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: While still a teenager Farley Granger appeared in a Los Angeles little theater production, where he was spotted by a scout. Sam Goldwyn signed him to a film contract and he debuted onscreen as a Russian youth in The North Star (1943). Typecast as a troubled pretty boy or a vulnerable, sensitive, soulful young hero, Granger appeared in one more film and then served in World War II. After the war, he returned to the screen as an intellectual thrill-killer in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948) Early predictions that Granger would become a major star failed to come true, however; his career was mismanaged and he never lived up to his potential. After making a series of minor Hollywood films, he moved to Italy in the mid '50s and made one film there, then returned to Hollywood for two more movies before giving up his screen career in favor of work on stage, doing repertory theatre and Broadway productions like The Seagull and The Glass Menagerie. In the late '60s Granger returned to Italy and began living there for much of the year, appearing onscreen in little-known Italian productions, and returning to America less frequently to participate in American projects. He eventually played a psychiatrist and head of a family on the TV soap opera One Life to Live, but mainly specialize in horror films and thrillers as the following decades unfolded, appearing in movies like 1974's Death Will Have Your Eyes and 1985's Deathmask. The actor enjoyed a state of semi-retirement as the years went on, however, stepping in front of the camera in the '90s and 2000s mostly as a participant in documentaries about Hollywood and Alfred Hitchcock, like 1995's The Celluloid Closet and 2001's Goldwyn: The Man and His Movies. Granger passed away in March of 2011 at the age of 85.

Trivia: The son of an architect, David Groh entered Brown University as an engineering major, but gradually gravitated to the Fine Arts department. Following a few summers with the American Shakespeare Festival, Groh received a Fulbright scholarship to study acting in England. Returning to New York, he was at first limited to "classical" roles, beginning with his off-Broadway bow in The Importance of Being Earnest. He enrolled at the Actors Studio to get some "modern" grounding: evidently he succeeded, inasmuch as his subsequent Broadway credits included such contemporary efforts as The Hot L Baltimore and Chapter Two. During the 1960s and 1970s, he worked steadily in the soap-opera mills, appearing in a dual role on Dark Shadows and as D L Brock in General Hospital. Told by his friends that he might have a future in Hollywood-based cop shows, Groh moved to LA in 1974--where, within a matter of months, he was cast as Rhoda Morgenstern's fiancé Joe Gerard on the popular sitcom Rhoda. The Joe-Rhoda wedding, telecast October 28, 1974, earned the series its highest-ever ratings; but the chemistry was never really there, and in 1977 the Gerards were divorced (many viewers, assuming that Groh and Harper were really married, sent letters of condolence to the two actors). In April of 1978, Groh was back on the small screen in his own sitcom, Another Day (1978), which lasted but a month. David Groh thereafter concentrated on stage work, with occasional forays into films and such TV miniseries as The Dream Merchants and Tourist.. Groh died at age 68 in February 2008.

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: 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.