Trivia: Tall, deep-voiced American actress Beatrice Arthur, born Beatrice Frankel, was best known for her television work on the long-running series Maude and The Golden Girls, but she also occasionally appeared in films. Her most famous film is 1973's Mame in which she played Vera Charles, the role she originated on Broadway.

Trivia: Actress Betty White got her start in local Los Angeles television as the "telephone girl" for video emcee Al Jarvis. By early 1950 she was one of the stars of the daily, five-hour series Hollywood on Television. One of the highlights of this program was a husband and wife sketch titled "Life With Elizabeth," which when committed to film and syndicated nationally in 1953 became White's first starring TV sitcom. She went on to headline her own network variety series in 1954, then co-starred with Bill Williams in the weekly TV domestic comedy Date With the Angels (1957), which without Williams was retitled The Betty White Show in early 1958. For the next 15 years she made guest appearances on various variety and quiz show efforts, and toured the straw-hat theatrical circuit in such plays as Critics Choice and Who Was That Lady, often appearing opposite her husband, TV personality Allen Ludden. Two years after hosting the 1971 syndicated informational series The Pet Set, she guest-starred as libidinous "Happy Homemaker" Sue Ann Nivens on the fourth season opener of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. This Emmy-winning episode led to White being cast as an MTM regular; she remained with the series until its final episode in 1977. She then starred on her own short-lived sitcom (again titled The Betty White Show) before returning to the guest-star circuit. In 1985, she joined the cast of TV's The Golden Girls as middle-aged grief counselor Rose Nyland. This top-rated program lasted seven seasons before metamorphosing into the rather less successful Golden Palace (1992). White was a regular on the 1995 series Maybe This Time, and in 1997 she won an Emmy for her one-shot appearance on The John Laroquette Show. She was in the films Hard Rain and The Story of Us, as well as Lake Placid. In 2003 she was cast in Bringing Down the House, and in 2008 provided a voice for the American version of Ponyo. White developed a new generation in fans when she became the subject of a successful online campaign to get her to host Saturday Night Live - which she did in 2010, along with winning the SAG award for Life time Achievement. The year before, she had a part in the hit Sandra Bullock vehicle The Proposal. She also became the star of year another successful TV show when she was cast in the female-centric sitcom Hot in Cleveland. She lent her voice to the 2012 adaptation of The Lorax.

Trivia: Graduating cum laude from the University of Tulsa, Rue McClanahan studied acting with Uta Hagen and at the Perry-Mansfield school. After her professional debut with a Pennsylvania stock company in 1957, McClanahan headed to New York, where between acting gigs she worked as a waitress, took shorthand and sold blouses. Grabbing any opportunity available, she made her TV bow on a 1960 episode of the TV series Malibu Run, then appeared in a handful of exploitation films with come-hither titles like Five Minutes to Love (she played "Poochie, the girl from the shack," a credit she has since dropped from her resumé). She managed to find more prestigious work on the New York stage, starring in such well-received productions as MacBird, Jimmy Shine, Sticks and Bones and California Suite. She also played regular roles on the TV soap operas Another World and Where the Heart Is. A 1972 guest shot on Norman Lear's controversial series All in the Family led to her being cast as Vivian Harmon on Lear's popular sitcom Maude, a role she played until the series' cancellation in 1978. McClanahan's next project was her own starring series, 1978's Apple Pie, which unfortunately bit the dust after three shows. She went on to play the vitriolic Aunt Fran on the network version of Mama's Family (1983-85), then was co-starred with her Maude colleague Bea Arthur in The Golden Girls (1985-92). Her well-rounded portrayal of overly amorous museum worker Blanche Devereaux won her an 1986 Emmy award; she reprised the character in the Golden Girls spin-off Golden Palace (1992-93). The star of several made-for-TV movies, McClanahan co-produced and appeared in a brace of "dramedies," Mother of the Bride (1991) and Baby of the Bride (1992).

Trivia: A 5-foot-tall embodiment of the phrase "Late Bloomer," Estelle Getty was 47 years old when she made her first off-Broadway stage appearance. Getty gained renown in 1982 for her vitriolic performance as Harvey Fierstein's mother in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Torch Song Trilogy. She made the first of several brief film appearances that same year. When the call went out for an actress to play Sophia Petrillo, a peppery octogenarian whose recent stroke robbed her brain of its "tact"cells, in the upcoming TV series Golden Girls, Getty auditioned, only to be turned down because she was too young for the role. Four auditions later, she landed the part by hiring a makeup artist to add some 20 years to her facial features, wearing a too-big thrift shop dress, and remaining in character throughout the interview. She played Sophia on Golden Girls from 1985 to 1992, reprising the character for the spin-off series Golden Palace (1992) and for two year's worth of appearances on another sitcom, Empty Nest. For her efforts, Getty won a 1987 Emmy, a Golden Globe, and an American Comedy Award. She also evidently became typecast for life, as witness her Sophia-like co-starring performance in the 1992 Sylvester Stallone vehicle Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. A handful of similar guest-starring roles in popular '90s series, including Mad About You and Touched By an Angel, followed that performance. During her first rush of TV fame, Getty also published her autobiography, If I Knew Then What I Know Now...So What?. She died of complications related to advanced dementia in the summer of 2008.

Trivia: Tall, straight-laced American actor Robert Culp parlayed his appearance and demeanor into a series of clean-cut character roles, often (though not always) with a humorous, mildly sarcastic edge. He was perhaps best known for three accomplishments: his turn as a Southern California documentary filmmaker who decides, along with his wife (Natalie Wood) to suddenly go counterculture with an "open marriage" in Paul Mazursky's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969); his iconic three-season role as an undercover agent in the espionage-themed series I Spy (1965-8); and his three-season run as Bill Maxwell on Stephen Cannell's superhero spoof series The Greatest American Hero (1981-3). Born in Oakland, California in 1930, Culp attended several West Coast colleges while training for a dramatic career. At 21, he made his Broadway debut in He Who Gets Slapped. Within six years, he was starring in his own Friday night CBS Western, Trackdown (1957-9) as Hoby Gilman, an 1870s era Texas Ranger. During the two-year run of this program, Culp began writing scripts, a habit he'd carry over to other series, notably The Rifleman and Gunsmoke. These all represented fine and noble accomplishments for a young actor, but as indicated, I Spy delivered a far greater impact to the young actor's career: it made Culp (along with his co-star, Bill Cosby) a bona fide celebrity. The men co-starred in the NBC adventure yarn as, respectively, Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott, undercover agents involved in globetrotting missions for the U.S. government. Both actors brought to the program a sharp yet subtle sense of humor that (coupled with its exotic locations) made it one of the major discoveries of the 1965-6 prime-time line-up. During the second of I Spy's three seasons, Culp made his directorial debut by helming episodes of Spy; he went on to direct installments of several other TV programs. The success of Bob & Carol at the tail end of the 1960s proved that Culp could hold his own as a movie star, and he later directed and co-starred in 1972 theatrical feature Hickey and Boggs, which reunited him with Cosby, albeit to much lesser acclaim. Unfortunately, as the years rolled on, Culp proved susceptible to the lure of parts in B-pictures, such as Sky Riders (1976), Flood! (1976) and Hot Rod (1979), though he delivered a fine portrayal in television's critically-acclaimed Roots: The Next Generations (1979). Culp rebounded further with the semicomic role of CIA chief Maxwell on American Hero, but many now-infamous behind-the-scenes issues (and external issues, such as the shooting of Ronald Reagan) beleaguered that program and ended its run after only three seasons. In the years that followed, Culp vacillated between exploitation roles, in tripe such as Big Bad Mama 2 and Silent Night, Deadly Night 3, and more respectable, mainstream guest turns in television series including The Cosby Show and Murder, She Wrote. He enjoyed one of his most prestigious assignments with a supporting role in the big screen John Grisham-Alan Pakula thriller The Parallax View (1993), opposite Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts. In the years that followed, Culp's on-camera presence grew less and less frequent, though he did make a cameo in the 1996 Leslie Nielsen laugher Spy Hard. Television continued to provide some of Culp's finest work: he rejoined old friend Cosby for a 1994 I Spy TV-movie reunion and made guest appearances in such series as Lonesome Dove, Law & Order and The Dead Zone. Following a period of semi-retirement, Culp died suddenly and rather arbitrarily, when he sustained a head injury during a fall outside of his Hollywood home in March 2010. He was 79 years old.

Trivia: An offbeat character actor whose stark features lent him to effective portrayals of villains and seedy figures, Stanley Kamel grew up in New Jersey and attended Boston University, where he received formalized dramatic training under the aegis of noted instructor Sanford Meisner. Kamel began his acting career with roles in off-Broadway productions during the early '70s, and quickly landed his first major on-camera role, as Eric Peters, on the daytime soap Days of Our Lives. His subsequent work over the following three decades consisted largely of recurring roles and guest parts in prime-time series including Cagney & Lacey, Hunter, Melrose Place, and -- most visibly -- the Tony Shalhoub sitcom Monk, as the lead character's shrink, Dr. Charles Kroger.