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: Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1931, Robert Ito has spent his film career as a character actor, often in the science fiction genre. He enjoyed success on the long-running television series Quincy, and his voice has been used in many animated films, such as Batman and Superman.Robert Ito's first performances were on the stage as a dancer in the National Ballet of Canada. After a decade with the company, Ito moved to New York in the 1960s, to dance on Broadway in The Flower Drum Song.Ito moved to Hollywood and began his film career in 1966 with some forgettable science fiction vehicles, such as Women of the Prehistoric Planet and Dimension 5. The B-movie genre often turned to Ito when it wanted an actor to portray someone of his Japanese heritage. Over the years, he played many such roles, the most outstanding of which was his performance as Professor Hikita, the kidnapped scientist in the 1984 cult classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.Ito fared well in television, in which he was given roles that showcased his talents in made-for-television movies and series. He appeared in some memorable dramas, such as Helter Skelter (1976), American Geisha (1986), and The War Between Us (1996). The latter film starred Ito as a Canadian World War I veteran and patriarch of a family of Japanese descent, forced to leave his home in Vancouver during the dark days of Japanese resettlement following Pearl Harbor.Ito also gained distinction for his role as Fong in the Kung Fu series, as well as on popular show Quincy. He made cameo appearances in many other television shows including Magnum, P.I. and Star Trek, which featured him in a 2001 production.

Trivia: The son of a San Francisco shoe factory owner, American actor Lloyd Nolan made it clear early on that he had no intention of entering the family business. Nolan developed an interest in acting while in college, at the expense of his education -- it took him five years to get through Santa Clara College, and he flunked out of Stanford, all because of time spent in amateur theatricals. Attempting a "joe job" on a freighter, Nolan gave it up when the freighter burned to the waterline. In 1927, he began studying at the Pasadena Playhouse, living on the inheritance left him by his father. Stock company work followed, and in 1933 Nolan scored a Broadway hit as vengeful small-town dentist Biff Grimes in One Sunday Afternoon (a role played in three film versions by Gary Cooper, James Cagney, and Dennis Morgan, respectively -- but never by Nolan). Nolan's first film was Stolen Harmony (1935); his breezy urban manner and Gaelic charm saved the actor from being confined to the bad guy parts he played so well, and by 1940 Nolan was, if not a star, certainly one of Hollywood's most versatile second-echelon leading men. As film historian William K. Everson has pointed out, the secret to Nolan's success was his integrity -- the audience respected his characters, even when he was the most cold-blooded of villains. The closest Nolan got to film stardom was a series of B detective films made at 20th Century-Fox from 1940 to 1942, in which he played private eye Michael Shayne -- a "hard-boiled dick" character long before Humphrey Bogart popularized this type as Sam Spade. Nolan was willing to tackle any sort of acting, from movies to stage to radio, and ultimately television, where he starred as detective Martin Kane in 1951; later TV stints would include a season as an IRS investigator in the syndicated Special Agent 7 (1958), and three years as grumpy-growley Dr. Chegley on the Diahann Carroll sitcom Julia (1969-1971). In 1953, Nolan originated the role of the paranoid Captain Queeg in the Broadway play The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, wherein he'd emerge from a pleasant backstage nap to play some of the most gut-wrenching "character deterioration" scenes ever written. Never your typical Hollywood celebrity, Nolan publicly acknowledged that he and his wife had an autistic son, proudly proclaiming each bit of intellectual or social progress the boy would make -- this at a time when many image-conscious movie star-parents barely admitted even having children, normal or otherwise. Well liked by his peers, Nolan was famous (in an affectionate manner) for having a photographic memory for lines but an appallingly bad attention span in real life; at times he was unable to give directions to his own home, and when he did so the directions might be three different things to three different people. A thorough professional to the last, Nolan continued acting in sizeable roles into the 1980s; he was terrific as Maureen O'Sullivan's irascible stage-star husband in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). Lloyd Nolan's last performance was as an aging soap opera star on an episode of the TV series Murder She Wrote; star Angela Lansbury, fiercely protective of an old friend and grand trouper, saw to it that Nolan's twilight-years reliance upon cue cards was cleverly written into the plot line of the episode.

Trivia: Though a film actor from 1963 and a stage performer before that, American leading man Sam Groom is best known for his work in the field of soap operas. After playing such supporting roles as Tom Eldredge in the 1965 As the World Turns prime-time spin-off Our Private World, Groom spent four years as Dr. Ross Mathews on NBC's Another World. Eventually leaving the series because he felt that daytime dramas offered "no dignity," he accepted the title role in the Canadian-produced nighttime series Dr. Simon Locke (1971). Though the series proved unsuccessful when it was syndicated to the U.S., its sponsor, Colgate-Palmolive, liked Groom enough to spin off the Locke character into another syndicated weekly, Police Surgeon, which ran until 1974. Sam Groom's most recent TV starring vehicle was the 1985 fantasy offering Otherworld.

Trivia: Inextricably associated with the 1980s for her memorable, seven-season portrayal of bookish teen Carol Seaver on the family-oriented sitcom Growing Pains (1985-1992), actress Tracey Gold grew up in a show-business family. The older sister of Missy Gold (Benson), Brandy Gold (Wildcats), and Jessie Gold (A Crime of Passion), Tracey signed for her first part at the age of seven in the miniseries Captains and the Kings. Major projects during the early '80s included a key supporting role in Alan Parker's critically acclaimed, divorce-themed psychodrama Shoot the Moon (1982, as one of the central couple's daughters) and a stint on the short-lived sitcom Goodnight, Beantown as the daughter of single working mom Mariette Hartley. Growing Pains, of course, represented Gold's major career break. She experienced difficulty around the end of the program by enduring and surviving a well-publicized bout with anorexia nervosa. After the sitcom wrapped, Gold began tackling parts in occasional telemovies that would come to shape and define her career in the years to follow. These included For the Love of Nancy (1994, which dramatized the story of a girl suffering from anorexia), Lady Killer (1995), Dirty Little Secret (1998), and Wildfire 7: The Inferno (2002). Gold made television headlines in 2004 when cast in the fourth season of the reality series The Mole, which featured celebrity participants.

Trivia: In critiquing a minor science fiction film of the late '50s, a prominent film historian characterized star Phillip Abbott as "...the kind of actor whose face you forget five minutes after seeing it." While there is some truth in this, let it be recorded here and now that Abbott's professional credentials were as impeccable and impressive as any "unforgettable" star. After serving with the U.S. Air Force in World War II (and earning an air medal and three oak-leaf clusters in the process), Abbott attended Fordham University, and later studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. Making his Broadway debut in 1948, he went on to appear in such stage successes as Detective Story and Two for the Seesaw. Far from being completely unmemorable in films, Abbott had at least two praiseworthy screen characterizations to his credit: nervous groom-to-be Arnold in The Bachelor Party (1957) and doctor-with-a-secret George Scudder in Sweet Bird of Youth (1962). His many network television credits included a stint as host/narrator on the experimental 1960 psychological soap opera House on High Street, and the continuing role of Assistant Director Arthur Ward on The FBI (1965-1974). Before, during, and after the height of his film and TV activities, Abbott continued to be a busy stage actor/director. In 1962, he co-founded Theatre West, an L.A.-based actor's workshop. He also produced, directed, and wrote nine instructional films for the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, as well as the ten-episode Lessons for Living, an in-school training project underwritten by the Disney studios. In addition, he created and produced the TV weekly Hidden Places on behalf of Nebraska Public Television. Outside of his professional activities, Abbott was active with the United Cerebral Palsy/Spastic Children's Foundation, and was one of the leading citizens of Tarzana, CA, where he served as president of the Nelson Company. Forgettable though his screen appearances may have been at times, Phillip Abbott will always be remembered by someone.

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.