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: Instantly recognizable for her cute overbite, raucous voice, and broad Bronx accent, Penny Marshall successfully made the transition from popular comic actress to a respected director and producer of popular mainstream feature films. A New York native (born Carole Penny Marsciarelli), Marshall is the daughter of an industrial filmmaker and a dance instructor. She started dancing herself as a toddler and as a teen competed on The Ted Mack Amateur Hour with a dance troupe comprised of several friends. The group also appeared on The Jackie Gleason Show. By the time she was a young adult and had graduated with degrees in math and psychology from the University of New Mexico, her older brother, Garry Marshall, had established himself as a successful television writer. It was Garry who provided Marshall with her first film role in his feature film debut effort as a screenwriter and producer in How Sweet It Is (1968).When her brother began creating and producing situation comedies, he made sure Marshall had parts in his shows, the first of which was My Friend Tony and the second was The Odd Couple, where she had a recurring role. Marshall also guest starred on other comedies, including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but her big break didn't come until her brother cast her and her friend Cindy Williams as Laverne and Shirley in an episode of his popular series Happy Days. Her portrayal of a wiseacre working-class broad and Williams' take on the more innocent Shirley gained an instant fan base and so Garry Marshall was inspired to build a sitcom around the characters. Laverne and Shirley debuted in 1978 and ran through 1983. During this period, Marshall was married to actor-turned-director Rob Reiner. She divorced him in the early '80s. At that time, it was apparent that her acting career was on a dead-end street and Marshall decided to try out directing. Beginning with television movies and series such as The Tracey Ullman Show, Marshall learned to direct. She made her feature film directorial debut with the Whoopi Goldberg vehicle Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986) which had originally been slated for director Howard Zieff. Returning her brother's favors, she gave him a part in the film and also created a part for her daughter, Tracy Reiner (the offspring from Marshall's first marriage to Michael Henry). The film was a critical and box-office dud, but this did not deter Marshall from trying again. Her second attempt at directing, Big (1988), the story of a boy whose wish is granted and so finds himself stranded in a man's body, made actor Tom Hanks a movie star and established Marshall as a respectable big-league filmmaker. Still, she took two years to finish her next film, Awakenings (1990). This was due in part to 20th Century Fox's reluctance to have the story filmed until Marshall had engaged her friends Robin Williams, in a rare subdued dramatic role, and Robert De Niro. A well-made and poignant drama, Awakenings received three Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. For her next film, Marshall offered up a sentimental, funny, and ebullient look at the women who kept professional baseball alive when all the young men were off fighting during WWII in A League of Their Own (1992). It was a well-crafted effort that has grown in popularity on video and netted star Geena Davis a Golden Globe nomination. Since then, Marshall's directorial output yielded uneven results and her films, while still loaded with mainstream appeal, had yet to reach the degree of popularity of her earlier work. In the late '90s, she and her much-younger pal, comedian Rosie O'Donnell, became popular for a series of television commercials for K-Mart. In addition to directing and producing, Marshall occasionally continued to work as an actress on television and in films, and earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (alongside her Laverne and Shirley co-star Cindy Williams) in 2004. Though at the time it appeared that Marshall had taken a hiatus from the director's chair, she would later resurface to direct episiodes of According to Jim and United States of Tara before lending her voice to the animated comedy series The Life and Times of Jim, and making an appearance in Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein's hipster-skewing sketch series Portlandia.

Trivia: Teri Garr found early visibility with a mixture of dramatic and comic roles before maturing, so to speak, into her persona as a smart comedienne typecast as an eccentric ditz. Her warm, fluffy presence and great sense of timing made her a Hollywood mainstay, still finding regular work into her fifties, with her intelligence forever providing depth to a panoply of sweetly goofy supporting roles.The progeny of old-school, low-level industry types -- vaudevillian Eddie Garr and wardrobe mistress Phyllis Garr -- the actress was born as Terry Garr on December 11, 1949. She had launched into a professional dance career by age 13, working with the San Francisco ballet and joining a touring company of West Side Story. Her toes soon tapped her into the movies, providing her steady work during the 1960s in such films as The TAMI Show, What a Way to Go, and John Goldfarb Please Come Home, with her first actual appearance coming in the Elvis Presley vehicle Fun in Acapulco (1963). Her tiny speaking role in the 1968 Monkees movie Head brought her enough attention to land her work as a featured player in a handful of early-'70s television variety shows: The Ken Berry "Wow" Show, The Burns and Schreiber Comedy Hour, and The Sony and Cher Comedy Hour.Francis Ford Coppola gave Garr her first major film role with 1974's The Conversation, where she played Amy, the girlfriend of Gene Hackman's surveillance man Harry Caul. With her next part, however, she proved herself impossible to pin down, going the opposite direction to play the riotously accented maidservant Inga in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974). From here she began a string of playing mothers and wives in high-profile films, few of which allowed her to dabble in her sillier side: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Oh, God! (1977), and The Black Stallion (1979). It wasn't until Tootsie in 1981 that she received full recognition for her talents and started to become identified with her knack for playing charmingly sweet airheads. She received her one and only Oscar nomination as Sandy, the neurotic soap actress.Tootsie proved an early career peak for Garr; although she continued to get a decent amount of prominent film work (Mr. Mom, Miracles, Mom and Dad Save the World, Dumb and Dumber), she never again made the same forceful impression, keeping her plate full but slipping into the background. Garr became ubiquitous as a TV movie actress, ushering in a slightly more earnest period of her career, as well as a drop in prestige. With such projects as Stranger in the Family (1991), Deliver Them From Evil: The Taking of Alta View (1992), and Fugitive Nights: Danger in the Desert (1993), she could be counted on to tackle the hot-button topic of the week on network TV.Although the '90s provided her few meaty movie roles, she did indeed thrive in television, including countless sitcom guest spots, as well as vocal work on the animated series Batman Beyond. Her most widely seen guest appearance was as the estranged birth mother of Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow) on NBC's Friends. In addition to it being an uncanny case of casting by physical resemblance, Garr's character provided the perfect explanation for the source of Phoebe's wackiness. Garr also seemed to symbolically pass the torch to Kudrow, her heir apparent in lovable flightiness.She continued to work steadily in a number of projects including Dick, Ghost World, and Unaccompanied Minors. She's fought a number of health issues including a nearly fatal brain aneurysm in 2006, and being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999.

Trivia: Supporting actress Currie has appeared on screen since the '80s.

Trivia: Mickey Fox was a character actress who worked in films and television during the '70s and '80s. She was also the owner of nightclubs and eateries in New York, California, and Europe. In film, Fox started out working in Rome and appeared in a few Fellini films, including Fellini Satyricon(1969). She also appeared in those of other noted Italian directors including Visconti and De Sica. Fox later returned to the states and continued working in low-budget films through 1983.

Trivia: American actor George Furth attended Northwestern University, a cradle of American acting talent. After getting his master's degree at Columbia, Furth sought out stage work: his first part was in the 1961 play A Cook for Mr. General. Most often cast in films as a bespectacled, nerdish, ineffectual type, Furth appeared in such films as The Best Man (1964) and Myra Breckenridge (1970). His most celebrated movie role was as Woodcock, the by-the-book railroad guard robbed twice by Paul Newman and Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). On TV, Furth was seen regularly on Broadside, Tammy, The Good Guys and The Dumplings--situation comedies all. Broadway regulars will recognize the name George Furth less for his acting than for his considerable accomplishments as a playwright; in 1970, Furth wrote the book for Stephen Sondheim's Tony-winning musical Company.

Trivia: With his chiseled, sharp features and distinctive raspy voice, American character actor Ed Peck was often cast as a policeman or a military man in feature films and television shows -- notably on the TV series Happy Days where he played police officer Kirk -- of the '60s through the early '80s. He made his debut on the afternoon television series Major Dell Conway of the Flying Tigers in the early '50s.

Trivia: While visiting a high school pal in Los Angeles in 1924, roly-poly Grady Sutton made the acquaintance of his friend's brother, director William A. Seiter. Quite taken by Sutton's bucolic appearance and comic potential, Seiter invited Sutton to appear in his next film, The Mad Whirl. Sutton enjoyed himself in his bit role, and decided to remain in Hollywood, where he spent the next 47 years playing countless minor roles as dimwitted Southerners and country bumpkins. Usually appearing in comedies, Sutton supported such master clowns as Laurel and Hardy and W.C. Fields (the latter reportedly refused to star in 1940's The Bank Dick unless Sutton was given a good part); he also headlined in two short-subjects series, Hal Roach's The Boy Friends and RKO's The Blondes and the Redheads. Through the auspices of Blondes and the Redheads director George Stevens, Sutton was cast as Katharine Hepburn's cloddish dancing partner in Alice Adams (1935), the first of many similar roles. Sutton kept his hand in movies until 1971, and co-starred on the 1966 Phyllis Diller TV sitcom The Pruitts of Southampton. A willing interview subject of the the 1960s and 1970s, Grady Sutton went into virtual seclusion after the death of his close friend, director George Cukor.