Trivia: Making her stage bow at age five in a community production of Alice in Wonderland, Linda Lavin spent the next ten years studying piano under the watchful eye of her stage mother. After majoring in theater arts at William and Mary College, Lavin appeared in stock in New Jersey, then weathered the chorus-audition rounds in New York, making her off-Broadway debut in a 1960 revival of Oh, Kay (1960). Two years later, she reached Broadway in A Family Affair. She went on to play Lois Lane (a la Ethel Merman) in the short-lived 1965 Broadway musical It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman, and when that show folded she starred in the off-Broadway production Wet Paint, which earned her a Theatre World Award. The musicomedy review The Mad Show followed, then Lavin was selected by director Alan Arkin to play Patsy Newquist (one of her favorite roles, and one that earned her the New York Critics' Outer Circle Award) in Jules Feiffer's Little Murders (1968). She subsequently played all the female roles in 1969's Cop-Out (another of her favorites) and Elaine Navazio in Neil Simon's Last of the Red Hot Lovers. From 1968 onward, Lavin made periodic trips to Hollywood. Her work as detective Janice Wentworth during the 1975-76 season of TV's Barney Miller led to a supporting role in the pilot episode of the proposed series Jerry. CBS nixed Jerry but signed Lavin to a development deal, which of course developed into her ten-season (1976-85) hitch as waitress Alice Hyatt in the popular sitcom Alice. Recalling that her counterpart in the 1975 film Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore was an aspiring singer, Lavin inked her Alice contract on the assumption that the producers would permit her to sing--which they did, on practically every other network program except Alice. Returning to Broadway after her series folded, Lavin won a Tony award for her performance in Neil Simon's Broadway Bound, and also starred in Gypsy and The Sisters Rosensweig. She also made a brief return to TV as Edie Kurland in the one-season comedy Room for Two (1992). Linda Lavin was at one time married to actor Ron Leibman.

Trivia: Born to a Syrian-Lebanese family in Brooklyn, Victor Tayback grew up learning how to aggressively defend himself and those he cared about, qualities that he'd later carry over into his acting work. Moving to California with his family, the 16-year-old Tayback made the varsity football team at Burbank High. Despite numerous injuries, he continued his gridiron activities at Glendale Community College, until he quit school over a matter of principle (he refused to apologize to his coach for breaking curfew). After four years in the navy, Tayback enrolled at the Frederick A. Speare School of Radio and TV Broadcasting, hoping to become a sportscaster. Instead, he was sidetracked into acting, working as a cab driver, bank teller and even a "Kelly Girl" between performing gigs. Shortly after forming a little-theatre group called the Company of Angels, Tayback made his movie debut in Door-to-Door Maniac (1961), a fact he tended to exclude from his resumé in later years. His professional life began to improve in 1967, when he won an audition to play Sid Caesar's look-alike in a TV pilot. Throughout the early 1970s the bulging, bald-domed actor made a comfortable living in TV commercials and TV guest-star assignments, and as a regular on the detective series Griff (1973) and Khan (1975). In 1975, he was cast in the secondary role of Mel Sharples, the potty-mouthed short-fused owner of a greasy spoon diner, in the theatrical feature Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. When the film evolved into the weekly TV sitcom Alice in 1976, Tayback was engaged to recreate his "Mel" characterization. He remained with the program for the next nine years. In contrast to his gruff, abusive screen character, Tayback was dearly loved by the rest of the Alice cast, who regarded him a Big Brother and Father Confessor rolled into one. Five years after Alice's cancellation, Vic Tayback died of cancer at the age of 61; one of his last screen assignments was the voice of Carface in the animated feature All Dogs Go to Heaven.

Trivia: Supporting actor Philip McKeon got his start as a child model appearing in magazines, newspapers, and television commercials. He is best remembered for playing Tommy, the son of the title character in the long-running sitcom Alice (1976-1985). His younger sister, Nancy McKeon, is a successful television actress.

Trivia: Howard Morton played character and supporting roles on stage, screen, and television. It is in the latter medium that he is best-remembered, especially for the roles he played for popular '70s producer Norman Lear. For Lear, Morton appeared frequently on All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. Fans of the NBC sitcom Gimme a Break will know Morton for playing police officer Ralph. He made his feature film debut in The Mechanic (1972). Morton suffered a stroke and died on May 11, 1997, at the age of 71.

Trivia: Pennsylvania-born actor Don Keefer enjoyed a 60-year-plus career on stage and screen that saw him range freely across character parts and leading roles in both fields. An actor from his youth, he started early playing leads, portraying the title role in The Adventures of Marco Polo for a production of the Child Study Association. He won the Clarence Derwent Award for his early work on Broadway, and spent his early career working alongside the likes of Ethel Barrymore, Helen Hayes, and José Ferrer, and under such directors as Moss Hart, Elia Kazan, and Margaret Webster (including the famed production of Othello starring Paul Robeson). Keefer was a charter member of the Actors' Studio, and originated the role of Bernard, the studious neighbor son-turned-lawyer in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. He was the only actor to remain with the production for its entire Broadway run, and subsequently made his screen debut in 1951 in the movie adaptation of the play produced by Stanley Kramer and directed by Laslo Benedek. From that beginning, he went on to appear in more than 130 movie and television productions, in between theatrical work on both coasts (including a stint at the Theatre Group at UCLA under John Houseman). Highlights of his stage career include a highly acclaimed touring production of Anton Chekhov: The Human Comedy, focusing on the lighter side of Chekhov's work. On screen as on stage, Keefer played a wide variety of parts -- he made a fine villain-turned-neutral in "Winchester Quarantine," an early (and very powerful) episode of Have Gun Will Travel, but was equally good as Ensign Twitchell, the comically (yet tragically) over-eager and officious junior officer in Joseph Pevney's Away All Boats, during this same period. Don Keefer was still working in the late '90s, in movies such as Liar Liar and an episode of Profiler. But amid hundreds of portrayals, Keefer's single most memorable role for most viewers -- other than Bernard in Death of a Salesman -- is almost certainly that of Dan Hollis, the doomed neighbor whose birthday celebration comes to a hideous end (his head popping out of a giant jack-in-the-box) in the 1961 Twilight Zone show "It's a Good Life."

Trivia: Known primarily for his B-movie-lovin' cowboy alter ego Joe Bob Briggs, actor/writer/comic/social satirist John Bloom is a man of many talents. In addition to keeping faux newshounds in stitches with his role as the host of "God Stuff" during the first two seasons of Comedy Central's wildly irreverent news parody The Daily Show, Bloom has penned numerous books on the subject of B-movies, acted in film and television, and kept tally of more onscreen movie deaths than Jack Valenti. A native of Dallas, TX, Bloom was raised in Little Rock, AR, before attending Vanderbilt University on a sports-writing scholarship. A subsequent move back to his native state found the emerging writer landing a job at the now-defunct Dallas Times Herald at the age of 19, with the first "Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In" column appearing in January of 1982. Offering a unique, carefree, and refreshingly unscholarly approach to film, the entertaining column would eventually be syndicated in over 100 newspapers nationwide. Though controversy soon followed when Briggs was fired as a result of comments made in an April 1985 article entitled "We Are the Weird," the media attention that resulted sparked a heated debate on political correctness and censorship that served only to raise his public profile. Picked up by new syndicator Universal Press a mere three days later, Briggs was soon back in print, to the delight of cinema-trash lovers across the country. In the months that followed, Bloom expanded the Joe Bob persona by developing a one-man show entitled "An Evening With Joe Bob Briggs" (later re-titled "Joe Bob Dead in Concert"), and after debuting in Cleveland in 1985, the show played in some of the nation's best comic venues over the course of the next two years. His show drawing national attention, Bloom was soon approached by executives from Showtime sister-station The Movie Channel and asked to serve as guest host for the popular late-night B-movie show Drive-in Theater. Soon renamed Joe Bob's Drive-In Theater, the twice Cable ACE award-nominated show offered the most laughably bad genre films imaginable -- surviving a healthy ten-year run until a 1996 format change forced cancellation. Never one to go down without a fight, Joe Bob was back on the air a mere four months later as the host of TNT's MonsterVision, essentially the same show on basic cable. The schlock cowboy continued to entertain audiences weekly with a healthy dose of cinematic junk food until that show, too, fell victim to an eventual format change four short years later. Making a move to Comedy Central, Briggs' turn as a religious commentator on The Daily Show offered the best (or worst depending on your vantage point) clips that religious television had to offer. Also gaining an impressive amount of film and television credits with numerous minor roles, Briggs can be spotted in such features as Great Balls of Fire!, Casino, and Face/Off. He also co-authored the true-crime novel Evidence of Love, which was later adapted as the Emmy-winning made-for-television feature A Killing in a Small Town (1990). Though Briggs would place his two syndicated columns, "Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In" and "Joe Bob's America," on hiatus as of 1998, his drive-in column returned a mere two years later, and fans suffered no shortage of reading material thanks to the release of such books as Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In, Iron Joe Bob, and Profoundly Disturbing: The Shocking Movies that Changed History. A new column entitled "The Vegas Guy" found Joe Bob exploring the casinos of the nation, and though his presence on television was sorely missed, this void would soon be filled thanks to the increasing popularity of the DVD format. Realizing that commentary tracks could offer as good a vehicle for his hilariously lowbrow wit and insight as his previous television endeavors, Briggs soon began recording commentaries as Joe Bob for such DVD releases as I Spit on Your Grave, Samurai Cop, and The Double-D Avenger (for such distributors as Elite and Media Blasters) beginning in 2003.