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: Lead actress, onscreen from the early '80s.

Trivia: Originally aspired to be an evangelistic singer. Caught the acting bug in high school when he played the dad in Bye Bye Birdie. Attended Oklahoma Baptist University on a music scholarship, but departed for Los Angeles after a couple of years. Big break came when he landed the role of Monroe Ficus on Too Close for Comfort in 1980. Famously paired with Tammy Faye Messner for a 1996 talk show titled The Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show. Has played five different roles in theatrical productions of Hairspray, most notably on Broadway as Wilbur Turnblad. Is an active AIDS advocate and has been HIV-positive for more than 20 years.

Trivia: American actor Claude Stroud played character roles in films of the '50s, '60s, and '70s. He started out in vaudeville, teamed with his twin brother, Clarence (they appeared as the Stroud Twins during the '30s). The twins also worked on the radio. Stroud later appeared on television before entering feature films.

Trivia: Hamilton Camp was evacuated from his native London to the U.S. during World War II. A stage actor from childhood, Camp reportedly made his film debut in RKO's Bedlam (1945) The slight-statured comic actor flourished on American TV from the early 1960s onward, guesting on such series as The Mary Tyler Moore Show and appearing as a regular on He and She (1967), Paul Sills' Story Theatre (1971) and Just Our Luck (1983). He also would have been one of the comedy troupers on the anything-goes revue series Turn-On (1969), had this notorious bomb survived past its first episode. Camp has shown up in only a handful of feature films, notably the 1967 spoof The Perils of Pauline. More recently, Hamilton Camp has been a prolific cartoon voiceover artist, providing a limitless array of characterizations on such TV animated series as The Smurfs, The Flintstone Kids, and DuckTales.