Trivia: A Chicagoan from head to toe, American comedian Bob Newhart started his workaday life as a certified public accountant after flunking out of law school. As a means of breaking his job's monotony, Newhart would call his friend Ed Gallagher, and improvise low-key comedy sketches. A mutual friend of Newhart and Gallagher's, Chicago deejay Dan Sorkin, tape-recorded some of these off-the-cuff routines and played them for Warner Bros. records. Newhart suddenly found himself booked into a Houston nightclub -- his first-ever public appearance. Armed with telephone-conversation routines which delineated how Abe Lincoln would be handled by a publicity agent, or how Abner Doubleday would have fared trying to sell baseball to a modern-day novelty firm, Newhart recorded his first comedy album in 1960 -- which evidently struck a nerve with fellow white-collar workers, since it sold 1,500,000 copies. The hottest young comic on the club-and-TV circuit, Newhart was offered starring roles in situation comedies, but felt he wasn't a good enough actor to make a single character interesting week after week. Instead, he signed in 1961 for NBC's The Bob Newhart Show, a comedy-variety series which nosedived in the ratings but won an Emmy. Fearing that TV would eat up all his material within a year or so, Newhart went back to nightclubs after his one-season series was cancelled. Sharpening his acting skills in TV guest spots and in several films (his first, 1962's Hell is For Heroes, was so unnerving an experience that Bob repeatedly begged the producers to kill his character off before the fadeout), Newhart felt emboldened enough to attempt a regular TV series again in 1972. This Bob Newhart Show cast the comedian as psychologist Bob Hartley - an ideal outlet for his "button-down" style of dry humor. Six seasons and several awards later, Newhart was firmly established as a television superstar; this time around he wasn't cancelled, but ended the series on his own volition, feeling the series had exhausted its bag of tricks. Most popular sitcom personalities had come acropper trying to repeat their first success with a second series, but Newhart broke the jinx with Newhart in 1982, wherein Bob played author Dick Loudon, who on a whim decided to open a New England colonial inn. Newhart was every bit as popular as his earlier sitcom, and, like the previous show, the series ended (in 1990) principally because Newhart chose to end it. This he did with panache: Newhart's final scene suggested the entire series had been a bad dream experienced by Bob Newhart Show's Bob Hartley! A third starring sitcom, 1992's Bob, found Newhart playing a cult-figure comic book artist; alas, despite excellent scriptwork and the usual polished Newhart performance, this new series fell victim to format tinkering and poor timeslots. Over teh course of the next few decades, Newhart would frequently turn up in guest roles on shows like Murphy Brown, ER, and Desperate Housewives, and though his 1997 odd couple sitcom George & Leo failed to find its footing, he did appear in all three installments of TNT's popular fantasy trilogy The Librarian, starring Noah Wyle. Meanwhile, cameos in such films as Elf and Horrible Bosses continually offered a gentle reminder that comedy's nicest funnyman could still crack us up.

Trivia: Though many casual observers perceive that comic actor Tom Poston was "discovered" by Steve Allen in 1956, Poston had in fact been a performer long before Allen ever set foot on a stage. At age 9, Poston was a member of the Flying Zebleys, an acrobatic troupe. After Air Force service in World War II, he began his formal acting training at the AADA. Poston made his "legit" New York stage debut in Jose Ferrer's Cyrano de Bergerac (1947). With several years of stage work under his belt, Poston was engaged to host the local New York TV variety series Entertainment (1955), and it was this effort that brought him to the attention of Steve Allen. The story goes that Poston was so flustered at his audition for Allen's TV variety series that he forgot his own name when asked. From 1956 through 1960, Poston was seen along with Louis Nye and Don Knotts as a member of the Allen stock company; appropriately, he was most often cast as a "man on the street" interviewee who could never remember his name. Poston won an Emmy for his work on Allen's show in 1959, and that same year hosted the weekday TV game show Split Personality; this gig led to a long tenure as a guest panelist on other quiz programs. In films from 1953, Poston starred in a pair of offbeat William Castle-directed comedies, Zotz (1962) and The Old Dark House (1963). Poston's TV sitcom credits include such roles as prison guard Sullivan on On the Rocks (1975), absentminded Damon Jerome on We've Got Each Other (1977), cantankerous neighbor Franklin Delano Bickley on Mork and Mindy and Ringo Crowley on Good Grief (1990). In 1982, Poston beat out Jerry Van Dyke for his most famous prime-time TV role: caretaker George Utley on Newhart. Poston died at age 85 in April 2007, of undisclosed causes. Until the time of his death, he was married to Suzanne Pleshette of The Bob Newhart Show.

Trivia: Most "baby boomers" first saw actor James Hampton in the whimsically funny role of bugler Hannibal Dobbs on the mid-1960s sitcom F Troop. Even today, memories of Dobson's earnest but hopelessly inept rendition of "Reveille" and his anguished reaction to public revelation of his character's middle name (Shirley) is enough to bring a warm smile to the lips. During the 1970s, Hampton was unofficially "adopted" by old pal Burt Reynolds, appearing in such Reynolds vehicles as The Longest Yard (1974) and Hustle (1975). James Hampton was afforded star billing for his role as the lycanthropic dad of Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf (1985), a part he carried over into the film's TV-cartoon spin-off.

Trivia: A veteran character actor of stage and screen, George O. Petrie will be recognized by fans of the NBC sitcom Mad About You as Paul Reiser's film editor. A native of New Haven, CT, and a 1934 graduate from U.S.C., Petrie's interest in acting led him to New York where he landed a role in the Broadway production of Cafe Crown. While serving in the military during WWII, Petrie appeared in the Broadway production of The Army Play by Play, a five-part anthology comprised of vignettes penned by soldiers from as many camps. The show ran for six months and played a command performance before President Roosevelt. Upon transferring to the Air Corps, Petrie was cast in Moss Hart's inspirational Winged Victory. Following its four-month run, Petrie went on to appear in George Cukor's film version. Petrie became a radio performer after his discharge and starred in several dramas, including The Amazing Mr. Malone. He turned to television acting in the '50s and began starring in live soap operas such as As the World Turns and Edge of Night as well as playing a semi-regular part on Jackie Gleason's The Honeymooners. Petrie would remain associated with Gleason on various projects through 1969. Petrie's filmography includes Hud (1963), Something in Common (1986), and Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987). Petrie died of lymphoma in his Brentwood, CA, home at the age 85.