Trivia: Angela Lansbury received an Oscar nomination for her first film, Gaslight, in 1944, and has been winning acting awards and audience favor ever since. Born in London to a family that included both politicians and performers, Lansbury came to the U.S. during World War II. She made notable early film appearances as the snooty sister in National Velvet (1944); the pathetic singer in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), which garnered her another Academy nomination; and the madam-with-a-heart-of-gold saloon singer in The Harvey Girls (1946). She turned evil as the manipulative publisher in State of the Union (1948), but was just as convincing as the good queen in The Three Musketeers (1948) and the petulant daughter in The Court Jester (1956). She received another Oscar nomination for her chilling performance as Laurence Harvey's scheming mother in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and appeared as the addled witch in Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), among other later films. On Broadway, she won Tony awards for the musicals Mame (1966), Dear World (1969), the revival of Gypsy (1975), Sweeney Todd (1979) and, at age 82, for the play Blithe Spirit (2009). Despite a season in the '50s on the game show Pantomime Quiz, she came to series television late, starring in 1984-1996 as Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote; she took over as producer of the show in the '90s. She returned to the Disney studios to record the voice of Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast (1991) and to sing the title song and later reprised the role in the direct-to-video sequel, The Enchanted Christmas (1997). Lansbury is the sister of TV producer Bruce Lansbury.

Trivia: Direct from Chicago's DePaul University, Betsy Palmer underwent intensive training at New York's Actors Studio, supporting herself as a secretary. She made her professional bow in stock in Wisconsin and Illinois in 1950; one year later, she made the first of hundreds of TV appearances. In 1955, Palmer first appeared on Broadway in The Grand Prize, and that same year launched her sporadic film career. Later stage credits included Forty Carats, in which she successfully replaced Lauren Bacall, and extensive touring in the role of Nellie Forbush in South Pacific. To millions of baby-boomers, Palmer will forever be associated with her work as a panelist on such TV game shows as I've Got a Secret; a later generation of televiewers will most readily recall her as Virginia Bullock on the 1989-90 season of Knot's Landing. To those whose teen years coincided with the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, Betsy Palmer is known only as the vicious, vengeful, axe-wielding Mrs. Voorhees (Jason's mom) in the first Friday the 13th (1980); reportedly, Palmer won that role because she was willing to drive her own car to and from location shoots. Palmer continued to act through her later years; she died in 2015, at age 88.

Trivia: While still a high schooler in her Texas home town, Josephine Cottle won a "Gateway to Hollywood" contest sponsored by film producer Jesse Lasky. Cottle was rechristened "Gale Storm" at the suggestion of a movie-magazine fan, and was promptly cast in 1940's Tom Brown's School Days. A brief RKO contract led nowhere, and soon Gale Storm was the sweetheart of Monogram Pictures, starring in several of that low-budget studio's musical "specials." Towards the end of the 1940s, Gale appeared in a number of Republic westerns opposite Roy Rogers. When actress Wanda Hendrix turned down the opportunity to star in the upcoming TV sitcom My Little Margie in 1951, Gale Storm jumped at the chance; like Hendrix, Gale didn't think much of the project at first, but was convinced that it could only get better. Whether or not My Little Margie ever truly evinced signs of improvement is a moot point: Storm became a bonafide star in the role of spunky 21-year-old Margie Belmont. The series' popularity increased tenfold when it left prime time in 1954 and entered the syndicated-rerun market. Capitalizing on her new-found celebrity, she pursued a successful nightclub career, and in 1955 cut a pair of Top Ten record singles, "Teenage Prayer" and "I Hear You Knocking." One year later, she launched a second successful TV series, Oh, Susanna (aka The Gale Storm Show) in which, for four seasons, she filled the role of Susanna Pomeroy, scatterbrained social director on the luxury liner S.S. Ocean Queen. Following her series' cancellation in 1960, Storm returned to nightclubs and played the straw-hat circuit in such musicals as Annie Get Your Gun and then went into semi-retirement, devoting her time to her husband Lee Bonnell (a fellow "Gateway to Hollywood" winner who had long since abandoned acting for the insurance business) and her children. In the late 1970s, Storm re-emerged in the public's consciousness when she announced that she'd been an alcoholic for several years; this was followed by a return to TV as spokesperson for a substance-abuse rehabilitation center in the Northwest. In 1981, Gale Storm published her biography, I Ain't Down Yet.

Trivia: In another era, American actor Eugene Roche might have been a perfect next-door neighbor on Ozzie and Harriet; balding, slightly paunchy, with an open, jovial Midwestern face. Following theatrical work, Roche made a name for himself in a project which gave him no on-screen billing: the friendly kitchen employee who sang the brief "Ajax for dishes" ditty in a series of detergent commercials. Roche's breakthrough film was Slaughterhouse Five (1971), in which he played the likeable POW Edgar Derby, whose fascination with war souvenirs results in his perfunctory execution at the hands of his German captors. Not all of Roche's film roles were this benign: in Foul Play (1978), he is a professional assassin who impersonates his murdered archbishop brother, the better to draw a bead on the Pope during an American visit. A reassuringly familiar presence on TV, Eugene Roche also had regular roles on several series, including The Corner Bar (1972), Good Time Harry (1980), Webster (1984), Take Five (1987) and Lenny (1990).

Trivia: During his first few decades as an actor, Bill Macy took whatever was readily available: poetry-reading jobs, movie bits, comedy-record gigs (he's the operatic cabdriver in the classical music lampoon The Wurst of PDQ Bach) and off-Broadway stage assignments. While appearing in the 1969 "nudie" musical Oh! Calcutta, the 45-year-old Macy gained attention, critical and otherwise, for appearing au naturel in one of the comedy sketches. Evidently he enjoyed the sensation; even in his days of TV prominence, Macy was known to disrobe at parties and public functions whenever he'd been too generous in his participation at the bar. In the early 1970s, Macy was cast in several small roles in the TV properties of producer Norman Lear; this led to a lengthy (72-78) engagement as Walter Findlay, husband of fiery feminist Maude Findlay (Bea Arthur) on the popular sitcom Maude. Since that time, Bill Macy has thrived in film and stage character parts, and has co-starred in two TV weeklies, Hanging In (79) and Nothing in Common (87).

Trivia: While growing up in Chicago, Tom Bosley dreamed of becoming the star left-fielder for the Cubs. As it turned out, the closest Bosley got to organized athletics was a sportscasting class at DePauw University. After additional training at the Radio Institute of Chicago and two years' practical experience in various dramatic radio programs and stock companies, he left for New York in 1950. Five years of odd jobs and summer-theater stints later, he landed his first off-Broadway role, playing Dupont-Dufort in Jean Anouilh's Thieves' Carnival. Steadier work followed at the Arena Theatre in Washington, D.C.; then in 1959, Bosley landed the starring role in the Broadway musical Fiorello!, picking up a Tony Award, an ANTA Award, and the New York Drama Critics Award in the bargain. In 1963, he made his film bow as Natalie Wood's "safe and secure" suitor Anthony Colombo in Love With the Proper Stranger. Occasionally cast as two-bit criminals or pathetic losers (he sold his eyes to blind millionairess Joan Crawford in the Spielberg-directed Night Gallery TV movie), Bosley was most often seen as a harried suburban father. After recurring roles on such TV series as That Was the Week That Was, The Debbie Reynolds Show, and The Sandy Duncan Show, Bosley was hired by Hanna-Barbera to provide the voice of flustered patriarch Howard Boyle on the animated sitcom Wait Til Your Father Gets Home (1972-1973). This served as a dry run of sorts for his most famous series-TV assignment: Howard Cunningham, aka "Mr. C," on the immensely popular Happy Days (1974-1983). The warm, familial ambience of the Happy Days set enabled Bosley to weather the tragic death of his first wife, former dancer Jean Elliot, in 1978. In addition to his Happy Days duties, Bosley was narrator of the syndicated documentary That's Hollywood (1977-1981). From 1989 to 1991, he starred on the weekly series The Father Dowling Mysteries, and thereafter was seen on an occasional basis as down-to-earth Cabot Cove sheriff Amos Tupper on Murder, She Wrote. Reportedly as kind, generous, and giving as his Happy Days character, Tom Bosley has over the last 20 years received numerous honors for his many civic and charitable activities.

Trivia: American actress Patricia Barry was signed for a Columbia Pictures contract almost immediately upon her graduation from Stephens College. Billed as Patricia White, the young actress was kept busy in Gene Autry westerns, two-reel comedies with such funsters as Andy Clyde and Sterling Holloway, and occasional leads in B-plus features like The Wreck of the Hesperus (1948). Changing her professional name upon her marriage to producer/director Philip Barry, Jr. (son of the famed playwright), Patricia became one of the most visible actresses in 1950s television. She spent two years as a regular on the daytime drama First Love, and worked steadily in such anthologies as Playhouse 90 and Matinee Theatre. Though an advocate of the "method" school of acting, Barry's technique was a lot less self-indulgent and timewasting than most method actors of her era, and she continued popping up with regularity on TV shows of the 1960s, including a costarring stint with Jack Klugman in the short-lived 1964 sitcom Harris Against the World. Active in TV and films into the 1980s, Patricia Barry is probably best known to modern viewers for her performances in two Twilight Zone installments, "The Chaser" (1960) and "I Dream of Jeannie," wherein she pulled off the dextrous task of being both sexy and funny at the same time and for her work on soap operas, including Days of Our Lives and All My Children. Barry died in 2016, at age 93.

Trivia: Expressive comic actress Conchata Ferrell attended drama classes at West Virginia University and Marshall University. Ferrell's first off-Broadway appearance was as good-natured hooker April Green in Lanford Wilson's Hot L Baltimore (1972), a role she would reprise in the short-lived 1975 TV sitcom version. In 1973, she won an Obie Award for her performance in The Sea Horse. Her first major film role was feisty frontier widow Elinore in the 1981 western Heartland, a performance that earned her a "Wrangler Award" from the Cowboy Hall of Fame. She has also been seen in Network (1976), Mystic Pizza (1988) and Edward Scissorhands (1991), to name but a few. As active on TV as elsewhere, Conchata Ferrell has played such regular TV-series roles as female cop Wilhelmina "The Fox" Johnson in BJ and the Bear (1979), café owner Vangie Cruise in McClain's Law (1981), nurse Joan Thor in the original ER (1984), zoo secretary Kate Galindo in A Peaceable Kingdom (1989), entertainment lawyer Susan Bloom in LA Law (1991-92 season, earning an Emmy nomination in 1992), and cynical psychologist/advice columnist Dr. Madeline Stoessinger in Hearts Afire (1993-95).

Trivia: Diminutive (5'7") comic actor Howard Morris was in his teens when, while attending the National Youth Administration's radio workshop in New York City, he befriended another aspiring actor named Carl Reiner. The two were reunited in Honolulu during World War II, when Morris was Reiner's sergeant in an entertainment unit. Both Morris and Reiner played supporting roles in Maurice Evans' army-camp tour of Hamlet and MacBeth; after the war, the two performers toured in the musical Call Me Mister before joining the cast of Sid Caesar's TV comedy-variety series. Only after finishing nine seasons with Caesar were Morris and Reiner able to establish their own individual showbiz identities: Reiner as a novelist, film supporting actor, director and creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, and Morris as one of the most prolific TV guest stars and directors of the 1960s. Relocating from New York to LA in 1961, Morris played the recurring role of goonish, rock-throwing Ernest T. Bass on The Andy Griffith Show, and a whole slew of one-shot assignments on series ranging from The Danny Thomas Show to The Twilight Zone. Morris forever shed the "third banana" status he'd had during his Sid Caesar days by directing episodes of such TV weeklies as Andy Griffith, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gomer Pyle USMC, and the unforgettable black-and-white pilot for Get Smart. He also served as producer of the 1972-73 sitcom The Corner Bar. In films, Morris sparkled in such supporting parts as Jerry Lewis' browbeaten father in The Nutty Professor and German psychiatrist Dr. Lilloman in Mel Brooks' High Anxiety (1977). His theatrical-film directorial credits include the all-star comedy Who's Minding the Mint (1967), Doris Day's swan song With Six You Get Eggroll (1968), a very WASP-ish adaptation of Woody Allen's Don't Drink the Water (1969), and the Donny & Marie Osmond opus Goin' Coconuts (1978). Howard Morris is also a fixture of the animated cartoon voice-over world, supplying voices and directing recording sessions for many a Hanna-Barbera, Filmation and Walt Disney production: If you can't place the voice, think of Morris as Atom Ant, Beetle Bailey, Jughead Jones, and futuristic rock star Jet Screamer ("Eep, opp, ork, ah-ah") on The Jetsons.