Trivia: Left fatherless at the age of four, American actress Lucille Ball developed a strong work ethic in childhood; among her more unusual jobs was as a "seeing eye kid" for a blind soap peddler. Ball's mother sent the girl to the Chautauqua Institution for piano lessons, but she was determined to pursue an acting career after watching the positive audience reaction given to vaudeville monologist Julius Tannen. Young Ball performed in amateur plays for the Elks club and at her high school, at one point starring, staging, and publicizing a production of Charley's Aunt. In 1926, Ball enrolled in the John Murray Anderson American Academy of Dramatic Art in Manhattan (where Bette Davis was the star pupil), but was discouraged by her teachers to continue due to her shyness. Her reticence notwithstanding, Ball kept trying until she got chorus-girl work and modeling jobs; but even then she received little encouragement from her peers, and the combination of a serious auto accident and recurring stomach ailments seemed to bode ill for her theatrical future. Still, Ball was no quitter, and, in 1933, she managed to become one of the singing/dancing Goldwyn Girls for movie producer Samuel Goldwyn; her first picture was Eddie Cantor's Roman Scandals (1933). Working her way up from bit roles at both Columbia Pictures (where one of her assignments was in a Three Stooges short) and RKO Radio, Ball finally attained featured billing in 1935, and stardom in 1938 -- albeit mostly in B-movies. Throughout the late 1930s and '40s, Ball's movie career moved steadily, if not spectacularly; even when she got a good role like the nasty-tempered nightclub star in The Big Street (1942), it was usually because the "bigger" RKO contract actresses had turned it down. By the time she finished a contract at MGM (she was dubbed "Technicolor Tessie" at the studio because of her photogenic red hair and bright smile) and returned to Columbia in 1947, she was considered washed up. Ball's home life was none too secure, either. She'd married Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz in 1940, but, despite an obvious strong affection for one another, they had separated and considered divorce numerous times during the war years. Hoping to keep her household together, Ball sought out professional work in which she could work with her husband. Offered her own TV series in 1950, she refused unless Arnaz would co-star. Television was a godsend for the couple; and Arnaz discovered he had a natural executive ability, and was soon calling all the shots for what would become I Love Lucy. From 1951 through 1957, it was the most popular sitcom on television, and Ball, after years of career stops and starts, was firmly established as a megastar in her role of zany, disaster-prone Lucy Ricardo. When her much-publicized baby was born in January 1953, the story received more press coverage than President Eisenhower's inauguration. With their new Hollywood prestige, Ball and Arnaz were able to set up the powerful Desilu Studios production complex, ultimately purchasing the facilities of RKO, where both performers had once been contract players. But professional pressures and personal problems began eroding the marriage, and Ball and Arnaz divorced in 1960, although both continued to operate Desilu. Ball gave Broadway a try in the 1960 musical Wildcat, which was successful but no hit, and, in 1962, returned to TV to solo as Lucy Carmichael on The Lucy Show. She'd already bought out Arnaz's interest in Desilu, and, before selling the studio to Gulf and Western in 1969, Ball had become a powerful executive in her own right, determinedly guiding the destinies of such fondly remembered TV series as Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. The Lucy Show ended in the spring of 1968, but Ball was back that fall with Here's Lucy, in which she played "odd job" specialist Lucy Carter and co-starred with her real-life children, Desi Jr. and Lucie. Here's Lucy lasted until 1974, at which time her career took some odd directions. She poured a lot of her own money in a film version of the Broadway musical Mame (1974), which can charitably be labeled an embarrassment. Her later attempts to resume TV production, and her benighted TV comeback in the 1986 sitcom Life With Lucy, were unsuccessful, although Ball, herself, continued to be lionized as the First Lady of Television, accumulating numerous awards and honorariums. Despite her many latter-day attempts to change her image -- in addition to her blunt, commandeering off-stage personality -- Ball would forever remain the wacky "Lucy" that Americans had loved intensely in the '50s. She died in 1989.

Trivia: American entertainer Carol Burnett and her sister were both raised by their loving grandmother. It has long been a matter of public record that Burnett credits her grandmother for encouraging her to utilize her comic and musical talents to the fullest. Working her way through UCLA, she majored in English and Theater arts, gradually developing the poise and self-confidence to tackle an entertainment career. After nightclub work, Burnett was spotlighted on the variety programs of Steve Allen, Ed Sullivan, and Jack Paar, bringing down the house on Paar's program with the specialty ballad "I Made a Fool of Myself over John Foster Dulles." In 1956, Burnett co-starred with Buddy Hackett in the live TV sitcom Stanley, which unfortunately was scheduled opposite the indestructible Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. A near-star several times over, Burnett finally grabbed the brass ring with her bravura performance in the 1959 off-Broadway musical Once Upon a Mattress, which led to a three-season stint as a regular on The Garry Moore Show. An Emmy award resulted from her contribution to Moore, and another Emmy followed for a 1962 joint appearance with Julie Andrews at Carnegie Hall. Some of her comedy of the era was the self-deprecating sort allotted to women who weren't raving beauties, but she transcended the cruelty of the jokes with an inner beauty that one would have to be blind to miss. As a slapstick comedienne Burnett was unrivalled, even by the sainted Lucille Ball, and on occasion she was allowed to drop the comic mask and deliver a heart-rending ballad. In 1962, CBS signed Burnett to a long term contract under the supervision of her then-husband, producer Joe Hamilton. After an uncomfortable few months in 1964 in which the producers of the Broadway production Fade Out Fade In sued Burnett for abandoning the play to appear in a weekly variety series The Entertainers, her post-Garry Moore career moved along unevenly. She was advised to sign for another series but avoided the option of situation comedy (she once insisted that she didn't want to be trapped playing someone named Agnes every week). In 1967, virtually out of desperation for a workable idea, The Carol Burnett Show premiered on CBS. Burnett patterned the program after Garry Moore's opening monologue, brief sketches with continuing characters, parodies, musical bits, and a closing all-star musical comedy production number. With such first-rate supporting talent as Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, Lyle Waggoner and Tim Conway, The Carol Burnett Show was a ratings-grabber until its final telecast in 1978. Carol Burnett's life and career since then has been distinguished by as many valleys as peaks. Her film career never truly got off the ground, despite excellent performances in such pictures as Pete 'N' Tillie (1972) and A Wedding (1978). Nevertheless, Carol Burnett has more than earned her place in the pantheon of television giants.Burnett would remain active in the coming decades, starring in everything from the classic musical Annie to the sitcom Mama's Family, not to mention making inumerable appearances on shows like Touched By an Angel, Mad About You, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and Glee.

Trivia: Born in Germany, but raised in the U.S., actor Rhodes Reason primarily appeared in second features of the '60s and '70s. He also appeared on television. Reason's brother, Rex Reason (aka Bart Roberts), was also an actor.

Trivia: Kasey Rogers is best known for her four seasons portraying Louise Tate, the wife of advertising-agency boss Larry Tate (David White), on Bewitched. Between 1949 and 1964, however, she also appeared in nearly two dozen movies under the name Laura Elliot, ranging from leading roles to uncredited support parts, by filmmakers from Alfred Hitchcock down. Additionally, she was in over 200 episodes of the prime-time soap opera Peyton Place between 1964 and 1968. She was born Imogene Rogers in Morehouse, MO, in 1926, and began studying acting, elocution, and music at age seven. For a time, however, Rogers' most visible attribute was her prowess with a baseball bat, which earned her the nickname "Casey." It stuck, with a little change in the spelling, and she continued using it as an adult. Shortly after World War II, Rogers was spotted by a talent scout and got a screen test at Paramount Pictures. She was signed up, given the name Laura Elliot (sometimes spelled Laura Elliott), and put into her first movie a week later. Her early appearances included such major films as Chicago Deadline, Samson and Delilah, and The File on Thelma Jordan; she also got a leading role, on loan-out, in the fantasy adventure film Two Lost Worlds (1950), in which she played the female lead opposite James Arness. Rogers later recalled that film (which mixed a pirate story and dinosaurs) as being every bit as confusing to make as it is to watch, with one of the characters' names even changing midway through. As it happened, 1951 was Rogers' big year in movies; she got her biggest role in the most enduringly popular film of her career, playing Farley Granger's estranged wife in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train. Her character, wearing glasses with lenses as thick as the base of shot glasses (so thick that, 50 years later, she recalled not even being able to see through them), is murdered by the cold-blooded psychopath portrayed by Robert Walker. She also appeared in George Stevens' A Place in the Sun, Rudolph Maté's classic sci-fi drama When Worlds Collide, the Bob Hope vehicle My Favorite Spy, and the Western Silver City. From there, however, Rogers receded to lesser movies such as The French Line and About Mrs. Leslie (both 1954). Starting in 1955, she was making regular appearances on television, alternating between the names Laura Elliot (or Elliott) and Kasey Rogers, across a range of programming that included Westerns such as Lawman, Bat Masterson, Trackdown, and Wanted: Dead or Alive, the dramatic anthology series Alcoa Presents, Goodyear Theater, and Stage 7, and the crime dramas Perry Mason and Richard Diamond, Private Detective. Rogers' first regular television role was on the night-time drama Peyton Place (1964-1968) as Julie Anderson, the mother of Barbara Parkins' Betty Anderson, the soap opera's resident bad girl. Rogers left the series in 1968 and was immediately offered the role of Louise Tate on Bewitched, which had previously been played by Irene Vernon. She was forced to cover her dark auburn hair with a black wig for the first few seasons so that she resembled her predecessor, and it was only at the end of the run that her own hair was revealed. Regardless of her coloring, however, she made a charming, funny, gorgeous, and unique TV "trophy wife" amid a decade of pretty, wholesome TV moms. Rogers has remained active intermittently as an actress and has pursued a writing career as well, including screenplays and a cookbook built around Bewitched as a thematic link. She appears at nostalgia conventions under both of her screen names, using Laura Elliot (the name under which she did most of her oaters) at Western shows and Kasey Rogers at television-oriented events.

Trivia: American actor Richard Arlen was working as a messenger boy at Paramount studios in the early 1920s when he was injured in a slight accident; the story goes that Arlen went to the studio heads to thank them for their prompt medical care, whereupon the executives, impressed by Arlen's good looks, hired him as an actor. Whether the story is true or not, it is a fact that Arlen soon became one of Paramount's most popular leading men, earning a measure of screen immortality by costarring with Buddy Rogers and Clara Bow in the first-ever Oscar winning picture, Wings (1927). Arlen was memorably cast as a World War I flying ace, a part in which he felt uniquely at home because he'd been a member of the Royal Canadian Flying Corps during the "real" war (though he never saw any combat!) The actor retained his popularity throughout the 1930s, and when roles became harder to come by in the 1940s, he wisely invested his savings in numerous successful businesses. Keeping in character, Arlen was also part-owner of a civilian flying service, and worked as an air safety expert for the government during World War II. Still acting in TV and commercials into the 1960s, Richard Arlen was reunited with his Wings costar Buddy Rogers in an amusing episode of the TV sitcom Petticoat Junction.

Trivia: Billed at the height of his popularity as "America's Boyfriend," Charles "Buddy" Rogers was the son of a Kansas judge. While attending the University of Kansas, Rogers played a variety of instruments with a local jazz band. While he would front a popular Catalina-based band in the 1930s, Rogers is best remembered for his film career, which began when he was recruited for Paramount Pictures' talent school in 1925. His finest hour onscreen was as the best pal of World War I aviator Richard Arlen in the first Oscar-winning film, Wings (1927). In 1928, Rogers acted opposite Mary Pickford, 11 years his senior, in My Best Girl. What started as a friendly professional relationship blossomed into romance after Pickford's divorce from Douglas Fairbanks, and in 1937 Rogers became Pickford's third (and last) husband. Rogers continued his acting career with moderate success into the late '40s, making one last picture, The Parson and the Outlaw, in 1957; he also produced a handful of second features for United Artists in 1947. The affable, ever-upbeat Charles Rogers confined his public appearances in the 1960s and 1970s to civic and charitable events, where he frequently acted as official spokesperson for his increasingly reclusive wife.