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: The son of an itinerant piano tuner-father and a restaurateur-mother, Richard Erdman was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Colorado. Having taken drama lessons since his early childhood, Erdman was 15 when he was brought to Hollywood by his mother to be "discovered." It wasn't until he'd held down an interim job as a sports reporter for the Los Angeles Examiner that Erdman finally appeared in his first film, Warner Bros.' Janie (1944). Rapidly outgrowing juvenile roles, Erdman played character parts in Hollywood films like Stalag 17 (1953) and in such European productions as Four Days Leave (1950) and Face of Fire (1959). In 1961, Erdman co-starred on the short-lived sitcom The Tab Hunter Show, playing Tab's millionaire-playboy buddy, Peter Fairchild III. In 1973, Erdman made his big-screen directorial debut with The Brothers O'Toole. Since that time, Richard Erdman has kept busy as a voice-over actor, offering a wide range of vocal characterizations for dozens of TV cartoon series, as well as the 1994 animated feature film The Pagemaster.

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: Actor Robert Costanzo is generally typecast an urban Italian-American, prone to mouthing such lines as "You gotta problem with that?" Costanzo began popping up with regularity in such films as Saturday Night Fever in the late '70s. The first of his many TV-series stints was as plumber Vincent Pizo, the blue-collar father of Travolta clone Joe Piza (Paul Regina), in 1978's Joe and Valerie. He retained his man-of-the-people veneer as maintenance engineer Hank Sabatino in the weekly series Checking In (1980), Lt. V.T. Krantz in the 1990 TVer Glory Days, and the voice of Detective Bullock in Warner Bros.' Batman: The Animated Series (1992). In 1995, Robert Costanzo joined the cast of television's NYPD Blue as Detective Giardella.