Trivia: Born Leonard Rosenberg, Randall moved to New York at age 19 and studied theater with Sanford Meisner and at the Neighborhood Playhouse. His stage debut was in The Circle of Chalk (1941). From 1942-46 he served with the U.S. Army, following which he acted on radio and TV. He began appearing onscreen in 1957 and was a fairly busy film actor through the mid '60s. He is best known for his work on TV, particularly for his portrayal of fastidious Felix Unger on the sitcom "The Odd Couple." He also starred or costarred in the series "One Man's Family," "Mr. Peepers," "The Tony Randall Show," and "Love, Sidney." He frequently appears on TV talk shows, where he is witty, erudite, and urbane. In 1991 he created the National Actors Theater, a repertory company; its purpose is to bring star-filled classic plays to broad-based audiences at low prices.

Trivia: Born Vera Jane Palmer, Jayne Mansfield was the daughter of a lawyer who died when Mansfield was six, at which time her mother moved the family from Pennsylvania to Dallas. While attending Southern Methodist University, the 16-year-old Palmer married student Paul James Mansfield. Lacking the funds for day-care service, Jayne attended acting classes in Los Angeles with her infant daughter strapped on her back like a papoose. After briefly working as a candy vendor in an L.A. theater, Mansfield caught the eye of a TV producer. It was difficult for Mansfield, whose measurements were 40-21-35, not to gain attention in her subsequent TV and film works. More famous as a cheesecake model than an actress, by 1955 Mansfield first gained critical plaudits for her classic performance as a Monroe-like movie starlet in George Axelrod's Broadway play Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter. This role won her a contract at 20th Century Fox, where she fell within the sphere of comedy director Frank Tashlin, who regarded Mansfield as a "living cartoon" and directed her accordingly in the film version of Rock Hunter and in 1956's The Girl Can't Help It. Despite good dramatic performances in such films as The Wayward Bus (1957), Kiss Them for Me (1957), and The Burglar (1957), Mansfield was forever typed as a parody Marilyn Monroe. When not acting, the publicity-hungry Mansfield aggressively sought out any press agent or photo op that was handy, as did her second husband, muscleman Mickey Hargitay, to whom she was married from 1958 through 1963 (their daughter, Mariska Hargitay, became a busy actress in her own right). Mansfield's third husband, Matt Cimber, became her agent, and guided her through a series of increasingly tawdry projects like Promises, Promises (1963), wherein Mansfield became the first major actress to appear nude onscreen. Her later career dwindled into cheap European films, slapped-together American quickies like Single Room Furnished (1965), and plenty of nightclub and summer-theater work. While driving to a club engagement in New Orleans, 34-year-old Jayne Mansfield was killed (but not decapitated, contrary to popular belief) in an automobile accident.

Trivia: Former model and stage actress Betsy Drake came to films when she married actor Cary Grant. The newlywed couple co-starred on screen in Every Girl Should Be Married (1948) and Room for One More (1952), and on radio in a sitcom based on Grant's film hit Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948). After a long absence from films, Betsy appeared with Jayne Mansfield in Will Success Spoil Hunter? (1957). Following her divorce from Grant in 1962, she showed up in only one more film, Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion (1965). In 1971, Betsy Drake authored a book based on her experience with a UCLA psychotherapy project. She died in 2015, at age 92.

Trivia: A lovable star with a vivacious personality, mesmerizing smile, and big blue eyes, Joan Blondell, the daughter of stage comic Eddie Blondell (one of the original Katzenjammer Kids), spent her childhood touring the world with her vaudevillian parents and appearing with them in shows. She joined a stock company at age 17, then came to New York after winning a Miss Dallas beauty contest. She then appeared in several Broadway productions and in the Ziegfield Follies before being paired with another unknown, actor James Cagney, in the stage musical Penny Arcade; a year later this became the film Sinners Holiday, propelling her to stardom. Blondell spent eight years under contract with Warner Bros., where she was cast as dizzy blondes and wisecracking gold-diggers. She generally appeared in comedies and musicals and was paired ten times on the screen with actor Dick Powell, to whom she was married from 1936-45. Through the '30s and '40s she continued to play cynical, wisecracking girls with hearts of gold appearing in as many as ten films a year during the '30s. In the '50s she left films for the stage, but then came back to do more mature character parts. Blondell is the author of a roman a clef novel titled Center Door Fancy (1972) and was also married to producer Mike Todd (1947-50).

Trivia: British actor John Williams is noted for his suave, perfectly-mannered characters. He is best remembered for his portrayal as Inspector Hubbard on the stage, screen and television versions of Dial M for Murder. Born in Chalfon St. Giles, England, Williams began his career on the stage at 13. By the age of 21, he was playing leads and sophisticated characters in Broadway plays. Beginning in the mid '30s, he began appearing in British films. By the '40s he was playing in Hollywood productions; he continued in film until the late '70s.

Trivia: Starting out in musicals and comedies, leather-lunged character actor Henry Jones had developed into a versatile dramatic actor by the 1950s, though he never abandoned his willingness to make people laugh. Jones scored his first cinematic bullseye when he re-created his Broadway role as the malevolent handyman Leroy in the 1956 cinemadaptation of Maxwell Anderson's The Bad Seed (1956). Refusing to be typed, Jones followed this triumph with a brace of quietly comic roles in Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It (1956) and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter. He returned to Broadway in 1958, winning the Tony and New York Drama Critics' awards for his performance in Sunrise at Campobello. Since that time, Jones has flourished in films, often making big impressions in the tiniest of roles: the coroner in Vertigo (1958), the bicycle salesman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), the hotel night clerk in Dick Tracy (1990) and so on. From 1963's Channing onward, Jones has been a regular on several weekly TV series, most notably as Judge Jonathan Dexter in Phyllis (1975-76) and B. Riley Wicker on the nighttime serial Falcon Crest (1985-86). Henry Jones is the father of actress Jocelyn Jones.

Trivia: Though best remembered today as the spouse of Jayne Mansfield, Hungarian-born bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay also enjoyed a career as an actor both in the United States and Europe during the late '60s and early '70s. Born Miklos Hargitay in 1926, he left his native Budapest after World War II and emigrated to the United States, where he performed as an adagio dancer and also owned his own construction business. He became interested in professional bodybuilding in the mid-'50s, and eventually won the Mr. Universe title in 1955. He then joined Mae West's stage show, where he met and fell in love with Mansfield. The pair was married in 1957, the same year that Hargitay made his motion-picture debut in Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. He would co-star with Mansfield three times -- in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1958), The Loves of Hercules (1960) (in which he played the title role), and in Promises! Promises! -- before the couple divorced in 1964. Hargitay's subsequent roles were primarily in Italian productions; the most notable of these was 1965's Bloody Pit of Horror, in which he played a crazed nobleman possessed by the sadistic spirit of his ancestor. Hargitay also appeared in several Italian Westerns and spy films before wrapping up his acting career in a trio of horror films -- Lady Frankenstein (1971), the perverse The Reincarnation of Isabel, and Delirium (both 1972). Hargitay remarried in 1973 and found a second fortune in real estate. Hargitay later became the president of Graphic Muscle, an internet site devoted to bodybuilding, and the proud father of five children, one of whom, Mariska Hargitay, achieved her own success in Hollywood.

Trivia: Although Groucho Marx was the third-oldest son of "stage mama" Minnie Marx, he was the first to take the plunge into show business. With his mother's blessing, the 14-year-old Marx took a job as a boy soprano with a group called the LeRoy Trio. This first engagement was nearly his last when, while on tour, he was stranded in Colorado and had to work his way back home. Marx was willing to chuck the theater and pursue his dream of becoming a doctor, but the undaunted Minnie organized Groucho, his younger brother Gummo, and a less than talented girl named Mabel O'Donnell into a vaudeville act called The Three Nightingales. Before long, Groucho's older brothers Chico and Harpo joined the act, which, by 1910, had metamorphosed into The Six Mascots (Minnie and the boy's Aunt Hannah rounded out the sextet). Fed up with indifferent audiences, Groucho began throwing jokes and insults into the act, directly addressing the crowd in as hilariously nasty a manner as possible. The audience loved it, and the four Marx Brothers eventually became a comedy team. Through the many incarnations of their vaudeville act, the characters remained the same: Groucho, the mustached, cigar-chomping leader of the foursome, alternately dispensing humorous invectives and acting as exasperated straight man for his brothers' antics; Chico, the monumentally stupid, pun-happy Italian; Harpo, the non-speaking, whirling dervish; and Gummo (later replaced by Zeppo), the hopelessly lost straight man. During the run of their vaudeville sketch Home Again, Groucho was unable to find his prop mustache and rapidly painted one on with greasepaint -- which is how he would appear with his brothers ever afterward, despite efforts by certain film directors to make his hirsute adornment look realistic. After managing to offend several powerful vaudeville magnates, the Marx Brothers accepted work with a Broadway-bound "tab" show, I'll Say She Is. The play scored a surprise hit when it opened in 1924, and the brothers became the toast of Broadway. They followed this success with 1925's The Cocoanuts, in which playwrights George Kaufman and Morris Ryskind refined Groucho's character into the combination con man/perpetual wisecracker that he would portray until the team dissolved. The Cocoanuts was also the first time Groucho appeared with his future perennial foil and straight woman Margaret Dumont. Animal Crackers, which opened in 1928, cast Groucho as fraudulent African explorer Capt. Geoffrey T. Spaulding, and introduced his lifelong signature tune, the Bert Kalmar/Harry Ruby classic "Hooray for Captain Spaulding." Both Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers were made into early talkies, prompting Paramount to invite the Brothers to Hollywood for a group of comedies written specifically for the screen. Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932), and Duck Soup (1933) are now acknowledged classics, but box-office receipts dropped off with each successive feature, and, by 1934, the Marx Brothers were considered washed up in Hollywood. Groucho was only mildly put out; professional inactivity gave him time to commiserate with the writers and novelists who comprised his circle of friends. He always considered himself a writer first and comedian second, and, over the years, published several witty books and articles. (He was gratified in the '60s when his letters to and from friends were installed in the Library of Congress -- quite an accomplishment for a man who never finished grade school.) The Marx Brothers were given a second chance in movies by MGM producer Irving Thalberg, who lavished a great deal of time, money, and energy on what many consider the team's best film, A Night at the Opera (1935). The normally iconoclastic Groucho remained an admirer of Thalberg for the rest of his life, noting that he lost all interest in filmmaking after the producer died in 1936. The Marx Brothers continued making films until 1941, principally to bail out the eternally broke Chico. Retired again from films in 1941, Groucho kept busy with occasional radio guest star appearances and a stint with the Hollywood Victory Caravan. Despite his seeming insouciance, Groucho loved performing and was disheartened that none of his radio series in the mid-'40s were successful. (Nor was the Marx Brothers' 1946 comeback film A Night in Casablanca.) When producer/writer John Guedel approached him in 1947 to host a radio quiz show called You Bet Your Life, Groucho initially refused, not wanting another failure on his resume. But he accepted the job when assured that, instead of being confined to a banal script or his worn-out screen character, he could be himself, ad-libbing to his heart's content with the contestants. You Bet Your Life was a rousing success on both radio (1947-1956) and television (1950-1961 on NBC), winning high ratings and several Emmy awards in the process. Except for an occasional reunion with his brothers (the 1949 film Love Happy, the 1959 TV special The Incredible Jewel Robbery), Groucho became a solo performer for the remainder of his career. During the '50s, Marx made occasional stage appearances in Time for Elizabeth, a play he co-wrote with his friend Harry Kurnitz; this slight piece was committed to film as a 1964 installment of Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, and in which the comedian looked ill at ease playing an everyman browbeaten by his boss. Working less frequently in the late '60s, Marx returned to the limelight in the early '70s when his old films were rediscovered by young antiestablishment types of the era, who revelled in his willingness to deflate authority and attack any and all sacred cows. By this time, Marx's health had been weakened by a stroke, but through the encouragement (some say prodding) of his secretary/companion Erin Fleming, he returned to active performing with TV guest appearances and a 1972 sold-out appearance at Carnegie Hall. And though he seemed very frail and aphasic in his latter-day performances, his fans couldn't get enough of him. In 1974, with Fleming at his side, Marx accepted a special Oscar. Ironically, it was the increasing influence of Fleming, which some observers insisted gave the octogenarian a new lease on life, that caused him the greatest amount of difficulty in his final years, resulting in the estrangement of his children and many of his oldest friends. In the midst of a heated battle between the Marx family and Fleming over the disposition of his estate, Groucho Marx died in 1977 at the age of 86.

Trivia: Born in Arizona on August 23, 1934, actress Barbara Eden was three years old when her family moved to San Francisco, where as a teenager she plunged into acting and singing classes at San Francisco State College's Conservatory of Music. After briefly working as a band singer, Eden took up residence at Hollywood's Studio Club, an inexpensive rooming house for aspiring actresses. Other Studio Club residents would note in later years that Eden would look at the club's bulletin board and apply for every show business job available, even those that she was advised would "ruin" her career. Persistence paid off, and in 1956 Eden made her film debut in Back from Eternity. She worked steadily in television, finally attaining leading-lady status on the 1958 sitcom How to Marry a Millionaire, in which she played a myopic "Marilyn Monroe"-type golddigger. Good film and TV roles followed for the lovely blonde actress, and full stardom arrived with the NBC comedy series I Dream of Jeannie. Eden played the curvaceous bottle imp from 1965-70, reviving the character in a brace of TV movies, the last one produced in 1991. Eden's post-Jeannie career has included several films, TV guest star appearances, theatrical and nightclub engagements, and still another sitcom, 1981's Harper Valley P.T.A.In 1983, Eden joined the cast of Jaws 3, and played a role in Chattanooga Choo Choo (1984) before participating in The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal in 1985. The actress would return to her Genie roots throughout her later career, including in the 1985 comedy I Dream of Jeannie: 15 Years Later, and I Still Dream of Jeannie (1991). Eden also made her mark in other sitcom-based films, most notably A Very Brady Sequel (1996). After starring alongside Hal Linden for the play Love Letters and taking a guest-starring role on Army Wives, a drama from Lifetime, Eden joined the cast of Always and Forever, a made-for-television movie for The Hallmark Channel (2009). In 2011, Eden published a memoir titled Jeannie Out of the Bottle that spoke candidly of her personal life, including detailed accounts of her failed marriages and the tragic death of her son.

Trivia: Benny Rubin inaugurated his career as a 14-year-old tap dancer in his hometown of Boston. He worked in stock and on showboats during the WWI years, breaking into burlesque as a dialect comedian in 1918. A vaudeville headliner throughout the 1920s, Rubin seemed a sure bet for movie stardom when he was signed by MGM in 1927. According to one source, however, the powers-that-be decided that Rubin looked "too Jewish" for movies. Nonetheless, he entered films during the talking era, starring in a brace of Tiffany Studios musicals -- Sunny Skies and Hot Curves, both filmed in 1930 -- before freelancing as a character actor. Though he was top-billed in a handful of two-reelers and was given prominent screen credit as one the scenarists for the Wheeler and Woolsey films Off Again -- On Again (1937) and High Flyers (1937), Rubin had to settle for bits and minor roles as a feature-film actor. He would later claim that his fall from grace was due to his bad temper and his chronic gambling. Far more successful on radio, Rubin became one of the most prominent members of Jack Benny's "stock company," usually playing an obnoxious information desk attendant ("I dunno! I dunno! I dunno!). During the 1950s and 1960s, Rubin worked steadily in TV programs, feature films, and two-reel comedies; he also worked in animated cartoons and TV commercials as a voice-over artist, truthfully proclaiming that he could convincingly convey any foreign accent -- "except Arabian." In 1973, Rubin produced a self-published, self-serving autobiography, Come Backstage With Me, in which he made innumerable specious claims about his show biz accomplishments; for example, he stated that it was he who advised fledging film director Orson Welles to hire cameraman Gregg Toland for the 1941 classic Citizen Kane (in truth, Rubin's contribution to the film was confined to a one-scene bit as a typesetter, which was cut from the final release print). Benny Rubin's final appearance was in the TV miniseries Glitter.

Trivia: Minta Durfee was a popular silent comedian who appeared in some of Chaplin's early films. She also appeared in films of her husband Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, whom she married in 1908 and who helped launch her career in 1913 when she began working at Keystone Studios. Durfee and Arbuckle separated in 1918 and she left films. By 1925, they divorced and she did not return full time to films. She did however, occasionally make cameo appearances or play bit parts through the mid-1960s.

Trivia: Born in Puerto Rico, actor Alberto Morin received his education in France. While in that country he worked briefly for Pathe Freres, a major film distribution firm, then studied theatre at the Escuela de Mimica in Mexico. Upon the advent of talking pictures, Morin was signed by Fox Pictures to make Spanish-language films for the South American market. He remained in Hollywood as a character actor, seldom getting much of a part but nearly always making an impression in his few seconds of screen time. Morin also worked steadily in radio and on such TV weeklies as Dobie Gillis and Mr. Roberts, sometimes billed as Albert Morin. During his five decades in Hollywood, Alberto Morin contributed uncredited performances in several of Tinseltown's most laudable achievements: he played Rene Picard in the Bazaar sequence in Gone With the Wind (1939), was a French military officer at Rick's Cafe Americain in Casablanca (1942), and showed up as a boat skipper in Key Largo (1947).

Trivia: French character actor Louis Mercier was in American films from 1929's Tiger Rose until well into the 1970s. Mercier was particularly busy at 20th Century-Fox's "B"-picture unit in the 1930s and 1940s, usually cast as detectives and magistrates. He can be seen fleetingly in Casablanca (1942) as a smuggler in the first "Rick's Café Americain" sequence. Louis Mercier's later credits include An Affair to Remember (1957, in which he was given a character name--a rarity for him), The Devil at 4 O'Clock (1961) and Darling Lili (1970).