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 starring career of shaggy-haired CCNY graduate Robert F. Lyons rose and descended during the "youth trip" era of the 1960s. After a few standard bad-guy assignments in such films as Pendulum (1968), Lyons was praised to the rafters for his role as the ingenious draft-dodger in 1970's Getting Straight. Nowadays, a comparatively well-groomed Lyons can be seen in such direct-to-videos as Platoon Leader (1986). Robert F. Lyons was the star, producer and screenwriter for the 1985 Vietnam-angst drama Cease Fire.

Trivia: A veteran soap opera actress, Judith Chapman has enjoyed starring roles on As the World Turns, Ryan's Hope, General Hospital, One Life to Live, Days of Our Lives, and The Young and the Restless. In addition to her impressive list of soap roles, Chapman has also appeared in numerous movies over the years, such as Dead Space and 28 Days.

Trivia: American actress Adrienne Barbeau was encouraged by her mother to take dancing and singing lessons. Adrienne was active in theatre both in high school and at Foothills Junior College; by age 19 she was touring Pacific military bases as a member of the San Jose Light Opera. After an unprepossessing job with a termite-control company, Adrienne set out for New York, paying the bills with a variety of jobs including go-go dancing in New Jersey nightclubs. In 1968 she was cast as Hodel in the long-running Broadway production Fiddler on the Roof, and three years later was featured in Grease, winning a Tony nomination through her rendition of "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee." From here, Adrienne was hired by Norman Lear to replace first-choice actress Marcia Rodd in the role of the divorced daughter on the controversial TV sitcom Maude. She played the role from 1972 through the series' cancellation in 1978, after which she began a whole new career as a successful horror-film star and sexy pin-up model. Adrienne married film director John Carpenter in 1979; most of her subsequent screen appearances were in such Carpenter-directed terrors as The Fog (1980), Escape from New York (1981) and Creepshow (1982). Perhaps Adrienne Barbeau's most enjoyable performance was as the Marlon Brando counterpart (!) in an uproarious distaff parody of Apocalypse Now, sublimely titled Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death (1989). Barbeau would continue to act over the coming decades, appearing on TV shows like The Drew Carey Show, Carnivale, and the soap General Hospital.

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: Actress Pat Klous began her career in the 1970s as a Manhattan-area model, and graduated to dramatics when tapped by CBS to star opposite fellow neophytes Connie Sellecca and Kathryn Witt in the prime-time adventure drama Flying High (1978-1979). The series told of three young women and their exploits stewardessing for the apocryphal Sunwest Airlines. It failed to take off, however, and folded about four months after it initially debuted. Ironically (or perhaps not so, given the networks' tendencies to emulate one another), the program bore more than a passing resemblance to The Love Boat, which had scored major ratings when it debuted a season prior on ABC -- so it seemed wholly fitting that Boat's producers tapped Klous to star in their thematically similar sitcom Aloha Paradise (1981) and then, a few years later, to replace Love Boat stalwart Lauren Tewes when Tewes was dropped from that program amid a serious cocaine addiction. On The Love Boat, Klous portrayed Cruise Director Judy McCoy. She remained with the program from 1984 until it folded in 1986, then did occasional television work thereafter.

Trivia: Actor Barry Corbin may be best remembered for portraying Maurice Minnifield, the blustery but good-hearted ex-astronaut and entrepreneurial owner of Cicely, Alaska, in the popular TV show Northern Exposure (1990-95). Prior to that, he worked steadily on stage, screen and television since the mid '70s. With his stocky build and big voice, the Texas native is noted for his portrayals of policemen, soldiers, and father figures. He received formal training in theater at Texas Tech, and, after spending two years in the Marines, Corbin returned home and began acting in regional theater. He later went to New York where he worked on and off Broadway. He moved to L.A. in 1977 where he began writing radio plays for National Public Radio. In 1980 Corbin began his feature-film career, appearing in three popular films: Any Which Way You Can, Stir Crazy, and Urban Cowboy. Among his other early career highlights are Six Pack, Honkytonk Man, and playing General Beringer in John Badham's nuclear thriller WarGames. He continued to work steadily in TV and film in projects such as LBJ: The Early Years, Nothing In Common, Critters 2, and Who's Harry Crumb before landing his iconic part on Northern Exposure.After the quirky CBS series ended, he could be seen in Curdled, The Drew Carey Show, and in a recurring role on the drama series One Tree Hill. In 2007 he was in the Best Picture winning No Country For Old Men. His most recent credits include Feed he Fish, and Valley of the Sun.

Trivia: When asked why he decided upon becoming an actor, Joe Santos tended to trot out the tried-and-true rationale "because I failed at everything else." While attending Fordham University, Santos excelled at football, but lost interest in the sport after a few semi-pro years. By the time he was 30, Santos had been remarkably unsuccessful in a variety of vocations, including railroad worker, tree cutter, automobile importer and tavern owner. While working a construction job in New York, Santos was invited by a friend to sit in on an acting class. This seemed like an easy way to make a living, so Santos began making the audition rounds, almost immediately landing a good part on a TV soap opera. This gig unfortunately led nowhere, and for the next year or so Santos drove a cab for 10 to 11 hours a day. The novice actor's first big break was a part in the 1971 film Panic in Needle Park, which he received at the recommendation of the film's star (and Santos' frequent softball partner) Al Pacino. With the plum part of Sergeant Cruz in the four-part TV drama The Blue Knight (1973), Santos inaugurated a fruitful, still-thriving career in "cop" roles, the best and longest-lasting of which was detective Dennis Becker on the James Garner series The Rockford Files (1974-80). Joe Santos' other series-TV credits include the top-billed part of deadbeat dad Norman Davis in Me and Maxx (1980), Hispanic nightclub comic Paul Rodriguez' disapproving father in AKA Pablo (1984), and Lieutenant Frank Harper in the 1985-86 episodes of Hardcastle and McCormick. One of his final roles was a recurring gig on The Sopranos. Santos died in 2016, at age 84.

Trivia: Asian-American actor George Takei studied architecture at the University of California and theatre arts at UCLA. Takei's first film appearance was in the 1960 Warner Bros. feature Ice Palace He appeared with regularity on series television in the early 1960s; his most controversial TV role was the son of a World War II traitor in the 1964 Twilight Zone episode "The Encounter," which was withdrawn from the series' syndicated package due to charges of misrepresentation from several Japanese-American groups. In 1966, Takei began what was to become a lifelong assignment when he was cast as chief navigator Hikaru Sulu on the evergreen science-fiction series Star Trek. He has extended this characterization into seven Star Trek feature films, as well as a Saturday morning cartoon series. Erudite and socially correct at all times, Takei nonetheless enjoyed a reputation as Star Trek's most aggressive on-set practical joker. The show's three-year run ended, and although Takai appeared in a smattering of pictures including The Green Berets and Which Way to the Front?, he didn't find steady work on screen until the Star Trek film franchise got under way in 1979. The ongoing love for the series, and Takai's own ability to stay in the public eye thanks in part to his ongoing association with Howard Stern's radio show, helped him find steady work throughout the nineties, eventually finding a very lucrative career using his quite recognizable, resonant voice in a variety of animated endeavors. He announced in a 2005 interview that he's been in a long-term relationship with another man for nearly 20 years, and this news did nothing to halt his career or the public's goodwill toward him. Among his most high-profile acting gigs apart from Star Trek have been the television show Heroes, okaying Le Duc Tho in Kissinger and Nixon, and playing a quirky economics teacher in the Tom Hanks directed Larry Crowne.

Trivia: In films from 1951, handsome actor Warren Stevens' better-known roles include the Howard Hughes-ish Kirk Edwards in The Barefoot Contessa (1954) and the authoritative Lieutenant "Doc" Ostrow in Forbidden Planet (1956). A tireless TV performer, Stevens was starred as Lt. William Storm in the 1956 adventure series Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers; was among the eleven "repertory actors" appearing in the 1963 anthology The Richard Boone Show; and was heard but not seen as movie mogul John Bracken on the 1969 prime-timer Bracken's World (ironically, when Bracken did appear, he was played by Stevens' old Forbidden Planet co-star Leslie Nielsen). In 1972, Warren Stevens was cast as Elliot Carson in the daytime soap opera Return to Peyton Place; nine years later, he played Merritt Madison in Behind the Screen, a short-lived series which took place on the set of a fictional soap opera.