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: Made her acting debut off Broadway in the original production of Godspell in the early 1970s; also appeared on Broadway in Grease before moving to Los Angeles in 1978. Played one of TV's first openly gay women on the ABC soap-opera parody Soap in 1979. Made her film debut in the 1979 comedy Fast Break, but her best-known movie role is Lucille LaRusso (the mother of Ralph Macchio's character) in The Karate Kid (1984) and The Karate Kid Part III (1989). Has had guest roles on more than 50 TV series. Longtime companion Bob Griffard is a TV veteran whose behind-the-camera credits include the ABC sitcoms Two of a Kind, Going Places, Step by Step and Perfect Strangers.

Trivia: Specializing in middle-aged characters even in his twenties, American actor Charles Cyphers has been a familiar face on the TV-movie landscape since the early '70s. Cyphers was particularly well served by director John Carpenter, who cast the actor in Assault on Precinct 13 (1975), Halloween (1978), The Fog (1980), and Escape From New York (1981). Carpenter also featured Cyphers as Sam Phillips in the made-for-TV Elvis (1979). Perhaps it's coincidence, or perhaps a private joke between actor and director: Whatever the case, Cyphers' character names in his Carpenter films are often lifted from real life. For example, he played Dan O'Bannon in The Fog (screenwriter O'Bannon is Carpenter's most frequent collaborator) and Leigh Brackett in Halloween (Brackett, a female screenwriter, worked on such films as Rio Bravo, which Carpenter remade as Assault on Precinct 13). On TV, Charles Cyphers was seen on The Betty White Show (1975), as Hugo Muncy, White's cross-dressing stunt double.

Trivia: A gruff character actor, Caridi has been onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: Lead actor Charles Frank first appeared onscreen in the late '70s.

Trivia: Alan Oppenheimer is one of the busiest of that breed of character actors who so expertly blend into the roles they're playing that they don't seem to be acting at all. Generally cast in "management" roles in films (the chief supervisor in 1973's Westworld, for example), Oppenheimer has also been a regular or semi-regular on several TV series. He was Dr. Rudy Wells during the first season of The Six Million Dollar Man (1974-75) ex-gangster Sheldon Leonard's brother Jessie on Big Eddie (1975), Captain Finnerty on Eischeid (1979-83) and Ben Brookstone on Home Free (1993), and was seen on an occasional basis as Dr. Raymond Auerbach on Murder She Wrote and network president Eugene Kinsella on Murphy Brown. Alan Oppenheimer's most lasting legacy rests in his innumerable cartoon voiceovers for Hanna-Barbera, Filmation, Disney and other studios: He was heard as Ming the Merciless on New Adventures of Flash Gordon (1979), Sidney Merciless in the "Shake Rattle and Roll" component of CB Bears (1977), Mighty Mouse in The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle (1979 Filmation version), Big D on The Drak Pack (1980), Tawky Tawney and Uncle Dudley in Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam (1981), Vanity on The Smurfs (1981-90), Sheriff Pudge on The Trollkins (1981), Skeletor in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983), the King of Gummadon in Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears (1985), Colonel Trautman in Rambo (1986), Pa Kent on Superman (1988 Ruby-Spears version), Merlin in The Legend of Prince Valiant (1991), and so many others.

Trivia: Character actor Alan Fudge essayed an exhausting variety of roles while a member of New York's APA repertory troupe in the late 1960s. In films, Fudge has largely been limited to playing rule-bound corporate types, lawyers, doctors and urban detectives. He was prominently billed in The Natural (1984) as Ed Hobbs, father of baseball whiz Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford), but his appearance was confined to a non-speaking precredits bit, lensed in long-shot. He was far more visible in his many TV guest appearances on such series as MASH and Knight Rider, and in such made-for-TV movies as The Blue Knight (1973), Children of An Lac (1980), I Know My First Name is Steven (1989) and MANTIS (1994). Alan Fudge's weekly-series stints include the roles of C W Crawford in Man From Atlantis (1977), Det. Commissioner Kimbrough on Escheid (1979), Dr. Van Adams in Paper Dolls (1984) and Chief Frank Leland in Bodies of Evidence (1992).

Trivia: A New York-based radio actor from childhood, Conrad Janis was 16 when he made his first Broadway appearance in Junior Miss. Janis went on to star in the 1945 film comedy Snafu then played supporting roles in such 20th Century-Fox productions as Margie (1946) and The Brasher Doubloon (1947, as a teenaged murderer). His subsequent Broadway credits include The Brass Ring (for which he won a Theatre World Award), Time Out for Ginger and Visit to a Small Planet. Premature baldness compelled him to switch from leading-man assignments to character roles. A veteran of some 350 TV appearances, Janis was seen on a regular weekly basis as Otto Palindrome on the 1978 sci-fi spoof Quark, and as Mindy McConnell's dad Fred on the Robin Williams sitcom Mork and Mindy. Dropped from M & M after the 1978-79 season when the producers decided to retool the program, Janis was rehired in 1980, this time at a much heftier salary. Though justifiably proud of his acting accomplishments, Janis reportedly is prouder still of his activities as a jazz musician, fronting such prestigious musical aggregations as The Tailgaters and the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band (this latter group served as the subject of a lively PBS documentary). In addition, Janis is the owner operator of a prominent avant-garde art gallery, and is in charge of his own production company, MiraCom. In 1994, Conrad Janis made his film directorial bow with The Feminine Touch.

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

Trivia: The son of an architect, David Groh entered Brown University as an engineering major, but gradually gravitated to the Fine Arts department. Following a few summers with the American Shakespeare Festival, Groh received a Fulbright scholarship to study acting in England. Returning to New York, he was at first limited to "classical" roles, beginning with his off-Broadway bow in The Importance of Being Earnest. He enrolled at the Actors Studio to get some "modern" grounding: evidently he succeeded, inasmuch as his subsequent Broadway credits included such contemporary efforts as The Hot L Baltimore and Chapter Two. During the 1960s and 1970s, he worked steadily in the soap-opera mills, appearing in a dual role on Dark Shadows and as D L Brock in General Hospital. Told by his friends that he might have a future in Hollywood-based cop shows, Groh moved to LA in 1974--where, within a matter of months, he was cast as Rhoda Morgenstern's fiancé Joe Gerard on the popular sitcom Rhoda. The Joe-Rhoda wedding, telecast October 28, 1974, earned the series its highest-ever ratings; but the chemistry was never really there, and in 1977 the Gerards were divorced (many viewers, assuming that Groh and Harper were really married, sent letters of condolence to the two actors). In April of 1978, Groh was back on the small screen in his own sitcom, Another Day (1978), which lasted but a month. David Groh thereafter concentrated on stage work, with occasional forays into films and such TV miniseries as The Dream Merchants and Tourist.. Groh died at age 68 in February 2008.

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.