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: Dark-haired and petite American comic actress Cynthia Stevenson first made a name for herself appearing on various television shows during the 1980s. On television she was typically cast as flighty somewhat forgetful optimists. In 1990, Stevenson was the host of the unsuccessful syndicated My Talk Show, a parody of talk shows in which she interviewed unknown celebrities in her living room. The show only lasted three months and nearly led Stevenson to leave acting. Then Robert Altman cast her as Bonnie Sherow in The Player. After that she won the second lead in Bob, a television sitcom starring Bob Newhart. Despite favorable critical reviews, the show only briefly aired. More sporadic film and television work followed until 1995, when Stevenson's career finally took flight and she appeared in three major feature films, including Live Nude Girls. As icing on the cake, she also landed the role of Gloria on the television sitcom Hope & Gloria.

Trivia: Lisa Kudrow first made her name playing Phoebe, the ditzy, New Age member of the titular close-knit pals on NBC's highly successful sitcom Friends. Since then, she has bridged the gap between television and film with undeniable success, winning particular acclaim for her role as an uptight school teacher in Don Roos' The Opposite of Sex (1998).Born in Encino, California on July 30, 1963, Kudrow earned a degree in biology from Vassar College before beginning her acting career. After college, she joined the Los Angeles improvisational group, The Groundlings, at the urging of family friend Jon Lovitz. Improv paved the way for more work, and Kudrow was soon appearing in bit roles in a number of films. Her first real break didn't come until 1993, when she began appearing on the TV sitcom Mad About You as Ursula, the waitress from hell. Real fame came in 1994, when the actress was cast as Phoebe on Friends; the enormous success of the show gave her both wide recognition and a steady day job. Kudrow's first leading role on the big screen was as one of the titular heroines (alongside Mira Sorvino) of the 1997 comedy Romy and Michele's High School Reunion; unfortunately, her character was little more than a film version of Phoebe. Fortunately, Kudrow got to widen her range a little further that same year with a starring role in the independent drama Clockwatchers, portraying a struggling actress alongside the likes of Toni Collette and Parker Posey. The following year, Kudrow won raves and critical respect for her turn in The Opposite of Sex, a scathing black comedy in which she gave a comic and poignant performance as an embittered woman coping with the death of her brother, the presence of her best friend's malicious little sister (Christina Ricci), and the romantic attentions of Lyle Lovett. The acclaim she received for her portrayal was complemented the same year with an Emmy Award for her work on Friends. In 1999, Kudrow shared the screen with Robert DeNiro in the comedy Analyze This, and later that year she starred with Diane Keaton and Meg Ryan as three sisters dealing with the imminent death of their irritating father (Walter Matthau) in the comedy Hanging Up, directed by Keaton and written by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron.As the new millenium unfolded, Kudrow would prove to be a strong force on screen, appearing in a number of acclaimed films, like Wonderland, Happy Endings, The Other Woman, Easy A, and in the comedy series Web Therapy.

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: Worked as a taxi driver in Boston and as a lifeguard on Cape Cod during a two-year hiatus between high school and college. Before moving to Los Angeles in the mid-1980s, performed with the New York Shakespeare Festival, with Joseph Papp's Public Theatre and in a Steppenwolf Theatre off-Broadway production of Sam Shepard's True West. Used CPR to save a heart-attack victim's life in a restaurant in 1997. Has run in marathons and competed in triathlons. Actress Abby Dalton (Falcon Crest) is his mother-in-law.

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.