Trivia: Best known as the rumpled television detective Columbo, character actor Peter Falk also enjoyed a successful film career, often in association with the groundbreaking independent filmmaker John Cassavetes. Born September 16, 1927, in New York City, Falk lost an eye at the age of three, resulting in the odd, squinting gaze which later became his trademark. He initially pursued a career in public administration, serving as an efficiency expert with the Connecticut Budget Bureau, but in the early '50s, boredom with his work sparked an interest in acting. By 1955, Falk had turned professional, and an appearance in a New York production of The Iceman Cometh earned him much attention. He soon graduated to Broadway and in 1958 made his feature debut in the Nicholas Ray/Budd Schulberg drama Wind Across the Everglades.A diminutive, stocky, and unkempt presence, Falk's early screen roles often portrayed him as a blue-collar type or as a thug; it was as the latter in 1960's Murder Inc. that he earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, a major career boost. He was nominated in the same category the following year as well, this time as a sarcastic bodyguard in Frank Capra's Pocketful of Miracles. In 1962, Falk won an Emmy for his work in the television film The Price of Tomatoes, a presentation of the Dick Powell Theater series. The steady stream of accolades made him a hot property, and he next starred in the 1962 feature Pressure Point. A cameo in Stanley Kramer's 1963 smash It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World preceded Falk's appearance in the Rat Pack outing Robin and the Seven Hoods, but the film stardom many predicted for him always seemed just out of reach, despite lead roles in 1965's The Great Race and 1967's Luv.In 1968, Falk first assumed the role of Columbo, the disheveled police lieutenant whose seemingly slow and inept investigative manner masked a steel-trap mind; debuting in the TV movie Prescription: Murder, the character was an immediate hit, and after a second telefilm, Ransom for a Dead Man, a regular Columbo series premiered as part of the revolving NBC Mystery Movie anthology in the fall of 1971, running for seven years and earning Falk a second Emmy in the process. In the meantime, he also continued his film career, most notably with Cassavetes; in 1970, Falk starred in the director's Husbands, and in 1974 they reunited for the brilliant A Woman Under the Influence. In between the two pictures, Falk also returned to Broadway, where he won a Tony award for his performance in the 1972 Neil Simon comedy The Prisoner of Second Avenue. In 1976, Cassavetes joined him in front of the camera to co-star in Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky, and directed him again in 1977's Opening Night.After Columbo ceased production in 1978, Falk starred in the Simon-penned mystery spoof The Cheap Detective, followed by the William Friedkin caper comedy The Brink's Job (1978). After 1979's The In-Laws, he starred two years later in ...All the Marbles, but was then virtually absent from the screen for the next half decade. Cassavetes' 1986 effort Big Trouble brought Falk back to the screen (albeit on a poor note; Cassavetes later practically disowned the embarrassing film) and and in 1987 he starred in Happy New Year along with the Rob Reiner cult favorite The Princess Bride. An appearance as himself in Wim Wenders' masterful Wings of Desire in 1988 preceded his 1989 resumption of the Columbo character for another regular series; the program was to remain Falk's focus well into the next decade, with only a handful of film appearances in pictures including 1990's Tune in Tomorrow and a cameo in Robert Altman's The Player. After the cancellation of Columbo, he next turned up in Wenders' Desire sequel Far Away, So Close before starring in the 1995 comedy Roommates. Falk continued to work in both film and television for the next decade and a half, starring in various Columbo specials through 2003, appearing with Woody Allen in the made-for-TV The Sunshine Boys in 1997, and playing a bar owner caught up in mafia dealings in 1999's The Money Kings. Other projects included the Adam Sandler-produced gangster comedy Corky Romano (2001), the Dreamworks animated family film A Shark Tale (as the voice of Ira Feinberg), and the Paul Reiser-scripted, Raymond de Felitta-directed comedy-drama The Thing About My Folks (2005). In 2007, Falk starred opposite Nicolas Cage and Julianne Moore in Lee Tamahori's sci-fi thriller Next. That same year, Falk announced to the public that he had Alzheimer's disease. He died in June 2011 at age 83.

Trivia: Universally regarded as one of Western Europe's foremost stage actors, Oskar Werner was 18 years old when he made his stage bow at the Burgtheater in his native Vienna. A lifelong pacifist, Werner did everything he could to avoid conscription in the Axis army during World War II; when he finally was forced into a uniform, he deserted at the earliest opportunity. After the war, Werner resumed his theatrical career, only reluctantly making his first film in 1948; "I am married to the theater, and the films are only my mistress" he would later declare. In 1951, he made his English-language film debut as "Happy," an enigmatic German POW, in 20th Century-Fox's Decision Before Dawn. When Fox reneged on its promise to develop Werner into a Hollywood star, he went back to his true love, the theatre, vowing to only appear in films that intrigued him. In 1955, he essayed the title role in Mozart, and also played a smaller but no less significant part as the student with the scarf in Ophuls' Lola Montes. Then it was back to the stage, culminating with his formation of Theatre Ensemble Oskar Werner in 1959. Werner's definitive screen performance was the romantic intellectual Jules in Francois Truffaut's Jules et Jim (1962), though it was his portrayal of the philosophical Dr. Schumann in Ship of Fools (1965) that earned the actor his only Oscar nomination. His friendship with Truffaut soured after their second collaboration, Fahrenheit 451 (1967); exhibiting profound disillusionment, Truffaut complained (not without justification) that Werner had become a "cold" performer. Oskar Werner died at the age of 62, just before he was scheduled to deliver a lecture at a German drama club.

Trivia: An alumnus of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Wisconsin-born actress Gena Rowlands entered the Broadway talent pool in 1952. From 1955 through 1957, the blonde, frosty-eyed actress co-starred with Edward G. Robinson in the original Broadway production of Middle of the Night. She also did plenty of Manhattan-based television during this period, including a recurring role on the forgotten syndicated series Top Secret U.S.A. Rowlands made her first film, The High Cost of Loving, in 1958, the same year that she married legendary actor/director John Cassavetes. The excellent response to her performance as the deaf-mute wife of a detective on the 1961 TV series 87th Precinct sparked a grass-roots campaign to have Rowlands appear on the series on a weekly basis, but her film commitments were such that she couldn't be confined to any one part for very long. Always a capable leading lady, Rowlands blossomed into full stardom in the films directed by her husband. She first collaborated with him on A Child Is Waiting (1963) and then starred as a prostitute in his 1968 film Faces. Rowlands went on to earn Oscar nominations for her work in two of her husband's other films, A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980).After Cassavetes' death in 1989, Rowlands took a two-year sabbatical from films, returning to play Holly Hunter's mother -- and Richard Dreyfuss' mother-in-law -- in Once Around (1991). That same year, she appeared as a casting agent in Jim Jarmusch's Night on Earth. After starring in such films as 1995's The Neon Bible and Something to Talk About (the latter of which featured her as the "steel magnolia" wife of Robert Duvall and mother of Julia Roberts), Rowlands stepped in front the camera for her son Nick Cassavetes' 1996 directorial debut, Unhook the Stars. The actress turned in a strong performance as a matriarch experiencing various life upheavals, and the following year again collaborated with her son in his romantic comedy She's So Lovely. Rowlands continued to stay busy with work for other directors, appearing in no less than three films in 1998. Particularly notable appearances included her role as Sean Connery's estranged wife in Playing by Heart and her portrayal of the grandmother of a disabled boy in The Mighty. In addition to her film work, Rowlands has earned considerable acclaim for her television roles. In 1985, she earned an Emmy nomination for her role in the powerful AIDS drama An Early Frost, and has won Emmys for her performances in The Betty Ford Story (1987) and Face of a Stranger (1991).At the beginning of the 21st century Rowlands continued to work steadily racking up credits in a variety of projects including Wild Iris, Hysterical Blindness, and Taking Lives. IN 2004 she acted again for her son in the cult hit The Notebook, and she followed that up with a role in the supernatural thriller The Skeleton Key. In 2007 she provided one of the voices in the well-reviewed Persepolis, and after a five-year hiatus from screens she returned in yet another project directed by her son, the quirky psychological drama Yellow.

Trivia: Direct from the University of Michigan, actress Martha Scott made her first professional appearance with the Globe Theatre troupe, performing abridged versions of Shakespeare at the 1933-34 Chicago World's Fair. Scott then worked extensively in stock and on radio before making her celebrated Broadway bow as Emily Webb in the original 1938 production of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning Our Town. She repeated the role of Emily in the 1940 film version, earning an Oscar nomination despite the fact that the film's tacked-on happy ending rendered Scott's famous "back from the dead" monologue pointless. Scott's subsequent film assignments, notably Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941) and One Foot in Heaven (1941), found her portraying characters far older than herself with total credibility. Having previously played both the wife and the sister of Charlton Heston (nine years her junior) on stage and TV, Scott portrayed Heston's mother on the big screen in The Ten Commandments (1955) and Ben-Hur (1959). Her television resumé includes the 1954 anthology Modern Romance, which she hosted, and the roles of Mrs. Patricia Shepard and Margaret Millington in, respectively, Dallas and Secrets of Midland Heights. Her most intriguing TV assignment was the 1987 Murder She Wrote episode "Strangest of Bargains," wherein, with the help of extensive stock footage, Scott, Jeffrey Lynn and Harry Morgan reprised their roles from the 1949 film Strange Bargain. Dabbling in producing in the 1970s, Scott served as co-producer of the 1978 Broadway play First Monday in October, functioning in the same capacity when the play was turned into a film in 1981. Martha Scott was married for many years to musician Mel Powell.

Trivia: American actress Patricia Barry was signed for a Columbia Pictures contract almost immediately upon her graduation from Stephens College. Billed as Patricia White, the young actress was kept busy in Gene Autry westerns, two-reel comedies with such funsters as Andy Clyde and Sterling Holloway, and occasional leads in B-plus features like The Wreck of the Hesperus (1948). Changing her professional name upon her marriage to producer/director Philip Barry, Jr. (son of the famed playwright), Patricia became one of the most visible actresses in 1950s television. She spent two years as a regular on the daytime drama First Love, and worked steadily in such anthologies as Playhouse 90 and Matinee Theatre. Though an advocate of the "method" school of acting, Barry's technique was a lot less self-indulgent and timewasting than most method actors of her era, and she continued popping up with regularity on TV shows of the 1960s, including a costarring stint with Jack Klugman in the short-lived 1964 sitcom Harris Against the World. Active in TV and films into the 1980s, Patricia Barry is probably best known to modern viewers for her performances in two Twilight Zone installments, "The Chaser" (1960) and "I Dream of Jeannie," wherein she pulled off the dextrous task of being both sexy and funny at the same time and for her work on soap operas, including Days of Our Lives and All My Children. Barry died in 2016, at age 93.

Trivia: Black lead and supporting actor, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: American actor Robert Brown -- not to be confused with the British actor of the same name whose credits include the James Bond movie The Living Daylights -- was born in Trenton, NJ, in 1926 (some sources say 1927), of Welsh and Scottish descent. He studied drama at the New School Dramatic Workshop, where his fellow students included Walter Matthau, Rod Steiger, future director Gene Saks, and actor-singer Harry Belafonte. Brown was principally a theater actor for the first two decades of his career, making his Broadway debut 1948 in Skipper Next to God, directed by Lee Strasberg and starring John Garfield. His other Broadway credits included Maxwell Anderson's Barefoot in Athens (1951) and Christopher Fry's The Dark Is Light Enough, the latter starring Katharine Cornell. Brown's tall, rangy good looks should have made him a natural for movies, but as a New York-based actor, his big-screen credits were minimal. He played a small role in the Benedict Bogeaus-produced Appointment in Honduras (1953), directed by Jacques Tourneur, and a much larger part, as the dissolute (but ultimately self-sacrificing) brother to Arthur Franz in The Flame Barrier (1958). Brown appeared in various dramatic anthology shows, and in episodes of series such as Perry Mason, and was somewhat busier in movies in the 1960s. His most prominent acting job, however, was in an episode of Star Trek, in a role that came to him accidentally. John Drew Barrymore was supposed to be the featured guest star in "The Alternative Factor," a 1967 episode, in a difficult dual role, but he never reported for filming, and Brown was cast in the part of the mysterious alien Lazarus at the last possible moment. He never had a chance to absorb the script the way he might have, in what was a difficult acting job. Despite the fact that he and the rest of the cast were rushed through his scenes, Brown managed to bring a good deal of humanity and complexity to his portrayals of the two roles. Ironically, thanks to the enduring popularity of the series, this has probably been Brown's most widely seen television appearance. In 1968, Brown won the leading role in an unusual nonviolent Western called Here Come the Brides. The series' roots lay in an unproduced film project that was to have starred Burt Lancaster, and Brown's portrayal of Jason Bolt evoked images of Lancaster (and also Errol Flynn) at their most charismatic. Brides only lasted two seasons, but Brown was sufficiently well-established to get the lead in another very different series, Primus, about a marine biologist. Following the cancellation of that series, Brown appeared intermittently on television into the 1980s.

Trivia: Character actress Shera Danese specialized in bit parts, initially ones of a slightly sultry nature. She landed one of her earliest big-screen roles as one of saxophone player Jimmy Doyle's (Robert De Niro) girlfriends in Martin Scorsese's revisionist musical New York, New York (1977), then drew attention away from Rebecca De Mornay as one of two prostitutes who accompany a high-school senior (Tom Cruise) out for a wild evening on the town, in Paul Brickman's satire on teen angst, Risky Business (1983). Subsequent projects included the 1987 Baby Boom (as a cloak room attendant), the 2002 John Q., and the 2006 Alpha Dog. Danese also appeared in numerous Columbo telemovies opposite longtime off-camera husband Peter Falk.

Trivia: Most of actor Stephen Elliot's film credits were piled up after he reached the age of fifty. The best of these include Hospital (1971), Death Wish (1974), The Hindenburg (1978) and Taking Care of Business (1988). Elliot was cast as Jill Eikenberry's bullying millionaire father in Arthur (1981), in which he pummeled prospective son-in-law Dudley Moore to a pulp when Moore balked at the altar; he repeated this ham-fisted characterization in Arthur 2, On the Rocks (1985). Stephen Elliot's acting contributions to television include patriarch Benjamin Lassiter on Beacon Hill (1975), Jane Wyman's ex-husband (not Ronald Reagan) on Falcon Crest (1981-82), and several years in the role of Paul Ailey on the daytime drama Love of Life.

Trivia: Mike Lally started in Hollywood as an assistant director in the early 1930s. Soon, however, Lally was steadily employed as a stunt man, doubling for such Warner Bros. stars as James Cagney and Pat O'Brien. He also played innumerable bit roles as reporters, court stenographers, cops and hangers-on. Active until 1982, Mike Lally was frequently seen in functionary roles on TV's Columbo.

Trivia: Character actor John Finnegan first appeared onscreen in the '70s.

Trivia: American actor Bruce Kirby made his Broadway bow at age 40 in the 1965 production Diamond Orchid. More stage work followed, and then movie assignments, commencing with the all-star Catch 22 (1970), and continuing into the 1980s with such productions as Sweet Dreams (1985) and Throw Momma from the Train (1987). Kirby's TV career has embraced both series successes (1989's Anything But Love, as Jamie Lee Curtis' father), ignoble failures (1976's Holmes and Yoyo, as Henry Sedford), and a few projects which never sold (Kirby was in two busted pilots for something called McNamara's Band). In 1984, Kirbyreturned to Broadway to understudy Dustin Hoffman as Willy Loman in the revival of Death of a Salesman. Bruce Kirby, sometimes billed as Bruce Kirby Sr., was the father of actor Bruno Kirby, who formerly billed himself as B. Kirby Jr.

Trivia: American character actor Vito Scotti may not be the living legend as described by his publicity packet, but he has certainly been one of the most familiar faces to bob up on small and large screens in the last five decades. Scotti's father was a vaudeville impresario, and his mother an opera singer; in fact, he was born while his mother was making a personal appearance in San Francisco. Launching his own career at seven with an Italian-language commedia del arte troupe in New York, Scotti picked up enough improvisational knowhow to develop a nightclub act. When the once-flourishing Italian theatre circuit began to fade after World War II, Scotti began auditioning for every job that came up -- whether he could do the job or not. Without his trademarked mustache, the diminuitive actor looked like a juvenile well into his thirties, and as such was cast in a supporting role as a timorous East Indian on the "Gunga Ram" segment of the '50s TV kiddie series Andy's Gang. Once the producers discovered that Scotti had mastered several foreign dialects, he was allowed to appear as a comic foil to Andy's Gang's resident puppet Froggy the Gremlin. In nighttime television, Scotti played everything from a murderous bank robber (on Steve Canyon) to a misplaced Japanese sub commander (on Gilligan's Island). He was indispensable to TV sitcoms: Scotti starred during the 1954 season of Life with Luigi (replacing J. Carroll Naish), then appeared as gesticulating Latin types in a score of comedy programs, notably The Dick Van Dyke Show (as eccentric Italian housepainter Vito Giotto) and The Flying Nun (as ever-suspicious Puerto Rican police captain Gaspar Fomento). In theatrical films, Scotti's appearances were brief but memorable. he is always greeted with appreciative audience laughter for his tiny bit as a restauranteur in The Godfather (1972); while in How Sweet it Is (1968) he is hilarious as a moonstruck chef, so overcome by the sight of bikini-clad Debbie Reynolds that he begins kissing her navel! Vito Scotti was still essaying dialect parts into the '90s.

Trivia: An American-born actor reared in Ireland and England, McGoohan made a memorable impression on the American and English viewing audiences by playing essentially the same role in three different television series. He began his performing career as a teen-ager, eventually played Henry V for the Old Vic company in London, and made mostly unremarkable films in the '50s. His movies include the delightful Disney film The Three Lives of Thomasina (1964). Success came in 1961, when McGoohan played government agent John Drake in Danger Man, a role he continued on Secret Agent (1965-66). He created, produced and often wrote episodes of the nightmarish, surrealistic cult series The Prisoner (1968-69). This show featured a character assumed to be the same John Drake (although he was known as Number 6 and his real name was never mentioned), who had been kidnapped and taken to a strange community. McGoohan later starred in the TV series Rafferty (1977) and directed the film Catch My Soul (1974). He won an Emmy Award in 1975 for his guest appearance on Columbo with Peter Falk.

Trivia: Actor George Hamilton got his start in high school dramatics. Movie-star handsome, Hamilton played the lead in his very first film, Crime and Punishment USA (1959). While his acting talent was barely discernible in his earliest effort, Hamilton steadily improved in such MGM films as Home From the Hill (1960), Where the Boys Are (1960), Light in the Piazza (1961). He was at his best in a brace of biopics: in Warner Bros.' Act One (1963) he played aspiring playwright Moss Hart, while in Your Cheatin' Heart (1965), he registered well as self-destructive C&W singer Hank Williams. His much-publicized mid-1960s dating of President Johnson's daughter Lynda Bird was unfairly written off by some as mere opportunism, a calculated ploy to buoy up a flagging career. In fact, it did more harm than good to Hamilton: by 1969, movie roles had dried up, and he was compelled to accept his first TV-series role, playing jet-setter Duncan Carlyle in The Survivors. The following year, he starred as State Department functionary Jack Brennan in the weekly TV espionager Paris 7000. He staged a spectacular comeback as star and executive producer of Love at First Bite (1979), a screamingly funny "Dracula" take-off that won the actor a Golden Globe nomination. Even better was Zorro the Gay Blade (1980), which unfortunately failed to match the excellent box-office performance of First Bite but which still provided a much-needed shot in the arm to Hamilton's career. He went on to play such campish roles as villainous movie producer Joel Abrigor in TV's Dynasty (1985-86 season only) and jaded 007-type Ian Stone in the weekly Spies (1987). Throughout the thick and thin of his acting career, Hamilton remained highly visible on the international social scene, squiring such high-profile lovelies as Elizabeth Taylor and Imelda Marcos. He also remained financially solvent with his line of skin products and tanning salons. In 1995, George Hamilton hopped on the talk-show bandwagon, co-starring with his former wife Alana (who'd remarried rocker Rod Stewart) on a not-bad syndicated daily TV chatfest.

Trivia: Publicity notwithstanding, Lesley Ann Warren did not exactly burst fully grown into the world in 1966 to star in the Rodgers and Hammerstein TV special Cinderella. Trained at New York's Professional Children's School, Lesley Ann studied under Lee Strasberg before making her Broadway debut in 110 in the Shade, the 1964 musical version of The Rainmaker. On the strength of Cinderella, Lesley Ann was signed to a Disney contract; but after starring in The Happiest Millionaire (1966) and The One and Only Genuine Original Family Band, she rebelled against her studio-imposed sweetness-'n'-light image. Upon replacing Barbara Bain in the long-running espionage TVer Mission: Impossible in 1970, Warren publicly emphasized that her character, Dana Lambert, was a "now" person, wise in the ways of sex. She stayed with Mission for only a year, after which she established herself as a leading light in the made-for-TV movie field, frequently cast as an older woman involved romantically with a much-younger man. She earned an Academy Award nomination for her hilarious performance as bleach-blond gangster's moll Norma in Victor/Victoria (1981), then starred in a couple of intriguing Alan Rudolph-directed dramas, Choose Me (1984) and The Songwriter (1986). Her more recent roles include Molly, the homeless woman in Mel Brooks' Life Stinks(1991), who goes into a "death throes" act whenever she feels like it, and the barracuda booking agent for c-and-w star George Strait in Pure Country (1994). For nearly a decade, Lesley Ann Warren was the wife of producer/hairstylist Jon Peters.