Trivia: Actress Betty White got her start in local Los Angeles television as the "telephone girl" for video emcee Al Jarvis. By early 1950 she was one of the stars of the daily, five-hour series Hollywood on Television. One of the highlights of this program was a husband and wife sketch titled "Life With Elizabeth," which when committed to film and syndicated nationally in 1953 became White's first starring TV sitcom. She went on to headline her own network variety series in 1954, then co-starred with Bill Williams in the weekly TV domestic comedy Date With the Angels (1957), which without Williams was retitled The Betty White Show in early 1958. For the next 15 years she made guest appearances on various variety and quiz show efforts, and toured the straw-hat theatrical circuit in such plays as Critics Choice and Who Was That Lady, often appearing opposite her husband, TV personality Allen Ludden. Two years after hosting the 1971 syndicated informational series The Pet Set, she guest-starred as libidinous "Happy Homemaker" Sue Ann Nivens on the fourth season opener of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. This Emmy-winning episode led to White being cast as an MTM regular; she remained with the series until its final episode in 1977. She then starred on her own short-lived sitcom (again titled The Betty White Show) before returning to the guest-star circuit. In 1985, she joined the cast of TV's The Golden Girls as middle-aged grief counselor Rose Nyland. This top-rated program lasted seven seasons before metamorphosing into the rather less successful Golden Palace (1992). White was a regular on the 1995 series Maybe This Time, and in 1997 she won an Emmy for her one-shot appearance on The John Laroquette Show. She was in the films Hard Rain and The Story of Us, as well as Lake Placid. In 2003 she was cast in Bringing Down the House, and in 2008 provided a voice for the American version of Ponyo. White developed a new generation in fans when she became the subject of a successful online campaign to get her to host Saturday Night Live - which she did in 2010, along with winning the SAG award for Life time Achievement. The year before, she had a part in the hit Sandra Bullock vehicle The Proposal. She also became the star of year another successful TV show when she was cast in the female-centric sitcom Hot in Cleveland. She lent her voice to the 2012 adaptation of The Lorax.

Trivia: During her nine-year (1975-1984) tenure as Barbara Cooper on TV's One Day at a Time, Valerie Bertinelli grew from a chubby, awkward 15-year-old with only a smattering of bit-part credits into a polished actress and bona fide sex symbol. When Bertinelli "married" her One Day co-star Boyd Gaines in a 1982 episode, the ratings went through the roof, while many a male viewer's heart sank. One year earlier, Bertinelli had been a bride for real; her marriage to rock star Eddie Van Halen was kept under wraps by the series' producers for fear of damaging the actress' "Little Miss Perfect" image. Bertinelli's son by Van Halen was named Wolfgang, as in Mozart. While still a One Day regular, Bertinelli made the first of many TV-movie starring appearances in 1979's Young Love, First Love; later small-screen projects -- most of them packaged by Bertinelli's own production company, Bertinelli Inc. -- included The Princess and the Cabbie (1981), I Was a Mail Order Bride (1982), Shattered Vows (1984), The Seduction of Gina (1984), Silent Witness (1985), and Pancho Barnes (1988). Conversely, her theatrical-feature credits are limited, but include C.H.O.M.P.S. (1979) and Ordinary Heroes (1985). In the years since One Day at a Time, Valerie Bertinelli has starred in the short-lived TV series, Sydney (1990) and Café Americain (1993).At the beginning of the 2000s, she landed a recurring role on Touched By an Angel. In 2005 she filed for divorce from Eddie Van Halen, and a few years later she would be the star of yet another series, the TV Land sitcom Hot In Cleveland opposite Wendy Malick, Jane Leeves, and Betty White.

Trivia: Began studying ballet at a very early age, but hurt her ankle when she was 18 and was forced to give it up. Appeared in David Lee Roth's video for "California Girls." Lived for a time with her best friend Faith Ford, whom she met in acting class. Cofounded the production company Bristol Cities with Frasier costar Peri Gilpin in 1998. Since her first pregnancy wasn't written into Frasier, her character, Daphne, was sent off to a fat camp and was said to have lost 9 pounds, 12 ounces---the weight of Jane's daughter when she was born. Made her Broadway debut in Cabaret as Sally Bowles in 2002. Reunited with Fraiser alum Wendy Malick to costar in the TV Land sitcom Hot in Cleveland.

Trivia: While savvy television viewers will no doubt recognize prolific small-screen actress Wendie Malick from such popular series as Baywatch, Just Shoot Me, and HBO's smart and sexy comedy Dream On, the late '90s found her feature career warming up in such independent efforts as Manna From Heaven (2001) and Bathroom Boy (2003). A native of Buffalo, NY, who first found work in front of the cameras as a Wilhelmina model in the 1970s, the Ohio Wesleyan University alum would later work for New York congressman Jack Kemp following her graduation. Subsequently gracing the catwalks of New York, Paris, and Madrid, it was a small role in the 1978 comedy How to Pick up Girls that provided the aspiring actress with her first screen break. Though she would appear in a few theatrical releases such as Scrooged (1988) during the 1980s, most of her work came with made-for-television features and such series as Kate and Allie and Anything But Love. Increasingly visible on the small screen during the 1990s, Malick's role as series protagonist Martin Tupper's (Brian Benben) ex-wife on Dream On utilized her comic abilities to maximum effect and netted the actress four Cable ACE awards. Following the final episode of Dream On in 1996, it was only one short year before Malick began a stint on another popular series that would gain her accolades among sitcom junkies, Just Shoot Me. Her background in the modeling industry provided the ideal foundation for her role as former model Nina Van Horn, and Malick (Emmy-nominated for the role) remained with the show until its final episode in 2003, simultaneously taking occasional parts in both made-for-TV and theatrical features. In 1997 Malick took the lead in the little-seen romantic comedy Just Add Love, and following voice work as the egotistical principal in the Disney series Fillmore!, she appeared alongside Valerie Bertinelli, Jane Leeves, and Betty White the Emmy-winning comedy series Hot in Cleveland. In addition to her screen work, Wendie Malick met husband Richard Erickson while building homes for poor families in Mexico, and she also helps the homeless with her work for the Adopt-A-Family organization.

Trivia: Tall leading man Barry Bostwick began his professional acting career while still a sophomore at the United States International University School of Performing Arts in San Diego; his first stage gig was opposite Walter Pidgeon in Take Her, She's Mine. Completing his training at the New York University Graduate School of the Arts, Bostwick made his Broadway bow in Cock-a-Doodle Dandy. He went on to play Danny Zuko in the smash-hit musical Grease, and in 1978 won a Tony Award for his work in The Robber Bridegroom. In films from 1971, Bostwick is best known for his calculatedly cloddish portrayal of Brad Majors in the midnight-movie perennial The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Equally enjoyable was his characterization of the aspiring songwriter ("It Just Shows to Go Ya") who agrees to write an entire Broadway musical in 24 hours in the 1979 spoof Movie, Movie. Barry Bostwick has also excelled on television, playing movie idol John Gilbert in Garson Kanin's The Silent Lovers (1980) and George Washington in two mid-'80s miniseries based on the life of the first U.S. president. He continued to work steadily on the big and small screen in projects such as the miniseries War & Remembrance and its sequel, Challenger, Praying Mantis, and Weekend at Bernie's II. At the beginning of the 21st century he appeared in The Skulls 3 as well as other productions including Hannah Montana: The Movie. In 2012 he appeared in the action comedy FDR: American Badass!

Trivia: American actress Cybill Shepherd's pre-acting career included a runner-up stint in the Miss Teenage America pageant and seemingly thousands of modelling gigs, most prominently for Cover Girl makeup. She was spotted adorning a magazine cover by film director Peter Bogdanovich, who selected her to play a small town heartbreaker in his prestigious 1971 film The Last Picture Show. Shepherd was praised for her cinematic debut, though the reviews devoted more space to her diving-board striptease than her delivery of lines. Except for a part as Charles Grodin's dream girl in The Heartbreak Kid (1972), Shepherd did most of her subsequent early film work for Bogdanovich, once her lover as well as her mentor. Reviewers were barely tolerant of her performance in Daisy Miller (1974) -- and with the next Bogdanovich-directed appearance in At Long Last Love (1975) the gloves were off, her career had hit a hard spot. But she recovered, at least professionally, and did quite well for herself in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1975). The "Peter Bogdanovich's Girlfriend" onus took years to suppress; it was still being bandied about when she appeared in her first (short-lived) TV series "The Yellow Rose" (1983). But with her starring role in the popular detective/comedy weekly "Moonlighting" (1985), Shepherd made up for lost time and attained star status without any association with her onetime "Svengali." Shepherd and co-star Bruce Willis played the reluctant partners in a failing detective agency, but the plotlines were secondary to the banter and witticisms between the stars -- not to mention the winks at the audience and "in" jokes that let the folks at home know that the characters knew that they were just acting on TV. An instant success, "Moonlighting" was plagued with production problems almost from the outset. Shepherd and Willis made no secret of their distaste for one another, and both behaved rather boorishly to those around them. Firings and tantrums were almost everyday occurences on the set, and this, plus the problem of turning out a quality script each week, caused the series to fall woefully behind in schedule. Soon it became a media event if "Moonlighting" ran something other than a repeat. In 1987, Shepherd became pregnant with twins, which forced a speedup in production and some wildly convoluted (and often tasteless) scripts to accomodate the actress' condition. Power struggles continued between Shepherd and producer Glenn Caron (and the people who replaced Caron); "Moonlighting" was cancelled in 1989. Since that time, Shepherd has signed an endorsement contract with L'Oreal cosmetics, while continuing to appear in films and TV movies of variable quality (including Texasville, the best-forgotten sequel to The Last Picture Show). Besides becoming a favored and most entertaining guest on the talk-show circuit, Shepherd later returned to television in the Emmy-winning CBS sitcom Cybill. In 2003 Shepherd appeared as Martha Stewart in the NBC biopic Martha, Inc.: The Story of Martha Stewart, and two years later she reprised the role in the made-for-television sequel Martha Behind Bars. For two years beginning in 2007 Stewart played the mother of her real-life daughter Clementine Ford's character on The L Word, and in 2010 she was bestowed the GLAAD Golden Gate Award for her efforts in increasing the LGBT community's visibility in the media. Meanwhile, appearances on such television series' as Psyche, Hot in Cleveland, and The Client List served well to keep her career going strong.

Trivia: Born December 19, 1972, quick-witted actress Rosa Blasi has gained as much attention for her sharp sense of humor as she has for her prowess as a serious stage performer, and thanks to a high-profile role on the long-running Lifetime medical drama Strong Medicine, she finally found her footing as a television actress after years of supporting roles on the small screen. Cast as single mother and Latino medico Dr. Luisa "Lu" Delgado on Strong Medicine, Chicago native Blasi gradually won over viewers thanks to her winning performance as an inner-city medical specialist who suddenly finds her clinic merging with the prestigious Rittenhouse Hospital.Having made her stage debut at the tender age of eight, Blasi was no stranger to the spotlight when she joined the Piven Performance Company and Second City in an effort to sharpen her skills as a performer, and thanks to roles on such popular sitcoms as Frasier, Becker, and The Drew Carey Show, the emerging actress grew increasingly comfortable on the small screen as well as the boards. In early 2006, Blasi took up her Strong Medicine role, which carried on for many seasons; meanwhile, she found time for movie roles as well. A dramatic part in the Showtime movie Noriega: God's Favorite preceded a fleeting appearance as the wife of Bill Pullman's ill-fated character in the horror hit The Grudge in 2004, with both offering fine examples of Blasi's undeniable onscreen charisma. In addition to her onscreen acting career, Blasi does frequent voice-over work and has become a regular fixture on the talk-show circuit.

Trivia: American actress Francine York commenced her theatrical career at age nine, in a play titled Keen Teens, or Campus Quarantine; she produced and directed it herself, had it staged at the Aurora (Minnesota) town auditorium, and used the proceeds from the admissions to finance a wienie roast for the local drama club. That was her story, as related in a 1963 TV Guide, and is as good a story as any. Active in high school sports, York bypassed college to become an airline stewardess, but didn't like the work and decided to become a fashion model in San Francisco. From there she headed to Hollywood, and worked steadily in many of the top TV programs of the early '60s, including recurring appearances on the 1964 weekly Slattery's People (she also later appeared on the daytime drama Days of Our Lives as Lorraine Temple). Usually cast in semi-villainous roles, York was also proficient at comedy, as proven by her many appearances on the anthology series Love American Style (1969-1972). A bit too tall to be a movie leading lady (many leading men would have felt self-conscious), Francine York did manage to make several memorable appearances in the '60s films of six-foot-plus comedian Jerry Lewis; perhaps coincidentally, Lewis appeared in an unbilled cameo of the Batman episode in which York played the "moll" of the Bookworm (Roddy McDowall). York continued acting through the 2000s; she died in 2017, at age 80.