Trivia: Tall, deep-voiced American actress Beatrice Arthur, born Beatrice Frankel, was best known for her television work on the long-running series Maude and The Golden Girls, but she also occasionally appeared in films. Her most famous film is 1973's Mame in which she played Vera Charles, the role she originated on Broadway.

Trivia: During his first few decades as an actor, Bill Macy took whatever was readily available: poetry-reading jobs, movie bits, comedy-record gigs (he's the operatic cabdriver in the classical music lampoon The Wurst of PDQ Bach) and off-Broadway stage assignments. While appearing in the 1969 "nudie" musical Oh! Calcutta, the 45-year-old Macy gained attention, critical and otherwise, for appearing au naturel in one of the comedy sketches. Evidently he enjoyed the sensation; even in his days of TV prominence, Macy was known to disrobe at parties and public functions whenever he'd been too generous in his participation at the bar. In the early 1970s, Macy was cast in several small roles in the TV properties of producer Norman Lear; this led to a lengthy (72-78) engagement as Walter Findlay, husband of fiery feminist Maude Findlay (Bea Arthur) on the popular sitcom Maude. Since that time, Bill Macy has thrived in film and stage character parts, and has co-starred in two TV weeklies, Hanging In (79) and Nothing in Common (87).

Trivia: American actress Adrienne Barbeau was encouraged by her mother to take dancing and singing lessons. Adrienne was active in theatre both in high school and at Foothills Junior College; by age 19 she was touring Pacific military bases as a member of the San Jose Light Opera. After an unprepossessing job with a termite-control company, Adrienne set out for New York, paying the bills with a variety of jobs including go-go dancing in New Jersey nightclubs. In 1968 she was cast as Hodel in the long-running Broadway production Fiddler on the Roof, and three years later was featured in Grease, winning a Tony nomination through her rendition of "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee." From here, Adrienne was hired by Norman Lear to replace first-choice actress Marcia Rodd in the role of the divorced daughter on the controversial TV sitcom Maude. She played the role from 1972 through the series' cancellation in 1978, after which she began a whole new career as a successful horror-film star and sexy pin-up model. Adrienne married film director John Carpenter in 1979; most of her subsequent screen appearances were in such Carpenter-directed terrors as The Fog (1980), Escape from New York (1981) and Creepshow (1982). Perhaps Adrienne Barbeau's most enjoyable performance was as the Marlon Brando counterpart (!) in an uproarious distaff parody of Apocalypse Now, sublimely titled Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death (1989). Barbeau would continue to act over the coming decades, appearing on TV shows like The Drew Carey Show, Carnivale, and the soap General Hospital.

Trivia: Wryly humorous Canadian character actor Conrad Bain was all wrapped up in such athletic pursuits as hockey and speed skating when, in his junior year of high school, he suddenly became fascinated with acting. He studied at Alberta's Banff School of Fine Arts, served in the Canadian army during World War II, then resumed his training at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He worked at the Stratford (Ontario) Shakespeare Festival and in live television before scoring his first real success in the 1956 Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. In the early 1970s, Bain began popping up in such New York-based films as Lovers and Other Strangers (1970) and Woody Allen's Bananas (1973). He gained national fame in the TV role of stuffy next-door neighbor Dr. Arthur Harmon on the Norman Lear sitcom Maude (1974-78). Bain was later awarded top billing as wealthy Phillip Drummond, foster father to Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges, on Diff'rent Strokes. His most recent regular-series assignment was as presidential aide Charley Ross on the George C. Scott TV vehicle Mr. President (1987). Conrad Bain's identical twin brother Bonar Bain occasionally guested on Conrad's various TV series. Conrad died at 89 in early 2013.

Trivia: Rotund, rough-hewn character actor Tom Pedi enjoyed a 50-year career that took him from touring shows in the late '30s into the original productions of some of the most renowned plays of the 1940s and '50s, and, finally, into top sitcoms and feature films in the 1970s. Born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1913, he was bitten by the acting bug at age five, when he played an angel in a Passion play. His older brothers were involved in local theatrical productions within the Italian community, and he spent a lot of his time with them, soaking up what he could as a boy. After completing high school, in the depths of the Great Depression, Pedi worked at various jobs while trying to break into professional theater. His first role came during the late '30s, in the touring company of Pins and Needles, impersonating Mussolini, a role to which he was so well-suited physically that one Canadian critic remarked that he could have sworn the Italian fascist leader was actually present. Pedi's professional career's start coincided with the gradual end of the Great Depression, at a point when theater was energized by a great many leftist political sensibilities -- he had the good luck early on to cross paths with performers and creative figures whose influence would be lost during the Red Scare of the subsequent decade. Pedi made his New York stage debut in 1941 portraying The Dasher (a businessman) in the play Brooklyn USA, co-authored by John Bright and co-produced by Lionel Stander, both future blacklistees; that cast also featured a young Sidney Lumet in an acting role. Pedi got to appear in one more production, Johnny Doodle (1942), and made his screen debut in the left-of-center film Native Land (1942) -- alongside future blacklistees Paul Robeson and Howard Da Silva, and authored by future blacklisted screenwriter Ben Maddow -- before the onset of the Second World War resulted in his being drafted. Pedi served in the infantry in North Africa, the invasions of Sicily and in the Salerno landings, and the invasion of Southern France, and was part of the army that crossed the Rhine into Germany, earning a string of decorations along the way. Following his discharge, he returned to New York, and over the next eight years worked in an enviable string of original productions, portraying Rocky Pioggi in The Iceman Cometh (1946-1947), Stanley in Death of a Salesman (1949-1950), and the dice-wielding Harry the Horse in Guys and Dolls (1950-1953). He got good notices for all of them, especially the last, and was well-established on the New York stage by then. In between stage performances, Pedi had managed to resume his screen career, working in a handful of movies, including Jules Dassin's Naked City (1948), in which he played a detective; Frank Capra's State of the Union (1948), playing a barber; and Robert Siodmak's Criss Cross (1949), portraying a hood. Pedi's husky build and rough features made him equally suitable portraying cops or criminals, although he also worked in lighter fare such as the Deanna Durbin vehicle Up in Central Park and had a big role in the Bob Hope race-track comedy Sorrowful Jones. Pedi also had a co-starring role in a short-lived television series called Stage Door (1950), working with Louise Allbritton and Scott McKay. It was theater that kept him busy for most of the decade, however -- Pedi probably could have done more movies, but his separation from his wife and his desire to have custody of his son, Alex, for part of each week made it necessary for him to base his career in New York for most of the 1950s and '60s. Pedi worked in such stage productions as New York's City Center revival of Kiss Me, Kate, starring Kitty Carlisle, in which he played one of the gangsters; Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge (1955-1956); and the comedy A Hole in the Head (1957), interspersed with occasional performances on anthology shows such as Chevrolet Tele-Theatre and Philco Television Playhouse. Pedi's performance in George Panetta's Comic Strip (1958), playing the rotund, lazy, comical Officer Hippo got some of the best notices in the play -- Walter Kerr of The New York Times called him "a winning slob" -- and when it was musicalized in 1962 as King of the Whole Damn World, he was back in the same role. While stage compatriots of his such as Michael Constantine and Peter Falk made the jump to series television and the big screen, Pedi was content to work the boards, in revivals of Guys and Dolls as well as new productions, even turning back to serious drama after 15 years of comedy, in Peter Weiss' The Investigation, which dealt with events at Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi concentration camp. He also squeezing in one appearance on The Defenders in the episode "The Sworn Twelve." Pedi returned to series television in 1970 as a regular on Arnie, playing Julius, the best friend of blue-collar worker Arnold Nuvo (Herschel Bernardi) when the latter suddenly finds himself promoted to an executive job. He also appeared in episodes of Maude, The Odd Couple, and Kojak, and filmgoers of the mid-'70s got to know his rotund presence in several major feature films, most notably Joseph Sargent's The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), as Caz Dolowicz, the excitable, foul-mouthed Grand Central Tower chief; and as Fat Angie Polaterra in J. Lee Thompson's St. Ives (1976), starring Charles Bronson. He also reprised his role of Rocky Pioggi in the American Film Theater production The Iceman Cometh (1973), which is generally regarded as the highlight of that entire series of filmed plays. Pedi had a long-running professional relationship with playwright George Panetta, appearing in a string of his plays across ten years, including Comic Strip, Kiss Mama, and Mike Downstairs (1968). He continued to work in movies right to the end of the 1980s, and died in 1996 at age 83.

Trivia: Supporting actress Priscilla Morrill spent most of her career on television, appearing in telemovies, as a semi-regular, and a guest star. Fans of The Mary Tyler Moore Show may remember her for playing Edie, the estranged wife of newsroom chief Lou Grant. She made her first professional appearance on stage in an off-Broadway production of Julius Caesar opposite John Carradine. While on Broadway, Morrill appeared in such dramas as Still Life, Night of the Iguana, and The Relapse. Though she had been on television since the early '60s, she did not make her feature film debut until she landed a small role in Clint Eastwood's Breezy (1973). After that, she rarely appeared in feature films; she did, however, appear in many television movies, including The Love Canal and The Trial of Jean Harris. Morrill's guest-starring appearances include such shows as Newhart, The Outer Limits, and Bagdad Cafe. Morrill occasionally landed regular roles on television sitcoms such as And Baby Makes Five, but none of these lasted more than a few months.