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: Actor MacDonald Carey started out as a Chicago-based radio actor and singer; among his early airwaves credits was a brief tenure as "Mr. First Nighter" in the anthology series of the same name, and a longer engagement as Dick Grosvenor on the daytime soap opera Stella Dallas. In 1941, Carey starred opposite Gertrude Lawrence in the Broadway musical Lady in the Dark, which led to a Hollywood contract. He appeared prominently in several Paramount features from 1942 to 1949, but is best remembered for his portrayal of the detective in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943), which he played on loan-out to Universal. When his film career began to wane in the early 1950s, Carey returned to radio as star of the tongue-in-cheek adventure series Jason and the Golden Fleece. He was also top-billed in two syndicated TV weeklies, Dr. Christian (1954) and Lock-Up (1959-61). In 1965, Carey was cast as Dr. Tom Horton on the NBC daytime drama Days of Our Lives, a job he held until his death 19 years later; his voice is still heard at the opening of each episode, intoning the familiar intro "Like sands from the hourglass, so are the days of our lives." Not long before his death, MacDonald Carey published his autobiography, in which he was brutally candid about his lifelong battle with alcoholism.

Trivia: Stuart Whitman, with a rugged build and sensitive face, rose from bit player to competent lead actor, but never did make it as a popular star in film. The San Francisco-born Whitman served three years with the Army Corps of Engineers where he was a light heavyweight boxer in his spare time. He next went on to study drama at the Los Angeles City College where he joined a Chekhov stage group. He began his film career in the early '50s as a bit player. Although never a star, he did manage to quietly accumulate $100 million dollars through shrewd investments in securities, real estate, cattle, and Thoroughbreds. For his role as a sex offender attempting to change in the 1961 British film The Mark, Whitman was nominated for an Oscar. In addition to features, Whitman has also appeared extensively on television.

Trivia: During his formative years, Roy Thinnes had wanted to become a doctor or football player--or, if one wants to believe his early press releases, both. Having made his professional acting debut as a teen-aged firebug in a 1957 pilot for the never-sold TV series Chicago 212, Thinnes spent several lean years "between engagements," working as a hotel clerk, vitamin salesman and copy boy to Chicago Sun Times columnist Irv Kupcinet. His first regular TV work was as Phil Brewer on the daytime soap opera General Hospital; during this period, the young actor became the television equivalent of a matinee idol, sparking a barrage of protest mail when he briefly left GH in pursuit of other acting jobs. Aggressively campaigning for the starring role of Ben Quick on the 1965 weekly-TV version of the 1958 film Long Hot Summer, Thinnes won the part, as well as a whole new crop of adoring female fans. While Summer was unsuccessful, Thinnes enjoyed a longer run as David Vincent on the Fugitive-like sci-fi series The Invaders (1967-68). Though he'd occasionally show up in such theatrical features as Hindenburg (1975), Airport 75 (1975) and Blue Bayou (1990), Thinnes would remain essentially a TV star for the rest of his career. Among Roy Thinnes' post-Invaders TV-series roles was Dr. James Whitman on The Psychiatrist (1971), Capt (and later Major) Holms on From Here to Eternity (1979-80), Nick Hogan on Falcon Crest (who, in 1983, married Victoria Gioberti [Jamie Rose] in a highly-rated ceremony) and the dual role of Roger Collins and Reverend Trask in the 1991 prime-time revival of Dark Shadows.

Trivia: Lead actress, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: "I happen to be darn lucky that I photograph well in Technicolor," peaches-and-cream complexioned Joan Caulfield readily admitted, having just romped through Paramount's Blue Skies (1946), opposite Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, and the equally colorful Monsieur Beaucaire (1946), with Bob Hope. One of those sexually non-threatening blondes who decorated postwar Hollywood escapism, Caulfield had been a model for Harry Conover when discovered by Broadway producer George Abbott, who cast her in the lead of Kiss and Tell (1943), a typical piece of Americana that lasted a whopping 480 performances and turned the novice into a hot commodity. She signed a contract with Paramount and went on to decorate a series of rather bland musical extravaganzas (her time-stepping with Astaire in Blue Skies is hardly memorable) and comedies. Warner Bros. borrowed her for The Unsuspected (1947), a pale imitation of Laura (1944) with Caulfield as the girl who returns from the grave, so to speak. But cast against such scene-stealers as Audrey Totter and Constance Bennett -- not to mention an especially hammy Claude Rains -- a star-billed Caulfield found herself thoroughly upstaged.She was much better suited to playing the title role in Dear Ruth (1947), from Norman Krasna's Broadway hit, and offers a restrained performance as the girl whose enterprising kid sister (Mona Freeman) mails her likeness to an Army lieutenant (William Holden) based overseas. The popular comedy spawned two sequels, Dear Wife (1950) and Dear Brat (1951), but Caulfield's role was eliminated in the latter. Cinematically, the 1950s proved anticlimactic and Caulfield mainly appeared in films produced by her husband (from 1950), Frank Ross, but she was a success on the small screen, especially opposite Barry Nelson on My Favorite Husband. Much to her later regret, she left the situation comedy in 1954 when film replaced live performances and it would be Vanessa Brown who went on to receive rerun residuals. Another attempt for sitcom stardom, the self-produced Sally struggled on for a season or so before being canceled in 1958.Like so many of her contemporaries, Caulfield turned up in A.C. Lyles' Westerns in the 1960s, earned fourth billing in the equally retro The Daring Dobermans (1973), and, now a mature character player, decorated such popular television shows as High Chaparral, Baretta, and, inevitably, Murder She Wrote. An unspectacular actress, Joan Caulfield is nevertheless fondly remembered for adding a bit of dignity and Dresden doll beauty to the immediate postwar years, a nice and comforting counterpoint to the often fatal femmes that defined the era.

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.

Trivia: As a teenager, American performer Betty Garrett won a scholarship to New York's Neighborhood Playhouse, and in 1938 she debuted onstage in the Mercury Theater production of Danton's Death. Later she danced with the Martha Graham company, sang in nightclubs and resort hotels, and held down odd jobs between engagements. In 1942 Garrett debuted on Broadway in the revue Let Freedom Ring, leading to other Broadway appearances. For her work in Call Me Mister she won the Donaldson Award in 1946, after which MGM signed her to a movie contract. She went on to make five musicals in the late '40s, impressing critics with her singing, dancing, and bright comic acting; as an energetic and effervescent second lead, she typically played the heroine's best friend. Garrett took two years off to give birth to two children; meanwhile, her husband, actor Larry Parks, admitted to the House Un-American Activities Committee that he had been a Communist. This ruined Garrett's screen career for several years, during which she and Parks appeared in a nightclub act and toured the U.S. with a play. In the mid-'50s she appeared in two more films and had the chance to renew her career; however, her husband was still blacklisted, so she chose to retire from the screen. She and Parks went on to work in stock and occasionally on TV, but they derived their income primarily from real estate. In the mid-'70s Garrett had a recurring role as Archie Bunker's neighbor on the TV sitcom All In the Family, and played landlady Edna Babish on Laverne and Shirley.