Trivia: The son of Yugoslav immigrants, Karl Malden labored in the steel mills of Gary, Indiana before enrolling in Arkansas State Teachers College. While not a prime candidate for stardom with his oversized nose and bullhorn voice, Malden attended Chicago's Goodman Dramatic School, then moved to New York, where he made his Broadway bow in 1937. Three years later he made his film debut in a microscopic role in They Knew What They Wanted (1940), which also featured another star-to-be, Tom Ewell. While serving in the Army Air Force during World War II, Malden returned to films in the all-serviceman epic Winged Victory (1944), where he was billed as Corporal Karl Malden. This led to a brief contract with 20th Century-Fox -- but not to Hollywood, since Malden's subsequent film appearances were lensed on the east coast. In 1947, Malden created the role of Mitch, the erstwhile beau of Blanche Dubois, in Tennessee Williams' Broadway play A Streetcar Named Desire; he repeated the role in the 1951 film version, winning an Oscar in the process. For much of his film career, Malden has been assigned roles that called for excesses of ham; even his Oscar-nominated performance in On the Waterfront (1954) was decidedly "Armour Star" in concept and execution. In 1957, he directed the Korean War melodrama Time Limit, the only instance in which the forceful and opinionated Malden was officially credited as director. Malden was best known to TV fans of the 1970s as Lieutenant Mike Stone, the no-nonsense protagonist of the longrunning cop series The Streets of San Francisco. Still wearing his familiar Streets hat and overcoat, Malden supplemented his income with a series of ads for American Express. His commercial catchphrases "What will you do?" and "Don't leave home without it!" soon entered the lexicon of TV trivia -- and provided endless fodder for such comedians as Johnny Carson. From 1989-92, Malden served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Trivia: The son of actors, juvenile performer Clint Howard began showing up on screen in the mid-1960s, usually in the TV series and feature films co-starring his older brother Ron Howard. Clint's best-known TV guest appearances include the part of Balok in the 1966 Star Trek episode "The Corbomite Maneuver," and his vivid portrayal of a youthful prognosticator in the opening installment of Night Gallery's 1971-72 season. He was starred in the 1967 Ivan Tors theatrical feature Gentle Giant and in that property's TV-series spin-off Gentle Ben. Upon attaining adulthood, Howard was mostly consigned to character parts; he has also been featured in the films directed by his brother Ron Howard, from Eat My Dust (1978) to Apollo 13 (1995).

Trivia: Never the typical ingénue, American actress Mariette Hartley was distinguished by attractively offbeat facial features and a full, throaty voice -- acting tools that enabled her to play a wide spectrum of ages and personalities even when she was barely out of her teens. The granddaughter of behavioral psychologist John B. Watson, Hartley began her training at Carnegie Tech, then studied acting under Eva LeGalleine . Shakespeare was Hartley's forte in her salad days; thus, she was a full-blown professional before the age of 21. Hartley's first film, Ride the High Country (1961), may well have been her best; as the runaway bride of a mentally deficient mountain man, Hartley was permitted to forego cutesiness and glamour, spending most of the film in dusty male western garb. She was so good in this first appearance that MGM literally had no idea what to do with her; the solution was to cast her as a garden-variety damsel in distress in Drums of Africa (1963), which Hartley now regards as her worst film (and it is -- far worse than the more obvious candidate, 1971's The Return of Count Yorga). Then as now, Hartley was better served on TV than in films. Appearing with regularity on such programs as Twilight Zone and Bonanza, Hartley exuded an intelligence and versatility rare in so young an actress. She gained a following with her recurring role on the nighttime soapera Peyton Place (1965), then provided the only bright moments of the misfire satirical sitcom The Hero (1966), in which she played the wife of a bumbling TV cowboy (Richard Mulligan). Her TV work load increased in the '70s, during which time she appeared as futuristic heroine Lyra-a in Gene Roddenberry's TV pilot Genesis II, a role which gained a great deal of press attention due to Hartley's exotic midriff makeup (her character was endowed with two navels). She also won an Emmy for her appearance in a 1978 installment of The Incredible Hulk. A popular talk-show raconteur, Hartley was able to parlay her no-nonsense persona into a series of lucrative camera commercials, in which she co-starred with James Garner. Her easy rapport with Garner led many to believe that she was married to the Rockford Files star, compelling her to make public appearances wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the message "I am NOT Mrs. James Garner" (she was, in fact, married to producer/director Patrick Boyriven). Her high audience "Q" rating led certain TV producers to believe that Hartley would be ideally cast as a news reporter on the 1983 sitcom Goodnight, Beantown. The casting was good, the show wasn't. Nor were follow-ups in this vein, including a foredoomed hitch as co-host of the 1987 revamping of CBS Morning News titled The Morning Program and the very short-lived newsroom-oriented weekly drama WIOU (1990). That the actress took to kidding about her many TV failures only added to her upbeat public image -- an image which masked a surfeit of grief brought on by the alcoholism and suicide of Hartley's father, which formed the basis of her 1990 book Breaking the Silence. Audiences were able to see this serious side of Mariette Hartley in her frequent TV-movie appearances, notably her performance as grieving mother Candy Lightner in M.A.D.D.: Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Mariette Hartley remained busy on films and in television into the '90s; once again, the TV work was more rewarding than the movie assignments, which included such negligible entertainments as Encino Man (1992).

Trivia: A gifted leading lady and character actress, Marge Redmond enjoyed a five-decade career that took her from the stage to television to feature films. Born Margery Redmond in Cleveland, Ohio in 1924 (some sources say 1930), Redmond became the first wife of future actor Jack Weston at the start of the 1950s, when both of them were working at the Cleveland Play House. They moved from regional theater to Hollywood, and were lucky enough to arrive in the film mecca just as television production was booming there. Redmond went on to appear in dozens of television shows, from My Three Sons to The Virginian, interspersed with the occasional feature film, of which The Trouble With Angels probably gave the actress her most notable role, as Sister Liquori, the best friend of the Mother Superior played by Rosalind Russell. That part pre-figured what became Redmond's most familiar small-screen portrayal, of Sister Jacqueline on The Flying Nun. The latter series only ran for two seasons, but thanks to the fact that Sally Field was its star, it has been seen in syndicated reruns for close to 50 years. She has since worked in virtually every genre of television show, right into the 1990s and Law And Order, and was still doing voice work for animated productions in the twenty-first century.

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from 1970.