Trivia: Angela Lansbury received an Oscar nomination for her first film, Gaslight, in 1944, and has been winning acting awards and audience favor ever since. Born in London to a family that included both politicians and performers, Lansbury came to the U.S. during World War II. She made notable early film appearances as the snooty sister in National Velvet (1944); the pathetic singer in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), which garnered her another Academy nomination; and the madam-with-a-heart-of-gold saloon singer in The Harvey Girls (1946). She turned evil as the manipulative publisher in State of the Union (1948), but was just as convincing as the good queen in The Three Musketeers (1948) and the petulant daughter in The Court Jester (1956). She received another Oscar nomination for her chilling performance as Laurence Harvey's scheming mother in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and appeared as the addled witch in Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), among other later films. On Broadway, she won Tony awards for the musicals Mame (1966), Dear World (1969), the revival of Gypsy (1975), Sweeney Todd (1979) and, at age 82, for the play Blithe Spirit (2009). Despite a season in the '50s on the game show Pantomime Quiz, she came to series television late, starring in 1984-1996 as Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote; she took over as producer of the show in the '90s. She returned to the Disney studios to record the voice of Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast (1991) and to sing the title song and later reprised the role in the direct-to-video sequel, The Enchanted Christmas (1997). Lansbury is the sister of TV producer Bruce Lansbury.

Trivia: Supporting actor, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: A former University of Illinois sociology major, ash-blonde leading lady Barbara Bain studied for a theatrical career at New York's Actors Studio and Neighborhood Playhouse. While attending an actor's workshop in 1956, Barbara made the acquaintance of an intense young performer named Martin Landau. It was love at first sight, and they married in 1957. Landau and Bain strove to maintain separate careers, and while her husband tended to work more often than she did, Barbara was well-represented with guest appearances on such series as Richard Diamond, Private Detective, Get Smart and The Dick Van Dyke Show. In 1964, the Landaus worked together for the first time on an episode of The Greatest Show on Earth. They didn't care much for the experience, and vowed not to co-star again -- at least, not until producer Bruce Geller made them an offer they couldn't refuse with the weekly TV suspenser Mission: Impossible. Cast as silken espionage agent Cinammon Carter, Bain won three consecutive Emmies for her work on the series (if you're wondering why Cinammon never adopted elaborate disguises, as did practically everyone else on the program, it is because Bain suffered from claustrophobia, and could not abide being hemmed in by heavy makeup). Then, after three seasons' worth of Mission: Impossible, the Landaus quit the series in 1969, citing poor scripts and insufficient creative challenges. In later years, Bain would comment ruefully that leaving the show ruined her career. The record doesn't quite bear this out: indeed, during the early 1970s she racked up an impressive list of TV movie appearances, and was offered a great deal of money to reteam with Landau in the syndicated sci-fi TV series Space: 1999 (1975-77). In 1989, Bain appeared in her very first theatrical feature, Trust Me (1989), playing a truculent, dishonest art collector. Though long-divorced from Martin Landau, Barbara Bain did not express an aversion to the possibility of playing a cameo alongside her ex-husband in the 1996 film version of Mission: Impossible, should either one of them be asked to do so (alas, they weren't).

Trivia: Learning the ropes at the Bucks County Playhouse and New York's Neighborhood Playhouse, Jessica Walter, born January 31st, 1949, made her Broadway debut in 1961's Advise and Consent. The raven-haired leading lady was then seen on a regular basis in several Manhattan-based TV programs, including the daytimer Love of Life and the 1965 nighttime series For the People. In films from 1964, Jessica was one of eight young female "newcomers" (Candice Bergen, Elizabeth Hartman, Joanna Pettet et. al.) who went on to greater things after appearing en masse in Sidney Lumet's The Group (1966). Her flashiest screen role was as the dangerously possessive "number one fan" Evelyn Draper in Clint Eastwood's Play Misty for Me (1971). Of her many weekly-TV assignments, Walter's title role in the mid-'70s cop series Amy Prentiss garnered her the most attention; that is, until recently, when Walter found late-career acclaim on the award-winning sitcom Arrested Development. As the insensitive, materialistic matriarch of the Bluth family, Walter garnered a plum comedic role, and Emmy attention to boot. Walter continued to remain active in television appearances following the cancellation of Arrested Development, and joined the cast of the Broadway revival of Anything Goes in 2011.

Trivia: Yale graduate Bradford Dillman began his career in the sort of misunderstood-youth roles that had previously been the province of Montgomery Clift and James Dean. His first significant stage success was as the younger son in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Eugene O'Neill play Long Day's Journey Into Night. Signed by 20th Century-Fox in 1958, Dillman at first played standard leading men; his subtle shift to villainy occurred after he was cast as a wealthy psychopath in Compulsion, the 1959 drama based on the Leopold-Loeb case. Compulsion won Dillman an award at the Cannes Film Festival, and also threatened to typecast him for the rest of his film career, notwithstanding his leading role in Fox's Francis of Assisi (1961). It was during his Fox years that Dillman married popular cover girl Suzy Parker. Bradford Dillman has remained much in demand as a television guest star, and in 1965 was the lead on the filmed-in-Britain TV drama series Court-Martial.

Trivia: Actress Cathy Podewell studied both drama and dance at the University of California in Santa Barbara before getting involved in show business, appearing in 1988's Night of the Demons. In 1988, she got her big break playing Cally Harper Ewing on the hit show Dallas, which she stayed with until 1991. She subsequently appeared on numerous TV shows, including Growing Pains and Walker, Texas Ranger.

Trivia: While growing up in Chicago, Tom Bosley dreamed of becoming the star left-fielder for the Cubs. As it turned out, the closest Bosley got to organized athletics was a sportscasting class at DePauw University. After additional training at the Radio Institute of Chicago and two years' practical experience in various dramatic radio programs and stock companies, he left for New York in 1950. Five years of odd jobs and summer-theater stints later, he landed his first off-Broadway role, playing Dupont-Dufort in Jean Anouilh's Thieves' Carnival. Steadier work followed at the Arena Theatre in Washington, D.C.; then in 1959, Bosley landed the starring role in the Broadway musical Fiorello!, picking up a Tony Award, an ANTA Award, and the New York Drama Critics Award in the bargain. In 1963, he made his film bow as Natalie Wood's "safe and secure" suitor Anthony Colombo in Love With the Proper Stranger. Occasionally cast as two-bit criminals or pathetic losers (he sold his eyes to blind millionairess Joan Crawford in the Spielberg-directed Night Gallery TV movie), Bosley was most often seen as a harried suburban father. After recurring roles on such TV series as That Was the Week That Was, The Debbie Reynolds Show, and The Sandy Duncan Show, Bosley was hired by Hanna-Barbera to provide the voice of flustered patriarch Howard Boyle on the animated sitcom Wait Til Your Father Gets Home (1972-1973). This served as a dry run of sorts for his most famous series-TV assignment: Howard Cunningham, aka "Mr. C," on the immensely popular Happy Days (1974-1983). The warm, familial ambience of the Happy Days set enabled Bosley to weather the tragic death of his first wife, former dancer Jean Elliot, in 1978. In addition to his Happy Days duties, Bosley was narrator of the syndicated documentary That's Hollywood (1977-1981). From 1989 to 1991, he starred on the weekly series The Father Dowling Mysteries, and thereafter was seen on an occasional basis as down-to-earth Cabot Cove sheriff Amos Tupper on Murder, She Wrote. Reportedly as kind, generous, and giving as his Happy Days character, Tom Bosley has over the last 20 years received numerous honors for his many civic and charitable activities.