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: Heavyset, hawk-nosed Italian-American character actor Al Molinaro maintained a constant association with two series roles throughout his career, both down-to-earth and sweet-natured, paternal types: that of Murray Greshner, better known as Murray the Cop, on the small-screen version of The Odd Couple (1970-1983), and that of Alfred Delvecchio, the second proprietor of Arnold's Drive-In, on Happy Days (a role maintained from 1976 through 1982). The Wisconsin-based location of Days hit close to home for Molinaro, as a real-life native of Kenosha, WI. Born in 1919, he began signing for acting roles in the early to mid-'50s and achieved his big break when very briefly cast as Agent 44 on Mel Brooks' spy spoof Get Smart (before Victor French replaced him). Molinaro reportedly met Odd Couple producer Garry Marshall while enrolled in acting classes with Marshall's sister, Penny, and thereby landed the part of Murray. That led, in turn, to the Happy Days casting in the fall of 1976 when series co-star Pat Morita left to headline his own short-lived series, Mr. T & Tina. Following Days, Molinaro signed for very infrequent guest roles on series and permanently settled in Los Angeles, where he did occasional theatrical performances and made public appearances. He retired from acting in the mid-'90s. Molinaro died in 2015, at age 96.

Trivia: Wiry, solemn-faced American actor Curt Conway interrupted stage work to appear in his first film, Gentleman's Agreement (1947). As Bert McAnny in the Oscar-winning film, Conway was one of many Anglo-Saxon types who opened mouth and inserted foot when Gregory Peck, investigating anti-Semitism, pretended to be Jewish. Conway was a stalwart of television's "live" days of the '50s, at which time he did some directing as well as acting. Twilight Zone fans will remember a heavily made-up Conway in the 1963 episode "He's Alive"; the actor played a shadowy stranger who gives advice to a neo-Nazi activist (Dennis Hopper) on how to get ahead, and who at the end of the episode turns out to be--to everyone's surprise but the audience--Adolph Hitler. Having begun his film career in a movie indictment of race prejudice, Curt Conway ended his career in a film dealing with the same subject, 1971's The Man.

Trivia: The son of vaudeville and burlesque performers, George O'Hanlon made his own stage bow as a dancer at age 16 -- only to be fired after a few weeks over a salary dispute. O'Hanlon made the rounds in summer stock and burlesque, then registered with Hollywood's Central Casting as a film extra in the early '30s. While hoofing away in the choruses of many a Warner Bros. musical, O'Hanlon took acting lessons at the Bliss-Hayden theater in Beverly Hills. His big break came when he was hired by fledgling director Richard Bare for a U.S.C.-subsidized short subject, So You Want to Give Up Smoking (1942). After the war, O'Hanlon and Bare teamed for a series of shorts for Warners release; informally titled Behind the Eight Ball, these one-reel gems starred O'Hanlon as benighted "everyman" Joe McDoakes. This popular series ran from 1946 through 1955, amassing a total of 56 entries, three of which were nominated for Academy Awards. Outside of his McDoakes assignments, O'Hanlon appeared as Gillis in 45 episodes of the 1950s TV sitcom The Life of Riley, and also wrote and directed several installments of such TV weeklies as The Roaring 20s, 77 Sunset Strip, and Petticoat Junction. He played supporting roles in films like The Hucksters (1946), The Tanks are Coming (1951), and Kronos (1957), and directed the 1959 Tommy Noonan/Pete Marshall vehicle The Rookies. Children of the 1960s will remember George O'Hanlon as the voice of George Jetson on the Hanna-Barbera prime-time cartoon series The Jetsons.

Trivia: To younger generations, the slightly diminutive and balding American character actor Richard Stahl was probably best known as Howard Miller, the deadpan, stone-faced chef (and indifferent receptor of Marian Mercer's affections) on the long-running syndicated sitcom It's a Living. Stahl inherited the position from fellow supporting player Bert Remsen, and sustained it for four seasons, until the program wrapped in September 1989. But Stahl's visage graced a much broader spectrum of films and television shows than his behind-the-counter presence at the Above the Top restaurant -- and if viewers have trouble making a list, this is only a reflection on Stahl's ability to blend in successfully with fellow cast members and settings. Such is the essence of a gifted character player. Stahl made his first bow in 1966, as Steve Parsons on the "Dear Sally Rogers" episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show (its final season). He subsequently became a mainstay on the television airwaves, and his resumé reads like a laundry list of '70s and '80s hit prime time series, including but not limited to: That Girl, The Partridge Family, Love American Style, Bonanza, Columbo, All in the Family, Good Times, The Odd Couple, Maude, Happy Days, The Facts of Life, Murder, She Wrote, Hill Street Blues, and a handful of particularly memorable turns on Newhart. He reinforced his small-screen presence (and audience familiarity) with feature film appearances in such motion pictures as Five Easy Pieces (1970), High Anxiety (1977), The Flamingo Kid (1984), The American President (1995), and The Ghosts of Mississippi (1996). Stahl landed his last role with a bit part in Garry Marshall's 1999 flop, The Other Sister. He spent his final seven years in retirement, battling Parkinson's Disease, and eventually succumbed to the illness on June 18, 2006. Stahl was seventy-four.

Trivia: Versatile American character actor Tim Herbert appeared in several films during the '60s and '70s. He got his start and later also made guest appearances in many television shows and movies.