Trivia: Actor Ted Knight dropped out of high school in order to enlist for World War II service. During the postwar years, Knight studied acting in Hartford, Connecticut. He became proficient with puppets and ventriloquism, which led to steady work as a TV kiddie-show host. Knight spent most of the 1950s and 1960s doing commercial voice-overs and essaying minor TV and movie roles (he was the nonspeaking cop who handed Norman Bates a robe at the end of Hitchcock's Psycho [1960]). Just barely making ends meet with TV guest spots and cartoon voices, Knight was rescued professionally in 1970 when he was cast in the role of vainglorious TV anchorman Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Three years into the series, Knight threatened to quit because of the one-note stupidity of his character. He was assuaged when the MTM producers "humanized" him with an understanding girlfriend (played by Georgia Engel) -- and it didn't hurt that the actor later won two Emmy awards for his portrayal of the clueless Ted Baxter. When MTM left the air in 1977, Knight attempted to headline a sitcom of his own. After a couple of false starts, he struck pay dirt in 1980 with Too Close for Comfort, playing a comic-strip artist with two nubile daughters. Too Close left the network for syndication in 1984, then matriculated into The Ted Knight Show in 1985. Though gravely ill, Ted Knight valiantly taped a years' worth of episodes before succumbing to cancer at the age of 62.

Trivia: Originally planned to be a schoolteacher. Spent two seasons with the New York City Opera Company, performing in such productions as Carmen and The Mikado. Performed as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Made her Broadway debut in 1960 in Do Re Mi. Played Maria in the 1962 Broadway production of The Sound of Music. Was an original cohost of Good Morning America. For five years, she headed the Ray Bolger Endowment for Musical Performances at UCLA. Regularly performs as a cabaret singer.

Trivia: American actor/singer Ray Middleton spent several years in regional and New York stage productions before his first film appearance (a non-singing one) in Gangs of Chicago (1940). He might have made his film debut in 1938, the year he was being considered for the romantic lead in the Laurel and Hardy comedy Swiss Miss; however, the film's leading lady, Della Lynd, vetoed Middleton in favor of Walter Woolf King. Most of Middleton's films were forgettable save for his starring appearance in I Dream of Jeannie (1952), an unusually lavish Republic Studios biopic about the life of Stephen Foster. In 1965, Middleton signed on to play the Innkeeper in the Broadway musical Man of La Mancha, a role he retained through six seasons and several Don Quixotes. Despite the job security, those six years were eventful ones for Middleton. He underwent serious heart surgery during the play's run, only to return to his part stronger and in better voice than ever. And, for the first time in his life, Middleton took a bride, dancer/singer Patricia Dinnell. After La Mancha, the Middletons devoted themselves to Unitarian church activity and to Ray's one-man touring concert, America in Song and Dance. Active in TV commercials into the 1970s, Ray Middleton made a welcome screen return in the 1972 film musical 1776.