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: Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1931, Robert Ito has spent his film career as a character actor, often in the science fiction genre. He enjoyed success on the long-running television series Quincy, and his voice has been used in many animated films, such as Batman and Superman.Robert Ito's first performances were on the stage as a dancer in the National Ballet of Canada. After a decade with the company, Ito moved to New York in the 1960s, to dance on Broadway in The Flower Drum Song.Ito moved to Hollywood and began his film career in 1966 with some forgettable science fiction vehicles, such as Women of the Prehistoric Planet and Dimension 5. The B-movie genre often turned to Ito when it wanted an actor to portray someone of his Japanese heritage. Over the years, he played many such roles, the most outstanding of which was his performance as Professor Hikita, the kidnapped scientist in the 1984 cult classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.Ito fared well in television, in which he was given roles that showcased his talents in made-for-television movies and series. He appeared in some memorable dramas, such as Helter Skelter (1976), American Geisha (1986), and The War Between Us (1996). The latter film starred Ito as a Canadian World War I veteran and patriarch of a family of Japanese descent, forced to leave his home in Vancouver during the dark days of Japanese resettlement following Pearl Harbor.Ito also gained distinction for his role as Fong in the Kung Fu series, as well as on popular show Quincy. He made cameo appearances in many other television shows including Magnum, P.I. and Star Trek, which featured him in a 2001 production.

Trivia: Jenny O'Hara is part of a performing family whose influence encompasses regional and New York theater from Warren, PA, to Greenwich Village and Broadway, and rock music from England to New York. Born in Sonora, CA, her father, John B. O'Hara, was a salesman and her mother, Edith, a journalist and drama teacher. Jenny, her singer/actress younger sister Jill O'Hara, and her singer/guitarist brother Jack O'Hara, grew up amid their mother's pursuit of a theatrical career, leading a gypsy-like existence in half-built houses and other accouterments of a struggling existence. Edith O'Hara directed a children's theater in Warren, where the two daughters occasionally participated as actresses during their teens, though neither took it seriously. Jenny spent a year at Carnegie Tech and a summer playing in stock theater, and then came to New York to study with Lee Strasberg and Sanford Meisner. She was in touring companies of Cactus Flower and Brecht on Brecht, with Lotte Lenya; off-Broadway productions of Arms and the Man, Play With the Tiger, and Hang Down Your Head and Die; and stock productions of Paint Your Wagon and Take Me Along, among many other musicals and straight plays. She also appeared on ABC's Time for Us. O'Hara's biggest stage credit of the '60s was in Dylan (opposite Alec Guinness) as Annabelle Graham-Pike. In 1970, O'Hara succeeded her younger sister Jill in the musical Promises, Promises. By the mid-'70s, Edith O'Hara was running the 13th Street Theatre in Greenwich Village (a major venue for off-off-Broadway and children's theater), and her brother Jack was in London, playing guitar and bass and singing with the band Eggs Over Easy, pioneering the pub rock scene in England. Meanwhile, Jenny had graduated to television, both in series and made-for-TV features, including a starring role in Brink's: The Great Robbery, The Return of the World's Greatest Detective (in which she took over a role originated by Joanne Woodward in the movie They Might Be Giants), Blind Ambition, and Blinded by the Light. She later worked in movies such as Career Opportunities, Mystic River, and Matchstick Men, and television series such as Law & Order, NYPD Blue, and ER.

Trivia: Georgia-born and South Carolina-raised American character actor Hoke Howell made a name for himself on Broadway beginning in 1958. He appeared frequently in films and on television from the mid-'70s through the early '90s.

Trivia: Though a film actor from 1963 and a stage performer before that, American leading man Sam Groom is best known for his work in the field of soap operas. After playing such supporting roles as Tom Eldredge in the 1965 As the World Turns prime-time spin-off Our Private World, Groom spent four years as Dr. Ross Mathews on NBC's Another World. Eventually leaving the series because he felt that daytime dramas offered "no dignity," he accepted the title role in the Canadian-produced nighttime series Dr. Simon Locke (1971). Though the series proved unsuccessful when it was syndicated to the U.S., its sponsor, Colgate-Palmolive, liked Groom enough to spin off the Locke character into another syndicated weekly, Police Surgeon, which ran until 1974. Sam Groom's most recent TV starring vehicle was the 1985 fantasy offering Otherworld.

Trivia: Actor Jim Antonio has spent the bulk of his career playing supporting roles on television both in films and as a guest star on series. He has also occasionally appeared in feature films. His brother, Lou Antonio, is an actor and director.

Trivia: While still recognizable for his recurring role as Captain Crane on The A-Team, former character actor Carl Franklin is now one of Hollywood's most versatile writer/directors. After a string of mind-numbing television roles forced him to go behind the camera in 1986, he has worked in every genre from war film to family drama and has been the force behind such different works as One False Move (1991), Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), and One True Thing (1998).Franklin grew up in Richmond, CA, a working-class suburb of San Francisco. His father died before he was born, and he was raised by his mother, a homemaker, and his stepfather, a carpenter. As a teenager, Franklin excelled in school and dreamed of becoming a lawyer or teacher. He earned a scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley, where he studied history and began hanging around the theater department in an effort to meet girls. He soon caught the acting bug and moved to New York City immediately after graduation.Franklin began his acting career on-stage at the New York Shakespeare Festival, performing in Cymbeline, Timon of Athens, and Twelfth Night. He went on to appear at New York's Lincoln Center and Joseph Papp Public Theater, and Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage. Franklin made his film debut in the comedy Five on the Black Hand Side (1973), before finding steady work on television. From 1974 to 1973, he guest-starred on The Streets of San Francisco, Good Times, The Incredible Hulk, The Rockford Files, and Trapper John, M.D. He also starred opposite Stacy Keach on the short-lived detective show Caribe and with Roddy McDowall on the doomed sci-fi series Fantastic Journey. After a two season stint on The A-Team from 1983 to 1985, Franklin grew increasingly unsatisfied with acting. While continuing to appear on shows like MacGyver and Riptide, he attempted to write and produce a film independently, mortgaging and losing his house in the process. Then, in 1986, at age 37, he enrolled in the American Film Institute's directing program.At AFI, Franklin discovered his own style while studying the films of celebrated European and Japanese directors. His master's thesis, Punk (1989), an intense 30-minute short about a downtrodden African-American boy dealing with his budding sexuality, impressed filmmaker Roger Coreman, who hired Franklin as an apprentice at his production company, Concorde Films. Like Coreman's previous protégé's, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Peter Bogdanovich, Franklin learned ways of fast-paced low-budget filmmaking, writing screenplays in under two weeks and shooting them only days later. Often working on location in the Philippines or Peru, he wrote, directed, and produced (and sometimes even acted in) a series of limited releases and straight-to-video flicks, including Nowhere to Run (1989), Eye of the Eagle 2: Inside the Enemy (1989), and Full Fathom Five (1990).After completing his tenure at Concorde, Franklin wrote and directed One False Move (1991), an independent crime thriller about three Los Angeles drug dealers who seek refuge in Arkansas after a murderous drug deal. The film starred Billy Bob Thornton, Cynda Williams, and Michael Beach as the outlaws and Bill Paxton as the Arkansas sheriff awaiting their arrival, but had little commercial value at the time. As a result, its distributor, IRS Media, gave the film a minor and ineffective advertising campaign. Yet, rave reviews and positive word-of-mouth quickly made One False Move a surprise hit. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert voted it the Best Film of the Year, and Franklin's work earned him a New Generation Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, an Independent Spirit Award for Best Director, and an MTV Movie Award for Best New Filmmaker.The success of One False Move put Franklin on the short list of Hollywood directors. Producers brought every type of script to his attention -- Disney even asked him to remake That Darn Cat (1965). For his next project, he settled on the HBO miniseries Laurel Avenue (1993), a drama about a working-class African-American family in St. Paul, MN. The well-received series starred John Beasley and Mary Alice, and featured cameos by Franklin's daughter, Caira, and son, Marcus. He went on to write and direct Devil in a Blue Dress (1995), his heralded adaptation of African-American crime novelist Walter Mosley's novel. The film featured Oscar-winner Denzel Washington as a private detective in 1940s Los Angeles, with Tom Sizemore, Don Cheadle, and Jennifer Beals in supporting roles. Devil in a Blue Dress was a critical favorite, but failed at the box office.Looking to do something completely different, Franklin then signed onto direct One True Thing (1998), an adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anna Quindlan's autobiographical story of a New York journalist (Renee Zellweger) who is forced to return home when her mother (Meryl Streep) becomes fatally ill. He followed up this adventurous move with another, directing the high-profile courtroom drama High Crimes (2002), starring Ashley Judd, Jim Caviezel, and Morgan Freeman, before reuniting with Denzel Washington for the thriller Out of Time (2003).