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 son of a Rhodes Scholar, Wayne Rogers attended Princeton University and acted with the college's Triangle Club players, then forgot all about performing for several years. After navy service, Rogers headed to New York to learn the intricacies of the world of finance. But with aspiring actor Peter Falk as his roommate, it was only a matter of time before Rogers would again yearn for the smell of greasepaint. He took classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse while supporting himself as a busboy and lifeguard. During these lean years, Rogers amazed Falk and his other friends with his uncanny ability to invest his meager earnings into winning propositions. Even after making it as an actor, Rogers continued dispensing wise financial advice to his show-biz buddies, earning the affectionate soubriquet "The Wizard." After Broadway, film, and daytime soap opera experience, Rogers landed his first prime time TV starring role, playing hard-riding Luke Perry on the 1960 series Stagecoach West. During a lull in his acting career in the mid-1960s, Rogers suddenly turned producer, bankrolling a horror quickie called The Astro Zombies, from which he earned back a 2000% profit on a $47,000 investment. In 1972, Rogers was cast as irreverent army surgeon "Trapper John" McIntyre on a new sitcom called M*A*S*H. Three years later, he abruptly stopped showing up on the set. Claiming that the producers had promised him that he'd be the star of M*A*S*H, Rogers was incensed that Alan Alda had emerged as top dog, so he quit the series cold. The producers slapped on a $2.9 million breach of contract suit, whereupon Rogers countersued; these legal volleys went back and forth for over a year before an amenable settlement was ironed out. Like many other M*A*S*H bailouts, Rogers had difficulty finding success as a solo TV performer: of his three subsequent starring series, City of Angels, House Calls and High Risk, only House Calls (1979-82) lasted beyond its first season. Wayne Rogers has had better luck as the star of such made-for-TV movies as Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan (1975), It Happened One Christmas (1977), The Girl Who Spelled Freedom (1986) and American Harvest (1987). The founder of the Wayne Rogers & Company investment firm, the veteran film and television actor was given his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2005. He died in 2015, at age 82.

Trivia: Comedy writer-actor, onscreen from the '80s. She was often teamed with Griff Rhys Jones.

Trivia: One of Hollywood's shoe-ins for deft portrayals of creepy, underhanded, Machiavellian types with an anarchic bite, Doug Hutchison distinguished himself with two career-defining portrayals in the late '80s: he played Obie, a member of a sinister student league at an all-boys' Catholic school, in director Keith Gordon's The Chocolate War (1988), and Sproles, an undercover cop's younger brother who causes problems for an economically divided couple (Andrew McCarthy and Molly Ringwald) in David Anspaugh's romantic drama Fresh Horses (1988). Hutchison frequently rose above the inherent weaknesses of the material he was handed, as in the two said films; one critic observed that Sproles "hoist[ed] [Horses] onto his shoulders for the duration of his scenes." That ability didn't emerge serendipitously; a classically trained performer who received his formal education at Juilliard, Hutchison later studied drama one-on-one under the tutelage of legendary acting coach Sanford Meisner. Unfortunately, within a few years of his astonishing onscreen debuts in 1988, Hutchison's screen activity somewhat declined, and when he did crop up, the projects were unworthy of him (such as 1992's The Lawnmower Man and 1996's Love Always). By the late '90s, however, Hutchison rebounded, with additional roles in A-listers including The Green Mile (1999), I Am Sam (2002), and The Salton Sea (2002). By the tail end of that decade, Hutchison moved into more sensationalistic material, signing for turns in J.T. Petty's horror western The Burrowers (2008) and Lexi Alexander's comic-book superhero film Punisher: War Zone (2008).

Trivia: Aside from his 1987 appearance as Starkweather in Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi drama Robocop, venerable African-American actor Tyrees Allen spent many years enduring supporting roles in lackluster films, such as the 1980 teen-oriented military farce Up the Academy, the 1986 comedy-fantasy The Dirt Bike Kid, and the 1991 exploitationer Touch and Die. A series of guest turns (as various characters) on the Paul Reiser sitcom Mad About You and the blockbuster drama Law & Order followed during the mid-'90s, and helped Allen's career immensely. In 2007, the actor played Detective Warren Jacobi in the mystery series Women's Murder Club.

Trivia: Actor Edward Byrnes broke into films around 1957, playing a few bits (he can be seen as one of Jimmy Piersall's buddies in the 1957 biopic Fear Strikes Out) and minor roles. Signed to a Warner Bros. contract, Byrnes connected with the public in the role of a punkish villain in Girl on the Run, the 90-minute pilot episode of 77 Sunset Strip. Audience response to the young actor was so overwhelmingly positive that he was signed as a regular for the Sunset Strip series proper. As hipster parking lot attendant Gerald Lloyd Kookson III, aka "Kookie," he skyrocketed to teen idoldom via the simple expedient of combing his hair at least once per episode. He went on to parlay this schtick into a Top 40 song hit, "Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb." During the second season of 77 Sunset Strip, Byrnes followed the example of fellow Warner contractees James Garner and Clint Walker, threatening to quit the series if he wasn't given more money and better scripts. Warners acquiesced to his demands: The studio also improved the social status of Byrnes' character on the series, promoting him to junior detective. After leaving the series in 1963, Byrnes moved to Europe, where he flourished as a star of spaghetti Westerns and espionage flicks. A pop-culture icon by the late '70s, Byrnes made occasional returns to Hollywood in such campy roles as Dick Clark-clone Vince Fontaine in Grease (1978). In addition, Ed Byrnes played "the Emcee" on the 1979 anthology series Sweepstakes, and in 1974, "Kookie" hosted the pilot episode of the evergreen quiz show Wheel of Fortune.

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.