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: Diminutive, jug-eared comic actor Sid Melton cut his acting teeth in the touring companies of such Broadway hits as See My Lawyer and Three Men on a Horse. Though he once listed his film debut as being 1945's Model Wife, Melton showed up onscreen as early as 1942, playing one of the students in Blondie Goes to College. Mostly showing up in bits and minor roles in big-studio features, Melton enjoyed starring assignments at bargain-basement Lippert Studios, notably the 1951 "sleeper" The Steel Helmet. His film career extended into the 1970s, when he was seen in a sizeable role in the Diana Ross starrer Lady Sings the Blues (1975). Sid Melton's TV credits include the cult-favorite roles of Ichabod Mudd ("with two D's!") on Captain Midnight and nightclub owner Charley Halper on The Danny Thomas Show.

Trivia: Known to millions as the easily confused, heavily accented Latino José Jimenez, Bill Dana was actually born William Szathmary-"a Jungarian Hew", explains Dana in his Jimenez dialect. A prolific comedy writer, Dana created special material for such performers as George Gobel and Don Adams throughout the 1950s. He joined the writing stable of The Steve Allen Show in 1956, making his on-camera debut as José Jimenez during a 1959 Christmas show. The sketch was predicated on the gimmick of a Puerto Rican Santa Claus whose hearty laugh came out "Jo, Jo, Jo!" The bit scored an immediate hit with the public, and soon the versatile Dana was a regular performer on the Allen show, playing a wide variety of dialect characterizations. When the Mercury space program became a hot topic, Dana cut a Grammy-nominated comedy album, José the Astronaut ("What will you do if you're lost in space?" "I plan to cry a lot") which accompanied many a genuine astronaut into the stratosphere. Dana brought his Jimenez persona to 1961's The Spike Jones Show, then appeared on a semi-regular basis as José the elevator operator on The Danny Thomas Show. This stint spun off into Dana's own sitcom in 1963, The Bill Dana Show, in which José Jimenez was employed as a bellhop at a posh New York Hotel. The series was cancelled in 1965, after which Dana continued making TV guest appearances and the occasional movie (1967's The Busy Body, 1980's The Nude Bomb, etc.). In the early 1970s, Dana was compelled to "retire" José Jimenez in the face of protests from scattered anti-defamation groups, but he still had plenty of comedy material and projects up his sleeve. One of Bill Dana's strangest endeavors of the 1980s was No Soap Radio (1982), a non sequitur-laden sitcom (with such "characters" as a boy-eating sofa!) which Dana both starred in and co-produced. He retired from acting and writing in the mid-1990s. Dana died in 2017, at age 92.

Trivia: Surprisingly little known to the public at large, bear-like, walrus-mustached Pat McCormick is a very busy stand-up comedian and comedy writer. McCormick's sly wit and taste for the humorously grotesque has won him many fans in the showbiz community, including Johnny Carson, Don Rickles, Don Adams, Jonathan Winters, Mel Brooks and Burt Reynolds. He was among the head writers of Carson's Tonight Show, and in 1968 both wrote for and served as announcer/straight man on Don Rickles' short-lived variety series. In films, McCormick is usually seen in showy featured roles, notably President Grover Cleveland in Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976) and Big Enos in the first two Smokey and the Bandits flicks. He also contributed to the scripts of the theatrical features Oh Dad Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad (1966) and Under the Rainbow (1986). In 1983, Pat McCormick was appropriately cast as "Mound" on the TV sitcom Gun Shy.