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: Only in the earliest stages of her career was actress Marilyn Mason billed as Marilyn. A professional from age 13, when she signed on with Los Angeles' Players Ring troupe, Mason made her first TV appearance on a 1955 Matinee Theater installment. She was particularly busy in the mid-to-late 1960s, playing the recurring role of Sally Welden on TV's Ben Casey and guesting on a variety of programs. In 1967, she was co-starred as Carrie Pipperidge in a televersion of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel; and in 1969, she made her big-screen debut opposite Elvis Presley in The Trouble With Girls. Her last regular-series stint was as Nikki Bell in the 1971 James Franciscus starrer Longstreet. After a long absence, Marilyn Mason returned to television in the early 1990s in a brace of made-for-TV movies.

Trivia: Joy Harmon may not be too well remembered by name, with only ten feature films to her credit and not that many more television appearances, but in 1967 she managed to make her mark on screen history, in a single scene that is still regarded as one of the most sexually suggestive in the history of mainstream movies. Born Patricia Joy Harmon in St. Louis, MO, in 1943, she moved with her family to Connecticut in 1946. Her father was connected to the exhibition end of the movie business and became an employee of the Roxy in Manhattan, one of the most prestigious theaters in New York. During her childhood, Harmon appeared in newsreels made by Fox Movietone News, and was taken with the idea of a movie career. At 13, she was hired as an extra in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, an experience that only reinforced her determination to become an actress. Deciding to take advantage of her natural attributes, she entered beauty contests and began seeking out roles on-stage -- she wasa runner-up for Miss Connecticut and later was cast in the Broadway show Make a Million. Harmon also posed in the pin-up magazines of the pre-Playboy era, and it was as a pin-up that she was best known for many years. Additionally, Harmon got a small role in Harry Foster's jukebox movie Let's Rock (1958). Her breakthrough came after she was invited to appear on Groucho Marx's quiz/comedy show You Bet Your Life. Marx was so taken with the cheerful, outgoing, and well-endowed Harmon, that he hired her to appear as one of his two assistants on his 1962 mid-season replacement show Tell it to Groucho, billed as Patty Harmon. Around this same period, she also played a small role in Burt Balaban's period crime thriller Mad Dog Coll (1961). From there she moved to performances in episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies, Burke's Law, My Three Sons, Batman, The Rounders, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., and Bewitched, through 1966, and a memorable pre-credit appearance in an episode of That Girl ("Pass The Potatoes, Ethel Merman"). With her blonde hair, eager smile, and ample bosom, she was mostly used as eye-candy. As with many actresses known for their physiques, her film appearances were in projects of widely varying quality, from high profile, big budget productions such as David Swift's frothy sex comedy, Under the Yum-Yum Tree (1963), to Terry O. Morse's Young Dillinger (1965), and Bert I. Gordon's Village of the Giants (1965). The latter, in particular, took advantage of Harmon's physical attributes as her bikini-clad character is one of a group of anti-social teenagers enlarged to 50 feet tall. In 1965, she got the only starring screen role of her career, in the low-budget comedy-caper movie One Way Wahini, which co-starred Anthony Eisley (Hawaiian Eye) and Edgar Bergen; however, that movie (which was shot in widescreen, no less, making any close-ups of Harmon that much more impressive) barely got any distribution and soon disappeared. Her most lasting screen contribution came in 1967 when Harmon was cast in Stuart Rosenberg's Cool Hand Luke. In a scene almost legendary for its suggestiveness, she portrayed a girl seen washing a car in the hot sun within a few feet of the working, straining prison work-camp inmates. Wearing a short, tight-fitting dress, she slid a soapy sponge over the car, reaching ever further and straining the fabric, front and back, her cleavage easily visible, sweating and getting ever wetter as she slid the sponge around while the men watching her got ever more distracted. It was to be her best moment onscreen -- a year later, Harmon married Jeff Gourson, a producer, and she retired from movies after one more big-screen appearance, in Angel in my Pocket (1969), though she appeared on television through 1972 in episodes of Love American Style and The Odd Couple. Today, she is mostly remembered for Cool Hand Luke; among her three children, her son Jason is a film editor, and her older daughter Jamie is an actress.