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: Veteran actor Art Hindle had already established a successful career in finance when he decided to try his hand at acting. He'd always had an interest in the arts and had been involved in local theater since his teens, but it wasn't until he was 21 and working as a stockbroker that he decided to pursue acting full time and relocate with his family to L.A. He began appearing in movies and on TV in the early '70s, showing up in episodes of shows like Starsky & Hutch and Baretta. In addition to starring roles on the short-lived crime drama Kingston Confidential in 1977 and the popular nighttime soap Dallas in 1981, Hindle would largely spend the following decades amassing a long résumé of single-episode appearances, from JAG to Mutant X to Puppets Who Kill. He would also appear in a number of TV movies and feature films and starred in the series Paradise Falls from 2001 to 2008.

Trivia: Blonde, serene-looking film actress Gloria Stuart forsook her stage career when she was signed to two separate movie contracts in 1932. It took a court arbitrator to determine which studio would be permitted to make use of Stuart's services, Paramount or Universal. Universal won, and soon the actress was starring in such memorable films as James Whale's The Old Dark House (1932) and The Invisible Man (1933). From 1936 on, Stuart, who was born in Santa Monica, CA, on July 4, 1910, was contracted to 20th Century Fox, where among many other films she appeared in John Ford's Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), the Shirley Temple vehicle Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938), and the Ritz Brothers version of The Three Musketeers (1939). Gradually retiring from films in the early '40s to return to her stage origins, Stuart subsequently decided to devote her time to her second husband, screenwriter/wit Arthur Sheekman, whom she had married in 1934. She became an accomplished painter, staging several one-woman exhibits in New York, Austria, and Italy during the 1960s. In 1982, Stuart made a long-overdue return to the screen in the cameo role of Peter O'Toole's matronly dancing partner in My Favorite Year. Sixteen years later, she became known to a whole new generation of fans when she starred as 100-year-old Rose DeWitt, the heroine of James Cameron's Titanic. The only member of Titanic's cast and crew to have been alive at the time of the actual catastrophe, Stuart, who was 88 when the film was released, made history with her performance in the record-breaking movie. Nominated for an Oscar in the Best Supporting Actress category, she became the oldest person in history to be nominated for an Academy Award; in addition to various other award nominations, she won a Best Supporting Actress prize from the Screen Actors Guild, an organization she had helped to found in 1933. Thanks to Titanic, Stuart enjoyed a late-life career renaissance, and was soon appearing in magazines (People dubbed her one of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World"), Hanson videos, and, most importantly, in new films that ranged from the romantic comedy The Love Letter (1999) to Wim Wenders' The Million Dollar Hotel (2000).

Trivia: Actor Richard Beymer has been working steadily on television and in feature films for over four decades. Born in Avoca, IA, Beymer first went before cameras on a Los Angeles children's show at the age of 12, and two years later made his feature-film debut in Vittorio De Sica's Stazione Termini (Indiscretion of an American Wife) (1953). After appearing in several more films during the '50s, with only two major performances in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and West Side Story (1961), Beymer had a significant role in The Longest Day (1962), sharing the film's unforgettable last scene with Richard Burton. Beymer enrolled in New York's Actor's Studio in 1963, but subsequently became an active participant in the struggle to allow African-Americans to register for the vote in Mississippi; during his time down South, he also helped to make a prize-winning documentary of the event. In 1974, Beymer directed his first feature film, The Innerview, an avant-garde effort he distributed to various international film festivals. During the '80s, Beymer became a supporting actor and is best remembered for his regular role as Benjamin Horne on David Lynch's television series Twin Peaks.

Trivia: After his graduation from Bates College, Jeffrey Lynn worked as a high school English and speech teacher. He turned to acting in the mid-'30s and in 1937 was signed to a stock Warner Bros. contract. A bit too lightweight for important roles, he was a fine second-echelon leading man, and before leaving Warners he'd compiled several impressive credits, including such roles as poet Joyce Kilmer in The Fighting 69th (1940) and Henry Mortyn Field in All This and Heaven Too (1940). He also "starred" as Ashley Wilkes in the screen tests of Selznick's Gone With the Wind (1939), feeding lines to such aspiring Scarlett O'Haras as Paulette Goddard and Frances Dee. During WWII, he served as an army intelligence officer, earning a Bronze Star. He returned to films in 1948 in hopes of revitalizing his career, but found more success as a stage and television actor. His TV credits included two series, My Son Jeep (1953) and Star Stage (1955). Jeffrey Lynn retired from acting in 1968 to devote his time to his family and "civilian" business pursuits.

Trivia: Direct from the University of Michigan, actress Martha Scott made her first professional appearance with the Globe Theatre troupe, performing abridged versions of Shakespeare at the 1933-34 Chicago World's Fair. Scott then worked extensively in stock and on radio before making her celebrated Broadway bow as Emily Webb in the original 1938 production of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning Our Town. She repeated the role of Emily in the 1940 film version, earning an Oscar nomination despite the fact that the film's tacked-on happy ending rendered Scott's famous "back from the dead" monologue pointless. Scott's subsequent film assignments, notably Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941) and One Foot in Heaven (1941), found her portraying characters far older than herself with total credibility. Having previously played both the wife and the sister of Charlton Heston (nine years her junior) on stage and TV, Scott portrayed Heston's mother on the big screen in The Ten Commandments (1955) and Ben-Hur (1959). Her television resumé includes the 1954 anthology Modern Romance, which she hosted, and the roles of Mrs. Patricia Shepard and Margaret Millington in, respectively, Dallas and Secrets of Midland Heights. Her most intriguing TV assignment was the 1987 Murder She Wrote episode "Strangest of Bargains," wherein, with the help of extensive stock footage, Scott, Jeffrey Lynn and Harry Morgan reprised their roles from the 1949 film Strange Bargain. Dabbling in producing in the 1970s, Scott served as co-producer of the 1978 Broadway play First Monday in October, functioning in the same capacity when the play was turned into a film in 1981. Martha Scott was married for many years to musician Mel Powell.

Trivia: One of the most prolific actors in television history -- with starring roles in 11 different television series under his belt -- Harry Morgan is most closely identified with his portrayal of Colonel Sherman Potter on M*A*S*H (1975-83). But his credits go back to the 1930s, embracing theater and film as well as the small screen. Born Harry Bratsberg in Detroit, Michigan, in 1915, he made his Broadway debut with the Group Theatre in 1937 as Pepper White in the original production of Golden Boy, alongside Luther Adler, Phoebe Brand, Howard Da Silva, Lee J. Cobb, Morris Carnovsky, Frances Farmer, Elia Kazan, John Garfield, Martin Ritt, and Roman Bohnen. His subsequence stage appearances between 1939 and 1941 comprised a string of failures -- most notably Clifford Odets' Night Music, directed by Harold Clurman; and Robert Ardrey's Thunder Rock, directed by Elia Kazan -- before he turned to film work. Changing his name to Henry Morgan, he appeared in small roles in The Shores of Tripoli, The Loves of Edgar Allen Poe, and Orchestra Wives, all from 1942. Over the next two years, he essayed supporting roles in everything from war movies to Westerns, where he showed an ability to dominate the screen with his voice and his eyes. Speaking softly, Morgan could quietly command a scene, even working alongside Henry Fonda in the most important of those early pictures, The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). Over the years following World War II, Morgan played ever-larger roles marked by their deceptive intensity. And even when he couldn't use his voice in a role, such as that of the mute and sinister Bill Womack in The Big Clock (1948), he was still able to make his presence felt in every one of his scenes with his eyes and his body movements. He was in a lot of important pictures during this period, including major studio productions such as All My Sons (1948), Down to the Sea in Ships (1949), and Madame Bovary (1949). He also appeared in independent films, most notably The Well (1951) and High Noon (1952). One of the more important of those roles was his portrayal of a professional killer in Appointment With Danger (1951), in which he worked alongside fellow actor Jack Webb for the first time. Morgan also passed through the stock company of director Anthony Mann, working in a brace of notable outdoor pictures across the 1950s. It was during the mid-1950s, as he began making regular appearances on television, that he was obliged to change his professional name to Harry Morgan (and, sometimes, Henry "Harry" Morgan), owing to confusion with another performer named Henry Morgan, who had already established himself on the small screen and done some movie acting as well. And it was at this time that Morgan, now billed as Harry Morgan, got his first successful television series, December Bride, which ran for five seasons and yielded a spin-off, Pete and Gladys. Morgan continued to appear in movies, increasingly in wry, comedic roles, most notably Support Your Local Sheriff (1969), but it was the small screen where his activity was concentrated throughout the 1960s.In 1966, Jack Webb, who had become an actor, director, and producer over the previous 15 years, decided to revive the series Dragnet and brought Morgan aboard to play the partner of Webb's Sgt. Joe Friday. As Officer Bill Gannon, Morgan provided a wonderful foil for the deadpan, no-nonsense Friday, emphasizing the natural flair for comic eccentricity that Morgan had shown across the previous 25 years. The series ran for four seasons, and Morgan reprised the role in the 1987 Dragnet feature film. He remained a busy actor going into the 1970s, when true stardom beckoned unexpectedly. In 1974, word got out that McLean Stevenson was planning on leaving the successful series M*A*S*H, and the producers were in the market for a replacement in the role of the military hospital's commanding officer. Morgan did a one-shot appearance as a comically deranged commanding general and earned the spot as Stevenson's replacement. Morgan worked periodically in the two decades following the series' cancellation in 1983, before retiring after 1999. He died in 2011 at age 96.

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: The sister of the notorious stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, with whom she was driven into performance by an ambitious stage mother, June Havoc began playing bits in silent film shorts at age two, eventually appearing in 24 Hal Roach comedies. She was earning $1500 a week as a vaudeville headliner by the time she was five. At age 13, she married the first of three husbands, and in her late teens, during the Depression and the demise of vaudeville, she modeled and participated in dance marathons (she still holds a record for marathon dancing in 1933), then went on to perform in Catskill Mountain resorts and in stock. In 1936 she made her Broadway debut. Four years later, she scored a big success in the 1940 production of Pal Joey, after which she was invited to Hollywood. She debuted onscreen as an adult in 1941, and over the next decade played leads and second leads in many films. However, Havoc never became a top star and found herself cast in routine films; she rarely appeared onscreen after 1952. Her stage work was more successful, and in 1944 she won a Donaldson Award for Mexican Hayride; she also did much work on TV. She wrote and directed the autobiographical Broadway play Marathon 33 (1963), and authored an autobiography, Early Havoc (1959). She was portrayed as a juvenile stage performer in the Broadway show Gypsy and its screen version. She married actor-director William Spier.

Trivia: The daughter of renowned acting coaches Lee and Paula Strasberg, Susan Strasberg did not, as has often been assumed, attend her father's celebrated Actors Studio. She was, however, a close friend of several of her parents' most famous students--notably Marilyn Monroe, the subject of Strawsberg's affectionate 1992 memoir Marilyn and Me. While growing up, Strasberg harbored dreams of becoming a scientist like her idol Marie Curie, but many of her parents' friends urged the girl to give acting a try. Mildly curious, she made her off-Broadway debut in the 1952 production Maya. Two years later, she made her first television appearance as Shakespeare's Juliet, and shortly thereafter was cast as a regular on the Hume Cronyn-Jessica Tandy TV situation comedy The Marriage. At 17, Susan blossomed into full-fledged stardom when she played the leading role in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play The Diary of Anne Frank. By 1957, she was being tagged as "Helen Hayes' successor" by several influential critics. Her first film appearances in The Cobweb and Picnic (both 1955) also bode well for a long and lasting stardom. Unfortunately, Susan's ardent supporters began turning on her when she starred in Stage Struck, the 1957 remake of Morning Glory (1933). Her over-the-top rendition of the role that had won Katharine Hepburn an Oscar back in 1933 was almost universally drubbed by the critics, prompting Strasberg to flee the U.S. and resettle in Europe. In the early 1960s, director Franco Zeffirelli persuaded her to return to Broadway in his production of Dumas' Lady of the Camelias. Alas, this effort also proved disastrous, forcing her to grasp at straws to revive her reputation. Her best effort during this awkward phase of her career was the Yugoslav-Italian film Kapo (1960), in which she played a concentration camp survivor. Such excellent opportunities were rare indeed; for the most part, Strasberg was mired in such tripe as Psych-Out (1967) and The Name of the Game is Kill (1968). In 1973, Susan returned to television as co-star of the detective series Toma. Shesubsequently continued to accept character roles of fluctuating quality in both U.S. and Canadian productions. In 1980, Susan penned her autobiography Bittersweet, which detailed her brief marriage to actor Christopher Jones, the heart defect that long imperiled the life of her daughter Jennifer, and the debilitating burden of being too famous too soon. Reflecting on her career in 1974, Susan Strasberg compared her teen-aged stardom to "trying to play a violin before it's finished." In 1999, Strasberg died of cancer at the age of 60.

Trivia: American actor Russ Marin played supporting roles on stage, radio, television, and films of the '70s and '80s. He started out in radio in 1950.

Trivia: Broadway actor Richard Gaines made his initial film appearance as Patrick Henry in The Howards of Virginia (1940). Gaines is best-known to modern audiences as Jean Arthur's stuffy suitor C. J. Pendergast in George Stevens' The More the Merrier (1942). Less pompous but no less dignified were his performances as George Washington in DeMille's Unconquered (1947) and Professor Jackson in Flight to Mars (1953). Either by accident or design, Richard Gaines made most of his last screen appearances at MGM, playing DAs, doctors and other briskly professional types.

Trivia: New Jersey-born Henry O'Neill was a year into his college education when he dropped out to join a traveling theatrical troupe. His career interrupted by WWI, O'Neill returned to the stage in 1919, where his prematurely grey hair and dignified demeanor assured him authoritative roles as lawyers, doctors, and business executives (though his first stage success was as the rough-and-tumble Paddy in Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape). In films from 1933, O'Neill spent the better part of his movie career at Warner Bros. and MGM, usually playing parts requiring kindliness and understanding, but he was equally as effective in villainous assignments. Age and illness required Henry O'Neill to cut down on his film commitments in the 1950s, though he frequently showed up on the many TV anthology series of the era.

Trivia: Born in Colorado and raised in Oregon, actor Walter Sande was a music student from age six. He dropped out of college to organize his own band, then for many years served as musical director for the West Coast Fox Theater chain. In 1937, Sande entered films with a small role in Goldwyn Follies (1938). He fluctuated thereafter between bits in films like Citizen Kane (1941), in which he played one of the many reporters, and supporting roles in films like To Have and Have Not (1944), in which he portrayed the defaulting customer who is punched out by a boat-renting Humphrey Bogart. On television, Walter Sande played Horatio Bullwinkle on Tugboat Annie (1958) and Papa Holstrum on The Farmer's Daughter (1963-1966).