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: Starting out as an assistant animator at the Walt Disney studios, John Dehner went on to work as a professional pianist, Army publicist, and radio journalist. From 1944 until the end of big-time radio in the early '60s, Dehner was one of the busiest and best performers on the airwaves. He guested on such series as Gunsmoke, Suspense, Escape, and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, and starred as British news correspondent J.B. Kendall on Frontier Gentleman (1958) and as Paladin in the radio version of Have Gun Will Travel (1958-1960). On Broadway, he appeared in Bridal Crown and served as director of Alien Summer. In films from 1944, Dehner played character roles ranging from a mad scientist in The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters (1954) to Sheriff Pat Garrett in The Left-Handed Gun (1958) to publisher Henry Luce in The Right Stuff (1983). Though he played the occasional lead, Dehner's cocked-eyebrow imperiousness generally precluded any romantic entanglements; he once commented with pride that, in all his years as an actor, he never won nor kissed the heroine. As busy on TV as elsewhere, Dehner was seen regularly on such series as The Betty White Show (1954), The Westerner (1960), The Roaring '20s (1961), The Baileys of Balboa (1964), The Doris Day Show (1968), The Don Knotts Show (1969), Temperatures Rising (1973-1974), Big Hawaii (1977), Young Maverick (1979-1980), and Enos (1980-1981). He also essayed such TV-movie roles as Dean Acheson in The Missiles of October (1974). Working almost up to the end, John Dehner died of emphysema and diabetes at the age of 76.

Trivia: A professional magazine model at age four, American actress Anne Francis made some 3000 appearances on network radio before she was ten. She was under film contracts to both MGM and 20th Century-Fox as a teenager; in the days of publicity-agent pigeonholing, the actress was dubbed variously as "The Fragile Blonde with the Mona Lisa Smile" and "The Palomino Blonde," labels that she intensely despised. Usually cast in sullen bad-girl or troublemaker roles, Francis suffered from a volcanic private life; throughout these years her one source of comfort was her pet dog Smidgeon, whom she'd named after Walter Pidgeon, her co-star in the science-fiction film classic Forbidden Planet (1956). In 1965, Francis found herself with a more contentious pet, an ocelot named Bruce Biteabit, when she starred in the TV adventure series Honey West, in which she played a glamorous private detective. The series was meant to cash in on the gimmicky James Bond movies of the time (Honey West was a judo expert, had exploding earrings, and a microphone hidden in a martini olive), and like many such imitations, the program was on and off in a single year. Francis' film and TV career continued unabated after that, though a potentially good role in the 1968 movie musical Funny Girl was mostly consigned to the cutting-room floor in order to intensify the spotlight on the film's star, Barbra Streisand. Active in guest star spots into the early '90s, Anne Francis--billing herself in recent years as Anne-Lloyd Francis--enjoyed a brief co-starring turn as Mama Jo on the 1984 action series Riptide.

Trivia: The daughter of actors Gene and Kathleen Lockhart, June Lockhart made her own acting bow at age 8. In 1938, the 12-year-old June appeared in her first film, A Christmas Carol (1938), in which her parents portrayed Mr. and Mrs. Bob Cratchit. Few of her ingenue roles of the 1940s were memorable, though Lockhart did get to play the title character in The She-Wolf of London (1945) (never mind that she turned out not to be a she-wolf by fadeout time). In 1958, Lockhart took over from a recalcitrant Cloris Leachman in the role of rural wife and mother Ruth Martin on the long-running TV series Lassie. Though she professed to despise the role, Lockhart remained with the series until 1964, and over 20 years later satirically reprised the character on an episode of It's Garry Shandling's Show. She went on to play the young matriarch of the "space family Robinson" on the Irwin Allen TV endeavor Lost in Space (1965-68), and portrayed a lady doctor on the last two seasons of the bucolic sitcom Petticoat Junction. In deliberate contrast to her TV image, Lockhart enjoyed a bohemian, kick-up-your-heels offscreen existence. At one juncture, she was fired from her co-hosting chores at the Miss USA pageant when it was revealed that (gasp!) she was living with a man much younger than herself. June Lockhart is the mother of Anne Lockhart, a prolific TV actress in her own right.

Trivia: Actor Joby Baker was at his busiest as a young TV leading man in the early 1960s, making guest appearances in such series as Dr. Kildare and Cain's Hundred. Baker also played comedy relief in Elvis Presley's Girl Happy (1966), and began a long association with Walt Disney Studios, where he appeared in Bullwhip Griffin (1966), Blackbeard's Ghost (1967) and Superdad (1974). In 1968, Baker was topbilled on Good Morning World, a sitcom about a pair of frantic disc jockeys named Lewis and Clark (Ronnie Schell of Gomer Pyle fame was Clark). Then followed over a decade of character roles, culminating with a regular stint as Colonel Marvin on the 1980 series Six O'Clock Follies, an ill-advised sitcom set in Saigon during the Vietnamese war. In addition to his acting credits, Joby Baker was a professional painter of note; several of his abstract works were exhibited in major Los Angeles art galleries.

Trivia: Supporting actress, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: Character actress, onscreen from 1957.