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: Originally planned to be a schoolteacher. Spent two seasons with the New York City Opera Company, performing in such productions as Carmen and The Mikado. Performed as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Made her Broadway debut in 1960 in Do Re Mi. Played Maria in the 1962 Broadway production of The Sound of Music. Was an original cohost of Good Morning America. For five years, she headed the Ray Bolger Endowment for Musical Performances at UCLA. Regularly performs as a cabaret singer.

Trivia: Lead actress, onscreen from the early '80s.

Trivia: Originally aspired to be an evangelistic singer. Caught the acting bug in high school when he played the dad in Bye Bye Birdie. Attended Oklahoma Baptist University on a music scholarship, but departed for Los Angeles after a couple of years. Big break came when he landed the role of Monroe Ficus on Too Close for Comfort in 1980. Famously paired with Tammy Faye Messner for a 1996 talk show titled The Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show. Has played five different roles in theatrical productions of Hairspray, most notably on Broadway as Wilbur Turnblad. Is an active AIDS advocate and has been HIV-positive for more than 20 years.

Trivia: Known to millions as the easily confused, heavily accented Latino José Jimenez, Bill Dana was actually born William Szathmary-"a Jungarian Hew", explains Dana in his Jimenez dialect. A prolific comedy writer, Dana created special material for such performers as George Gobel and Don Adams throughout the 1950s. He joined the writing stable of The Steve Allen Show in 1956, making his on-camera debut as José Jimenez during a 1959 Christmas show. The sketch was predicated on the gimmick of a Puerto Rican Santa Claus whose hearty laugh came out "Jo, Jo, Jo!" The bit scored an immediate hit with the public, and soon the versatile Dana was a regular performer on the Allen show, playing a wide variety of dialect characterizations. When the Mercury space program became a hot topic, Dana cut a Grammy-nominated comedy album, José the Astronaut ("What will you do if you're lost in space?" "I plan to cry a lot") which accompanied many a genuine astronaut into the stratosphere. Dana brought his Jimenez persona to 1961's The Spike Jones Show, then appeared on a semi-regular basis as José the elevator operator on The Danny Thomas Show. This stint spun off into Dana's own sitcom in 1963, The Bill Dana Show, in which José Jimenez was employed as a bellhop at a posh New York Hotel. The series was cancelled in 1965, after which Dana continued making TV guest appearances and the occasional movie (1967's The Busy Body, 1980's The Nude Bomb, etc.). In the early 1970s, Dana was compelled to "retire" José Jimenez in the face of protests from scattered anti-defamation groups, but he still had plenty of comedy material and projects up his sleeve. One of Bill Dana's strangest endeavors of the 1980s was No Soap Radio (1982), a non sequitur-laden sitcom (with such "characters" as a boy-eating sofa!) which Dana both starred in and co-produced. He retired from acting and writing in the mid-1990s. Dana died in 2017, at age 92.