Trivia: Trivia buffs and diehard fans of Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront will know that the non-speaking cab driver in the film's famed 'taxicab scene between Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger was noted character actor Nehemiah Persoff. An American resident from age 9, the Jerusalem-born Persoff spent his early adulthood working for the New York subway system. Asked in later years why he chose acting as a profession, Persoff would comment that the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe compelled him to prove himself worthy of his "gift of life." On stage in community and non-professional productions from 1940, he studied with Stella Adler at the Actor's Studio before graduating to Broadway. His first film appearance, in 1948, was in the Manhattan-based The Naked City. After attaining prominence in the mid-1950s, Persoff alternated between villainy and sympathetic roles, utilizing his ear for dialects to depict a wide array of nationalities. He was often cast as a gangster, both serious (Johnny Torrio in the 1959 feature Capone, Jake Guzik on the TV series The Untouchables) and satiric (Little Bonaparte in 1959's Some Like It Hot). His credits in the 1980s included Stalin in the 1980 TV movie FDR: The Last Year, Barbra Streisand's father in Yentl (1983), and the robust voice of Papa Mousekewitz in the 1986 animated feature An American Tail.

Trivia: Best known as the loose-limbed klutz Jack Tripper from the hit ABC sitcom Three's Company, John Ritter also had a long (if undistinguished) film career, dating back to the early '70s. Perhaps taking a cue from Robin Williams, Ritter fashioned a full beard when he put his slapstick days behind him, remaking himself as a serious dramatic actor both on television and in the movies in the 1990s. Ritter was born in Burbank, CA, on September 17, 1948, the second son of Western singing stars Tex Ritter and Dorothy Fay, whose talent for song he once admitted he did not inherit. Ritter was class body president at Hollywood High School before enrolling at the University of Southern California, where he majored in psychology and minored in architecture. In his third year, he decided to take a drama class taught by Nina Foch, and quickly changed his major, graduating in 1971. (He later studied with Stella Adler and the Harvey Lembeck Comedy Workshop.) His first film role was in the 1971 film The Barefoot Executive.Minor roles during the 1970s finally gave way to major success in 1977, when Ritter was cast as the pratfalling roommate of two beautiful Southern Californian women on Three's Company. The program became one of the most popular on the air, known for its farcical scenarios based on wild misunderstandings, some of which were fueled by Ritter's Jack Tripper pretending to be gay to throw off the landlord. Ritter was praised for his sharp timing and rubbery ability to bounce around the set through all variety of physical comedy. His work earned him an Emmy. Having become a major television star, Ritter enjoyed the program's success through 1985, when its spin-off (Three's a Crowd) went off the air. He worked on TV movies during the show's run, and found more TV work awaiting him upon its conclusion (the dramedy Hooperman in 1988, the comedy Hearts Afire in 1992). His familiar mug and goofball shtick earned him leads in a handful of lesser film comedies in the late '80s and early '90s, including Real Men (1987), Skin Deep (1988), Stay Tuned (1992), and two Problem Child films (1990 and 1991), on the set of which he met future wife Amy Yasbeck.Not satisfied with his comic pigeonholing, Ritter took well-received strides toward drama in the 1990s. He made a lasting impression on critics as a gay dollar-store owner in Billy Bob Thornton's Sling Blade (1996), as well as a psychiatrist treating a hitman in Henry Bromell's Panic (2000). Ritter has also made recurring guest appearances on the hit television programs Ally McBeal and Felicity, the latter of which cast him in the agonizing role of a frequently relapsing alcoholic father. In 2002 Ritter returned to television in his own new comedy series, 8 Simple Rules for Dating my Teenage Daughter. Though the show proved a modest success, Ritter's sudden death due to aortic dissection in early September of 2003 left castmates and fans alike shocked and deeply saddened.

Trivia: Brooklyn-born actor John Joseph Patrick Ryan borrowed his stage name "Jack Lord" from a distant relative. Spending his immediate post-college years as a seafaring man, Lord worked as an engineer in Persia before returning to American shores to manage a Greenwich Village art school and paint original work; he flourished within that sphere (often signing his paintings "John J. Ryan,") and in fact exhibited the tableaux at an array of prestigious institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Modern Museum of Art. Lord switched to acting in the late 1940s, studying under Sanford Meisner at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. In films and television from 1949, Lord (a performer with stark features including deep-set eyes and high cheekbones) played his share of brutish villains and working stiffs before gaining TV fame as star of the critically acclaimed but low-rated rodeo series Stoney Burke (1962). At around the same time, Lord played CIA agent Felix Leiter in the first James Bond film, Dr. No. From 1968 through 1980, Lord starred on the weekly cop drama Hawaii Five-O; producers cast him as Steve McGarrett, a troubleshooter with the Hawaii State Police who spent his days cruising around the islands, cracking open individual cases, and taking on the movers and shakers in Hawaiian organized crime, particularly gangster Wo Fat (Khigh Dhiegh), who eluded capture until the program's final month on the air. Lord also wrote and directed several episodes. After Hawaii 5-0 folded, Jack Lord attempted another Hawaii-based TV series, but M Station: Hawaii (1980) never got any farther than a pilot film. Lord died of congestive heart failure in his Honolulu beachfront home at the age of 77, in January 1998. He was married to Marie Denarde for 50 years.

Trivia: American actor James MacArthur was the adopted son of stage legend Helen Hayes and playwright Charles MacArthur. Despite his mother's insistence that James have a normal childhood, it was difficult not to be intoxicated by the theatre when growing up around the greatest acting and literary talent in the '40s. At age 8, young MacArthur appeared in a stock-company production of The Corn is Green. Fresh out of Harvard, MacArthur became a movie juvenile, specializing in tortured-teen roles in such films as The Young Stranger (1957) and Disney's Light in the Forest (1958). Outgrowing his somewhat charming awkwardness, MacArthur was less satisfying as a standard leading man, and by 1967 he was wasting away in pictures like The Love Ins. That same year, the pilot film for a new Jack Lord cop series, Hawaii Five-O, was screened for a test audience. The group liked the film but not the young man (Tim O'Kelly) who played Lord's assistant, deeming him too young for the part. Hawaii producer Leonard Freeman then called upon 30-year-old MacArthur, with whom Freeman had worked on the Clint Eastwood vehicle Hang 'Em High. From 1968 through 1979, MacArthur played Hawaii Five-0's detective Danny Williams, always handy whenever Jack Lord felt the need to snap "Book 'em, Danno." Though the series enriched MacArthur and made him a vital member of the Honolulu society and business world, the actor finally packed it in after 11 seasons, when it seemed as though he'd be Danno forever (the show continued for one more season). Too wealthy to care about a career at this point, James MacArthur still took an occasional role into the '80s; his most prominent post-Hawaii assignment was the 1980 TV movie Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story, in which he played a rare non-sympathetic character. MacArthur died in October 2010 of natural causes at age 72.

Trivia: Kam Fong was an actor who was best known to millions of television viewers for his portrayal of Sgt. Chin Ho Kelly on the first 10 seasons of the series Hawaii Five-O. He came from a place far away from acting, however, though very much a part of the series' later setting. Born Kam Tong Chun in Honolulu in 1918, he grew up in dire poverty, owing to a split in his family -- over his father's extramarital affair -- that led to his father's exile from the family business. His mother supported the family, in part, by making bootleg whiskey, and he spent a part of his childhood hiding her product from the police. He graduated from President William McKinley High School in 1938 and later found work as a boilermaker at the Pearl Harbor shipyard, where he witnessed the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base on December 7, 1941. He continued as a civilian defense worker through the war. In January 1944, he lost his first wife, Esther, and children Marilyn and Donald in a freak accident when two B-24 bombers collided over Honolulu and incinerated their home. He tried to drink himself to death and, failing that, came within seconds of shooting himself, until his mother interceded. In 1946, he joined the Honolulu Police Department, and later admitted that initially he hoped to be killed in the line of duty. He got his life back together over the next few years, and remarried in 1949, and had four children. He served on the police force for 16 years before retiring, and after that sold real estate, worked as a disc jockey, and started to dabble in local theater work. His name change, from Kam Tong Chun to Kam Fong Chun, initially came about when he was a young boy when a teacher misunderstood his real name.In 1966, when pre-production began on the pilot episode for Hawaii Five-O, the call went out for anyone in the island state with acting experience. At the time, Hawaii had no film facilities or movie industry, and barely any acting community, and Fong's community theater work was relevant, although he wasn't inclined to do anything about the opportunity. It was his real estate partner who signed him up for an audition without his knowledge and persuaded him to go. As soon as producer Leonard Freeman and the rest of the production crew saw him read, and then discovered he was a 16-year veteran of the Honolulu Police Department, the role of Chin Ho was his. The only request that the CBS network made was that he shorten his name, which was how he became Kam Fong. Over his 10 seasons on the series, Fong was one of the most popular members of the cast, with the public as well as his fellow actors. Audiences responded to the personal qualities that he brought to the role, particularly his serious yet gentle demeanor; and also to the verisimilitude his presence gave the series. Accounts say his technical expertise behind the scenes, and the tweaking of the scripts he helped provide, was almost as valuable as his acting. Fong was a mainstay of the cast across 10 years. By 1978, however, the now nearly 60-year-old Fong had decided to give up the grind of weekly series work. He also felt he and the writers had gone as far as they could with the Chin Ho Kelly character, who was killed off in the final episode of the season. He subsequently returned to acting in two episodes of Magnum P.I., another series shot in Hawaii, and made a run for governor of Hawaii at the end of the 1980s. In 1997, when Stephen J. Cannell tried to revive Hawaii Five-O, he got several ex-cast members back to reprise their roles, including Fong (the producer was apparently unaware that Fong's Chin Ho Kelly had been killed off in season 10, a fact that was only recalled after shooting was concluded, far too late to rewrite or re-edit his part, and the character was left in). Fong, a long-time smoker (who reportedly wanted to be buried with a cigar and three packs of cigarettes), died of lung cancer in 2002. His son Danny Chun is also an actor.