Trivia: A former band clarinettist and vocalist, Hal Linden studied drama at the American Theatre Wing. His big Broadway break came in 1958, when he was engaged to understudy Sydney Chaplin in the musical comedy Bells are Ringing; Linden played Chaplin's character, Jeffrey Moss, a handful of times on Broadway and on a full-time basis in the touring company (reportedly, he also showed up in the 1960 film version of Bells are Ringing, though the "official" starting point of his film career was 1979's When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?) During the 1960s, Linden's time was occupied by his stage work in musicals like Wildcat, The Apple Tree and Illya Darling; from time to time, he'd pop up on a Manhattan-filmed TV series like Car 54 Where Are You? or The Defenders and was a regular on the CBS daytime drama Search for Tomorrow. In 1974, Linden won a Tony award for his work in the Broadway musical The Rothschilds. The next year, Barney Miller, a sitcom for which Linden had lensed a pilot in 1972, was picked up as a mid-season replacement by ABC. Linden would play harried Greenwich village police captain Barney Miller from 1975 through 1980, collecting five Emmy nominations, but-astonishingly -- no actual awards. Hal Linden's subsequent TV series work has included hosting stints on the ABC informational weeklies Animals, Animals, Animals and FYI, and top-billed starring roles on Blacke's Magic (1988), Jack's Place (1992) and One of the Boys (1994); he co-starred in the latter with another perennial Emmy Awards bridesmaid, Suzanne Pleshette.His less than extensive big-screen resume includes A New Life, Killers in the House, and Time Changer.

Trivia: Angular Anglo-Latino actor Gregory Sierra began showing up on screen in 1971 in such films as The Wrath of God. Sierra quickly familiarized himself with TV viewers via his continuing role as Julio Fuentes in the weekly sitcom Sanford and Son. He left Sanford in January of 1975 to accept the part of detective sergeant Chano Amenguale on Barney Miller, a role he held down until the fall of 1976. Next up, Sierra starred as Dr. Tony Menzies on A.E.S. Hudson Street, a 1978 TV comedy that folded after six weeks despite positive critical comment. Two years later, he was cast as South American revolutionary "El Puerco" on the nighttime serial spoof Soap, figuring prominently in the series' up-in-the-air final episode in 1981. Gregory Sierra's more recent television roles have included Lt. Victor Maldonado on the NBC sci-fier Something is Out There (1988), and the ill-fated Lt. Lou Rodriguez on the trendy 1980's cop show Miami Vice.

Trivia: The son of an insurance salesman, David Wayne attended Western Michigan University. While working as a statistician in Cleveland, Wayne became attracted to the local theatrical activity. Auditioning for a Shakespearean repertory company, he won the role of Touchstone in As You Like It, which he performed before an audience for the first time at the 1935 Cleveland Exposition. In 1938, he made his first New York stage appearance in Escape This Night. Classified 4F at the outbreak of World War II, Wayne volunteered for the ambulance corps, subsequently serving as a Red Cross driver in North Africa. His theatrical career really began to pick up steam after the war: cast as Og the Leprechaun in the 1947 musical hit Finian's Rainbow, he became the first actor ever to win a Tony Award. The following year, he created the role of Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts, and in 1955 he was seen as Okinawan interpreter Sakini in Teahouse of the August Moon. While all of his major stage roles went to other actors in the film versions, Wayne enjoyed a substantial movie career of his own. Though he made his screen debut in 1947's Portrait of Jennie, Wayne was given "and introducing" billing in the Tracy/Hepburn comedy Adam's Rib (1949), in which he played capricious composer Kip Lurie. After playing Joe, cartoonist Bill Mauldin's mud-caked infantryman, in Universal's Up Front (1951), Wayne spent most of his screen time at 20th Century-Fox, where, among other things, he did two co-starring stints with Marilyn Monroe (1952's We're Not Married, 1953's How to Marry a Millionaire), played theatrical impresario Sol Hurok in Tonight We Sing (1953), starred as a tragedy-plagued small-town barber in the underrated Wait Till the Sun Shines Nellie (1953) and portrayed schizophrenic Joanne Woodward's long-suffering husband in Three Faces of Eve (1957). One of Wayne's co-stars during his Fox years was Una Merkel, who once remarked "I loved David Wayne. I think he's one of the finest actors we have. He's so good they don't know what to do with him."One place where they evidently did know what to do with Wayne was television, where he worked steadily from 1948 onward. Besides playing such prominent personages as Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain and even "Old Scratch" (in a 1961 telecast of The Devil and Daniel Webster), he appeared in classic individual episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Twilight Zone, played "special guest villain" The Mad Hatter on Batman, and was a regular on the weekly series Norby (1955), The Good Life (1973), Ellery Queen (1975, as Inspector Queen), Dallas (1978), and House Calls (1980). In addition, Wayne appeared with New York's Lincoln Center Repertory, and was one of the hosts of the NBC weekend radio potpourri Monitor. Curtailing his activities in the late 1980s, David Wayne retired altogether in 1993, after the death of his wife of 51 years.