Trivia: Born Thelma Ford, Shirley Booth began appearing in amateur plays at age 12, then made her professional stage debut four years later; her Broadway debut, in 1925, was opposite Humphrey Bogart in Hells' Bells. Booth toiled on Broadway for a decade before being cast in her first significant role. Ultimately, her work on stage and radio led to a lead role in Come Back, Little Sheba (1950), for which she won the Tony Award and the New York Drama Critics Award; she made her screen debut in the film version of that play (1952) and won the Best Actress Oscar for her efforts. Booth did a number of other films, but in her later years she was best-known as the maid Hazel in the TV series Hazel (1961-66). She retired after appearing in the TV series A Touch of Grace (1973).

Trivia: Coleman attended a Virginia military school before studying law and serving in the army. While attending the University of Texas, Coleman became attracted to acting, and headed to New York, where he studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse. After stage experience and TV work, Coleman made his movie debut in 1965's The Slender Thread. Minus his trademarked mustache for the most part in the mid-1960s, Coleman specialized in secondary character roles. He began to branch into comedy during his supporting stint as obstetrician Leon Bessemer on the Marlo Thomas sitcom That Girl, but his most memorable role would come in 1980 as the nasty, chauvinistic boss in 9 to 5. He would go on to appear in other films, like On Golden Pond [1981], The Beverly Hillbillies [1993], You've Got Mail [1998], and Moonlight Mile, but the actor found more success in television, appearing on a few cult hits that were tragically cancelled, like Drexell's Class and Madman of the People, as well as The Guardian, Courting Alex, Heartland, and Boardwalk Empire.

Trivia: American actor Vaughn Taylor was trained as a certified public accountant at Northeastern University. While performing in college theatricals, Taylor entertained notions of a stage career; he won a scholarship at the Leland Powers School of Theatre, but his resources were so low that he had to sell his blood to blood banks to pay his expenses. Steady stock, tent-show, and radio work convinced Taylor that he'd made the right career move, and upon completing his Army duties in 1945, the actor took on the new challenge of live television. Taylor played so many TV roles that it is fruitless to try to list them, though the first "couch potato generation" might have affectionate memories of the actor as sharp-witted janitor Ernest P. Duckweather on the 1953 satirical puppet show Johnny Jupiter. (Taylor was replaced by Wright King when the series went from live to film). Taylor was also a prominent "summer repertory" actor on the prestigious anthology Robert Montgomery Presents from 1952 through 1954. The movies utilized Taylor's talents, often in roles as duplicitous executives or crooked business partners: he was the two-timing showman beheaded by magician Vincent Price in The Mad Magician (1954). Anyone who follows the reruns of The Twilight Zone will be more than familiar with the skill and range of Vaughn Taylor: he played bookworm Burgess Meredith's hardhearted boss in "Time Enough at Last," a crazed old conjurer in "Still Valley," an unctuous robot salesman in "I Sing the Body Electric" and a kindly wheelchair-bound gent who sells his kindness and becomes a killer in "The Self-Improvement of Salvatore Ross."

Trivia: An imposing presence in films of the late '40s, as well as early television shows such as The Aldrich Family (1949), New York stage actor Howard I. Smith actually made his screen debut as far back as 1918, in Young America. Relocating to Hollywood in 1946, Smith usually played overbearing politicos or other figures of authority, but is perhaps best remembered today as Uncle Charley in the 1951 screen version Death of a Salesman.