Trivia: Tall, deep-voiced American actress Beatrice Arthur, born Beatrice Frankel, was best known for her television work on the long-running series Maude and The Golden Girls, but she also occasionally appeared in films. Her most famous film is 1973's Mame in which she played Vera Charles, the role she originated on Broadway.

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.

Trivia: Graduating cum laude from the University of Tulsa, Rue McClanahan studied acting with Uta Hagen and at the Perry-Mansfield school. After her professional debut with a Pennsylvania stock company in 1957, McClanahan headed to New York, where between acting gigs she worked as a waitress, took shorthand and sold blouses. Grabbing any opportunity available, she made her TV bow on a 1960 episode of the TV series Malibu Run, then appeared in a handful of exploitation films with come-hither titles like Five Minutes to Love (she played "Poochie, the girl from the shack," a credit she has since dropped from her resumé). She managed to find more prestigious work on the New York stage, starring in such well-received productions as MacBird, Jimmy Shine, Sticks and Bones and California Suite. She also played regular roles on the TV soap operas Another World and Where the Heart Is. A 1972 guest shot on Norman Lear's controversial series All in the Family led to her being cast as Vivian Harmon on Lear's popular sitcom Maude, a role she played until the series' cancellation in 1978. McClanahan's next project was her own starring series, 1978's Apple Pie, which unfortunately bit the dust after three shows. She went on to play the vitriolic Aunt Fran on the network version of Mama's Family (1983-85), then was co-starred with her Maude colleague Bea Arthur in The Golden Girls (1985-92). Her well-rounded portrayal of overly amorous museum worker Blanche Devereaux won her an 1986 Emmy award; she reprised the character in the Golden Girls spin-off Golden Palace (1992-93). The star of several made-for-TV movies, McClanahan co-produced and appeared in a brace of "dramedies," Mother of the Bride (1991) and Baby of the Bride (1992).

Trivia: A 5-foot-tall embodiment of the phrase "Late Bloomer," Estelle Getty was 47 years old when she made her first off-Broadway stage appearance. Getty gained renown in 1982 for her vitriolic performance as Harvey Fierstein's mother in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Torch Song Trilogy. She made the first of several brief film appearances that same year. When the call went out for an actress to play Sophia Petrillo, a peppery octogenarian whose recent stroke robbed her brain of its "tact"cells, in the upcoming TV series Golden Girls, Getty auditioned, only to be turned down because she was too young for the role. Four auditions later, she landed the part by hiring a makeup artist to add some 20 years to her facial features, wearing a too-big thrift shop dress, and remaining in character throughout the interview. She played Sophia on Golden Girls from 1985 to 1992, reprising the character for the spin-off series Golden Palace (1992) and for two year's worth of appearances on another sitcom, Empty Nest. For her efforts, Getty won a 1987 Emmy, a Golden Globe, and an American Comedy Award. She also evidently became typecast for life, as witness her Sophia-like co-starring performance in the 1992 Sylvester Stallone vehicle Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. A handful of similar guest-starring roles in popular '90s series, including Mad About You and Touched By an Angel, followed that performance. During her first rush of TV fame, Getty also published her autobiography, If I Knew Then What I Know Now...So What?. She died of complications related to advanced dementia in the summer of 2008.

Trivia: A successful character actress most adept at playing matronly types, Beth Grant took her onscreen bow in the late '80s and began tackling innumerable roles in Hollywood features, usually bit parts as housewives, female doctors, or down-home small-town women. Grant received her first feature assignment as a harried mother at a farmhouse in Barry Levinson's Rain Man (1988). She subsequently divided her time between film and television roles, guest-acting on dozens of series and occasionally taking on more extensive small-screen roles, such as on Coach and Jericho. Grant's many big-screen credits include the films Don't Tell Her It's Me (1990), Speed (1994), Donnie Darko (2001), and Little Miss Sunshine (2006). She was particularly memorable in the latter, as one of the snotty and obnoxious pageant judges. Darko represented Grant's first experience working with helmer Richard Kelly; she re-teamed with Kelly for his follow-up, the dystopian black comedy Southland Tales (2005).

Trivia: Lead and former juvenile actress McNichol is the daughter of a former actress. At age six she began appearing in commercials and was in TV shows by age nine. At 12 she became a regular on the TV series Apple's Way; after that show was canceled she was soon signed to the cast of Family, for which she went on to win two Emmy Awards. She began appearing onscreen in the late '70s, and looked to be on her way to a good film career with her costarring role in Little Darlings (1980), a popular teen-oriented comedy; however, most of her subsequent films were either low-quality or unsuccessful, and she never established herself as a screen actress. In the late '80s and early '90s she costarred on the TV sitcom Empty Nest.

Trivia: It took the television series Seinfeld and his portrayal of Morty Seinfeld to turn Barney Martin into a pop-culture star, complete with talk-show engagements and personal appearances -- but Martin was a working actor for 40 years before that, in films and television, on Broadway, and in regional theater. Born in New York City in the early '20s, he was the son of the police official in charge of the jail facility known as the Tombs. He served in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, with 42 missions to his credit as a navigator; he joined the police force after the war and won commendations for bravery. Martin had always shown a flair for comedy, and while a member of the police force, he was often asked to add jokes to the speeches of various deputy commissioners. In the early '50s, he began moving into professional entertainment circles, selling his jokes and also writing for Name That Tune, and then was hired as a writer on The Steve Allen Show -- it was while working on that end of the business, and with some encouragement from a new friend, Mel Brooks, that Martin became convinced that he could be as funny as most of the professional comics he was seeing in front of the cameras and on-stage. By the end of the 1950s, he was working as a stand-in for Jackie Gleason. With his hefty frame tipping the scales at well over 200 pounds even in those days, and his slightly befuddled look, he was nearly a dead-ringer for Gleason in one profile, and he ended up working on camera in various sketches. Martin's other early television performances included regular work as a "ringer" on Candid Camera, and work on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Perry Como Show, as well as straight acting performances on such dramatic shows as The Naked City, where his New York accent and mannerisms made Martin a natural. He also turned in an excruciatingly funny performance as Fats Borderman, a hapless professional hood, in the Car 54, Where Are You? episode "Toody Undercover." Martin made his first big-screen appearance in the 1956 Alfred Hitchcock thriller The Wrong Man, as a member of the jury -- he also showed up in uncredited appearances in such movies as Butterfield 8, Requiem for a Heavyweight, and Love With the Proper Stranger. In 1968, he got his first two credited screen appearances, in Mel Brooks' The Producers, portraying Goring in "Springtime for Hitler," and playing Hank in Ralph Nelson's Charly. Most of Martin's acting, however, was on-stage, including Broadway productions of South Pacific, All American, Street Scene, How Now, Dow Jones, and Chicago; in the latter's '70s production, he originated the role of Amos Hart. He also appeared in regional theater productions of Last of the Red Hot Lovers and The Fantasticks. Martin also made occasional appearances on television, most notably on The Odd Couple, starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, in such episodes as "The Jury Story" and "The Subway Story." His friendship with Randall also carried over to his being cast as a regular when the latter got his own series, The Tony Randall Show, in 1976. Martin might have gone on for the rest of his career as a character actor well known to those in his profession, doing occasional big-screen performances in features such as Stanley Donen's Movie, Movie and Steve Gordon's Arthur, but for the Seinfeld television series. After inheriting the role of Morty Seinfeld from another actor, Martin became a regular on the series, usually working in tandem with Liz Sheridan playing Morty's wife, also playing opposite Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Michael Richards, and Jerry Stiller, and always holding his own in eliciting laughs. Perhaps Martin's best single episode was the one in which his character is defeated in the election as chairman of the condominium board -- the script was filled with little digs aimed at Oliver Stone's movie Nixon, and Martin was able to bring just enough Nixon-like gravitas to his portrayal to make the whole show work.

Trivia: Possibly in defiance of the old adage "those that can't do, teach," American actor Harold Gould gave up a comfortable professorship in the drama department of the University of California to become a performer himself. Building up stage and TV credits from the late '50s onward, Gould made his first film, Two for the Seesaw, in 1962. He divided his time between stage and screen for the rest of the '60s, winning an Obie Award for the off-Broadway production Difficulty of Concentration. Gould was prominently cast in such slick '70s products as The Sting (1973), Woody Allen's Love and Death (1975), and Mel Brooks' Silent Movie (1976) (as a classically gesticulating villain). Often nattily attired and usually comporting himself like a wealthy self-made businessman, Gould was generously employed on TV for three decades. He co-starred with Daniel J. Travanti in the 1988 American Playhouse production of I Never Sang for My Father, played WASP-ish Katharine Hepburn's aging Jewish lover in the TV movie Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry (1986), and had regular stints on such series as The Long Hot Summer (1965), He and She (1967), Rhoda (1974) (as Rhoda's father), The Feather and Father Gang (1977), Washington: Behind Closed Doors (1977), Park Place (1981) Foot in the Door (1983), Spencer (1984) and Singer and Sons (1990). However, when the time came in 1974 to make a series out of the pilot film for Happy Days, an unavailable Harold Gould was replaced by Tom Bosley.