Trivia: In terms of public recognition, the unabashedly voluptuous, raven-haired American actress Delta Burke will ere be tied to her role as Suzanne Sugarbaker, one of the two main proprietors of the Sugarbakers interior design firm, on the blockbuster CBS sitcom Designing Women (a role she carried from 1986-1991). But those who have followed Burke's career diligently know that her experience extends to dozens of additional series roles and telemovies, making her a veritable queen of prime time. Burke claims an enduring off-camera impact on the American fashion world as well, and is a best-selling author.Born in Orlando, FL, on July 30, 1956, Burke never met her biological father; she was raised by her single mother, Jean, and an adoptive dad, Frederick Burke -- an Orlando-area realtor. With an irrepressible beauty and the graciousness and charm of a southern debutante, Burke began working her way up through the pageant circuit, ascending from the Orlando Fire Department's "Miss Flame" contest to that of Miss Florida to the 1974 Miss America pageant -- which she promptly lost by failing to even make the top ten (an event that Burke later regarded as an enormous blessing in disguise). While celebrating her 20th birthday alone at a St. Augustine, FL, motel, a stalker assaulted her.The cumulative impact of this turmoil drove Burke to England, where she put herself through the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (via her pageant winnings) and trained as an actress. When she finally returned to the United States, Burke soon secured an agent, and landed parts in now-forgotten telemovies during the late '70s and very early '80s. The turns began inconspicuously, with a bit role in the Suzanne Somers made-for-TV movie Zuma Beach, but in 1979, Burke shot up to instant first billing, heavily typecast as a Scarlett O'Hara-like "Southern belle" in the made-for-television feature Charleston. Unfortunately, the picture aired to devastating reviews and disappointing ratings.Near the end of her three-season run as the star of the long-running HBO sitcom 1st & Ten from 1984-1987 (a Wildcats-like comedy with Burke as Diane Barrow, the owner of an NFL football team), Burke signed with producers Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason for the Sugarbaker role. Designing Women cast Burke, Dixie Carter, Jean Smart, and Annie Potts as the aforementioned Atlanta-area interior designers with a distinctly Southern flair. After debuting on September 29, 1986, the program bowed to sensational critical reviews and viewer raves. After flirting with ratings doom, the network ultimately gave the show a permanent slot in its Monday-evening schedule -- one that lasted until late May 1993.Burke's weight fluctuation generated an enormous amount of tabloid fodder, and created friction between her and the Thomasons, which ultimately led to Burke's termination at the end of the 1991 season. Not one to be daunted, the actress attempted to rebound with a 1992 ABC sitcom, Delta, that cast her as a country singer striving for elusive stardom. Yet this program (developed and produced through Burke's production company) failed to connect with a sizeable audience, and folded within one year.After a few starring roles in telemovies Burke landed a tremendous amount of off-camera success by manufacturing and marketing a line of plus-size clothes through her own clothing firm, Delta Burke Designs. Burke also authored and published a best-selling autobiography, Delta Style, in 1998. In the new millenium, the TV queen began to appear in her first big-screen features. She appeared in the Mel Gibson romantic comedy-fantasy What Women Want and voiced a pooch in the 2003 family comedy Good Boy!. The comedic melodrama Sordid Lives found her appearing in a long-running indie success. In 2006, she also returned to series television, in a temporary role as Bella Horowitz, on David E. Kelley's comedy drama Boston Legal. In 2008 she had a major role in the made-for-cable romantic comedy Bridal Fever.Off-camera, Burke famously married to Simon & Simon and Major Dad star (and fellow Southerner) Gerald McRaney in 1989.

Trivia: The epitomical "Southern belle," radiant with finesse, grace, and an aura of down-home hospitality, Tennessee-born actress and chanteuse Dixie Carter received her broadest exposure on television thanks to two memorable sitcom roles: that of TV exercise hostess Maggie McKinney, spunky romantic partner and wife of millionaire Philip Drummond (Conrad Bain), on Diff'rent Strokes, and that of Julia Sugarbaker, Atlanta fashion designer extraordinaire, on the long-running Thomason-produced sitcom Designing Women.Carter was born in McLemoresville, TN, the daughter of two grocery-store proprietors. As a young lady, she projected a heightened gift for song. She studied music at Rhodes College in Memphis, then moved to Manhattan in 1963 to launch herself as a musical-theater star, but her career stalled for seven years given her 1967 marriage to Wall Street financier Arthur Carter (no blood relation to her; the common surname was a coincidence). Carter returned to the stage in 1974, with pivotal roles in such productions as Fathers and Sons and Pal Joey, and landed the part of Brandy Henderson in the soap opera The Edge of Night. In 1979, the actress moved to Los Angeles to commence film work. In the mean time, the marriage to Carter, and then a subsequent marriage, to Broadway star George Hearn, dissolved.By the late '70s and early '80s, Carter started racking up occasional bit parts and guest appearances in such series as Lou Grant, Out of the Blue, and Quincy, M.E. The Diff'rent Strokes part (which lasted only one season -- Carter withdrew from the series and was replaced at the start of the 1985-1986 season by cover girl and one-time Miss America Mary Ann Mobley) represented her highest billing up through that time. Then came the Sugarbaker role. Carter was one of the few members of the ensemble (alongside Annie Potts and Meshach Taylor) to actually remain with the program through the end of its run (in 1993), and fans continued to indelibly associate her with the series even after it wrapped. In the mean time, Carter's third husband, actor Hal Holbrook (who signed for a supporting role alongside his wife on Designing Women), encouraged her to resuscitate her singing career, and she mounted a well-received cabaret act, modeling her approach to old standards after the esteemed Mabel Mercer.Carter's resumé of onscreen work also included appearances in such long-form projects as the feature The Killing of Randy Webster (1981) and the miniseries Dazzle (1995). She gained additional acclaim and recognition with her portrayal of Gloria Hodge on the prime-time black comedy series Desperate Housewives. Carter died of endometrial cancer at age 70 in April 2010.

Trivia: Don't let actress Jean Smart's filmography fool you, because though she seems to have a penchant for appearing in fairly light-hearted fare of the family-oriented variety, she possesses all the skill of the most talented dramatic stage and screen actresses around. Unafraid to take the sort of risks necessary to keep her career and her personal life in fair balance, fans balked when Smart left television's hugely popular Designing Women while the series was in its prime, though her subsequent performances have found her sound judgment well justified. A Seattle native who received her B.A. from the University of Washington, it wasn't long before Smart was taking the stage at the 1975 Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Relocating to New York City, Smart's performance in the off-Broadway play Last Summer at Bluefish Cove earned the emerging actress a Drama Desk nomination. Her performance in the Broadway production of Piaf found Smart heading to Hollywood to tape the play for PBS, and it wasn't long before she began appearing in such films as Protocol (1984) and Project X (1987). A pivotal moment came when Smart was cast in the television series Designing Women; following the show's premier in 1986 she would remain a member of the cast until the 1991 season. It was while on that series that friend and fellow castmate Delta Burke set Smart up on a date with actor Richard Gilliland, whom Smart would later wed. The birth of their son Conner prompted Smart to reassess her career; though she would soon depart from Designing Women, she would continue to act in such efforts as the television feature Locked Up: A Mother's Rage (1991) and Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story (1992), in which she essayed the role of America's most notorious female serial killer. As the 1990s progressed Smart became something of a television fixture, and performances in The Yearling (1994) and A Change of Heart (1998) found her career continuing to flourish. Roles in such features as Disney's The Kid and Snow Day (2000) found Smart ever more associated with family-friendly fare, an association which she would continue to embrace with a role in the 2002 Disney Channel animated series Kim Possible. Other series in which Smart appeared included Hercules, Frasier, and The Oblongs; and in 2003 Smart teamed with her husband for the Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of Audrey's Rain.In 2004, Smart joined the cast of the bittersweet romantic comedy Garden State, and made a brief appearance in I Heart Huckabees during the same year. In 2006, Smart was earned nominations for two Emmy awards (Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series and Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series) for her turn as the mentally fragile First Lady of the United States, whom she portrayed in the fifth season of 24. The actress wouldn't win an Emmy, however, until 2008, when she took home the coveted award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her role on the sitcom Samantha, Who?. Smart played another mother in the film adaptation of C.D. Payne's novel Youth in Revolt in 2009, and took on the role of Hawaii Governor Pat Jameson for Hawaii Five-0, the CBS remake of the popular 1970s police procedural of the same name.

Trivia: Involved in amateur theatricals since childhood, Annie Potts received her BFA in theatre arts from Missouri's Stephens College. Potts has been seen in comic supporting roles in films since 1978; she is most closely associated with the part of ditzy secretary Janine Melnitz in the two Ghostbusters flicks of the 1980s. On television, Potts has played Edith Bedelmeyer on the one-season sitcom Goodtime Girls (1980), then enjoyed a longer run as Mary Jo Shively on Designing Women (1986-93). Her characterization of outspoken gourmet chef Dana Paladino on the prime time sitcom Love and War won Annie an Emmy nomination in 1994. Annie Potts has also been featured in a popular series of commercials for a well-known corn-chip product, and has served as national spokesperson for the Women for Arthritis Foundation. In 1996 she was cast as a no-nonsense schoolteacher of troubled inner-city high schoolers in the ABC-TV show Dangerous Minds, a series based on the 1995 Michelle Pfeiffer film of the same name. She voiced the part of Bo Peep in the first two Toy Story films, and in 2003 she took part in a Designing Women reunion. That same year she was the lead in Defending Our Kids: The Julie Posey Story. She appeared intermittently on the Showtime series Huff, and in 2007 she joined the cast of the short-lived series Men In Trees. In 2012 she was cast as one of the leads in the new TV series GCB.

Trivia: Lead actor Richard Gilliland first appeared onscreen in the '70s.

Trivia: Refined comedic actor Meshach Taylor was most well known for his role as Anthony Bouvier on the CBS series Designing Women (1986-1993) and as the flamboyant Hollywood Montrose in the fantasy comedy features Mannequin and Mannequin 2: On the Move. He started his career by touring in national theater companies and appearing on the TV series Buffalo Bill with Dabney Coleman. He has been in several made-for-TV movies, including the Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen title Double, Double, Toil and Trouble. Some of his feature films included the sci-fi adventure Explorers, the Susanna Hoffs vehicle The Allnighter, and the Kid 'N Play movie Class Act. In 1993, he joined the cast of Dave's World as Harry Anderson's neighbor, Sheldon. After hosting his very own series on HGTV, The Urban Gardener with Meshach Taylor, he appeared on Broadway as Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast. In addition to being a regular panelist on the game show To Tell the Truth, he also appeared in the feature film Friends and Family, a comedy about a literally gay mafia. He had a recurring role on the Nickelodeon sitcom Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide, playing the school principal. Taylor had four children with his wife, veteran General Hospital actress Bianca Ferguson. He died in 2014, at age 67.