Durante trademark. In 1920, the group was renamed Jimmy Durante's Jazz Band.

Heather O'Rourke (December 27, 1975 – February 1, 1988) was an American child actress who played Carol Anne Freeling in the Poltergeist film trilogy and made several television guest appearances. Born in San Diego, O'Rourke also died there in 1988 due to medical error.

O'Rourke was born on December 27, 1975 in San Diego, California, the second daughter of Kathleen O'Rourke. Before O'Rourke's death in 1988, her mother married James "Jim" A. Peele. The family lived in Lakeside, California at the time of her death.

In a contemporary interview with American Premiere magazine, director Steven Spielberg explained that he was looking for a "'beatific' four-year-old child...every mother's dream" for the lead in his 1982 horror film Poltergeist. While eating in the MGM commissary, Spielberg saw five-year-old Heather O'Rourke having lunch with her mother while sister Tammy O'Rourke was shooting Pennies from Heaven. After his lunch, Spielberg approached the family and offered Heather the Poltergeist role; O'Rourke was signed the next day, beating out Drew Barrymore for the role.