Trivia: A former band clarinettist and vocalist, Hal Linden studied drama at the American Theatre Wing. His big Broadway break came in 1958, when he was engaged to understudy Sydney Chaplin in the musical comedy Bells are Ringing; Linden played Chaplin's character, Jeffrey Moss, a handful of times on Broadway and on a full-time basis in the touring company (reportedly, he also showed up in the 1960 film version of Bells are Ringing, though the "official" starting point of his film career was 1979's When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?) During the 1960s, Linden's time was occupied by his stage work in musicals like Wildcat, The Apple Tree and Illya Darling; from time to time, he'd pop up on a Manhattan-filmed TV series like Car 54 Where Are You? or The Defenders and was a regular on the CBS daytime drama Search for Tomorrow. In 1974, Linden won a Tony award for his work in the Broadway musical The Rothschilds. The next year, Barney Miller, a sitcom for which Linden had lensed a pilot in 1972, was picked up as a mid-season replacement by ABC. Linden would play harried Greenwich village police captain Barney Miller from 1975 through 1980, collecting five Emmy nominations, but-astonishingly -- no actual awards. Hal Linden's subsequent TV series work has included hosting stints on the ABC informational weeklies Animals, Animals, Animals and FYI, and top-billed starring roles on Blacke's Magic (1988), Jack's Place (1992) and One of the Boys (1994); he co-starred in the latter with another perennial Emmy Awards bridesmaid, Suzanne Pleshette.His less than extensive big-screen resume includes A New Life, Killers in the House, and Time Changer.

Trivia: The son of a wealthy office-supplies dealer, American actor Maxwell Gail Jr. excelled in high-school sports, spending his senior year as an exchange student in Germany. Upon earning collegiate degrees from both Williams University and University of Michigan, he became a teacher in Detroit's inner city, partially to ensure himself a draft deferment. Frustrated at trying to communicate with his sullen poverty-level students, Gail chucked it all to head for San Francisco, where he worked as a guidance counselor. Again, the frustrations of the job got to him, compelling Gail to seek employment as a cocktail-lounge pianist. Trying out for a play on a whim in 1970, Gail finally found his life's calling. He spent the early '70s haunting the casting offices, accepting small TV roles as heavies and bullies. A guest spot as a tough lug on the 1974 sitcom Friends and Lovers caught the attention of producer Danny Arnold, who cast Gail as Detective Stanley "Wojo" Wojohowicz on the new comedy series Barney Miller. Gail played "Wojo" until the series' cancellation in 1980, at which point he re-entered the guest-star pool. Since that time Max Gail Jr. has been seen as a reporter on the short-lived 1983 adventure series Whiz Kids, and as the father of Dweezil Zappa and Moon Unit Zappa on the even shorter-lived 1990 sitcom Normal Life.

Trivia: "As familiar as a favorite leather easy chair" is how one magazine writer described the craggy, weather-beaten face of ineluctable character actor James Gregory. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any time in the past six decades that Gregory hasn't been seen on stage, on TV or on the big screen. There were those occasional periods during the 1930s and 1940s when he was working on Wall Street rather than acting, and there were those uniformed stints in the Marines and the Naval Reserve. Otherwise, Gregory remained a persistent showbiz presence from the time he first performed with a Pennsylvania-based travelling troupe in 1936. Three years later, he was on Broadway in Key Largo; he went on to appear in such stage hits as Dream Girl, All My Sons, Death of a Salesman and The Desperate Hours. In films from 1948, Gregory was repeatedly cast as crusty no-nonsense types: detectives, military officers, prosecuting attorneys and outlaw leaders. With his bravura performance as demagogic, dead-headed senator Johnny Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Gregory launched a second career of sorts, cornering the market in portraying braggadocio blowhards. One of his best characterizations in this vein was as the hard-shelled Inspector Luger in the TV sitcom Barney Miller. He played Luger for six seasons (1975-78, 1979-81), with time out for his own short-lived starring series, Detective School (1978). He also played Prohibition-era detective Barney Ruditsky on The Lawless Years (1959-61) and T. R. Scott in The Paul Lynde Show (1972), not to mention nearly 1000 guest appearances on other series. James Gregory has sometimes exhibited his sentimental streak by singing in his spare time: he has for many years been a member of the SPEBQSA, which as any fan of The Music Man can tell you is the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America.

Trivia: American actor George Murdock's uneven facial features enabled him to play many an offbeat part in his early professional years, none more offbeat than the ventriloquist's dummy come to life in the 1962 Twilight Zone episode "The Dummy." Murdock went on to play obnoxious and intrusive authority figures. He made Sammy Jackson's life hell as Captain Krupnick in the 1964 sitcom version of No Time for Sergeants, and fifteen years later did same for Hal Linden as an internal-affairs snoop on Barney Miller. In his later years, Murdock landed one of his best-known parts, as God in the disastrous Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.