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Chicago – April 29th is Kate Mulgrew’s 60th birthday, and what better way to celebrate than Exclusive Portraits of the former Starfleet Commander (“Star Trek: Voyager”). Mulgrew was in Chicago promoting her memoir, “Born with Teeth.”

Born in Iowa, Kathleen Kiernan “Kate” Mulgrew studied acting at the prestigious Stella Adler Conservatory. She began her career in 1975 on the soap opera “Ryan’s Hope,” which led to primetime with the short-lived spinoff “Mrs. Columbo.” After doing character parts in movies and TV during the 1980s, Mulgrew scored her most high profile role as Captain Kathryn Janeway on “Star Trek: Voyager” in 1995, leading the series for seven seasons. That role remained her most notable, until taking on Galina “Red” Reznikov in the hot and current Netflix series “Orange is the New Black.”

Kate Mulgrew in Chicago for Her Memoir, ‘Born with Teeth,’ April 16th, 2015

Photo credit: Joe Arce of Starstruck Foto for HollywoodChicago.

TV/film composer and conductor John Cacavas, whose credits include Airport 1975 and 1970s TV series Kojak, died January 28 at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 83. The South Dakota native scored numerous TV series and films throughout his career beginning with the 1972 feature Horror Express. He went on to score the next two movies in the Airport franchise, Airport 1975 and Airport ’77. Cacavas had developed a strong friendship with Telly Savalas, leading to a long tenure as composer for the Kojak TV series (1973-78), including the series theme for its fifth and final season on CBS. His other TV credits include Hawaii Five-o, Matlock, Switch, Columbo, Mrs. Columbo, Quincy, Buck Rogers, Gangster Chronicles, Lady Blue, Four Seasons and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not. He also composed movies-of-the-week, TV pilots, mini-series and specials such as A Time to Triumph, Eddie Capra Mysteries, She Cried Murder, Time Machine, By Reason Of Insanity,...

Kate Mulgrew is stepping into the cast ranks of "Warehouse 13" and Adult Swim's outrageous "Ntsf:sd:suv::" and finding the experience to be an energizing break from her more serious roles of the past. Widely known for playing Capt. Kathryn Janeway on "Star Trek: Voyager," Mulgrew enjoys a busy career that spans film, television and the stage, including parts on "Mrs. Columbo," "Murder, She Wrote," "Murphy Brown" and "A Stranger is Watching." Mulgrew makes her "Warehouse 13" debut Aug. 29 on Syfy in the episode "The 40th Floor," where she portrays Jane, an influential Regent whose relationship to the warehouse and its staff -- especially Pete (Eddie McClintock) and Myka (Joanne Kelly) -- becomes a key story point in the show's third season. The part continues with the Sept. 12 episode ...

If there was one thing you could count on about Lt. Columbo, it was that he would never leave a room without immediately entering it again, to clear up "Just one more thing..." Which remembrance adds either sadness and poignancy or a typical note of Peter Falk-style humour to the news that he has departed the department for the last time. At the time of writing, no direct cause of death has been attributed to the demise of the Columbo actor in Los Angeles at the age of 83, but Falk had been battling Alzheimer's Disease for some years.

You can read in a lot of places a rote history of his career, the famous "For that money, I could get an actor with two eyes!" story, and accounts of the sad familial wrangling that put a small shadow on a shining career at the end. But I don't really want to rewrite that stuff,...

Peter Falk, the Oscar-nominated and Emmy Award-winning actor best known for his portrayal of the raincoat-wearing, cigar smoking TV detective Columbo, died Thursday evening at his home in Beverly Hills, CA; he was 83. Though an exact cause of death was not released by his family, it had been known that Falk was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Though he received two Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor in 1960 and 1961 for Murder, Inc. and Pocketful of Miracles, and was an acclaimed stage actor, winning a Tony Award for 1972's The Prisoner of Second Avenue, he was known to millions as the irascible Lieutenant Columbo, one of television most beloved detectives, whose apparent absent-mindedness belied his cunning deductive skills and ease at outwitting even the most clever and devious of criminals. In all, he received four Emmy Awards and 10 nominations for the role, which he played from 1968 (in the TV film Prescription: Murder) to a special 2003 episode of the series.

Born in New York City in 1927, Falk underwent surgery at only the age of three to have his right eye removed because of a malignant tumor; for the rest of his life he would wear a glass eye, which became one of his most notable traits. Rejected by the armed forces because of his eyesight, he enlisted in the Merchant Marines during World War II, returning home to finish his college education, obtaining a master's degree in public administration and taking a job as an efficiency expert in Hartford, Connecticut in the early 1950s. It was there that he began his acting career, studying with the acclaimed actress and teacher Eva Le Gallienne. After moving to New York to pursue acting full time, he co-starred in the 1956 revival of The Iceman Cometh alongside Jason Robards, and was on Broadway within the same year, and started appearing on television as well. In the late '50s he took a number of small film roles, and was hailed by critics for his turn as a murderer in the 1960 gangster film Murder Inc., which proved to be his breakthrough role. An Oscar nomination followed, as did a role in Frank Capra's Pocketful of Miracles the next year, which was the acclaimed director's last film and for which Falk received a second Oscar nod.

With back-to-back Academy Award nominations and his first Emmy Award (for a 1961 episode of The Dick Powell Theater), Falk worked steadily throughout the 1960s in both television and film, with small roles in It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and Robin and the 7 Hoods, and a starring role in the short-lived legal TV series The Trials of O'Brien. He first played the role of Lieutenant Columbo in the 1968 TV movie Prescription: Murder, which was originally written as a Broadway play and then reworked for television. The film set up a number of tropes for the upcoming TV series: the seeming ineptitude of detective Columbo and the intricate cat-and-mouse mysteries in which the killer, known to viewers, seemed to dance around the detective's bumbling investigations. Columbo became a TV series in 1971, with a young 25-year-old Steven Spielberg helming the very first episode. The series was an unqualified hit for NBC, and ran through 1977 in 90 or 120 minute movie-length segments that appeared every third week as part of the network's "Sunday Mystery Movie" series, with a wide variety of acclaimed guest stars. Even after it went off the air, it spawned the short-lived Mrs. Columbo (based on the detective's unseen wife), starring a young Kate Mulgrew.

While becoming one of the signature television stars of the 1970s, Falk also appeared on the big screen in two of close friend John Cassavetes' films, Husbands (1970) and the Oscar-nominated A Woman Under the Influence (1971). Falk also played a Sam Spade-style detective in the comedy Murder By Death, and also starred in The Brink's Job (1978), The Cheap Detective (also 1978), and The In-Laws (1979). After the Columbo series came to a close in 1977, Falk continued acting in film, appearing in two highly notable roles in 1987: the storybook-reading Grandfather in Rob Reiner's The Princess Bride, and an acclaimed turn as a slightly modified version of himself as a man who converses with angels in Wim Wender's Wings of Desire. He returned to the role of Columbo in 1989 when ABC began commission TV movies centered on the character that would appear twice a year. After his last Columbo turn in 2003, Falk appeared sporadically in film and TV, his last role in the 2009 indie comedy American Cowslip.

In December 2008, his daughter Catherine Falk had filed court documents stating her father suffered from Alzheimer's Disease and petitioned to be his guardian; he is survived by his two daughters and wife, Shera.

Fare such as Smallville's 'Labyrinth' episode and pretty much anything in either the UK or Us version of Life On Mars - even 'Life Is A Rock', the outrageous 'space finale' of ABC's 2008 remake of the original UK BBC series - is not admissable here. We knew that Smallville would continue after Labyrinth's attempts to persuade Clark that his Kryptonian heritage was invented, and since we knew ABC's Life On Mars was heading for the trash anyway, the final episode had no parameters left to respect. Also excluded are episodes of anthologies such as The Twilight Zone, which set out on a weekly basis to mess with our minds. And sorry, Lost definitely also falls into that category.

Here, instead, are the season episodes which 'got us' fair and square without committing canonical suicide...

This is chock-full of spoilers, so be warned...

10: The Prisoner - 'The Chimes Of Big...

Fare such as Smallville's 'Labyrinth' episode and pretty much anything in either the UK or Us version of Life On Mars  - even 'Life Is A Rock', the outrageous 'space finale' of ABC's 2008 remake of the original UK BBC series - is not admissable here. We knew that Smallville would continue after Labyrinth's attempts to persuade Clark that his Kryptonian heritage was invented, and since we knew ABC's Life On Mars was heading for the trash anyway, the final episode had no parameters left to respect. Also excluded are episodes of anthologies such as The Twilight Zone, which set out on a weekly basis to mess with our minds. And sorry, Lost definitely also falls into that category.

Here, instead, are the season episodes which 'got us' fair and square without committing canonical suicide...

This is chock-full of spoilers, so be warned...

10: The Prisoner - 'The Chimes Of Big...

Fare such as Smallville's 'Labyrinth' episode and pretty much anything in either the UK or Us version of Life On Mars  - even 'Life Is A Rock', the outrageous 'space finale' of ABC's 2008 remake of the original UK BBC series - is not admissable here. We knew that Smallville would continue after Labyrinth's attempts to persuade Clark that his Kryptonian heritage was invented, and since we knew ABC's Life On Mars was heading for the trash anyway, the final episode had no parameters left to respect. Also excluded are episodes of anthologies such as The Twilight Zone, which set out on a weekly basis to mess with our minds. And sorry, Lost definitely also falls into that category.

Here, instead, are the season episodes which 'got us' fair and square without committing canonical suicide...

This is chock-full of spoilers, so be warned...

10: The Prisoner - 'The Chimes Of Big...

Columbo is one of television’s most beloved characters thank to the sophisticated writing of Richard Levinson and William Link in addition to the performance from Peter Falk. The rumpled detective appeared for seven seasons on the NBC Sunday Mystery Movie and then returned for a series of telefilms in the late 1980s.

All seven seasons were collected between 2004 and 2006 with the 1989 set of telefilms released in 2007.

Universal is finally releasing the 1990 set of telefilms on February 3 according to TV Shows on DVD. The set of six episodes will come on three discs and retail for $26.98. The titles for the record are:

• "Columbo Cries Wolf"

• "Agenda for Murder"

• "Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo"

• "Uneasy Lies the Crown"

• "Murder in Malibu"

• "Columbo Goes to College"

Guest performers include Deidre Hall (Days of our Lives), Ian Buchanan (The Bold and the Beautiful), Gigi Rice (The John Larroquette Show), Louis Zorich (Mad About You...