Trivia: Born in Brooklyn, NY, on December 29, 1936, actress/dancer/rubberfaced comedienne Mary Tyler Moore went on to star in the definitive television comedies of both the 1960s and the 1970s: The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966) and The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977). For her performances as Laura Petrie and Mary Richards, Moore won five Emmy Awards, in 1965, 1966, 1973, 1974, and 1976.Moore got her start in television commercials, acting as Happy Hotpoint, the Hotpoint Appliance Elf during The Ozzie and Harriet Show in 1955. She then progressed to a stint as the disembodied voice and legs of Sam, the answering service lady, on Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1957-1960). Three unsuccessful shows and a series of TV specials followed her more notable series: Mary (1978), the Mary Tyler Moore Hour (1979), and Mary (1985-1986). Her dramatic career took off in 1981, when she was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of the repressed mother in Ordinary People. Moore had Broadway success with Whose Life Is It Anyway?, appeared in the highly acclaimed Finnegan, Begin Again with Robert Preston on HBO, and won a CableACE Award in 1993 for her performance as an evil orphanage director in Stolen Babies. In 1996, Moore gained the appreciation of a new generation of fans with her hilarious turn as Ben Stiller's neurotic mother in David O. Russell's Flirting With Disaster. She also experienced a sort of renaissance through her mention in other films, notably Douglas Keeve's 1995 frockumentary Unzipped, which featured a beatific Isaac Mizrahi extolling the virtues of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and singing its theme song. In addition to her television and film work, Moore, as a well-known diabetic, has been a longtime representative of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. And though her film and television roles would become more sporadic moving into the new millennium, Moore could still be seen in the occasional theatrical release (Cheats, Against the Current) or made-for-television movie (Miss Lettie and Me, Snow Wonder) while making guest appearances in such popular sitcoms as That 70's Show and Hot in Cleveland. Moore died in 2017, at age 80.

Trivia: Raised in the only Jewish family in his neighborhood, American actor Ed Asner grew up having to defend himself both vocally and physically. A born competitor, he played championship football in high school and organized a top-notch basketball team which toured most of liberated Europe. Asner's performing career got its start while he was announcing for his high school radio station; moving to Chicago in the '50s, the actor was briefly a member of the Playwrights Theatre Club until he went to New York to try his luck on Broadway. Asner starred for several years in the off-Broadway production Threepenny Opera, and, toward the end of the '50s, picked up an occasional check as a film actor for industrial short subjects and TV appearances. Between 1960 and 1965, he established himself as one of television's most reliable villains; thanks to his resemblance to certain Soviet politicians, the actor was particularly busy during the spy-show boom of the mid-'60s. He also showed up briefly as a regular on the New York-filmed dramatic series Slattery's People. And though his film roles became larger, it was in a relatively minor part as a cop in Elvis Presley's Change of Habit (1969) that Asner first worked with Mary Tyler Moore. In 1970, over Moore's initial hesitation (she wasn't certain he was funny enough), Asner was cast as Lou Grant, the irascible head of the WJM newsroom on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The popular series ran for seven seasons, during which time the actor received three Emmy awards. His new stardom allowed Asner a wider variety of select roles, including a continuing villainous appearance on the miniseries Roots -- which earned him another Emmy. When Moore ceased production in 1977, Asner took his Lou Grant character into an hour-long dramatic weekly about a Los Angeles newspaper. The show's title, of course, was Lou Grant, and its marked liberal stance seemed, to some viewers, to be an extension of Asner's real-life viewpoint. While Lou Grant was in production, Asner was twice elected head of the Screen Actors Guild, a position that he frequently utilized as a forum for his political opinions -- notably his opposition to U.S. involvement in Central America. When Asner suggested that each guild member contribute toward opposing the country's foreign policy, he clashed head to head with Charlton Heston, who wrested Asner's office from him in a highly publicized power play. Although no tangible proof has ever been offered, it was Asner's belief that CBS canceled Lou Grant in 1982 because of his politics and not dwindling ratings. The actor continued to prosper professionally after Lou Grant, however, and, during the remainder of the '80s and into the '90s, starred in several TV movies, had guest and recurring roles in a wide variety of both TV dramas and comedies, and headlining two regular series, Off the Rack and The Bronx Zoo. Slowed but hardly halted by health problems in the '90s, Asner managed to find time to appear in the weekly sitcoms Hearts Afire and Thunder Alley -- atypically cast in the latter show as an ineffective grouch who was easily brow-beaten by his daughter and grandchildren.

Trivia: Actor Ted Knight dropped out of high school in order to enlist for World War II service. During the postwar years, Knight studied acting in Hartford, Connecticut. He became proficient with puppets and ventriloquism, which led to steady work as a TV kiddie-show host. Knight spent most of the 1950s and 1960s doing commercial voice-overs and essaying minor TV and movie roles (he was the nonspeaking cop who handed Norman Bates a robe at the end of Hitchcock's Psycho [1960]). Just barely making ends meet with TV guest spots and cartoon voices, Knight was rescued professionally in 1970 when he was cast in the role of vainglorious TV anchorman Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Three years into the series, Knight threatened to quit because of the one-note stupidity of his character. He was assuaged when the MTM producers "humanized" him with an understanding girlfriend (played by Georgia Engel) -- and it didn't hurt that the actor later won two Emmy awards for his portrayal of the clueless Ted Baxter. When MTM left the air in 1977, Knight attempted to headline a sitcom of his own. After a couple of false starts, he struck pay dirt in 1980 with Too Close for Comfort, playing a comic-strip artist with two nubile daughters. Too Close left the network for syndication in 1984, then matriculated into The Ted Knight Show in 1985. Though gravely ill, Ted Knight valiantly taped a years' worth of episodes before succumbing to cancer at the age of 62.

Trivia: Best remembered for his high-profile acting roles on two 1970s television sitcoms -- that of genial news writer Murray Slaughter on CBS's The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977) and that of sweet-natured Captain Merrill Stubing on ABC's The Love Boat (1977-1986), stage-trained actor Gavin MacLeod in fact began his career typecast as a villain. He landed parts in Hollywood features including The Sand Pebbles (1966), Deathwatch (1966), and The Comic (1969), and enjoyed a tenure as Joseph "Happy" Haines on the sitcom McHale's Navy from 1962 through 1964. After The Love Boat permanently laid anchor in the mid-'80s, MacLeod signed on as a spokesperson and pitchman for Princess Cruises and returned to regional theatrical work. He also tackled guest spots on programs including Touched by an Angel and (in a move that surprised everyone) the HBO prison drama Oz. Off-camera, MacLeod is an outspoken born-again Christian. He hosted a popular talk show on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, along with his wife, Patti (whom he divorced in 1982 and remarried three years later), called Back on Course, and personally funded many of the Greatest Adventure Stories from the Bible animated videos for children.

Trivia: Actress Betty White got her start in local Los Angeles television as the "telephone girl" for video emcee Al Jarvis. By early 1950 she was one of the stars of the daily, five-hour series Hollywood on Television. One of the highlights of this program was a husband and wife sketch titled "Life With Elizabeth," which when committed to film and syndicated nationally in 1953 became White's first starring TV sitcom. She went on to headline her own network variety series in 1954, then co-starred with Bill Williams in the weekly TV domestic comedy Date With the Angels (1957), which without Williams was retitled The Betty White Show in early 1958. For the next 15 years she made guest appearances on various variety and quiz show efforts, and toured the straw-hat theatrical circuit in such plays as Critics Choice and Who Was That Lady, often appearing opposite her husband, TV personality Allen Ludden. Two years after hosting the 1971 syndicated informational series The Pet Set, she guest-starred as libidinous "Happy Homemaker" Sue Ann Nivens on the fourth season opener of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. This Emmy-winning episode led to White being cast as an MTM regular; she remained with the series until its final episode in 1977. She then starred on her own short-lived sitcom (again titled The Betty White Show) before returning to the guest-star circuit. In 1985, she joined the cast of TV's The Golden Girls as middle-aged grief counselor Rose Nyland. This top-rated program lasted seven seasons before metamorphosing into the rather less successful Golden Palace (1992). White was a regular on the 1995 series Maybe This Time, and in 1997 she won an Emmy for her one-shot appearance on The John Laroquette Show. She was in the films Hard Rain and The Story of Us, as well as Lake Placid. In 2003 she was cast in Bringing Down the House, and in 2008 provided a voice for the American version of Ponyo. White developed a new generation in fans when she became the subject of a successful online campaign to get her to host Saturday Night Live - which she did in 2010, along with winning the SAG award for Life time Achievement. The year before, she had a part in the hit Sandra Bullock vehicle The Proposal. She also became the star of year another successful TV show when she was cast in the female-centric sitcom Hot in Cleveland. She lent her voice to the 2012 adaptation of The Lorax.

Trivia: John Gabriel was 19 when he made his first brief film appearance in 1950. He went on to play nondescript secondary roles in such films as South Pacific (1958), finally attaining co-starring parts in the mid-'60s Westerns Stagecoach and El Dorado. He was far more successful on television, especially in the specialized world of the soap opera: He spent several fruitful years playing such daytime drama roles as Seneca Beaulac in Ryan's Hope and Zack Conway in Loving. John Gabriel harbors no regrets for the one plum role he didn't land: The Professor in Gilligan's Island (1964-1967), a part he essayed in the pilot episode before he was replaced by Russell Johnson.

Trivia: Rotund, rough-hewn character actor Tom Pedi enjoyed a 50-year career that took him from touring shows in the late '30s into the original productions of some of the most renowned plays of the 1940s and '50s, and, finally, into top sitcoms and feature films in the 1970s. Born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1913, he was bitten by the acting bug at age five, when he played an angel in a Passion play. His older brothers were involved in local theatrical productions within the Italian community, and he spent a lot of his time with them, soaking up what he could as a boy. After completing high school, in the depths of the Great Depression, Pedi worked at various jobs while trying to break into professional theater. His first role came during the late '30s, in the touring company of Pins and Needles, impersonating Mussolini, a role to which he was so well-suited physically that one Canadian critic remarked that he could have sworn the Italian fascist leader was actually present. Pedi's professional career's start coincided with the gradual end of the Great Depression, at a point when theater was energized by a great many leftist political sensibilities -- he had the good luck early on to cross paths with performers and creative figures whose influence would be lost during the Red Scare of the subsequent decade. Pedi made his New York stage debut in 1941 portraying The Dasher (a businessman) in the play Brooklyn USA, co-authored by John Bright and co-produced by Lionel Stander, both future blacklistees; that cast also featured a young Sidney Lumet in an acting role. Pedi got to appear in one more production, Johnny Doodle (1942), and made his screen debut in the left-of-center film Native Land (1942) -- alongside future blacklistees Paul Robeson and Howard Da Silva, and authored by future blacklisted screenwriter Ben Maddow -- before the onset of the Second World War resulted in his being drafted. Pedi served in the infantry in North Africa, the invasions of Sicily and in the Salerno landings, and the invasion of Southern France, and was part of the army that crossed the Rhine into Germany, earning a string of decorations along the way. Following his discharge, he returned to New York, and over the next eight years worked in an enviable string of original productions, portraying Rocky Pioggi in The Iceman Cometh (1946-1947), Stanley in Death of a Salesman (1949-1950), and the dice-wielding Harry the Horse in Guys and Dolls (1950-1953). He got good notices for all of them, especially the last, and was well-established on the New York stage by then. In between stage performances, Pedi had managed to resume his screen career, working in a handful of movies, including Jules Dassin's Naked City (1948), in which he played a detective; Frank Capra's State of the Union (1948), playing a barber; and Robert Siodmak's Criss Cross (1949), portraying a hood. Pedi's husky build and rough features made him equally suitable portraying cops or criminals, although he also worked in lighter fare such as the Deanna Durbin vehicle Up in Central Park and had a big role in the Bob Hope race-track comedy Sorrowful Jones. Pedi also had a co-starring role in a short-lived television series called Stage Door (1950), working with Louise Allbritton and Scott McKay. It was theater that kept him busy for most of the decade, however -- Pedi probably could have done more movies, but his separation from his wife and his desire to have custody of his son, Alex, for part of each week made it necessary for him to base his career in New York for most of the 1950s and '60s. Pedi worked in such stage productions as New York's City Center revival of Kiss Me, Kate, starring Kitty Carlisle, in which he played one of the gangsters; Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge (1955-1956); and the comedy A Hole in the Head (1957), interspersed with occasional performances on anthology shows such as Chevrolet Tele-Theatre and Philco Television Playhouse. Pedi's performance in George Panetta's Comic Strip (1958), playing the rotund, lazy, comical Officer Hippo got some of the best notices in the play -- Walter Kerr of The New York Times called him "a winning slob" -- and when it was musicalized in 1962 as King of the Whole Damn World, he was back in the same role. While stage compatriots of his such as Michael Constantine and Peter Falk made the jump to series television and the big screen, Pedi was content to work the boards, in revivals of Guys and Dolls as well as new productions, even turning back to serious drama after 15 years of comedy, in Peter Weiss' The Investigation, which dealt with events at Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi concentration camp. He also squeezing in one appearance on The Defenders in the episode "The Sworn Twelve." Pedi returned to series television in 1970 as a regular on Arnie, playing Julius, the best friend of blue-collar worker Arnold Nuvo (Herschel Bernardi) when the latter suddenly finds himself promoted to an executive job. He also appeared in episodes of Maude, The Odd Couple, and Kojak, and filmgoers of the mid-'70s got to know his rotund presence in several major feature films, most notably Joseph Sargent's The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), as Caz Dolowicz, the excitable, foul-mouthed Grand Central Tower chief; and as Fat Angie Polaterra in J. Lee Thompson's St. Ives (1976), starring Charles Bronson. He also reprised his role of Rocky Pioggi in the American Film Theater production The Iceman Cometh (1973), which is generally regarded as the highlight of that entire series of filmed plays. Pedi had a long-running professional relationship with playwright George Panetta, appearing in a string of his plays across ten years, including Comic Strip, Kiss Mama, and Mike Downstairs (1968). He continued to work in movies right to the end of the 1980s, and died in 1996 at age 83.