Trivia: Born Leonard Rosenberg, Randall moved to New York at age 19 and studied theater with Sanford Meisner and at the Neighborhood Playhouse. His stage debut was in The Circle of Chalk (1941). From 1942-46 he served with the U.S. Army, following which he acted on radio and TV. He began appearing onscreen in 1957 and was a fairly busy film actor through the mid '60s. He is best known for his work on TV, particularly for his portrayal of fastidious Felix Unger on the sitcom "The Odd Couple." He also starred or costarred in the series "One Man's Family," "Mr. Peepers," "The Tony Randall Show," and "Love, Sidney." He frequently appears on TV talk shows, where he is witty, erudite, and urbane. In 1991 he created the National Actors Theater, a repertory company; its purpose is to bring star-filled classic plays to broad-based audiences at low prices.

Trivia: Commenting on his notorious on-set irascibility in 1977, Jack Klugman replied that he was merely "taking Peter Falk lessons from Robert Blake," invoking the names of two other allegedly hard-to-please TV stars. Klugman grew up in Philadelphia, and after taking in a 1939 performance by New York's Group Theatre, Klugman decided that an actor's life was right up his alley. He majored in drama at Carnegie Tech and studied acting at the American Theatre Wing before making his (non-salaried) 1949 stage-debut at the Equity Library Theater. While sharing a New York flat with fellow hopeful Charles Bronson, Klugman took several "grub" jobs to survive, at one point selling his blood for $85 a pint. During television's so-called Golden Age, Klugman appeared in as many as 400 TV shows. He made his film debut in 1956, and three years later co-starred with Ethel Merman in the original Broadway production of Gypsy. In 1964, Klugman won the first of his Emmy awards for his performance in "Blacklist," an episode of the TV series The Defenders; that same year, he starred in his first sitcom, the 13-week wonder Harris Against the World. Far more successful was his next TV series, The Odd Couple, which ran from 1970 through 1974; Klugman won two Emmies for his portrayal of incorrigible slob Oscar Madison (he'd previously essayed the role when he replaced Walter Matthau in the original Broadway production of the Neil Simon play). It was during Odd Couple's run that the network "suits" got their first real taste of Klugman's savage indignation, when he and co-star Tony Randall threatened to boycott the show unless the idiotic laughtrack was removed (Klugman and Randall won that round; from 1971 onward, Odd Couple was filmed before a live audience). It was but a foretaste of things to come during Klugman's six-year (1977-83) reign as star of Quincy, M.E.. Popular though Klugman was in the role of the crusading, speechifying LA County Coroner's Office medical examiner R. Quincy, he hardly endeared himself to the producers when he vented his anger against their creative decisions in the pages of TV Guide. Nor was he warmly regarded by the Writer's Guild when he complained about the paucity of high-quality scripts (he wrote several Quincy episodes himself, with mixed results). After Quincy's cancellation, Klugman starred in the Broadway play I'm Not Rappaport and co-starred with John Stamos in the 1986 sitcom You Again?. The future of Klugman's career -- and his future, period -- was sorely threatened when he underwent throat surgery in 1989. He'd been diagnosed with cancer of the larynx as early as 1974, but at that time was able to continue working after a small growth was removed. For several years after the 1989 operation, Klugman was unable to speak, though he soon regained this ability. He continued working through 2011, and died the following year at age 90.

Trivia: Only in the earliest stages of her career was actress Marilyn Mason billed as Marilyn. A professional from age 13, when she signed on with Los Angeles' Players Ring troupe, Mason made her first TV appearance on a 1955 Matinee Theater installment. She was particularly busy in the mid-to-late 1960s, playing the recurring role of Sally Welden on TV's Ben Casey and guesting on a variety of programs. In 1967, she was co-starred as Carrie Pipperidge in a televersion of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel; and in 1969, she made her big-screen debut opposite Elvis Presley in The Trouble With Girls. Her last regular-series stint was as Nikki Bell in the 1971 James Franciscus starrer Longstreet. After a long absence, Marilyn Mason returned to television in the early 1990s in a brace of made-for-TV movies.

Trivia: American actress Francine York commenced her theatrical career at age nine, in a play titled Keen Teens, or Campus Quarantine; she produced and directed it herself, had it staged at the Aurora (Minnesota) town auditorium, and used the proceeds from the admissions to finance a wienie roast for the local drama club. That was her story, as related in a 1963 TV Guide, and is as good a story as any. Active in high school sports, York bypassed college to become an airline stewardess, but didn't like the work and decided to become a fashion model in San Francisco. From there she headed to Hollywood, and worked steadily in many of the top TV programs of the early '60s, including recurring appearances on the 1964 weekly Slattery's People (she also later appeared on the daytime drama Days of Our Lives as Lorraine Temple). Usually cast in semi-villainous roles, York was also proficient at comedy, as proven by her many appearances on the anthology series Love American Style (1969-1972). A bit too tall to be a movie leading lady (many leading men would have felt self-conscious), Francine York did manage to make several memorable appearances in the '60s films of six-foot-plus comedian Jerry Lewis; perhaps coincidentally, Lewis appeared in an unbilled cameo of the Batman episode in which York played the "moll" of the Bookworm (Roddy McDowall). York continued acting through the 2000s; she died in 2017, at age 80.