Trivia: Born Leonard Rosenberg, Randall moved to New York at age 19 and studied theater with Sanford Meisner and at the Neighborhood Playhouse. His stage debut was in The Circle of Chalk (1941). From 1942-46 he served with the U.S. Army, following which he acted on radio and TV. He began appearing onscreen in 1957 and was a fairly busy film actor through the mid '60s. He is best known for his work on TV, particularly for his portrayal of fastidious Felix Unger on the sitcom "The Odd Couple." He also starred or costarred in the series "One Man's Family," "Mr. Peepers," "The Tony Randall Show," and "Love, Sidney." He frequently appears on TV talk shows, where he is witty, erudite, and urbane. In 1991 he created the National Actors Theater, a repertory company; its purpose is to bring star-filled classic plays to broad-based audiences at low prices.

Trivia: Commenting on his notorious on-set irascibility in 1977, Jack Klugman replied that he was merely "taking Peter Falk lessons from Robert Blake," invoking the names of two other allegedly hard-to-please TV stars. Klugman grew up in Philadelphia, and after taking in a 1939 performance by New York's Group Theatre, Klugman decided that an actor's life was right up his alley. He majored in drama at Carnegie Tech and studied acting at the American Theatre Wing before making his (non-salaried) 1949 stage-debut at the Equity Library Theater. While sharing a New York flat with fellow hopeful Charles Bronson, Klugman took several "grub" jobs to survive, at one point selling his blood for $85 a pint. During television's so-called Golden Age, Klugman appeared in as many as 400 TV shows. He made his film debut in 1956, and three years later co-starred with Ethel Merman in the original Broadway production of Gypsy. In 1964, Klugman won the first of his Emmy awards for his performance in "Blacklist," an episode of the TV series The Defenders; that same year, he starred in his first sitcom, the 13-week wonder Harris Against the World. Far more successful was his next TV series, The Odd Couple, which ran from 1970 through 1974; Klugman won two Emmies for his portrayal of incorrigible slob Oscar Madison (he'd previously essayed the role when he replaced Walter Matthau in the original Broadway production of the Neil Simon play). It was during Odd Couple's run that the network "suits" got their first real taste of Klugman's savage indignation, when he and co-star Tony Randall threatened to boycott the show unless the idiotic laughtrack was removed (Klugman and Randall won that round; from 1971 onward, Odd Couple was filmed before a live audience). It was but a foretaste of things to come during Klugman's six-year (1977-83) reign as star of Quincy, M.E.. Popular though Klugman was in the role of the crusading, speechifying LA County Coroner's Office medical examiner R. Quincy, he hardly endeared himself to the producers when he vented his anger against their creative decisions in the pages of TV Guide. Nor was he warmly regarded by the Writer's Guild when he complained about the paucity of high-quality scripts (he wrote several Quincy episodes himself, with mixed results). After Quincy's cancellation, Klugman starred in the Broadway play I'm Not Rappaport and co-starred with John Stamos in the 1986 sitcom You Again?. The future of Klugman's career -- and his future, period -- was sorely threatened when he underwent throat surgery in 1989. He'd been diagnosed with cancer of the larynx as early as 1974, but at that time was able to continue working after a small growth was removed. For several years after the 1989 operation, Klugman was unable to speak, though he soon regained this ability. He continued working through 2011, and died the following year at age 90.

Trivia: Formidable American character actress Reta Shaw was the daughter of a New England orchestra leader. Educated in virtually all forms of the arts except acting, Shaw took a series of musical and "civilian" jobs before appearing in her first play, the 1946 dud It Takes Two. She went on to character roles in such major Broadway musicals as Annie Get Your Gun and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Shaw was one of the few members of the original Broadway cast of Picnic to be invited to appear in the 1956 film version. The hefty Ms. Shaw was subsequently shown to good advantage as a pajama factory employee in the 1957 film musical The Pajama Game (again repeating her stage role), and in dozens of smaller but still showy roles, such as Mrs. Brill the maid in 1964's Mary Poppins. From 1968 through 1970, Reta Shaw was seen on a weekly basis as housekeeper Martha Grant on the TV sitcom version of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

Trivia: Wiry, solemn-faced American actor Curt Conway interrupted stage work to appear in his first film, Gentleman's Agreement (1947). As Bert McAnny in the Oscar-winning film, Conway was one of many Anglo-Saxon types who opened mouth and inserted foot when Gregory Peck, investigating anti-Semitism, pretended to be Jewish. Conway was a stalwart of television's "live" days of the '50s, at which time he did some directing as well as acting. Twilight Zone fans will remember a heavily made-up Conway in the 1963 episode "He's Alive"; the actor played a shadowy stranger who gives advice to a neo-Nazi activist (Dennis Hopper) on how to get ahead, and who at the end of the episode turns out to be--to everyone's surprise but the audience--Adolph Hitler. Having begun his film career in a movie indictment of race prejudice, Curt Conway ended his career in a film dealing with the same subject, 1971's The Man.

Trivia: A former contract player for MGM and 20th Century Fox during the '40s and '50s, Robert Lewis' greatest contribution came not from his performing career but from his ability to teach and direct the acting of others. In 1947, he, director Elia Kazan, and Cheryl Crawford co-founded the Actors Studio in New York. Lewis has also taught at the Group Theater, the Yale School of Drama, the Lincoln Center Training Program, and at his own Robert Lewis Theater Workshop. Many of the late 20th century's brightest stars, including Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Sally Field, Meryl Streep, Eli Wallach, Faye Dunaway, and John Garfield, have benefited from his tutelage.The New York City native launched his own acting career in 1929 when he joined Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theater. While working at the Group Theater in 1931, Lewis became a staunch follower of Konstantin Stanislavsky's acting techniques, which are not to be confused with Lee Strasberg's Method, which Lewis felt represented a misinterpretation of Stanislavsky. In 1938, Lewis started his own acting studio. The following year, he made his Broadway directorial debut with a production of William Saroyan's My Heart's in the Highlands (1939). Lewis came to Hollywood in 1940 and after signing with Fox made his acting debut in Dragon Seed (1943). The highlight of Lewis' film career came when Charles Chaplin cast him as Maurice Botello in Monsieur Verdoux (1947). That year, Lewis went back to Broadway and became one of the Great White Way's most respected directors. He was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 1991. That year, Kent State University established the Robert Lewis Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Theater Research in his honor.Lewis published three books. The first, Method -- or Madness? (1958), represented his take on Stanislavsky's teachings. The second, Advice to Players (1980), was a training guide for actors. His third, Slings and Arrows: Theater in My Life (1984), contained his memoirs. Lewis died of heart failure November 23, 1997, in New York at the age of 88.