Trivia: While serving his two-year hitch in the Army, Jack Riley performed in "Rolling Along of 1960," a military travelling show. After his discharge, Riley attended John Carroll University, then resumed his show-business activities as an actor, comedian, and "special material" writer for such stars as Mort Sahl, Rowan and Martin and Don Rickles. He made his film debut in 1962's The Days of Wine and Roses, and later essayed eccentric roles in such laugh-spinners as Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1979). Active in television since 1966, Riley was a comedy-ensemble player in Keep on Truckin' (1975) and The Tim Conway Show (1980 edition), and occasionally popped up on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, impersonating Lyndon Johnson. His most celebrated TV role was the supremely paranoid Elliot Carlin in The Bob Newhart Show (1972-78), a role he later reprised (under various character names) in such series as Alf and St. Elsewhere. He was also cast as TV station manager Leon Buchanan in the two-episode sitcom Roxie (1987), and was heard as the voice of Stu Pickles on the animated series Rugrats (1991- ). Extremely active in the LA theatrical scene, Jack Riley starred in such stage productions as 12 Angry Men and Small Craft Warnings. RIley died in 2016, at age 80.

Trivia: American actor John Fiedler did his first professional work in his native Wisconsin. Fiedler's many Broadway appearances included the 1960 play A Raisin in the Sun, in which he was the only Caucasian in a virtually all-black cast. His first film role was as the supplicative Juror No. 2 in Twelve Angry Men (1957). Fiedler's stock in trade was the meek-looking soul who compensated for his demeanor with a nasty temper or sadistic streak. In this capacity, he was often seen as vindictive school principals, obstreperous civil servants or combative psychiatric patients (vide TV's The Bob Newhart Show). Incredibly prolific in films and on television, John Fiedler's best-known role was Vinnie, Oscar Madison's card-playing crony in both the stage and screen versions of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple.

Trivia: Glamorous, down-to-earth leading lady Suzanne Pleshette was the daughter of the managing director of Brooklyn's Paramount Theater. She attended Performing Arts High School, Finch College, and Syracuse University. After some TV experience, she made her film debut in Jerry Lewis' The Geisha Boy (1958), then went on to replace Anne Bancroft as star of Broadway's The Miracle Worker. During her years at Warner Bros., Pleshette successfully avoided simpering ingénue roles, holding out for parts requiring beyond-her-years emotional depth. Her flair for comedy was delightfully tapped during her subsequent tenure with Disney in such films as The Ugly Dachsund (1967) and The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin (1968). Pleshette's film work, however, has never struck so responsive a chord with the fans as her television work, notably her portrayal of Emily Hartley on The Bob Newhart Show (1972-1978) -- a role that she briefly and hilariously reprised on the very last episode of Newhart's subsequent series, Newhart. She then starred in several short-lived TV series, including Maggie Briggs (1984), Bridges to Cross (1986), and The Boys Are Back (1994), and was also a ubiquitous presence in such made-for-TV movies as Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean. And yes: Incredible as it may seem, Suzanne Pleshette was once married to Troy Donahue. Pleshette died of respiratory failure in January 2008.

Trivia: Born in New Hampshire, Peter Bonerz was raised in Milwaukee, where he attended Marquette High School. Afflicted with a stammer in his teen years, Bonerz was encouraged by one of his teachers to enter an elocution contest. In doing so, he began to develop confidence in his speaking skills; by the time he'd graduated from Marquette University, Bonerz was determined to pursue a career in acting. Turned down by Chicago's Second City troupe, Bonerz was nonetheless able to secure work with the Premise, a New York-based improv group. Drafted into the army, he bluffed his way into a job as a director of training films. He continued his directing activities into his civilian life, staging and appearing in sketches with the Committee, a San Francisco comedy aggregation. In 1965, Bonerz starred in the independently produced film Funnyman, which earned him critical praise but which never secured a national release. Still, he was able to find work in such films as Medium Cool (1969) and Catch-22 (1970) and TV programs like The Addams Family. In 1972, Bonerz finally achieved a nationwide following when he was cast as orthodontist Jerry Robinson on The Bob Newhart Show, which ran for six seasons. He later co-starred as chauvinistic CEO Mr. Hart in the TV-series adaptation 9 to 5 (1982). By the 1980s, Bonerz was far too busy as a TV and film director to appear before the cameras with any frequency. His big-screen directorial credits include Nobody's Perfekt (1980) and Police Academy 6 (1989), while his TV work in this field is far too extensive to detail here. In 1992, Peter Bonerz received the Directors' Guild Award for his achievements in TV comedy directing; and from 1991 to 1994, Bonerz taught acting and directing courses at U.C.L.A.

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: From the late '60s through the mid-'70s, first on I Dream of Jeannie and later on The Bob Newhart Show, Bill Daily was one of the most visible comic acting talents in television, despite the fact that he'd always intended on a career in music. Born in Des Moines, IA, in 1928, he was raised by his mother with help from several aunts and uncles after the death of his father and he gravitated toward music as a teenager. Following a stint in the army in the late '40s, Daily became a professional musician, playing upright bass with different groups in the Midwest, and he eventually added little bits of stand-up comedy to his repertory in the course of performing. He hooked up with an NBC station in Chicago, first working behind the camera as a writer and musician and then doing comedy on the air. Eventually, he became a regular guest as a comedian on The Mike Douglas Show, which originated from Chicago. From there, he was discovered by Steve Allen who brought him onto his show as a comedian and sidekick. Daily subsequently credited his musical side with providing him with the sense of timing to become a successful comedian. During the early and mid-'60s, Daily moved into acting roles on programs like Bewitched -- on which he debuted in a straight dramatic role, in a Christmas episode in which he was highly effective -- and was given a small role in the pilot of I Dream of Jeannie. That part, of Major Roger Healy, turned into the co-starring role after the program's first season. Following five successful seasons on that program, he moved to The Bob Newhart Show as Howard Borden, providing comedic support similar to the part he'd played on I Dream Of Jeannie, as Newhart's befuddled, constantly jet-lagged next door neighbor. Daily has only ever appeared in two feature films, both of them comedies -- the made-for-television In Name Only in 1969, as a carefree bachelor (clearly modeled after one aspect of his character on I Dream of Jeannie) and in Disney's release of The Barefoot Executive in 1971. Since the first Bob Newhart series left the air, his television appearances have been infrequent and always in supporting, guest starring roles, although he did appear on Nick-at-Nite helping to promote The Bob Newhart Show when it aired on the channel. He has since reportedly become a theatrical actor and director in the Albuquerque, NM, area.

Trivia: Actress and comedian Marcia Wallace began her career as a stage actress, appearing with the improv troupe The Fourth Wall and in off-Broadway plays in the late '60s. After a guest appearance on the Merv Griffin Show, Wallace began a thriving TV career playing secretary Carol Kester Bondurant on The Bob Newhart Show and making countless appearances over the coming decades on game shows like Hollywood Squares and To Tell the Truth, as well as shows like Full House and The Young and the Restless. In 1990, she began voicing Edna Krabappel, Bart's jaded 4th grade teacher, on The Simpsons, winning an Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance in 1992. Wallace continued to appear on the show in a recurring role up until her death in 2013.

Trivia: The son of a Manhattan orchestra conductor and a former Ziegfeld Follies girl, little Billy Redfield made his Broadway bow at age 9 in Swing Your Lady. Billy launched his radio career around the same time, and made his earliest movie appearance in 1939. As adult actor William Redfield, he was one of the original founders of the influential Actors Studio. While his film assignments of the 1950s and 1960s were unremarkable (as Captain Owens in 1966's Fantastic Voyage, for example, he played third fiddle to the special effects and Raquel Welch's diving suit), he remained a much-in-demand stage performer, and also proved a delightful raconteur on such TV chatfests as The Tonight Show. His reminiscences of the ups and downs of the acting profession were candid and perceptive without ever descending into maliciousness; many of his best anecdotes were self-deprecatory, notably his oft-repeated tale about being saddled in the 1956 film The Proud and the Profane with some of the worst movie dialogue ever written. An ever-busy TV performer, Redfield played the title role in the 1953 DuMont Network series Jimmy Hughes, Rookie Cop, and the following year was seen as Bobby Logan in The Marriage, the first live network series to be regularly broadcast in color. A talented writer, Redfield co-created the popular Wally Cox TV sitcom Mister Peepers, penned the stage play A View with Alarm, and published the 1965 volume Letters From an Actor, a candid memoir of his experiences while playing Guildenstern in the John Gielgud-directed 1964 staging of Hamlet, which starred Richard Burton. Not long after making his final film appearance as pensive mental patient Harding in the Oscar-winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 49-year-old William Redfield died of leukemia.

Trivia: Lead actress, onscreen from the '50s.

Trivia: Fey, flaky comic actress Louise Lasser majored in political science at Brandeis University before studying acting at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. She proved an excellent improvisational comedienne in the Elaine May revue The Third Ear, which led to several TV commercial appearances. In 1966, she married comedian Woody Allen, who later directed her in Take the Money and Run (1968), Bananas (1970), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex... (1972) and Stardust Memories (1980); she also provided a voice for Allen's Japanese spy-film spoof What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966). Though they divorced in 1970, Lasser and Allen remained close friends, turning to one another in moments of severe personal crisis. In 1976, Lasser starred as the zoned-out heroine of Norman Lear's satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman probably her best-known role. Louise Lasser's most recent weekly TV assignment was the early-1980s sitcom It's a Living.

Trivia: Rarely garnering a lead role, M. Emmet Walsh has become one of the busiest character actors in Hollywood, using his ruddy, seedy appearance to embody countless low-life strangers with unsavory agendas. In his rare sympathetic roles, he's also capable of generating genuine pathos for the put upon plight of struggling small-timers. His effortless portrayals have made him a welcome addition to numerous ensembles, even if many viewers can't match a name to his recognizable mug. In fact, his work is so well thought of that critic Roger Ebert created the Stanton-Walsh Rule, which states that no film featuring either Walsh or Harry Dean Stanton can be altogether bad.Contrary to his frequent casting as a Southerner, Walsh is a native New Yorker, born on March 22, 1935, in Ogdensburg, NY. As a youth he attended the prestigious Tilton School in New Hampshire, and went on to share a college dorm room with actor William Devane. He graduated from the Clarkson University School of Business, but it was not until his thirties that he discovered his true calling: acting. He first popped up in Midnight Cowboy (1969), and has worked steadily ever since, some years appearing in as many as eight motion pictures, other years focusing more on TV movies. Working in relative anonymity through the '70s and early '80s, appearing in films ranging from Serpico (1973) to Slapshot (1977) to Blade Runner (1982), Walsh landed his meatiest and most memorable role in Joel and Ethan Coen's remarkable debut, Blood Simple (1984). Without batting an eye, Walsh exuded more casual menace as the amoral private detective doggedly pursuing his own self-interest than a host of typecast villains could muster in their entire careers. His role was key to creating a stylish noir that would launch the careers of two modern masters. It earned him an Independent Spirit Award.Blood Simple did not markedly alter Walsh's status as a supporting actor, as he went on to appear in this capacity in Fletch (1985), Back to School (1986), and Raising Arizona (1987), his next collaboration with the Coens, in which his bull-slinging machinist scores riotously with less than a minute of screen time. One of the first appearances of the kindly Walsh was in 1988's Clean and Sober, in which he plays a recovering alcoholic helping Michael Keaton through the same struggle.As he crept into his late fifties and early sixties, the stature of Walsh's films diminished a little, if not his actual workload. Continuing to dutifully pursue his craft throughout the early '90s, Walsh again returned to a higher profile with appearances in such films as A Time to Kill (1996), William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (1996), and My Best Friend's Wedding (1997). More as a reaction to the ineptitude of the movie than Walsh's performance, Ebert called into question his own Walsh-Stanton Rule in his review of Wild Wild West, the 1999 Will Smith-Kevin Kline debacle in which Walsh is one of the only tolerable elements. In the years to come, Walsh would remain active on screen, appearing in films like Youth in Revolt and providing the voice of Olaf on the animated series Pound Puppies.

Trivia: Often introduced as "one of America's most familiar faces," it's likely that you've caught a glimpse of Ron Masak either in one of his over 300 appearances in various television shows, on that commercial that lingers in the back of your memory somewhere (he was once blessed with the moniker "king of commercials" and was the voice of the Vlassic Pickle Stork for 15 years), or maybe in one of his 15 feature film appearances. Whatever you might recognize him from, if you don't remember his name, he's the guy that you know you've seen somewhere before, but just might not be able to place where. A native of Chicago, IL (he was once offered a contract with the Chicago White Sox by Hall-of-Famer Rogers Hornsby), Masak was classically trained as an actor at the Windy City's own CCC. A tireless performer, Masak found an initial platform for his talents in the Army, where he toured the world entertaining in an all-Army show in which he served as writer, performer, and director. Masak became well-known not only for his acting abilities, but for the fact that he was a dedicated performer who never missed a show. Proving himself adept at roles ranging from Shakespeare to his almost decade-long stint as the sheriff on Murder She Wrote, Masak thrived in theater and in commercial work around Chicago in the late '50s and early '60s.After a few minor roles in such television series as Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Monkees, and The Flying Nun (not to mention what many consider to be one of the earliest Elvis impersonations on the Spade Cooley Show in 1958), Masak was spotted by producer Harry Ackerman early in his career and went to California to audition for a lead in a pilot. Though that particular prospect fell through, Masak was introduced to John Sturges, a meeting which resulted in his feature debut in the cold-war thriller Ice Station Zebra (1968). Masak's work as an emcee is another testament to his universal appeal and versatile likeability; he has served as host for some of the biggest names in show business, including such talents as Kenny Rogers and Billy Crystal. Masak also starred in four of the most successful sales motivational videos of all time, including Second Effort with Vince Lombardi and Ya Gotta Believe with Tommy Lasorda (which Masak also wrote and directed). The first recipient of MDA's Humanitarian of the Year Award, Masak's work as field announcer for the Special Olympics and his eight-year stint as host of The Jerry Lewis Telethon represents only a fraction of his remarkable work as a compassionate philanthropist, and though Masak's film work may not be as prolific or as frequent as his extensive television work, his roles in such films as Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) are always memorable and constantly ring true with an appeal that often leaves a lasting impression, even though his screen time may be brief and his characters secondary.