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: Fresh out of Bryn Mawr college, American actress Mildred Natwick started the road to stage success in amateur shows in her native Baltimore. By 1932 Natwick was on Broadway in Carrie Nation; establishing what would become her standard operating procedure, the actress played a character much older than herself. In 1940, Natwick was introduced to movie audiences as the cockney "lady of the evening" in John Ford's The Long Voyage Home (1940) -- the first of several assignments for Ford, which included Three Godfathers (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1948) and The Quiet Man (1952). Seldom starring in a film role, Natwick nonetheless made the most of what she was given, as in her one-scene part as an advocate of birth control who inadvertently pitches her program to the parents of 12 children in Cheaper By the Dozen (1950). And it was Natwick who, as skulking sorceress Grizelda in Danny Kaye's The Court Jester (1956), inaugurates the side-splitting "The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle" routine. A frequent visitor to TV, Natwick briefly settled down on the tube in the mystery series "The Snoop Sisters," which costarred Helen Hayes. In films until 1988, Natwick was honored with a long-overdue Oscar nomination for her work as Jane Fonda's martyr mama in 1967's Barefoot in the Park.

Trivia: Owl-eyed, adenoidal character actor Marvin Kaplan became an English teacher after studying at New York University and Brooklyn College. Following World War II service, Kaplan attended playwrighting classes at USC, which led to his participation in community theatre. It was Katharine Hepburn who selected Kaplan for the small but telling role of the hapless court stenographer in Adam's Rib (1949). He continued accepting movie and TV supporting parts in the 1950s, usually playing bookish, bespectacled milquetoasts. He is best known to TV sitcom fans as Henry Beesemeyer on the weekly yockfest Alice (1976-1985). Two generations of cartoon fans remember Marvin Kaplan as the voice of Choo Choo on the Hanna-Barbera series Top Cat, a role he has continued to reprise on such animated series as Yogi's Treasure Hunt and Wake, Rattle and Roll into the 1990s.

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: Character actor Ted Gehring first appeared onscreen in the late '60s.

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: Whether playing a wiseacre waitress, an insane bioengineer, or a vengeful, darkly comic widow, Diane Ladd brings energy and accomplishment to her roles. Born Rose Diane Ladner in Meridian, MS, she moved to New York City as a teen. Before making her stage debut in Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending, Ladd worked as a model and a dancer at the Copacabana nightclub. In 1961, Ladd debuted in her first feature film, Something Wild. Though she subsequently appeared in a few more films during the '60s, including The Reivers (1969), Ladd focused on her stage career. In film, 1974 proved to be a great year for Ladd. Her portrayal of Flo, the tough waitress who helps out a recently widowed Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More, garnered her nominations for an Oscar, a Golden Globe, and a British Academy Award. She then appeared opposite Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway in Roman Polanski's Chinatown. Beginning in 1976, Ladd became a familiar face in television movies like The Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980) and miniseries such as Black Beauty (1978). Though she continued to sporadically appear in feature films through the '80s, her movie career didn't perk up again until the early '90s. Formerly married to character actor Bruce Dern, Ladd is the mother of willowy leading lady Laura Dern. Mother and daughter have appeared in several films together, notably 1991's Rambling Rose and David Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990) -- the former film earned mother and daughter a place in Oscar history when they became the first such duo to be nominated for the same film (Ladd for Best Supporting Actress and Dern for Best Actress).