Trivia: A singer almost from the time she learned to talk, American actress Shirley Jones was entered by her vocal coach in the Miss Pittsburgh contest at age 18. The attendant publicity led Jones to an audition with Rodgers and Hammerstein for potential stage work. Much taken by Jones' beautifully trained voice, the producers cast her as the leading lady in the expensive, prestigious film production of their theatrical smash Oklahoma! (1955). In 1956 Jones starred in another Rodgers and Hammerstein film adaptation, Carousel; this and her first film tended to limit her to sweet, peaches 'n' cream roles for the next several years. Thankfully, and with the full support of director Richard Brooks, Jones was able to break away from her screen stereotype with her role as a vengeful prostitute in Elmer Gantry (1960) -- a powerfully flamboyant performance that won her an Academy Award. Alas, filmgoers preferred the "nice" Shirley, and it was back to goody-goody roles in such films as The Music Man (1962) and A Ticklish Affair (1963) -- though critics heartily praised Jones' performances in these harmless confections. It was again for Brooks that Shirley had her next major dramatic film role, in 1969's The Happy Ending, which represented one of her last movie appearances before her four-year TV stint as the glamorous matriarch of The Partridge Family. This popular series did less for Shirley than it did for her stepson, teen idol David Cassidy, but The Partridge Family is still raking in ratings (and residuals) on the rerun circuit. Her unhappy marriage to the late actor Jack Cassidy long in the past, Jones found domestic stability as the wife of actor/agent Marty Ingels, with whom she wrote a refreshingly candid dual biography. The actress also played a recurring character on The Drew Carey Show (1998-1999), and appeared in numerous documentaries throughout the 2000s. Jones had a supporting role in 2006's Grandma's Boy, and guest roles on shows like Cougar Town and Raising Hope.

Trivia: A performer whose career soared and peaked in the early '70s, multifaceted entertainer David Cassidy dramatically redefined the term "teen idol," as others including Paul Anka and Neil Sedaka had before him. In his heyday, Cassidy culled an untoward number of admirers, including legions of starstruck teenage girls. The son of actors Jack Cassidy and Evelyn Ward (and the stepson of Shirley Jones), David landed his first major break on the blockbuster '70s musical sitcom The Partridge Family (1970-1974), opposite Jones, Susan Dey, and Danny Bonaduce. Based very loosely on the experiences of the real-life family vocal band the Cowsills, the now-iconic series told of a widowed mother and her brood of rowdy kids, who became national pop stars overnight, and eked out a life touring in a colorful schoolbus and performing all over the country. Cassidy -- 20 years old when the series premiered -- played the eldest Partridge boy, 16-year-old David. Series producers took advantage of the program's success by marketing the Partridges as a real-life recording group, fronted by David (who was not a professional musician); this worked, and brought Cassidy Grammy Awards and the largest celebrity fan club in the history of recorded music. The triumphs were somewhat short-lived, however, and by 1975 (a year after Family folded) Cassidy's popularity with the younger market had declined, as new and fresher talent took his place. He responded by branching out into acting roles, in films such as A Chance to Live (1978), The Narc (1978), and The Night the City Screamed (1980), and in time established an agreeable presence as a musical theater star, on Broadway and in London's famed West End.Cassidy's overall popularity rebounded in the mid- to late '90s. Thanks in no small part to a nostalgia craze and to presence on VH1, he landed an assignment opening the 75-million-dollar show EFX at the MGM Grand, which in turn gave him the clout to mount and produce his own revue in Vegas, a tribute to Sinatra and co. christened The Rat Pack Is Back (1999). In the following decade, Cassidy began touring once again, signed a new record deal, and issued a series of albums including Then and Now (2001) and Touch of Blue (2003). Busy as ever, he topped TV GUIDE's list of the 25 Greatest Teen Idols in 2005.

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: After making her first film appearance at age 13, Josephine Hutchinson attended the Cornish School of Music and Drama. A leading Broadway actress of the late 1920s, Hutchinson was most closely associated with the title role in Eva Le Gailliene's Civic Repertory Company production of Alice in Wonderland. Her impeccable credentials notwithstanding, Hutchinson's earliest movie publicity emphasized the fact that hers was the longest name of any movie leading lady. She spent most of her first filmmaking decade at Warner Bros., acting opposite Dick Powell, Pat O'Brien, and, in The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), Paul Muni. At Universal, she played the wife of Basil Rathbone in The Son of Frankenstein (1939), an experience she cherished primarily because of the warm camaraderie between her co-stars Rathbone, Boris Karloff and Lionel Atwill. Josephine Hutchinson worked steadily in films and television into the 1970s, most often playing firm, forceful elderly women.