Trivia: Born in Brooklyn, NY, on December 29, 1936, actress/dancer/rubberfaced comedienne Mary Tyler Moore went on to star in the definitive television comedies of both the 1960s and the 1970s: The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966) and The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977). For her performances as Laura Petrie and Mary Richards, Moore won five Emmy Awards, in 1965, 1966, 1973, 1974, and 1976.Moore got her start in television commercials, acting as Happy Hotpoint, the Hotpoint Appliance Elf during The Ozzie and Harriet Show in 1955. She then progressed to a stint as the disembodied voice and legs of Sam, the answering service lady, on Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1957-1960). Three unsuccessful shows and a series of TV specials followed her more notable series: Mary (1978), the Mary Tyler Moore Hour (1979), and Mary (1985-1986). Her dramatic career took off in 1981, when she was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of the repressed mother in Ordinary People. Moore had Broadway success with Whose Life Is It Anyway?, appeared in the highly acclaimed Finnegan, Begin Again with Robert Preston on HBO, and won a CableACE Award in 1993 for her performance as an evil orphanage director in Stolen Babies. In 1996, Moore gained the appreciation of a new generation of fans with her hilarious turn as Ben Stiller's neurotic mother in David O. Russell's Flirting With Disaster. She also experienced a sort of renaissance through her mention in other films, notably Douglas Keeve's 1995 frockumentary Unzipped, which featured a beatific Isaac Mizrahi extolling the virtues of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and singing its theme song. In addition to her television and film work, Moore, as a well-known diabetic, has been a longtime representative of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. And though her film and television roles would become more sporadic moving into the new millennium, Moore could still be seen in the occasional theatrical release (Cheats, Against the Current) or made-for-television movie (Miss Lettie and Me, Snow Wonder) while making guest appearances in such popular sitcoms as That 70's Show and Hot in Cleveland. Moore died in 2017, at age 80.

Trivia: Actor Ted Knight dropped out of high school in order to enlist for World War II service. During the postwar years, Knight studied acting in Hartford, Connecticut. He became proficient with puppets and ventriloquism, which led to steady work as a TV kiddie-show host. Knight spent most of the 1950s and 1960s doing commercial voice-overs and essaying minor TV and movie roles (he was the nonspeaking cop who handed Norman Bates a robe at the end of Hitchcock's Psycho [1960]). Just barely making ends meet with TV guest spots and cartoon voices, Knight was rescued professionally in 1970 when he was cast in the role of vainglorious TV anchorman Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Three years into the series, Knight threatened to quit because of the one-note stupidity of his character. He was assuaged when the MTM producers "humanized" him with an understanding girlfriend (played by Georgia Engel) -- and it didn't hurt that the actor later won two Emmy awards for his portrayal of the clueless Ted Baxter. When MTM left the air in 1977, Knight attempted to headline a sitcom of his own. After a couple of false starts, he struck pay dirt in 1980 with Too Close for Comfort, playing a comic-strip artist with two nubile daughters. Too Close left the network for syndication in 1984, then matriculated into The Ted Knight Show in 1985. Though gravely ill, Ted Knight valiantly taped a years' worth of episodes before succumbing to cancer at the age of 62.

Trivia: Best remembered for his high-profile acting roles on two 1970s television sitcoms -- that of genial news writer Murray Slaughter on CBS's The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977) and that of sweet-natured Captain Merrill Stubing on ABC's The Love Boat (1977-1986), stage-trained actor Gavin MacLeod in fact began his career typecast as a villain. He landed parts in Hollywood features including The Sand Pebbles (1966), Deathwatch (1966), and The Comic (1969), and enjoyed a tenure as Joseph "Happy" Haines on the sitcom McHale's Navy from 1962 through 1964. After The Love Boat permanently laid anchor in the mid-'80s, MacLeod signed on as a spokesperson and pitchman for Princess Cruises and returned to regional theatrical work. He also tackled guest spots on programs including Touched by an Angel and (in a move that surprised everyone) the HBO prison drama Oz. Off-camera, MacLeod is an outspoken born-again Christian. He hosted a popular talk show on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, along with his wife, Patti (whom he divorced in 1982 and remarried three years later), called Back on Course, and personally funded many of the Greatest Adventure Stories from the Bible animated videos for children.

Trivia: Actress Valerie Harper's fame largely rests on her colorful portrayal of television's "New Yawk-er" Rhoda Morgenstern. After growing up in Oregon, Michigan and Jersey City, Harper became a chorus dancer in the Big Apple, hoofing with the Radio City Rockettes and performing in such Broadway musicals as Li'l Abner, Take Me Along, Wildcat and Subways Are for Sleeping. Her first film appearance was in the 1959 movie adaptation of Li'l Abner. While spending her nights on stage, she attended Hunter College and the New School for Social Research, supporting herself between dancing gigs as a telephone canvasser and hat-check girl. During the 1960s, she did comedy-improv work with Second City and Paul Sill's Story Theatre (one of her co-workers during her Sills years was her first husband, comic actor Richard Schaal). In the popular mid-1960s comedy record album When You're in Love, the Whole World is Jewish, Harper can be heard offering an embryonic version of Rhoda Morgenstern, a character she based on her childhood friend Penny Almog. So well-grounded was she in Rhoda-like characterizations by 1970 that she was hired for The Mary Tyler Moore Show (her first regular TV-series gig) on the basis of a one-sentence audition. After winning three Emmies for her Mary Tyler Moore work, Harper was spun off into her own series in 1974, titled Rhoda. Though it opened to excellent ratings (thanks largely to the one-hour episode in which Rhoda married her blue-collar fiance Joe [David Groh]), Rhoda was never as big a hit as Mary Tyler Moore, and it left the air in 1978. During this period, Harper made her formal film debut in Freebie and the Bean (1974), earning a Golden Globe nomination for her portrayal of a Puerto Rican housewife. After toting up several stage and TV-movie credits, she returned to the weekly-series grind in 1986 with Valerie. She walked out on the show over a salary dispute, whereupon the producers fired her and retooled the series into The Hogan Family, which ran without Harper until 1991. She has starred in two series since leaving Valerie (1990's City and 1995's The Office) but has been unable to latch onto a character with the staying power of Rhoda Morgenstern. Additional appearances in Melrose Place, Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, and Drop Dead Diva followed, Extremely active in prosocial causes off-camera, Valerie Harper was co-founder of an anti-hunger organization called LIFE (Love Is Feeding Everyone).

Trivia: Fey, flaky comic actress Louise Lasser majored in political science at Brandeis University before studying acting at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. She proved an excellent improvisational comedienne in the Elaine May revue The Third Ear, which led to several TV commercial appearances. In 1966, she married comedian Woody Allen, who later directed her in Take the Money and Run (1968), Bananas (1970), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex... (1972) and Stardust Memories (1980); she also provided a voice for Allen's Japanese spy-film spoof What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966). Though they divorced in 1970, Lasser and Allen remained close friends, turning to one another in moments of severe personal crisis. In 1976, Lasser starred as the zoned-out heroine of Norman Lear's satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman probably her best-known role. Louise Lasser's most recent weekly TV assignment was the early-1980s sitcom It's a Living.

Trivia: A beloved comedic actress whose breakthrough performance in the Mary Tyler Moore Show helped convince a disgruntled Ted Knight to stick with the series despite disappointment with his character, Georgia Engel's golden comic talents are only matched by her unmistakable blonde locks and remarkable zeal for her craft. A native of Washington, D.C., who studied her craft at The University of Hawaii, Engel appeared in Milos Forman's Taking Off and Jacques Deray's The Outside Man before joining the cast of The Mary Tyler Moore Show in a one-time role that was quickly expanded when producers made note of her comic abilities. Engel remained with the series until the end of its run in 1977, during which time she was nominated for two Emmy awards for her winning performances. If subsequent appearances on such short-lived sitcoms as The Betty White Show and Goodtime Girls found Engel's career floundering somewhat in the late-'70s/early-'80s, post-Mary Tyler Moore era, a six-year stint in the popular television series Coach in the early '90s found her back in top form. Of course that was only the beginning to Engel's comeback period, and following the cancellation of Coach in 1997, her success carried over into the new millennium with a recurring role on Everybody Loves Raymond. Minor voice work in Dr. Dolittle 2 preceded a return to the big screen in the 2002 comedy The Sweetest Thing, after which she made an appearance in theater opposite I Dream of Jeannie's Barbara Eden in The Odd Couple: The Female Version.

Trivia: Canadian actor Henry Corden played numerous character roles in U.S. films, on stage and on television. He was typically cast as a comical, avaricious Arab. Corden had a distinctive voice and frequently voiced children's cartoons.