Trivia: The son of actor Robert Alda, Alan Alda grew up around vaudeville and burlesque comedians, soaking up as many jokes and routines as was humanly possible. Robert Alda hoped that his son would become a doctor, but the boy's urge to perform won out. After graduating from Fordham University, Alda first acted at the Cleveland Playhouse, and then put his computer-like retention of comedy bits to good use as an improvisational performer with Chicago's Second City and an ensemble player on the satirical TV weekly That Was the Week That Was. Alda's first film was Gone Are the Days in 1963, adapted from the Ossie Davis play in which Alda had appeared on Broadway. (Among the actor's many subsequent stage credits were the original productions of The Apple Tree and The Owl and the Pussycat.) Most of Alda's films were critical successes but financial disappointments. He portrayed George Plimpton in the 1968 adaptation of the writer's bestseller Paper Lion and was a crazed Vietnam vet in the 1972 movie To Kill a Clown. Alda's signature role was the wisecracking Army surgeon Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H, which ran from 1972 through 1983. Intensely pacifistic, the series adhered to Alda's own attitudes towards warfare. (He'd once been an ROTC member in college, but became physically ill at the notion of learning how to kill.) During his M*A*S*H years, Alda also began auxiliary careers as a director and scriptwriter, winning numerous Emmy awards in the process. He also developed a separate sitcom, 1974's We'll Get By. In 1978, Alda took advantage of an unusually lengthy production break in M*A*S*H to star in three films: California Suite, Same Time, Next Year, and The Seduction of Joe Tynan. He made his theatrical-movie directorial debut in 1981 with The Four Seasons, a semiserious exploration of modern romantic gamesmanship; it would prove to be his most successful film as a director, with subsequent efforts like Sweet Liberty (1986) and Betsy's Wedding (1989) no where close. Long associated with major political and social causes and well-known both offscreen and on as a man of heightened sensitivity, Alda has occasionally delighted in going against the grain of his carefully cultivated image with nasty, spiteful characterizations, most notably in Woody Allen'sCrimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and as death row inmate Caryl Chessman in the 1977 TV movie Kill Me if You Can. Alda later continued to make his mark on audiences with his more accustomed nice-guy portrayals in films such as Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), Everyone Says I Love You (1996), Flirting With Disaster (1996), and The Object of My Affection (1998).The next several years saw Alda show up in a handful of supporting roles, but in 2004, he had his biggest year in more than a decade. First, he appeared opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorcese's critically-acclaimed Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator. Playing Senator Ralph Owen Brewster, Alda would go on to receive a Best Supporting Actor Oscar-nomination, the first nod from the Academy in his long and impressive career. Meanwhile, on the small-screen, Alda played presidential-hopeful Arnold Vinick on NBC's political drama The West Wing, another Senator and his first regular series role since M*A*S*H. He would also enjoy recurring roles on 30 Rock and The Big C, and would continue to flex his comedy muscles in movies like Tower Heist and Wanderlust.

Trivia: The daughter of Polish immigrants, Loretta Swit first performed before an audience at age 7, playing "The Snow Queen" in a dance recital in her home town of Passaic, NJ. Despite her mother's strenuous objections, Swit decided to make the theatre her life; she studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, then spent several years with the Gene Frankel Repertory Company. Admonished by casting agents to alter both her "unsaleable" name and her tad-too-large nose, she ignored this advice and persevered as a young character actress. Her first tangible success was in a Las Vegas production of Mame, in which she played the mousy housekeeper/stenographer Agnes Gooch opposite Susan Hayward's Auntie Mame. Arriving in Hollywood in 1970, Swit quickly garnered critical attention--and the effusive praise of her coworkers--for her offbeat guest-star characterizations in such series as Gunsmoke, Mission: Impossible and Mannix. Upon learning that a TV version of the film hit M*A*S*H was in the works in early 1972, Swit energetically campaigned for the role of Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan--even though she'd sat through the original 1970 film with her eyes closed because she hated the sight of blood. Swit remained with M*A*S*H until its cancellation in 1983, winning two Emmy Awards along the way. During the series' occasional production layoffs, she starred in a number of made-for-TV movies, including the pilot episode of Cagney and Lacey (1981). In the decade since M*A*S*H's demise, Swit has been busier with her various political and social causes than with her acting career. Often as not, she chose the stage over TV or films during these years; in 1990, she won the Sarah Siddons award for her performance in the Chicago production of Shirley Valentine. A staunch animal-rights advocate, Loretta Swit was host of the 1992 cable-TV documentary series Those Incredible Animals (1992). In 1998 she appeared in the sex comedy Boardheads.

Trivia: Born February 6, 1939 in Minnesota, Mike Farrell was two years old when his family moved to LA; his father, a carpenter, had just gotten a lucrative movie-studio job. Exposed to showbiz from an early age, Farrell began acting in high school plays, hoping to pursue the theatre as a career. He was forced to put his thespic urges on the back burner during his hitch with the U.S. Marines, but upon being discharged he attended drama courses at Los Angeles City College and UCLA, and also studied at the Jeff Corey Workshop. He made his professional debut in a 1961 stage production of Rain, then spent several years playing bits in such films as Captain Newman MD (1963), The Graduate (1967) and Targets (1968). His first real break came in 1968, when he was cast as architect Scott Banning on the NBC daytime drama Days of Our Lives. Two years later, he put his John Hancock on a contract with Universal, playing supporting roles in such prime-times series as The Interns (1969) and Man and the City (1971).Unhappy with the type of roles offered him by his studio, Farrell asked for and received his release in 1975 when the opportunity came to audition for the popular sitcom M*A*S*H. Wayne Rogers had just left that top-rated series, leaving an opening in the category of "Hawkeye's Best Friend." Farrell read for the assignment, hit it off immediately with M*A*S*H leading-man Alan Alda (something Rogers had never been able to do), and was cast as wise-cracking army surgeon B. J. Hunnicutt, a role he'd fill until the series' final episode in 1983. Like Alda, Farrell directed several M*A*S*H episodes; also like Alda, he was a dedicated political and social activist, devoted to such causes as gay rights and prevention of child and spousal abuse. Since M*A*S*H's demise, Farrell has chosen to cut down on his acting appearances, preferring to direct; in addition to his series-TV work as director, he has also helmed the 1988 TV movie Run Till You Fall. In 1988, he co-produced the critically acclaimed theatrical feature Dominick and Eugene with Marvin Minoff , and reunited with Minoff to co-produce the 1998 drama Patch Adams. Though Farrell has guest starred in a number of television shows throughout the 1980s, 90s and 2000s (among them include Murder, She Wrote, Justice League, Matlock, and Desparate Housewives), his most significant television role since M.A.S.H was perhaps that of veterinarian Jim Hansen, whom he portrayed in the NBC drama Providence (1999 - 2002).

Trivia: One of the most prolific actors in television history -- with starring roles in 11 different television series under his belt -- Harry Morgan is most closely identified with his portrayal of Colonel Sherman Potter on M*A*S*H (1975-83). But his credits go back to the 1930s, embracing theater and film as well as the small screen. Born Harry Bratsberg in Detroit, Michigan, in 1915, he made his Broadway debut with the Group Theatre in 1937 as Pepper White in the original production of Golden Boy, alongside Luther Adler, Phoebe Brand, Howard Da Silva, Lee J. Cobb, Morris Carnovsky, Frances Farmer, Elia Kazan, John Garfield, Martin Ritt, and Roman Bohnen. His subsequence stage appearances between 1939 and 1941 comprised a string of failures -- most notably Clifford Odets' Night Music, directed by Harold Clurman; and Robert Ardrey's Thunder Rock, directed by Elia Kazan -- before he turned to film work. Changing his name to Henry Morgan, he appeared in small roles in The Shores of Tripoli, The Loves of Edgar Allen Poe, and Orchestra Wives, all from 1942. Over the next two years, he essayed supporting roles in everything from war movies to Westerns, where he showed an ability to dominate the screen with his voice and his eyes. Speaking softly, Morgan could quietly command a scene, even working alongside Henry Fonda in the most important of those early pictures, The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). Over the years following World War II, Morgan played ever-larger roles marked by their deceptive intensity. And even when he couldn't use his voice in a role, such as that of the mute and sinister Bill Womack in The Big Clock (1948), he was still able to make his presence felt in every one of his scenes with his eyes and his body movements. He was in a lot of important pictures during this period, including major studio productions such as All My Sons (1948), Down to the Sea in Ships (1949), and Madame Bovary (1949). He also appeared in independent films, most notably The Well (1951) and High Noon (1952). One of the more important of those roles was his portrayal of a professional killer in Appointment With Danger (1951), in which he worked alongside fellow actor Jack Webb for the first time. Morgan also passed through the stock company of director Anthony Mann, working in a brace of notable outdoor pictures across the 1950s. It was during the mid-1950s, as he began making regular appearances on television, that he was obliged to change his professional name to Harry Morgan (and, sometimes, Henry "Harry" Morgan), owing to confusion with another performer named Henry Morgan, who had already established himself on the small screen and done some movie acting as well. And it was at this time that Morgan, now billed as Harry Morgan, got his first successful television series, December Bride, which ran for five seasons and yielded a spin-off, Pete and Gladys. Morgan continued to appear in movies, increasingly in wry, comedic roles, most notably Support Your Local Sheriff (1969), but it was the small screen where his activity was concentrated throughout the 1960s.In 1966, Jack Webb, who had become an actor, director, and producer over the previous 15 years, decided to revive the series Dragnet and brought Morgan aboard to play the partner of Webb's Sgt. Joe Friday. As Officer Bill Gannon, Morgan provided a wonderful foil for the deadpan, no-nonsense Friday, emphasizing the natural flair for comic eccentricity that Morgan had shown across the previous 25 years. The series ran for four seasons, and Morgan reprised the role in the 1987 Dragnet feature film. He remained a busy actor going into the 1970s, when true stardom beckoned unexpectedly. In 1974, word got out that McLean Stevenson was planning on leaving the successful series M*A*S*H, and the producers were in the market for a replacement in the role of the military hospital's commanding officer. Morgan did a one-shot appearance as a comically deranged commanding general and earned the spot as Stevenson's replacement. Morgan worked periodically in the two decades following the series' cancellation in 1983, before retiring after 1999. He died in 2011 at age 96.

Trivia: American actor Gary Burghoff was the son of a Connecticut clockworks executive and a professional dancer. Under the aegis of his mother (the dancer), Burghoff studied tap dancing from age 5; he also trained himself to be a professional drummer, despite the fact that he'd been born with three deformed fingers on his left hand. Turning to acting, Burghoff found that his high piping voice and his 5'6" frame consigned him to child and teenager roles - which became a blessing when he was cast in the title role of the off-broadway musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown in 1967. Director Robert Altman cast Burghoff as Cpl. "Radar" O'Reilly in his antiwar comedy M*A*S*H (1970); the name Radar was derived from the character's uncanny ability to anticipate what people were going to say and to sense when the "choppers" were bringing incoming wounded into the "Mobile Army Surgical Hospital" of the film's acronymic title. When M*A*S*H was converted into a TV situation comedy in 1972, Burghoff was the only member of the original movie cast to be signed for the series (It was not his first TV stint; he'd been a regular on 1970's Don Knotts Show). The actor played company clerk Radar from 1972 through 1979, winning an Emmy in the process and endearing himself to millions of fans. Not all his costars found Burghoff as lovable as Radar; he could be somewhat bullheaded on the set, especially when he felt that others weren't working to their fullest capacity. Except for occasional guest-star appearances - including an inevitable spot on Murder She Wrote, that settlement house of former sitcom stars - Burghoff hasn't worked much since M*A*S*H. This inactivity was by choice, in that Burghoff preferred to devote his time to his numerous pro-ecology and Animal Rights causes. In the late 1980s, Gary Burghoff was reunited with several of his M*A*S*H costars in a series of elaborately produced IBM television commercials. He would go on to make a smattering of apperances on TV, on shows like The Love Boat and Fantasy Island.

Trivia: Larry Linville is best known for playing weasel-like Major Frank Burns on the esteemed, long-running series M*A*S*H*. He began his career as a supporting actor in the pilot for the television series Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969) and made his feature-film debut in Jack Lemmon's Kotch (1971). Linville left M*A*S*H in 1977 after appearing on it for five years. Since then he appeared in low-budget films such as Rock and Roll High School Forever (1990) and Body Waves (1991). Linville also continued working on television in series such as Grandpa Goes to Washington (1978-1979) and Herbie the Love Bug (1982) and as a guest star in other series. Linville's stage appearances included a Broadway stint in Travels With My Aunt, though in the '90s, he was more likely to appear in dinner theater.

Trivia: American actor Jamie Farr was the only son of a Lebanese butcher living in Toledo, Ohio. An easy target for bullies due to his short stature and large nose, Farr became the neighborhood clown to save himself from physical abuse. Humor gave him confidence, and by the time Farr graduated from high school he was a top student, extremely popular and active in numerous extra-curricular activities. Always a big movie fan, Farr harbored dreams of being an actor, and to that end studied at the Pasadena Playhouse. In 1955, Farr was cast in his first film (still billed under his own name, Jameel Farrah), The Blackboard Jungle, playing a redeemable hoodlum named Santini; shortly thereafter, he was cast in the Broadway production of No Time for Sergeants, just before he was drafted. The two years in the Army upset the momentum of Farr's career, and he found himself from 1958 through 1971 rebuilding himself from the ground up in bits and supporting roles. (Farr was not in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians during this period, as has often been reported; the cast of that turkey included a Broadway actor named Al Nesor, who bore a startling resemblance to Farr and played many of the same type roles). One of Farr's one-day bits was for the sixth episode of the new TV series M*A*S*H in 1972; Farr had the almost wordless role of a GI who dressed in women's clothing in hopes of getting out of the Army. The character of "Corporal Klinger" was meant to be a onetime joke, but the producers of M*A*S*H sensed possibilities in the character. By Season Two of M*A*S*H, Farr became a full supporting character; by Season Three he was being given co-starring billing in the series' opening credits sequence. After misguidingly "camping" the character in the earliest rehearsals, Farr played Klinger "straight" in every sense of the word: Neither gay nor transvestite, Klinger was simply a guy who'd go to great extremes to get out of military service. Gradually the character began to become fashion conscious, and before the eighties were over Klinger was making several fashion lists as one of the best-dressed characters on TV! Farr's role was expanded when Gary Burghoff left M*A*S*H in 1979; promoted to company clerk, Klinger began to thrive in the military, and the outrageous costuming was allowed to lapse. By the time M*A*S*H left the air, Klinger had taken a Korean wife, and Jamie Farr had become a true-blue celebrity. Unfortunately neither Farr nor Klinger were able to extend their audience appeal into the sequel series After M*A*S*H, not even when the scripts contrived to have Klinger become a fugitive from justice in a move to repeat his "outsider" status on M*A*S*H. Nonetheless, Jamie Farr has kept busy in the years following the cancellation of After M*A*S*H in 1984 with TV guest spots and stage appearances in such roles as Ali Hakim in Oklahoma and Evil Eye Fleegle in Li'l Abner. Farr would continue to appear regularly on screen in the years to come, appearing in movies like Scrooged, and on TV shows like Diagnosis Murder and Mad About You.

Trivia: After majoring in history at Columbia University, brawny Brian Dennehy (born July 9, 1938) took a string of odd jobs to pay his way through Yale Drama School, and to afford private acting lessons. His first professional break came with the Broadway production Streamers. In films and TV from 1977, Dennehy is a most versatile actor, at home playing Western baddies (Silverado), ulcerated big-city cops (F/X), serial killers (John Wayne Gacy in the made-for-TV To Catch a Killer), by-the-book military types (General Groves in Day One, another TV movie), and vacillating politicos (Presumed Innocent). One of his most rewarding film assignments was as dying architectural genius Stourley Kracklite in Peter Greenaway's The Belly of an Architect (1987).In addition to his many TV-movie roles (one of which, good-old-boy Chuck Munson in 1993's Foreign Affairs, won him a Cable Ace Award), Dennehy has starred in the weekly series Big Shamus, Little Shamus (1977), Star of the Family (1981), and Birdland (1994), as well as the sporadically produced Jack Reed feature-length mysteries. It was in one of the last-mentioned projects, Jack Reed: A Search for Justice (1994), that Dennehy made his directorial debut. Aside from his work in film and television, Dennehy has also had considerable success on the stage, particularly with his Tony-winning portrayal of Willy Loman in the 1998 Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman.The actor continued to show his range in the 1995 comedy Tommy Boy (starring David Spade and the late comedian Chris Farley), in which he became well known for his role as Big Tom Callahan, and for a voice role in Ratatouille (2007) as Django, the father of rat and aspiring chef Remy.Dennehy joined Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino in Righteous Kill, a 2008 police drama, and worked alongisde Russell Crowe in the 2010 suspense film The Next Three Days. In 2011, Dennehy played the pivotal role of Clarence Darrow in Alleged, a romantic drama set during the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial.

Trivia: Soft-spoken, blond supporting actor William Christopher is best remembered for portraying mild-mannered Father Mulcahy on the classic television comedy M*A*S*H (1972-1983), but his career began back in the mid-1960s, with guest spots on shows like The Patty Duke Show and The Andy Griffith Show. In 1983, he reprised the role of Mulcahy in the short-lived sitcom After M*A*S*H (1983-1984). Between 1996 and 1997, he and former M*A*S*H castmate Jamie Farr headlined a touring production of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple. He had a recurring role on Days of Our Lives in 2012, once again playing a priest. Christopher died in 2016, at age 84.