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: The quintessential blue-eyed, blonde-haired, freckle-faced Boy Next Door, Van Johnson was the son of a Rhode Island plumbing contractor. Making his Broadway bow in The New Faces of 1936, Johnson spent several busy years as a musical-comedy chorus boy. After understudying Gene Kelly in Pal Joey, he came to Hollywood to recreate his minor role in the film version of the Broadway musical hit Too Many Girls. Proving himself an able actor in the Warner Bros. "B" picture Murder in the Big House (1942), Johnson was signed by MGM, where he was given the traditional big buildup. He served his MGM apprenticeship as Lew Ayres' replacement in the "Dr. Kildare" series, latterly known as the "Dr. Gillespie" series, in deference to top-billed Lionel Barrymore. While en route to a preview showing of an MGM film, Johnson was seriously injured in an auto accident. This proved to be a blessing in disguise to his career: the accident prevented his being drafted into the army, thus he had the young leading-man field virtually to himself at MGM during the war years. Delivering solid dramatic performances in such major productions as The Human Comedy (1943) A Guy Named Joe (1943) and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), Johnson rapidly became a favorite with the public--particularly the teenaged female public. He remained a favorite into the 1950s, alternating serious characterizations with lightweight romantic fare. One of his best roles was Lt. Maryk in The Caine Mutiny (1954), for which he was loaned to Columbia. When his MGM contract came to an end, Johnson free-lanced both in Hollywood and abroad. He also made his London stage debut as Harold Hill in The Music Man, a role he'd continue to play on the summer-theater circuit well into the 1970s. His TV work included the lead in the elaborate 1957 musical version of The Pied Piper of Hamelin (released theatrically in 1961) and his "special guest villain" turn as The Minstrel on Batman (1967). He staged a film comeback as a character actor in the late 1960s, earning excellent reviews for his work in Divorce American Style (1967). And in the mid-1980s, Van Johnson again proved that he still had the old star quality, first as one of the leads in the short-lived TVer Glitter, then in a gently self-mocking role in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), and finally as Gene Barry's replacement in the hit Broadway musical La Cage Aux Folles (1985).

Trivia: American actress Patti D'Arbanville was 13 when she was discovered by "underground" filmmaker Andy Warhol. Wary of Warhol's reputation, D'Arbanville's mother wouldn't permit her daughter to work for the director until the girl was 17 -- at which point she enacted a lesbian love scene in Warhol's Flesh (1968). Unlike many Warhol protegees, D'Arbanville was able to matriculate to mainstream movies, though many of these, particularly the 1977 Bilitis, were obsessed with sex and procreation. The actress endeared herself to middle-America movie fans in the Barbra Streisand/Ryan O'Neal vehicle The Main Event (1979), stealing the show as a girl with a hacking (and hilarious) cough. Other D'Arbanville performances of note include the role of Ken Wahl's lady love on the TV series Wiseguy, and the redoubtable Cathy Smith in the 1989 John Belushi biopic Wired.

Trivia: Stuart Whitman, with a rugged build and sensitive face, rose from bit player to competent lead actor, but never did make it as a popular star in film. The San Francisco-born Whitman served three years with the Army Corps of Engineers where he was a light heavyweight boxer in his spare time. He next went on to study drama at the Los Angeles City College where he joined a Chekhov stage group. He began his film career in the early '50s as a bit player. Although never a star, he did manage to quietly accumulate $100 million dollars through shrewd investments in securities, real estate, cattle, and Thoroughbreds. For his role as a sex offender attempting to change in the 1961 British film The Mark, Whitman was nominated for an Oscar. In addition to features, Whitman has also appeared extensively on television.

Trivia: Though she despised the appellation "the girl next door," this was how June Allyson was promoted throughout most of her MGM career. The blonde, raspy-voiced actress was born in a tenement section of the Bronx. Her career nearly ended before it began when 8-year-old June seriously injured her back in a fall. For four years she wore a steel brace, then spent several more months in physical therapy. Thanks to the financial support of her grown half-brother, June was able to take dancing lessons. At 19, she made her film debut in the Vitaphone short Swing for Sale (1937). In her earliest movie appearances (notably the 1937 Educational Studios 2-reeler Dime a Dance) June projected a far more worldly, all-knowing image than she would convey in her later feature films. After co-starring in such Broadway productions as Sing Out the News, Very Warm for May and Panama Hattie and Best Foot Forward, June was signed to an MGM contract in 1942. The studio quickly began molding June's screen image of a freckled-faced, peaches-and-cream "best girl" and perfect wife. She was permitted to display some grit in The Girl in White (1952), playing New York City's first woman doctor, but most of her screen characters were quietly subordinate to the male leads. One of her favorite co-stars was James Stewart, with whom she appeared in The Stratton Story (1949) and The Glenn Miller Story (1954). In 1955, she completely broke away from her on-camera persona as the spiteful wife of Jose Ferrer in The Shrike (1955), a role for which she was personally selected by the demanding Ferrer. June was the wife of actor/ producer/ director Dick Powell, a union that lasted from 1945 until Powell's death in 1963, despite several well-publicized breakups. She starred in and hosted the 1960 TV anthology series The June Allyson Show, produced by Powell's Four Star Productions. After her film career ended, June made a handful of nightclub singing appearances; in 1972, she made a brief screen comeback in They Only Kill Their Masters, astonishing her fans by playing a murderess. In recent years, June Allyson has appeared in several TV commercials.

Trivia: Trained at Northwestern University's drama department, onetime salesman Claude Akins was a Broadway actor when he was selected by a Columbia talent scout for a small role in the Oscar-winning From Here to Eternity (1953). With a craggy face and blunt voice that evoked memories of Lon Chaney Jr., Akins was a "natural" for villainous or roughneck roles, but was versatile enough to play parts requiring compassion and humor. A television actor since the "live" days, Akins achieved stardom relatively late in life via such genial adventure series as Movin' On (1974), B.J. and the Bear (1979), The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo (1979) and Legmen (1984). In his last decade, Claude Akins was a busy-and most genial-commercial spokesperson.

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: The son of actors Eddie Albert and Margo, Edward Albert was educated abroad at Oxford University. While chronologically his movie debut was in 1965's The Fool Killer, Albert didn't seriously pursue acting as a profession until his early twenties. In 1972, he made his film-starring bow in Butterflies are Free (1972), playing a well-adjusted sightless youth who becomes the object of hippie-like Goldie Hawn's affections. His next film, Forty Carats (1973), was like Butterflies an adaptation of a popular stage play, though this time his part was less interesting. Albert's subsequent films are most likely not as rewarding to him as his ongoing hobby of photography. Ardent TV viewers have seen Edward Albert in regular roles on the nighttime soap operas The Yellow Rose (1984) and Falcon Crest (1986).

Trivia: Born in Puerto Rico, his parents were Canadian and moved the family back to Toronto when he was 13. Was a member of the high school swim team and student council. Enjoys collecting primitive art. Is a resident director at Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills. Established an acting scholarship at his high school. Is active in many charities, including Project Angel Food, the AIDS Project Los Angeles and the United Way.