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: Actor E. G. Marshall started out on radio in his native Minnesota, then headed for New York and Broadway. After several years' solid stage service, Marshall began accepting small roles in such films as 13 Rue Madeline (1945) and Call Northside 777 (1947). A mainstay of television's so-called Golden Age, Marshall excelled in incisive, authoritative roles. Long before winning two Emmy awards for his portrayal of lawyer Lawrence Preston on TV's The Defenders (1961-65), Marshall was associated with fictional jurisprudence as the military prosecutor in The Caine Mutiny (1954) and as Juror #4 in Twelve Angry Men (1957). In contrast to his businesslike demeanor, Marshall is one of Hollywood's most notorious pranksters; he was never more impish than when he ad-libbed profanities and nonsequiturs while his lips were hidden by a surgical mask in the 1969-73 TV series The Bold Ones. The best of E.G. Marshall's work of the 1970s and 1980s includes the role of the straying husband in Woody Allen's Interiors (1977), the U.S. President in Superman II (1978) and General Eisenhower in the 1985 TV miniseries War and Remembrance. Continuing to flourish into the 1990s, Marshall was seen in the 1993 TV adaptation of Stephen King's The Tommyknockers, and was cast as Arthur Thurmond on the 1994 medical series Chicago Hope. Radio fans will remember E.G. Marshall as the unctuous host ("Pleasant dreeeaaammms") of the 1970s anthology The CBS Radio Mystery Theatre.

Trivia: Upon earning his BA at Bucknell University, Ralph Waite embarked upon no fewer than three careers before deciding upon acting. First, Waite was a social case worker in New York's Westchester County, a job he quit after running into the stone walls of indifference and bureaucracies. Then, after spending three years at the Yale School of Divinity, he was a practicing Presbyterian minister; this, too fell by the wayside due to Waite's unwillingness to conform to church protocol and his disenchantment over the perceived hypocrisy of his fellow clerics. Finally, he worked as a religious editor for the publishing firm of Harper & Row. This job might have panned out, but Waite, separated from his wife and suffering an identity crisis, felt the need to "prove himself" by entering a tougher, more competitive field. Thus, at the age of 30, Waite began taking acting lessons. His professional debut in the off-Broadway production The Balcony proved so disastrous that it is little wonder he chooses to regard his 1965 Broadway bow in Hogan's Goat as the true beginning of his career. After an excellent showing as Jack Nicholson's impotent brother in Five Easy Pieces (1971) the offers began pouring in. In 1972, Waite was cast as John Walton in the immensely popular TV series The Waltons. During the nine-season run of that ratings bonanza, Waite helped form the Los Angeles Actors' Theatre. He also was prominently featured in the blockbuster miniseries Roots (1977), and wrote and directed (but did not star in) the 1980 film On the Money. His post-Walton credits included the TV series Mississippi, the film Cliffhanger (1993) and TV movies Crash and Burn and Sin and Redemption. Towards the end of his career, he had a recurring role on Day of Our Lives as Father Matt, and played the father of two leading men on two long-running series - Gibbs on NCIS and Booth on Bones. Waite died in 2014 at age 85.

Trivia: Attended high school with John F. Kennedy Jr. and actor David Duchovny. Father Renato Beghe was a U.S. Tax Court Judge, appointed by President George H.W. Bush. Once involved in Scientology, where he was featured in a promotional advertising campaign, but has since become a vocal critic of the church. Claims to have donated $1 million to Scientology during his 12 years as a member. Once spent three-and-a-half weeks in a coma following a car accident. Best man at David Duchovny's 1997 marriage to Téa Leoni, and Duchovny was his best man when he wed in 2000.

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: A former showgirl and nightclub singer, Janice Rule was signed to a Warner Bros. contract in 1951. It would be nearly ten years before Rule's truly worthwhile roles would outnumber her inconsequential parts. She all but cornered the market in bitter, neurotic socialites in the 1960s, playing such parts as the small-town wealthy shrew who drunkenly swallows a string of valuable pearls in The Chase (1966) and Burt Lancaster's vitriolic ex-mistress in The Swimmer (1968). Playing these profoundly disturbed screen characters must have been cathartic for Ms. Rule, who took time off from acting in the late 1970s to become a professional psychoanalyst. From 1961 through 1979, Janice Rule was married to actor Ben Gazzara.

Trivia: Though many will best remember blonde, Southern charmer Dinah Shore as the hostess of primetime variety shows and daytime talk shows from the early '50s through the late '70s, she was also once a popular big band singer and star of radio and feature films. Born Frances "Fanny" Rose Shore in Winchester, TN, she contracted polio when she was a year and a half old and was left with a crippled right leg that was eventually strengthened by massage, swimming and tennis. Shore attended Vanderbilt University where she was president of her sorority. While in school, she received lessons in voice and acting, gaining early exposure on Nashville's WSM radio. Following graduation in 1938, Shore moved to New York to launch a singing career where she made her professional debut on New York's WNEW radio; her first recordings were made with Xavier Cugat's band. Her first big break came when she was hired to sing with the Leo Reisman Orchestra; Shore took her stage name from a popular song, "Dinah." By 1940, Shore had won many fans and was named "New Star of Radio 1940." She launched her film career in the 1943 revue Thank Your Lucky Stars and went on to appear in a few more films of the '40s and early '50s including Bell of the Yukon (1944) and Aaron Slick of Punkin Crick (1953). But though a talented singer and a pleasant personality, Shore's film career seemed permanently stalled so in 1951, she turned to television. Her first show, The Dinah Shore Show was 15 minutes long and aired twice weekly, featuring singing and the occasional guest. She became the first woman to host her own variety show in 1957 with The Dinah Shore Chevy Show. Shore's daytime talk show of the '60s was characterized by her easy down-home manner and wit that made her a charming cross between Hollywood sophistication and just-plain folksiness. From 1943 and 1962 she was married to actor George Montgomery. In the early '70s she created a stir when she became romantically involved with Burt Reynolds. Shore died of cancer in 1994.

Trivia: A character actor, Lee DeBroux first appeared onscreen in the late '60s; he often plays rustics.