Trivia: The son of Yugoslav immigrants, Karl Malden labored in the steel mills of Gary, Indiana before enrolling in Arkansas State Teachers College. While not a prime candidate for stardom with his oversized nose and bullhorn voice, Malden attended Chicago's Goodman Dramatic School, then moved to New York, where he made his Broadway bow in 1937. Three years later he made his film debut in a microscopic role in They Knew What They Wanted (1940), which also featured another star-to-be, Tom Ewell. While serving in the Army Air Force during World War II, Malden returned to films in the all-serviceman epic Winged Victory (1944), where he was billed as Corporal Karl Malden. This led to a brief contract with 20th Century-Fox -- but not to Hollywood, since Malden's subsequent film appearances were lensed on the east coast. In 1947, Malden created the role of Mitch, the erstwhile beau of Blanche Dubois, in Tennessee Williams' Broadway play A Streetcar Named Desire; he repeated the role in the 1951 film version, winning an Oscar in the process. For much of his film career, Malden has been assigned roles that called for excesses of ham; even his Oscar-nominated performance in On the Waterfront (1954) was decidedly "Armour Star" in concept and execution. In 1957, he directed the Korean War melodrama Time Limit, the only instance in which the forceful and opinionated Malden was officially credited as director. Malden was best known to TV fans of the 1970s as Lieutenant Mike Stone, the no-nonsense protagonist of the longrunning cop series The Streets of San Francisco. Still wearing his familiar Streets hat and overcoat, Malden supplemented his income with a series of ads for American Express. His commercial catchphrases "What will you do?" and "Don't leave home without it!" soon entered the lexicon of TV trivia -- and provided endless fodder for such comedians as Johnny Carson. From 1989-92, Malden served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Trivia: African-American actor Hari Rhodes first came to the widespread attention of televiewers with his portrayal of African native Mike on the TV series Daktari. Though he seldom had as much to do as series star Marshall Thompson, Rhodes developed a fan following during his three-year (1966-69) run with the program. Subsequent TV jobs included such roles as DA William Washburn on the 1969 law-and-order weekly The Protectors; Los Angeles mayor Dan Stoddard on the 1976 cop series Most Wanted; Brima Cesay on the landmark 1977 miniseries Roots; and Presidential retainer Coates on the 1979 "docudrama" Backstairs at the White House. Hari Rhodes died in January of 1992, a few months before the premiere of his final project, the made-for-TV feature Murder without Motive: The Edmund Perry Story.

Trivia: Black lead and supporting actor, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: Made TV debut in 1974 on the ABC crime-drama The Streets of San Francisco. Landed first regular TV series role in 1975 on the CBS comedy The Jeffersons, playing Jenny Willis Jefferson. Starred in Maya Angelou's play On A Southern Journey in 1983.

Trivia: Though Mike Evans was roundly known to 1970s prime-time devotees as Lionel Jefferson, the scion of dry-cleaning entrepreneur George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley) and his wife, Louise (Isabel Sanford), on producer Norman Lear's The Jeffersons (1975-1985), the bulk of his career actually spanned three hit '70s sitcoms, all created by Lear: All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and Good Times. Evans then parlayed his efforts into prime-time miniseries before fading from the limelight in the '80s and '90s.Born Michael Jonas Evans on November 3, 1949, in Salisbury, NC, Evans moved to southern California with his family during childhood, and studied acting at Los Angeles City College after high school. Not long after Evans graduated from LACC (in 1971), the socially conscious mega-producer Lear cast the young man as Lionel Jefferson, the son of bigoted Archie Bunker's next-door neighbors George and Louise Jefferson, in his groundbreaking CBS series All in the Family. The program, of course, became a massive runaway hit during the summer of 1971, and carried its success until the fall of 1983. By 1975, however, Lear decided to "spin off" George and Louise into a series of their own, by having up-and-coming entrepreneur George strike it rich in the dry-cleaning business. The Jeffersons premiered on January 18, 1975, but Lear used Evans as an element to help viewers transition between the two series -- by keeping Lionel on All in the Family for several months (the character moved temporarily into his parents' old house in Queens, and thus stayed next door to Archie Bunker). Evans remained with the series until the fall of 1975, and departed amicably to pursue other interests -- specifically, an assignment co-creating (with Eric Monte) and scripting one of Lear's other sitcoms, Good Times (1974-1979), itself a spin-off of Lear's Maude, which the producer had spun off of Lear's All in the Family. During his absence from The Jeffersons, Evans also appeared as Arnold Simms in the ten-hour ABC miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man (1976). In the interim, Mike Evans was temporarily replaced by another young black actor, Damon Evans (no relation), on the Jeffersons set. Mike Evans returned to The Jeffersons to play Lionel in the autumn of 1979. Over the remainder of the series run, the character of Lionel married Jenny (Berlinda Tolbert), the daughter of a neighboring biracial couple, and a year after Mike Evans returned to the series in 1979, the onscreen couple had a baby daughter. Over time, Lionel and Jenny separated, then divorced, with Evans permanently departing from the series in 1981.The Jeffersons marked Evans' last major television effort, though he appeared briefly in a 2000 episode of Walker, Texas Ranger. During his later years, Evans invested heavily in southern California real estate. He died of throat cancer, at age 57, on December 14, 2006.