Trivia: Best known as the rumpled television detective Columbo, character actor Peter Falk also enjoyed a successful film career, often in association with the groundbreaking independent filmmaker John Cassavetes. Born September 16, 1927, in New York City, Falk lost an eye at the age of three, resulting in the odd, squinting gaze which later became his trademark. He initially pursued a career in public administration, serving as an efficiency expert with the Connecticut Budget Bureau, but in the early '50s, boredom with his work sparked an interest in acting. By 1955, Falk had turned professional, and an appearance in a New York production of The Iceman Cometh earned him much attention. He soon graduated to Broadway and in 1958 made his feature debut in the Nicholas Ray/Budd Schulberg drama Wind Across the Everglades.A diminutive, stocky, and unkempt presence, Falk's early screen roles often portrayed him as a blue-collar type or as a thug; it was as the latter in 1960's Murder Inc. that he earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, a major career boost. He was nominated in the same category the following year as well, this time as a sarcastic bodyguard in Frank Capra's Pocketful of Miracles. In 1962, Falk won an Emmy for his work in the television film The Price of Tomatoes, a presentation of the Dick Powell Theater series. The steady stream of accolades made him a hot property, and he next starred in the 1962 feature Pressure Point. A cameo in Stanley Kramer's 1963 smash It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World preceded Falk's appearance in the Rat Pack outing Robin and the Seven Hoods, but the film stardom many predicted for him always seemed just out of reach, despite lead roles in 1965's The Great Race and 1967's Luv.In 1968, Falk first assumed the role of Columbo, the disheveled police lieutenant whose seemingly slow and inept investigative manner masked a steel-trap mind; debuting in the TV movie Prescription: Murder, the character was an immediate hit, and after a second telefilm, Ransom for a Dead Man, a regular Columbo series premiered as part of the revolving NBC Mystery Movie anthology in the fall of 1971, running for seven years and earning Falk a second Emmy in the process. In the meantime, he also continued his film career, most notably with Cassavetes; in 1970, Falk starred in the director's Husbands, and in 1974 they reunited for the brilliant A Woman Under the Influence. In between the two pictures, Falk also returned to Broadway, where he won a Tony award for his performance in the 1972 Neil Simon comedy The Prisoner of Second Avenue. In 1976, Cassavetes joined him in front of the camera to co-star in Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky, and directed him again in 1977's Opening Night.After Columbo ceased production in 1978, Falk starred in the Simon-penned mystery spoof The Cheap Detective, followed by the William Friedkin caper comedy The Brink's Job (1978). After 1979's The In-Laws, he starred two years later in ...All the Marbles, but was then virtually absent from the screen for the next half decade. Cassavetes' 1986 effort Big Trouble brought Falk back to the screen (albeit on a poor note; Cassavetes later practically disowned the embarrassing film) and and in 1987 he starred in Happy New Year along with the Rob Reiner cult favorite The Princess Bride. An appearance as himself in Wim Wenders' masterful Wings of Desire in 1988 preceded his 1989 resumption of the Columbo character for another regular series; the program was to remain Falk's focus well into the next decade, with only a handful of film appearances in pictures including 1990's Tune in Tomorrow and a cameo in Robert Altman's The Player. After the cancellation of Columbo, he next turned up in Wenders' Desire sequel Far Away, So Close before starring in the 1995 comedy Roommates. Falk continued to work in both film and television for the next decade and a half, starring in various Columbo specials through 2003, appearing with Woody Allen in the made-for-TV The Sunshine Boys in 1997, and playing a bar owner caught up in mafia dealings in 1999's The Money Kings. Other projects included the Adam Sandler-produced gangster comedy Corky Romano (2001), the Dreamworks animated family film A Shark Tale (as the voice of Ira Feinberg), and the Paul Reiser-scripted, Raymond de Felitta-directed comedy-drama The Thing About My Folks (2005). In 2007, Falk starred opposite Nicolas Cage and Julianne Moore in Lee Tamahori's sci-fi thriller Next. That same year, Falk announced to the public that he had Alzheimer's disease. He died in June 2011 at age 83.

Trivia: Perhaps better known to the general public as an actor, John Cassavetes' true artistic legacy derives from his work behind the camera; arguably, he was America's first truly independent filmmaker, an iconoclastic maverick whose movies challenged the assumptions of the cinematic form. Obsessed with bringing to the screen the "small feelings" he believed that American society at large attempted to suppress, Cassavetes' work emphasized his actors above all else, favoring character examination over traditional narrative storytelling to explore the realities of the human condition. A pioneer of self-financing and self-distribution, he led the way for filmmakers to break free of Hollywood control, perfecting an improvisational, cinéma vérité aesthetic all his own.The son of Greek immigrants, Cassavetes was born December 9, 1929, in New York City. After attending public school on Long Island, he later studied English at both Mohawk College and Colgate University prior to enrolling at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts. Upon graduating in 1950, he signed on with a Rhode Island stock company while attempting to land roles on Broadway and made his film debut in Gregory Ratoff's Taxi in 1953. A series of television roles followed, with Cassavetes frequently typecast as a troubled youth. By 1955, he was playing similar parts in the movies, appearing in pictures ranging from Night Holds Terror to Crime in the Streets. Cassavetes' career as a filmmaker began most unexpectedly. In 1957, he was appearing on Night People, a New York-based radio show, to promote his recent performance in the Martin Ritt film Edge of the City. While talking with host Jean Shepherd, Cassavetes abruptly announced that he felt the film was a disappointment and claimed he could make a better movie himself; at the close of the program, he challenged listeners interested in an alternative to Hollywood formulas to send in a dollar or two to fund his aspirations, promising he would make "a movie about people." No one was more surprised than Cassavetes himself when, over the course of the next several days, the radio station received over 2,000 dollars in dollar bills and loose change; true to his word, he began production within the week, despite having no idea exactly what kind of film he wanted to make.Assembling a group of students from his acting workshop, Cassavetes began work on what was later titled Shadows. The production had no script or professional crew, only rented lights and a 16 mm camera. Without any prior experience behind the camera, Cassavetes and his cast made mistake after mistake, resulting in a soundtrack which rendered the actors' dialogue completely inaudible (consequently creating a three-year delay in release while a new soundtrack was dubbed). A sprawling, wholly improvised piece about a family of black Greenwich Village jazz musicians -- the oldest brother dark-skinned, the younger brother and sister light enough to pass for white -- the film staked out the kind of fringe society to which Cassavetes' work would consistently return, posing difficult questions about love and identity.Unable to find an American distributor, the completed Shadows appeared in 1960, and was widely hailed as a groundbreaking accomplishment. After receiving the Critics Award at that year's Venice Film Festival, it finally was released in the U.S. with the backing of a British distributor. The film's success brought Cassavetes to the attention of Paramount, who hired him to direct the 1961 drama Too Late Blues with Bobby Darin. The movie was a financial and critical disaster, and he was quickly dropped from his contract. Landing at United Artists, he directed A Child Is Waiting for producer Stanley Kramer. After the two men had a falling out, Cassavetes was removed from the project, which Kramer then drastically re-cut, prompting a bitter Cassavetes to wash his hands of the finished product. Stung by his experiences as a Hollywood filmmaker, he vowed to thereafter finance and control his own work, turning away from directing for several years to earn the money necessary to fund his endeavors. A string of acting jobs in films ranging from Don Siegel's The Killers to Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby to Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen (for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor) wrapped up Cassavetes for all of the mid-'60s, but in 1968 he returned to filmmaking with Faces, the first of his pictures to star his wife, the brilliant actress Gena Rowlands. Another edgy drama shot in Cassavetes' trademark cinéma vérité style, Faces was a tremendous financial and critical success, garnering a pair of Oscar nominations as well as winning five awards at the Venice Film Festival; its success again brought Hollywood calling, but this time the director entertained only those offers affording him absolute creative control and final cut.After coming to terms with Columbia, Cassavetes began work on 1970's Husbands, which co-starred Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara. After helming 1971's Minnie and Moskowitz for Universal, he turned to self-financing, creating his masterpiece A Woman Under the Influence, which earned Rowlands an Academy Award nomination in the Best Actress category. With a story he developed with longtime fan Martin Scorsese, Cassavetes next turned to 1976's film noir The Killing of a Chinese Bookie; though also reissued two years later in a truncated version, the picture failed to find an audience, and was barely even circulated. When the same fate befell 1978's Opening Night, Cassavetes was forced to return to Columbia in 1980 to make Gloria.Four years passed before the director's next film, Love Streams. His subsequent effort was 1985's aptly titled Big Trouble, a comedy already in production when Cassavetes took over for writer/director Andrew Bergman, who had abruptly quit the project. The finished film was subsequently recut by its producers, and Cassavetes publicly declared it a disaster. Upon completing the picture, he became ill; regardless, he continued working, turning to the theatrical stage when he could no longer find funding for his films. A Woman of Mystery, a three-act play which was his final fully realized work, premiered in Los Angeles in 1987. On February 3, 1989, John Cassavetes died. Son Nick continued in his father's footsteps, working as an actor as well as the director of the films Unhook the Stars (1996) and She's So Lovely (1997), the latter an adaptation of one of his father's unfilmed screenplays.

Trivia: During the late 1930s, when Clark Gable was named the King of Hollywood, Myrna Loy was elected the Queen. The legendary actress, who started her career as a dancer, moved into silent films and was typecast for a few years as exotic women. Her film titles from those early years include Arrowsmith (1931), Love Me Tonight (1932), The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), and Manhattan Melodrama (1934), the film that gangster John Dillinger just had to see the night he was killed. Starting in 1934, with The Thin Man, opposite William Powell, she became Hollywood's ideal wife: bright, witty, humorous. She and Powell were often teamed throughout the '30s and '40s, and many of the characters she played were strong, independent, adventurous women. In addition to The Thin Man series, Loy's best appearances included The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Libeled Lady (1936), Wife vs. Secretary (1936), Test Pilot (1938), and Too Hot to Handle (1938). She took a break from filmmaking during WWII to work with the Red Cross, and in her later years she devoted as much time to politics as to acting (among her accomplishments, Loy became the first film star to work with the United Nations). She stands out in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), and its sequel Belles on Their Toes (1952). She received an honorary Oscar in 1991, two years before her death.

Trivia: American actress Blythe Danner brings a kind of classy elegance to her work that betrays her real-life background: the daughter of a Philadelphia bank executive, she enjoyed an expensive prep school education and undergraduate study at Bard College. Her earliest theatrical work was with the Theater Company of Boston and the Trinity Square Playhouse of Boston; by the time she was 25, Danner had won the Theatre World Award for her performance in the Lincoln Center Rep's production of The Miser. In 1970, she earned a Tony for her performance in Butterflies are Free; based on the true story of a blind attorney, Danner played the central character's free-spirit love interest. Given the tenor of '70s newspaper publicity, Danner was featured in several magazine and newspaper photo spreads because she spent much of Butterflies' first act clad in nothing but her underwear. Subsequently, the actress was frequently cast opposite fellow up-and-comer Ken Howard, notably in the short-lived 1973 TV sitcom Adam's Rib. She worked so well with Howard that many fans assumed that the two were married; in fact, Danner's longtime husband is Broadway and TV producer Bruce Paltrow.A "critic's darling" thanks to her husky voice and pleasantly mannered acting style, Danner has worked with distinction in TV and on stage, though her film roles have tended to be few and far between. She was memorable as Robert Duvall's long-suffering wife in The Great Santini (1980) and as Nick Nolte's wife in The Prince of Tides (1991), while in 1986's Brighton Beach Memoirs, the decidedly WASPish Danner surprised fans by portraying a middle-aged Jewish woman. Danner's film appearances became more frequent during the latter half of the '90s: she did starring work in such films as To Wong Foo: Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995), The Myth of Fingerprints (1997), The X-Files (1998), and The Love Letter (1999). A memorable turn opposite Robert DeNiro in the 2000 comedy found the established dramatic actress reaching the apex of a particularly impressive comedy run, and a year after reprising her role in the 2004 sequel Meet the Fockers, Danner would make showbiz history by earning a record three Emmy nominations for her roles in Huff, Will and Grace, and Back when We Were Grownups. When the smoke cleared and all of the winners had been announced, Danner did ineed come out on top when she took home the "Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series" award for Huff, with nominations for both Huff and Will and Grace at the following year's ceremony offering telling testament as to just how strong her work truly was. In 2006 Danner could be seen performing opposite Zack Braff in the romantic comedy drama remake The Last Kiss. She continued to work steadily, often in comedies such as Paul, Little Fockers, and What's Your Number, and she starred in the 2012 drama The Lucky One.Frequently seen in TV guest roles (she managed to make her Mrs. Albert Speer in 1982's Inside the Third Reich sympathetic, no mean feat), Danner could be seen on television on a regular basis in the brief 1989 series Tattingers, produced by her husband. In 1992, she did stellar work in the made-for-TV movie Cruel Doubt, in which she played the matriarch of a broken family. Her daughter Gwyneth Paltrow was also featured in the movie.

Trivia: A graduate of Northwestern University, actor James Olson did stage work in and around Chicago before his 1956 film bow in The Sharkfighters. Angular and sandy-haired, Olson was well suited to classical stage roles. In films and on television, it was his lot to portray a long line of understanding husbands, doubting doctors, mystery killers and corporate bigwigs. James Olson garnered some of his best reviews for his performance as Joanne Woodward's autumn romance in Rachel, Rachel (1967), under the direction of Paul Newman.

Trivia: African American actor James McEachin was a stage actor until signed to a Universal contract in the mid-1960s. Though relatively young, McEachin projected a middle-aged, "solid citizen" image that perfectly suited his title character in the Universal television series Tenafly (1973). McEachin was cast as private eye and loyal family man Harry Tenafly, one of the few TV detectives who relied more on brains than movie-star charisma. Since that time, James McEachin has usually been cast as a cop; he played Sergeant (and later Lieutenant) Brock on virtually every Perry Mason TV movie of the 1980s and 1990s-a notable exception being the 1987 entry The Case of the Scandalous Scoundrel, in which he was cast as "Harry Forbes."

Trivia: Anjanette Comer, as a teenager, was one of those hyperkinetic types involved in every extracurricular activity available, including basketball, cheerleading and beauty contests. After attending Baylor University for a short period, 18-year-old Anjanette came to California. She planned to enroll in either UCLA or the Pasadena Playhouse; the Playhouse won. Toting up lots of TV credits on shows like Gunsmoke, Arrest and Trial, Anjanette made her first film appearance in 1965's Quick Before it Melts (1965), where she was exotically cast as a Maori girl. She then landed one of the most bizarre assignments of the 1965-66 season: in the jet-black comedy The Loved One, she played Aimee Thanatogenos, who commits suicide by embalming herself! Anjanette's movie activity dropped off in 1970 after she played Ruth in the film version of John Updike's Rabbit Run (1970); she later claimed she let her love life interfere with her work. Anjanette Comer's most recent films include Fire Sale (1977) and the made-for-TV The Long Summer of George Adams (1983).

Trivia: British actor Don Knight played leading roles in a number of Hollywood films between the late '60s and early '80s. He began acting while attending University in 1958 and later worked on television. Knight was also an ordained minister and a dialectician.

Trivia: Finnish-born actor George Gaynes was a United States citizen for most of his life. Blessed with a superb singing voice and an amiable stage presence, Gaynes rapidly built a reputation as a Broadway musical comedy performer in the '40s and '50s (his best-known appearance was in Wonderful Town, the musical version of My Sister Eileen). Entering films and television in the early 1960s, Gaynes was a regular on the TV daytime dramas Search for Tomorrow and General Hospital, and showed up in such movies as The Group (1968), Marooned (1969) and Doctor's Wives (1971). He was terrific in Dustin Hoffman's Tootsie (1981) as the aging, libidinous soap opera actor who tries to put the make on his co-star "Dorothy Michaels," little suspecting that Dorothy is really the certifiably male Michael Dorsey (Hoffman). In 1984, Gaynes was showcased on two different series, one on TV, the other on the big screen. The TV series was Punky Brewster, wherein Gaynes played photographer Henry Warnimont, the adult guardian of the title character (a little lost girl, played by Soleil Moon Frye); when Punky Brewster was spun off into a cartoon series, Gaynes came along as one of the voice talents. The aforementioned big-screen series was launched with Police Academy (1984), a juvenile comedy that somehow spawned five sequels, all of them featuring Gaynes as long-suffering police chief Lassard. None of his subsequent appearances drew as many laughs as did George Gaynes' setpiece in the first film, in which, while trying to deliver a public speech, he was the unwitting (but increasingly ecstatic) recipient of a prostitute's services. Gaynes appeared in all seven films in the series; he also appeared in films like The Cruicible and Wag the Dog. Gaynes died in 2016, at age 98.

Trivia: Character actress Shera Danese specialized in bit parts, initially ones of a slightly sultry nature. She landed one of her earliest big-screen roles as one of saxophone player Jimmy Doyle's (Robert De Niro) girlfriends in Martin Scorsese's revisionist musical New York, New York (1977), then drew attention away from Rebecca De Mornay as one of two prostitutes who accompany a high-school senior (Tom Cruise) out for a wild evening on the town, in Paul Brickman's satire on teen angst, Risky Business (1983). Subsequent projects included the 1987 Baby Boom (as a cloak room attendant), the 2002 John Q., and the 2006 Alpha Dog. Danese also appeared in numerous Columbo telemovies opposite longtime off-camera husband Peter Falk.

Trivia: Best known to audiences as Mr. Miyagi, Ralph Macchio's mentor in the "wax on, wax off" school of combat in the 1984 hit The Karate Kid, Noriyuki "Pat" Morita is the most prominent Japanese-American actor of his generation. Morita is also well known for having played Arnold, the amiable diner owner on the hit television series Happy Days, for two non-consecutive seasons (1975-1976 and 1982-1983). His status as one of the most familiar actors of Asian descent kept him working in a variety of projects throughout the 1980s and '90s.Having spent part of his youth in a Japanese internment camp during World War II, Morita nonetheless emerged with his sense of humor intact, giving up work as a computer programmer to concentrate on stand-up comedy in the early '60s. After a number of nightclub and TV variety show appearances, Morita found his first film role in 1967's Thoroughly Modern Millie as a stereotypical ethnic henchman. His natural affability soon began shining through, winning Morita his role on Happy Days for the 1975-1976 season. As Arnold, Morita interacted with Richie, Fonzie, and company with a memorable combination of good humor and exasperation. He returned to the gig in 1982-1983 after a failed attempt to front his own series (the critically lambasted Mr. T and Tina in 1976), a number of small film roles, and guest appearances on such shows as The Love Boat and Magnum P.I. His major pop culture breakthrough was the role of janitor and karate master Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid. An eccentric tutor who at first appears to be using his student for an endless variety of household chores, Miyagi soon reveals the method behind his training, turning the scrawny Daniel (Macchio) into a confident fighter, while also instilling an important message that violence should remain a last resort. The exceedingly popular film made Morita a household name, and audiences were left with the indelible image of a jolly and wise old soul trying desperately to catch a fly with a pair of chopsticks. Morita reprised the role for the two sequels starring Macchio in (1986 and 1989), as well as The Next Karate Kid, which starred future Oscar winner Hilary Swank, in 1994.In the late '80s, Morita found the success that had previously eluded him in television solo efforts with the two-season detective series Ohara (1987-1989). In 1987, he also wrote and starred in the World War II romance Captive Hearts, a film about a pilot shot down over Japan who falls in love with a village woman. Morita plays the village elder who saves the young pilot from execution.Morita spent the 1990s continuing to work regularly as a character actor in both television and movies. His film roles included Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1993,) and vocal work as the Emperor in Disney's Mulan (1998). He guest starred on such shows as The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Diagnosis Murder, and The Hughleys, and had a recurring role as Mr. Tanaka on Baywatch.

Trivia: American actor Michael Pataki's first film credit was 1958's Ten North Frederick. In the early phases of his career, Pataki was reminiscent of a young Rod Steiger; in point of fact, he played the 25-year-old version of the Steiger character in the made-for-TV The Movie Maker (1965). His later television work included the weekly series Paul Sand in Friends and Lovers (1974), as Sand's brother Charlie; Spider-Man (1977), as Captain Barbera; and Phyl and Micky (1980), as Soviet consular official Vladimir Jimenko. The Slavic nature of the last-named role was typical of the sort of characters Pataki played in the 1980s, which included Nikoli Koloff in Rocky IV (1985) and Rocky V (1990). Additionally, Pataki is among those lucky thespians who played guest spots on both the original Star Trek and its 1987 grandchild Star Trek: The Next Generation. On the production side, Pataki was director of the soft-core sex farce Cinderella and the low-budget scarefest Mansion of the Doomed (both 1977), and served as producer of the 1981 TV adaptation of Broadway's Pippin. More recently, Michael Pataki was heard as "The Sewer King" on the animated TVer Batman: The New Adventures (1992).

Trivia: Actor George Hamilton got his start in high school dramatics. Movie-star handsome, Hamilton played the lead in his very first film, Crime and Punishment USA (1959). While his acting talent was barely discernible in his earliest effort, Hamilton steadily improved in such MGM films as Home From the Hill (1960), Where the Boys Are (1960), Light in the Piazza (1961). He was at his best in a brace of biopics: in Warner Bros.' Act One (1963) he played aspiring playwright Moss Hart, while in Your Cheatin' Heart (1965), he registered well as self-destructive C&W singer Hank Williams. His much-publicized mid-1960s dating of President Johnson's daughter Lynda Bird was unfairly written off by some as mere opportunism, a calculated ploy to buoy up a flagging career. In fact, it did more harm than good to Hamilton: by 1969, movie roles had dried up, and he was compelled to accept his first TV-series role, playing jet-setter Duncan Carlyle in The Survivors. The following year, he starred as State Department functionary Jack Brennan in the weekly TV espionager Paris 7000. He staged a spectacular comeback as star and executive producer of Love at First Bite (1979), a screamingly funny "Dracula" take-off that won the actor a Golden Globe nomination. Even better was Zorro the Gay Blade (1980), which unfortunately failed to match the excellent box-office performance of First Bite but which still provided a much-needed shot in the arm to Hamilton's career. He went on to play such campish roles as villainous movie producer Joel Abrigor in TV's Dynasty (1985-86 season only) and jaded 007-type Ian Stone in the weekly Spies (1987). Throughout the thick and thin of his acting career, Hamilton remained highly visible on the international social scene, squiring such high-profile lovelies as Elizabeth Taylor and Imelda Marcos. He also remained financially solvent with his line of skin products and tanning salons. In 1995, George Hamilton hopped on the talk-show bandwagon, co-starring with his former wife Alana (who'd remarried rocker Rod Stewart) on a not-bad syndicated daily TV chatfest.

Trivia: Most of actor Stephen Elliot's film credits were piled up after he reached the age of fifty. The best of these include Hospital (1971), Death Wish (1974), The Hindenburg (1978) and Taking Care of Business (1988). Elliot was cast as Jill Eikenberry's bullying millionaire father in Arthur (1981), in which he pummeled prospective son-in-law Dudley Moore to a pulp when Moore balked at the altar; he repeated this ham-fisted characterization in Arthur 2, On the Rocks (1985). Stephen Elliot's acting contributions to television include patriarch Benjamin Lassiter on Beacon Hill (1975), Jane Wyman's ex-husband (not Ronald Reagan) on Falcon Crest (1981-82), and several years in the role of Paul Ailey on the daytime drama Love of Life.

Trivia: Beckman is a stocky character actor, onscreen from the '50s.

Trivia: Mike Lally started in Hollywood as an assistant director in the early 1930s. Soon, however, Lally was steadily employed as a stunt man, doubling for such Warner Bros. stars as James Cagney and Pat O'Brien. He also played innumerable bit roles as reporters, court stenographers, cops and hangers-on. Active until 1982, Mike Lally was frequently seen in functionary roles on TV's Columbo.

Trivia: Stuntman and occasional supporting actor Troy Melton spent most of his career on television and appeared on numerous series, from the 1960s through the mid-'70s. Melton also worked on numerous films of the 1960s and 1970s, beginning with Davy Crockett and the River Pirate (1956).

Trivia: Character actor John Finnegan first appeared onscreen in the '70s.

Trivia: American actor Bruce Kirby made his Broadway bow at age 40 in the 1965 production Diamond Orchid. More stage work followed, and then movie assignments, commencing with the all-star Catch 22 (1970), and continuing into the 1980s with such productions as Sweet Dreams (1985) and Throw Momma from the Train (1987). Kirby's TV career has embraced both series successes (1989's Anything But Love, as Jamie Lee Curtis' father), ignoble failures (1976's Holmes and Yoyo, as Henry Sedford), and a few projects which never sold (Kirby was in two busted pilots for something called McNamara's Band). In 1984, Kirbyreturned to Broadway to understudy Dustin Hoffman as Willy Loman in the revival of Death of a Salesman. Bruce Kirby, sometimes billed as Bruce Kirby Sr., was the father of actor Bruno Kirby, who formerly billed himself as B. Kirby Jr.

Trivia: American character actor Vito Scotti may not be the living legend as described by his publicity packet, but he has certainly been one of the most familiar faces to bob up on small and large screens in the last five decades. Scotti's father was a vaudeville impresario, and his mother an opera singer; in fact, he was born while his mother was making a personal appearance in San Francisco. Launching his own career at seven with an Italian-language commedia del arte troupe in New York, Scotti picked up enough improvisational knowhow to develop a nightclub act. When the once-flourishing Italian theatre circuit began to fade after World War II, Scotti began auditioning for every job that came up -- whether he could do the job or not. Without his trademarked mustache, the diminuitive actor looked like a juvenile well into his thirties, and as such was cast in a supporting role as a timorous East Indian on the "Gunga Ram" segment of the '50s TV kiddie series Andy's Gang. Once the producers discovered that Scotti had mastered several foreign dialects, he was allowed to appear as a comic foil to Andy's Gang's resident puppet Froggy the Gremlin. In nighttime television, Scotti played everything from a murderous bank robber (on Steve Canyon) to a misplaced Japanese sub commander (on Gilligan's Island). He was indispensable to TV sitcoms: Scotti starred during the 1954 season of Life with Luigi (replacing J. Carroll Naish), then appeared as gesticulating Latin types in a score of comedy programs, notably The Dick Van Dyke Show (as eccentric Italian housepainter Vito Giotto) and The Flying Nun (as ever-suspicious Puerto Rican police captain Gaspar Fomento). In theatrical films, Scotti's appearances were brief but memorable. he is always greeted with appreciative audience laughter for his tiny bit as a restauranteur in The Godfather (1972); while in How Sweet it Is (1968) he is hilarious as a moonstruck chef, so overcome by the sight of bikini-clad Debbie Reynolds that he begins kissing her navel! Vito Scotti was still essaying dialect parts into the '90s.

Trivia: An American-born actor reared in Ireland and England, McGoohan made a memorable impression on the American and English viewing audiences by playing essentially the same role in three different television series. He began his performing career as a teen-ager, eventually played Henry V for the Old Vic company in London, and made mostly unremarkable films in the '50s. His movies include the delightful Disney film The Three Lives of Thomasina (1964). Success came in 1961, when McGoohan played government agent John Drake in Danger Man, a role he continued on Secret Agent (1965-66). He created, produced and often wrote episodes of the nightmarish, surrealistic cult series The Prisoner (1968-69). This show featured a character assumed to be the same John Drake (although he was known as Number 6 and his real name was never mentioned), who had been kidnapped and taken to a strange community. McGoohan later starred in the TV series Rafferty (1977) and directed the film Catch My Soul (1974). He won an Emmy Award in 1975 for his guest appearance on Columbo with Peter Falk.

Trivia: Publicity notwithstanding, Lesley Ann Warren did not exactly burst fully grown into the world in 1966 to star in the Rodgers and Hammerstein TV special Cinderella. Trained at New York's Professional Children's School, Lesley Ann studied under Lee Strasberg before making her Broadway debut in 110 in the Shade, the 1964 musical version of The Rainmaker. On the strength of Cinderella, Lesley Ann was signed to a Disney contract; but after starring in The Happiest Millionaire (1966) and The One and Only Genuine Original Family Band, she rebelled against her studio-imposed sweetness-'n'-light image. Upon replacing Barbara Bain in the long-running espionage TVer Mission: Impossible in 1970, Warren publicly emphasized that her character, Dana Lambert, was a "now" person, wise in the ways of sex. She stayed with Mission for only a year, after which she established herself as a leading light in the made-for-TV movie field, frequently cast as an older woman involved romantically with a much-younger man. She earned an Academy Award nomination for her hilarious performance as bleach-blond gangster's moll Norma in Victor/Victoria (1981), then starred in a couple of intriguing Alan Rudolph-directed dramas, Choose Me (1984) and The Songwriter (1986). Her more recent roles include Molly, the homeless woman in Mel Brooks' Life Stinks(1991), who goes into a "death throes" act whenever she feels like it, and the barracuda booking agent for c-and-w star George Strait in Pure Country (1994). For nearly a decade, Lesley Ann Warren was the wife of producer/hairstylist Jon Peters.