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: Born Krekor Ohanian, American actor Mike Connors was born and raised in the heavily Armenian community of Fresno, California. He studied law at UCLA, but distinguished himself in sports (he'd gotten in on a basketball scholarship). While in the Air Force, Connors switched his career goals to acting on the advice of producer/director William Wellman, who'd remembered Connors' college athletic activities. Hollywood changed young Mr. Ohanian's last name to Connors, and since this was the era of "Rocks" and "Tabs" it was decided that the actor needed a suitably rugged first name. So Connors spent his first few acting years as Touch Connors, a nickname he'd gotten while playing college football. His first picture was the Joan Crawford vehicle Sudden Fear (1952) but handsome hunks were a glut on the market in the early '50s, so Connors found himself in "B" pictures, mostly at bargain-basement American International studios. Renaming himself "Mike," Connors was able to secure the lead role as an undercover agent on the 1959 detective series Tightrope. The series was a hit but was dropped from the network due to complaints about excessive violence, though it cleaned up in syndication for years afterward. After a few strong but non-starring roles in such films as Good Neighbor Sam (1963) and Where Love Has Gone (1964), Connors landed the title role in Mannix (1967), a weekly TV actioner about a trouble-prone private eye. For the next eight high-rated seasons, Connors' Joe Mannix was beaten up, shot at, cold-cocked and nearly run over in those ubiquitous underground parking lots each and every week. The series ran in over 70 foreign countries, allowing Connors a generous chunk of profits percentages in addition to his lofty weekly salary-- which became loftier each time that the actor announced plans to retire. Mike Connors has starred in the 1981 series Today's FBI and filmed a cop-show pilot titled Ohanian (playing a character with his own real name), but nothing has quite captured the public's fancy, or been as lucrative in reruns, as Connors' chef d'ouevre series Mannix.

Trivia: A graduate of Louisiana State University and New York's Neighborhood Playhouse, Elizabeth Ashley started her professional career as a model and ballet dancer (she had studied with Tatiana Semenova). Ashley was still travelling under her given name of Elizabeth Cole when she made her 1959 Broadway bow in The Highest Tree. She first adopted the billing of "Ashley" for her 1961 breakthrough stage appearance in Take Her, She's Mine, which won her the Theatre World Award. Ashley followed this triumph with her performance as newlywed Corrie Bratter in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1963). She made her film debut as Monica Winthrop in The Carpetbaggers (1963), co-starring with then-husband George Peppard (she had previously been married to actor James Farentino). After the 1965 film Ship of Fools, Ashley dropped out of acting for five years. In her candid 1978 autobiography Actress: Postcards From the Road, she attributed her career hiatus to a number of mitigating circumstances: a bout with cancer, a difficult pregnancy, her increasingly unhappy marriage to Peppard, and a professional "freeze-out" because she'd turned down the film version of Barefoot in the Park. By the time she reactivated her career in 1970, Ashley's performances had taken on a harsh, dangerous edge -- which, in the long run, had a most salutary effect on her career. With her searing portrayal of Maggie in the 1974 Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, her comeback was complete. A busier-than-ever character actress in films and on stage, Elizabeth Ashley was also seen on a semiweekly basis as husky-voiced Aunt Frieda on the TV sitcom Evening Shade (1990-1994), which starred fellow Floridian Burt Reynolds.

Trivia: Red-headed, ruddy-faced American supporting actor Ken Swofford made his movie debut in 1964's Father Goose. Swofford hit his peak on television in the 1970s and 1980s, playing explosive, loudmouthed, stuffy types. He was brilliant as Winchell-like columnist Frank Flannagan in the weekly 1975 version of Ellery Queen, then went on to essay subtler variations of this character in Switch (1975-78) and The Eddie Capra Mysteries (1978-79). He was one of the singular delights of the syndicated version of Fame (1983-87), as the kids' perennial nemesis, vice-principal Morloch. Off camera, the affable Swofford got along famously with his young Fame co-stars, and was one of the series' biggest boosters on the promotional-tour circuit. More recently, Ken Swofford was seen in the recurring role of Lt. Capalano in Murder She Wrote (1984-96).

Trivia: Lead actress, onscreen from the '80s.

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 Peter Haskell has from time to time showed up in theatrical films (he was in two of the three Child's Play flicks), but the lion's share of his work has been on television. Haskell has starred or co-starred in such made-for-TV films as The Ballad of Andy Crocker (1969), The Eyes of Charles Sand (1970), The Phantom of Hollywood (1973), The Night They Took Miss Beautiful (1977) and The Cracker Factory (1979). His many regular weekly series assignments include Bracken's World (1969-71), as producer Kevin Grant, and The Law and Harry McGraw (1987), as assistant district attorney Tyler Chase; he was also seen on a daily basis in the soap operas Ryan's Hope and Rituals. In all of his appearances, Peter Haskell seems to have been born sitting behind an mahogany desk while wearing a three-piece suit.

Trivia: Stage actor Andrew Prine was first seen on-screen as James Keller, older brother to Helen, in 1962's The Miracle Worker. The gangling, athletic Prine went on to specialize in frontier adventures and military dramas--sometimes a combination of both, as in the made-for-cable epic Gettysburg (1993). Prine's first starring TV role was as rodeo rider Andy Guthrie in the 1962 weekly Wide Country. Andrew Prine's subsequent TV-series assignments included homesteader Timothy Pride in The Road West (1966), bibulous network sales chief Dan Costello in W.E.B. (1978), and talk-show personality Reed Ellis in Room for Two (1992).

Trivia: The son of actress Viveca Lindfors and director Don Siegel, Tabori made his film debut as a child in Lindfors' 1958 drama Weddings and Babies. He began acting in theater in the '60s, and by the end of the decade was playing bit parts in films such as Siegel's Coogan's Bluff, Bob Fosse's Sweet Charity; and Peter Yates' John and Mary. In the '70s, Tabori starred in John Erman's Making It and Tom Gries' Journey Through Rosebud; his other notable films include John Dexter's Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker and Claudia Weill's Girlfriends. A regular stage actor, Tabori has also worked frequently in television, including productions of Arthur Miller's A Memory Of Two Mondays and Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not For Burning, as well as numerous television films, such as the Aldous Huxley adaptation Brave New World and Gries' The Glass House and QBVII.