Happy Birthday to Sergeant Degarmo
Richard Riehle had the rare opportunity to play the same character in consecutive episodes of Columbo. He was Sergeant Degarmo in both Ashes to Ashes and Murder with too Many Notes, in Season 13.
Born on May 12, 1948, in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, this guy is a real character actor. He's been in over 200 films, including big names like "Glory" (1989), "The Fugitive" (1993), "Casino" (1995), "Lethal Weapon 4" (1998), and who could forget "Office Space" (1999)?
On TV he's been on shows like "Quantum Leap", "Roseanne", "Murder, She Wrote", "L.A. Law", "Ally McBeal", "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "Chicago Hope", "Diagnosis: Murder", "Sabrina the Teenage Witch", "The West Wing", "ER", "Married to the Kellys", "Tremors", "Boston Legal", "Grounded for Life" (45 episodes), and "The Young and the Restless".
Happy birthday to Wilfrid Hyde-White
Born on May 12, 1903, in Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, England, Hyde-White was an English actor known for his droll and urbane upper-class characters. He had an extensive stage and screen career in both the United Kingdom and the United States, portraying over 160 film and television roles between 1935 and 1987.
Hyde-White appeared in two episodes of the series. The first one, "Dagger of the Mind" (1972), was set in Britain and concerned Columbo paying a visit to Scotland Yard. Hyde-White played Tanner, Sir Roger's butler who deduces the true circumstances of his death and attempts to blackmail the dastardly duo; with lethal consequences. Due to Hyde-White's UK tax problems at the time, all his scenes were shot in California.
He also appeared as the family lawyer, Kittering, in season 5's Last Salute to the Commodore.
Hyde-White passed away on May 6, 1991, in Woodland Hills, California.
Happy birthday to Lindsay Crouse!
The Lady in Black herself, Dr. Joan Allenby, was born May 12th, 1948 in Manhattan, New York City.
She made her Broadway debut in the 1972 revival of "Much Ado About Nothing" and appeared in her first film in 1976 in "All the President's Men". For her role in the 1984 film "Places in the Heart", she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Her other notable films include "Slap Shot" (1977), "The Verdict" (1982), "Prefontaine" (1997), and "The Insider" (1999).
Crouse portrayed Dr. Joan Allenby in the episode "Sex and the Married Detective". Dr. Allenby is a famous sex therapist and radio show host who discovers her partner, David Kincaid, cheating on her with her assistant, Cindy Galt.
Happy birthday to our favorite garlic slinger...
That's right, Oscar Beregi Jr. was born May 12th, 1918 in Budapest, Hungary. He's known to Columbo fans as the restaurant proprietor who serves Clayton and Dudek their dinner the night before the big match.
Beregi Jr. and his father left Hungary in 1939, with the father settling in the United States, while the son ran a restaurant in Chile. It took several years for the younger Beregi to be granted a visa to enter the U.S., and then only through the intervention of then-U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. When Beregi finally arrived in America, he spoke little English and worked as a salesman for several years, learning the language, before re-entering the acting profession well into middle age.
He made the most of the meatier roles offered him in television, such as mob boss Joe Kulak (a character possibly based on real-life mobster Jake Guzik) in eight episodes of The Untouchables (1959). He was also impressively commanding as the scientific criminal mastermind Farwell in Rod Serling's The Rip Van Winkle Caper (1961) and, in the same series, as former SS concentration camp commandant Guenther Lutze, driven to insanity by the ghosts of his former victims in Deaths-Head Revisited (1961).
In his spare time, he was a successful breeder of Komondors, a breed of large, white Hungarian sheep dog, considered a living treasure in their native country.
He passed away on November 1, 1976.
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