Trivia: Born Muzyad Yakhoob, he began his show biz career in 1932 as a singer at a Detroit radio station; he began performing as an MC-comedian in nightclubs in 1938 and gradually gained popularity and national recognition over the next decade. He debuted onscreen in 1947, going on to a brief film career in corny lead roles or comic supporting parts. He was much more successful on TV, starring in the long-running sitcom Make Room for Daddy (later re-named The Danny Thomas Show); he also starred in a number of specials and made guest appearances on variety shows. In the late '50s Thomas began producing for TV, forming a partnership with Sheldon Leonard and later Aaron Spelling; he produced such series as The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gomer Pyle, and The Mod Squad. He also starred in several failed TV shows including The Danny Thomas Hour and Make Room for Granddaddy. He founded the St. Jude's Research Hospital, which is dedicated to finding cures for catastrophic chidren's diseases. He was the father of actress Marlo Thomas. He authored an autobiography, Make Room for Danny (1990).

Trivia: While still of high-school age, Marjorie Lord was a contract ingenue at RKO, playing the deadpan leading lady in two Wheeler and Woolsey comedies: Off Again On Again (1937) and High Flyers (1937). She moved to Universal Pictures in the 1940s, where she was decorative (and little else) in the studio's serials, westerns, and "B" pictures (notably 1942's Sherlock Holmes in Washington). Her best role during this period was opposite James Cagney in Johnny Come Lately (1943); she later had the chance to essay a villainous characterization in the independently produced The Strange Mrs. Crane (1948). Full stardom eluded Lord until 1957, when she replaced Jean Hagen as Mrs. Danny Williams on TV's The Danny Thomas Show (aka Make Room for Daddy). She played Kathy Williams until the series' cancellation in 1964, then re-created the role in the 1969 "revival" series Make Room For Granddaddy. She continued acting until the mid-1980s. The mother of actress Anne Archer, with whom she appeared in the 1978 TV movie Harold Robbins' The Pirate., Lord died in 2015, at age 97.

Trivia: Actor Hans Conried, whose public image was that of a Shakespearean ham, was born not in England but in Baltimore. Scrounging for work during the Depression era, Conried offered himself to a radio station as a performer, and at 18 became a professional. One of his earliest jobs was appearing in uncut radio adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, and before he was twenty he was able to recite many of the Bard's lengthier passages from memory. After several years in summer stock and radio, Conried made his screen debut in Dramatic School (1938). Conried's saturnine features and reedy voice made him indispensable for small character roles, and until he entered the service in World War II the actor fluctuated between movies and radio. Given a choice, Conried would have preferred to stay in radio, where the money was better and the parts larger, but despite the obscurity of much of his film work he managed to sandwich in memorable small (often unbilled) appearances in such "A" pictures as Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942), The Big Street (1942) and Passage to Marseilles (1944). While in the army, Conried was put in charge of Radio Tokyo in postwar Japan, where he began his lifelong hobby of collecting rare Japanese artifacts; the actor also had a near-encyclopedic knowledge of American Indian lore. As big-time radio began to fade during the late 1940s and early 1950s, Conried concentrated more on film work. He was awarded the starring role in the bizarre musical 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1952), written by his friend Dr. Seuss; unfortunately, the studio, not knowing how to handle this unorthodox project, cut it to ribbons, and the film was a failure. Later he was engaged for a choice co-starring role in Cole Porter's Broadway musical Can Can; in addition, he became a favorite guest on Jack Paar's late-night TV program, popped up frequently and hilariously as a game show contestant, and in 1957 made the first of many special-guest visits as the imperishable Uncle Tonoose on The Danny Thomas Show. Cartoon producers also relied heavily on Conried, notably Walt Disney, who cast the actor as the voice of Captain Hook in the animated feature Peter Pan, and Jay Ward, for whom Conried played Snidely Whiplash on The Bullwinkle Show and Uncle Waldo on Hoppity Hooper. In 1963, Jay Ward hired Conried as the supercilious host of the syndicated comedy series Fractured Flickers. Conried cut down on his TV show appearances in the 1970s and 1980s, preferring to devote his time to stage work; for well over a year, the actor co-starred with Phil Leeds in an Atlanta production of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys. Just before his death, Conried was cast in a recurring role on the "realistic" drama series American Dream, where he was permitted to drop the high-tone Shakespearean veneer in the gruff, down-to-earth part of Jewish oldster Abe Berlowitz.

Trivia: Though she was best known as a young TV star, Angela Cartwright also appeared in perennial movie musical favorite The Sound of Music (1965). Born in England, Cartwright's family moved to Los Angeles when she was three. Cartwright soon made her film debut, at the ripe old age of three and a half, in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956). Cast in 1957 as stepdaughter Linda on Danny Thomas' TV hit Make Room for Daddy, retitled The Danny Thomas Show, Cartwright stayed with the series until it ended in 1964. It was Cartwright's two mid-'60s credits, though, that captured the most devoted fans. As The Sound of Music's pretty Brigitta Von Trapp, Cartwright became one of the seven children taught to sing and love life by buoyant nun/stepmother Julie Andrews. With its Rodgers & Hammerstein songs and unbridled sentiment, The Sound of Music broke box office records, becoming a beloved classic. Cartwright then joined the cast of Irwin Allen's low-tech TV series Lost in Space as young teen daughter Penny Robinson. Though the show only ran from 1965 to 1968, Lost in Space attracted a durable cult following; Cartwright had a cameo in the 1998 film version. After Lost in Space ended, Cartwright made sporadic appearances in films and TV in the subsequent decades, including Irwin Allen's disaster flick sequel Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979). Married since 1976, Cartwright has two children and made a career outside of acting as a photographer, writer, and boutique owner. Her older sister is actress Veronica Cartwright.

Trivia: The older sister of actress Lillian Randolph, Amanda Randolph worked her way up the black vaudeville circuit as a singer and comedienne. She made her first screen appearance in the Vitaphone two-reeler The Black Network (1935) as the supposedly untalented wife of a radio sponsor; ironically, she sounded better than the film's official leading lady Nina Mae McKinney. After appearing in a handful of all-black feature films she established herself as a character actress on network radio. In the 1950s she was generally cast as maidservants in films, with the notable exception of her performance as Sidney Poitier's mother in 1950's No Way Out. On television, Amanda Randolph was seen to excellent advantage as the Kingfish's domineering mother-in-law on The Amos 'N' Andy Show (1951-1953) and as Louise the maid on Make Room for Daddy (1954-1964).