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: The very feminine Lois Nettleton made her first stage appearance as "The Father" in a grade-school production of Hansel and Gretel. After studying at the Goodman Theatre and the Actors' Studio, 20-year-old Lois made her Broadway boy in 1949's The Biggest Thief in Town, very briefly adopting the stage name of Lydia Scott (she found her given name too plain and "schoolmarmy"). She understudied Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie the Cat in the original 1955 production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, occasionally getting to play the role herself. For her work in the stage play God and Kate Murphy, Lois won the Clarence Derwent Award. While her official film debut was 1962's Period Adjustment, she previously played a minor role in director Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957). Lois' film work, while extensive, has not been as rewarding as her stage and TV endeavors. Bypassing her co-starring stints in the short-term sitcom Accidental Family (1967) and You Can't Take It With You (1987), Lois Nettleton was seen as a regular on the NBC soap opera Brighter Day (1954), enjoyed a healthy two-season run as Joann St. John on the weekly TV version of In the Heat of the Night, and has won two Emmies, the first for the 1977 daytime special The American Woman: Profiles in Courage, and the second for "A Gun for Mandy," a 1983 episode of the syndicated religious anthology Insight. She died of lung cancer at age 80 in January 2008.

Trivia: Connecticut native Linda Purl grew up in Japan, where her father, a Union Carbide executive, had been transferred. Under the watchful eye of her mother, a former ballerina, Purl began acting professionally in Japanese stage and TV productions at the age of seven. Ten years later, she made her American film debut in Jory (1972). Never a conventional ingenue, she has played everything from mentally retarded teens to rape victims to psychotic killers, as well as a few real-life personalities like Alice Roosevelt Longworth and globetrotting journalist Nellie Bly. Purl has the distinction of playing two different recurring characters on the same television series. During the 1974-75 season of Happy Days, she was seen as Richie Cunningham's (Ron Howard) high-school girlfriend Gloria; she returned to the series in 1982 as Ashler Pfister, a divorced mother with whom Fonzie (Henry Winkler) was briefly involved romantically. Linda has also appeared regularly on such series as The Secret Storm and Beacon Hill; more recently, she played an assistant DA put in charge of a group of young ex-convicts on the syndicated weekly adventure series Robin's Hoods (1994). Linda Purl was at one time married to Desi Arnaz Jr..

Trivia: One of Hollywood's premiere impressionists and comedians, Frank Gorshin is best remembered for his hypo-manic portrayal of the villainous, green-clad Riddler from the campy Batman television series of the 1960s. Gorshin made his film debut in the 1955 action-drama Hot Rod Girl. As a movie actor, Gorshin has spent the bulk of his career appearing in low-budget fare, but he has also worked in a few major features including Meteor Man (1993) and gave a well-received supporting performance in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys (1996). He has also been on television as a guest star on comedies, dramas, and variety shows. Lovers of the first Star Trek series will know Gorshin from the anti-prejudice episode, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield." Following the demise of the Batman series, Gorshin continued his film career as a character actor.

Trivia: While his name might suggest a birthplace somewhere in France -- or at the very least Quebec -- actor Rene Auberjonois was born in New York City. However, his well-to-do parents were of noble European blood, thus French was the language of choice in his household. Despite his first-born-American status, Auberjonois was shunned by many of his schoolmates as a foreigner, and teased for having a "girl's" name. As a defense mechanism, Auberjonois became the class clown, which somehow led naturally to amateur theatricals. The influence of such neighborhood family friends as Burgess Meredith and Lotte Lenya solidified Auberjonois' determination to make performing his life's work. He was cast in a production at Stratford (Ontario)'s Shakespeare company by John Houseman -- another neighbor of his parents' -- and after moving with his family to England, Auberjonois returned to complete his acting training at Carnegie-Mellon University. There he decided to specialize in character parts rather than leads -- a wise decision, in that he's still at it while some of his handsomer and more charismatic Carnegie-Mellon classmates have fallen by the wayside. Three years with the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. led Auberjonois to San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre, of which he was a founding member. Movie and TV work was not as easy to come by, so the actor returned to New York, where he won a Tony for his Broadway role in the musical Coco. An introduction to director Robert Altman led Auberjonois to his first film, M*A*S*H (1970), in which he introduced the character that would later be fleshed out on TV as Father Mulcahy (with William Christopher in the role). He worked in two more Altman films before he and the director began to grow in opposite directions. More stage work and films followed, then TV assignments; Auberjonois' characters ranged from arrogant dress designers to snooty aristocrats to schizophrenic killers on film, while the stage afforded him more richly textured roles in such plays as King Lear and The Good Doctor. In 1981, Auberjonois was cast as Clayton Endicott III, the terminally fussy chief of staff to Governor Gatling on Benson. Like so many other professional twits in so many other films, Auberjonois' job was to make life miserable for the more down-to-earth hero, in this case Robert "Benson" Guillaume. Blessed with one of the most flexible voiceboxes in show business, Auberjonois has spent much of his career providing voice-overs for cartoon characters in animated projects like the Disney's The Little Mermaid, The Legend of Tarzan, Justice League, and Pound Puppies. In 1993, Rene Auberjonois assured himself a permanent place in the hearts of "Trekkies" everywhere when he was cast as Odo (complete with understated but distinctive "alien" makeup) on the weekly syndicated TV show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which he appeared on until 1999.Auberjonois would remain extremely active on screen in the years to come, appearing in movies like The Patriot, and on shows like Boston Legal.

Trivia: Trained for her craft at Illinois' Northwestern University, North Carolina-born actress Penny Fuller made a name for herself on Broadway in the mid-to-late '60s. After appearing in Barefoot in the Park, Cabaret, and a handful of Shakespeare productions, Fuller won critical plaudits for her portrayal of the outwardly sweet but inwardly subversive Eve Harrington in Applause, the 1970 musical version of All About Eve. After this starmaking turn, Fuller found herself typed in films and TV as schemers and "steel magnolias." In addition to her many TV-movie appearances, Fuller has had regular roles on three series: The Edge of Night (early '70s) Bare Essence (1983) and Fortune Dane (1986). She won an Emmy for her performance in the 1982 TV staging of The Elephant Man. More recently, Penny Fuller has appeared as Mrs. Drysdale in the 1993 filmization of The Beverly Hillbillies and has periodically shown up as Helen Hunt's mother on the NBC sitcom Mad About You.

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: Born on May 20, 1958, in Austin, TX, Matt McCoy would ultimately perform in over 40 different film and television roles from 1985 and throughout the 2000s. Though McCoy took on a few small roles with relative success in Fraternity Vacation (1985) and Weekend Warriors (1986), his most recognizable performance wouldn't come until 1988, when he starred as an intrepid yet bumbling police officer in Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach (1988), a role which he would reprise in Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989). After the demise of the Police Academy franchise, McCoy went on to star in several television productions, including the acclaimed Miracle Landing (1990), an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and a feature-length television "reunion" of the characters from the Archie comic book series. In the following years, the actor put in solid performances in several moderately well-received movies, perhaps the most notable of which being his role as the unwitting husband in Curtis Hanson's psychological thriller The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. In 1993, McCoy starred alongside Pamela Anderson in her film debut, the erotic drama Snapdragon. Though McCoy went on to play several lead roles, the films in which he appeared were generally too unremarkable to merit any significant critical or mainstream recognition. This would change somewhat after a tiny role in another one of Curtis Hanson's films -- the Oscar-winning police detective film L.A. Confidential (1997). While his L.A. Confidential performance did not help him land true movie-star status, it certainly helped his small-screen endeavors. In 1999, McCoy starred in an episode of the long-running cop drama NYPD Blue, and later that year took on the leading role in Imminent Danger, a made-for-television feature co-starring Connie Sellecca. Shortly afterward, McCoy donated his talents for a supporting role in Citizen Baines, a CBS political drama featuring James Cromwell. In 2003, McCoy could be seen in the ill-conceived crime comedy National Security along with Martin Lawrence.

Trivia: Of Scandinavian stock, Barry Nelson was no sooner graduated from the University of California-Berkeley than he was signed to an MGM contract. Most of his MGM feature-film assignments were supporting roles, though he was given leads in the 1942 "B" A Yank in Burma and the 1947 "Crime Does Not Pay" short The Luckiest Guy in the World. While serving in the Army, Nelson made his Broadway debut in the morale-boosting Moss Hart play Winged Victory, repeating his role (and his billing of Corporal Barry Nelson) in the 1944 film version. Full stardom came Nelson's way in such Broadway productions of the 1950s and 1960s as The Rat Race, The Moon is Blue and Cactus Flower. He repeated his Broadway role in the 1963 film version of Mary Mary, and both directed and acted in Frank Gilroy's two-character play The Only Game in Town (1968). Nelson starred in a trio of 1950s TV series: the 1952 espionager The Hunter, the 1953 sitcom My Favorite Husband, and the unjustly neglected Canadian-filmed 1958 adventure series Hudson's Bay (1959). Oh, and did you know that Nelson was the first actor ever to play Ian Fleming's secret agent James Bond on television? Yep: Barry Nelson portrayed American spy Jimmy Bond on a 1954 TV adaptation of Fleming's Casino Royale. Nelson died of unspecified causes on April 7, 2007, while traveling through Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He was 84.

Trivia: Trained for an acting career at various Manhattan professional children's schools, Elliot Reid was hired for the CBS radio announcer's staff while still a teenager. His work on the airwaves led to Reid's being hired by Orson Welles for the latter's 1937 modern-dress production of Julius Caesar. Reid was subsequently featured in such Broadway hits as My Sister Eileen and Ladies in Retirement. Uncomfortably cast as a two-fisted hero in his first film, the 1950 anti-Red opus The Whip Hand, Reid was seen to better advantage in comedy roles. Highlights in the actor's film career included the part of Jane Russell's erstwhile suitor in Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1954) and Fred MacMurray's snotty romantic rival in Disney's The Absent-Minded Professor (1960) and Son of Flubber (1963). In the 1960s, Elliot Reid gained a reputation as a sharp-witted political satirist on such programs as The Jack Paar Program and That Was the Week That Was, fracturing audiences with his on-target impressions of such pundits as Lyndon Johnson and Paul Harvey. Other TV work in Reid's resumé included the role of Darleen Carr's father on the weekly sitcom Miss Winslow and Son (1979). Even in the later stages of his career, Elliot Reid would occasionally return to his dramatic-radio roots in such audio series as "Theater 5" and "The CBS Radio Mystery Theater."

Trivia: Born in Vicksburg, MS, in 1920, actress Beah Richards studied at Dillard University in New Orleans before pursuing an acting career on-stage in New York City. She appeared in Louis S. Peterson's off-Broadway play Take a Giant Step and in the film adaptation in 1959. In 1965, she received a Tony nomination for her role as Sister Margaret in James Baldwin's play The Amen Corner, and two years later she received an Academy Award nomination for her supporting role as Sidney Poitier's mother in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. She continued playing matriarch characters in the feature films Hurry Sundown, In the Heat of the Night, and The Great White Hope. During the '70s, she took over for Lillian Randolph as Bill Cosby's mother on The Bill Cosby Show, played Aunt Ethel on Sanford and Son, and played several grandmotherly characters in made-for-TV movies. More television appearances followed in the '80s, with recurring roles on Designing Women, Beauty and the Beast, Hill Street Blues, Roots: The Next Generations, and L.A. Law. In 1987, she received her first Emmy award for playing Olive Varden on Frank's Place. She has also directed plays at the Los Angeles Inner City Cultural Center, appeared in her own one-woman show, and published several plays and novels, including the poetry collection A Black Woman Speaks and Other Poems. After playing the substance abuse counselor in Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy, she made a bit of a comeback as Dr. Benton's (Eriq LaSalle) mother on the NBC medical drama ER and as Grandma Baby in Jonathan Demme's Beloved, based on the novel by Toni Morrison. She received an Emmy for her final television appearance as Gertrude Turner on the ABC drama The Practice. She died of emphysema in 2000.

Trivia: Alternately -- and justly -- tagged as "The Godfather of Soul," "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business," "Soul Brother No. 1," and "Mr. Dynamite," James Brown launched himself into the musical spotlight as a multi-talented R&B powerhouse with revolutionary gifts not only in the arena of vocal performance, but in those of songwriting, instrumentation, and dance. In the process, Brown -- unapologetically raw, ear-splitting (given his trademark scream), rambunctious, explicit, and dark-skinned -- not only obliterated stereotypes of what black musicians had to be, but paved the way for later African-American artists as disparate as Prince and Snoop Dogg. Generally believed to have been born in Barnwell, SC, on May 3, 1933, and christened James Joseph Brown Jr., Brown grew up on the proverbial wrong side of the tracks. Abandoned by his parents at a tender age and raised by relatives and in the ghetto streets, he drifted into crime as a youngster, and was quickly shuttled off to the Alto Reform School outside of Tocoa, GA, for car theft. At Alto, Brown met and forged a lifelong friendship with aspiring musician Bobby Byrd (born Bobby Day), who later became an integral fixture of Brown's stage act. Byrd's family sympathized with Brown's family plight and brought the youngster into their household; Brown and Byrd then forged a gospel group that evolved, by turns, into Brown's R&B backup band, the Flames, with Brown covering vocals and Byrd on keyboards. Gigs at local venues followed over the next few years, until a demo tape of the group's electrifying single "Please, Please, Please" landed on the desk of Cincinnati's King Records. The label signed Brown immediately, first on its spin-off label, Federal, then -- in 1961 -- on King proper. One of that label's LPs, a live album, truly worked magic for Brown's career: 1962's James Brown: Live at the Apollo. This now-legendary, oft-mythologized effort spanned only 30 minutes but sold millions of copies and put Brown on the cultural map. Brown continued to issue gold and platinum singles and LPs over the years, landing an unprecedented number of hits. These included "Night Train," "I Got You (I Feel Good)," "Mashed Potatoes U.S.A," the seminal "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," and "Shout and Shimmy." Brown's musical popularity continued unabated through the 1970s, before he reinvented himself in the '80s as a motion picture star. Brown made his most enduring cinematic impact during this period, with two A-list features: John Landis' anarchic musical road comedy The Blues Brothers (1980) and Sylvester Stallone's jingoistic Rocky IV (1985). In the former, Brown pulls from his gospel roots to play "jive-ass preacher" Reverend Cleophus James, the caped, microphone-wielding, arm-swinging minister of the Triple Rock Baptist Church, whose screamed admonition to Jake and Elwood Blues (John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd) -- "Have you seen the light?!" -- sends Jake hand-springing and back-flipping down the church aisles. In the fourth Rocky installment, Brown comes billed as "The Godfather of Soul" and, in a truly bizarre beat, performs a musical "warm-up" of "Living in America" with fighter Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) on a Las Vegas stage, before that pugilist's fatal exhibition match with Russian monstrosity Drago (Dolph Lundgren). Roger Ebert wrote of that moment, "this scene sets some kind of a record: It represents almost everything that the original 1976 Rocky Balboa would have found repellent." The public, however, did not concur. Consumers sent "Living in America" (the centerpiece of the movie soundtrack) to the top of the R&B charts and Rocky IV soaring over the 127-million-dollar mark. Brown's other two feature-film appearances include the outrageous Dan Aykroyd/Michael Pressman comedy Doctor Detroit (1983) -- as a bandleader -- and the lesser sequel Blues Brothers 2000 (1998), reprising his turn as Rev. Cleophus James. Brown also headlines a myriad of concert films, such as James Brown: Live in Concert (1979), James Brown: Soul Jubilee (1984), James Brown: Live at Chastain Park (1985), and James Brown: Live from the House of Blues (2000). Brown appeared, as well, on numerous TV programs, including Married...with Children (as himself) and King of the Hill (as the voice of Digby Wilkins). He also composed the scores for two 1973 blaxploitation flicks, Black Caesar and Slaughter's Big Ripoff. Cinematically, Brown's singles are, of course, omnipresent on hundreds of movie soundtracks -- everything from Jonathan Demme's Something Wild (1986) to Christopher Crowe's Off Limits (1987) to James Orr's Mr. Destiny (1990) to Adrian Lyne's Jacob's Ladder (1990) to Ron Howard's Apollo 13 (1995), with his "I Got You (I Feel Good)" the most common inclusion. In addition to his musical and film success, Brown suffered some negative publicity in the late '80s (and became a never-ending source of celebrity gossip) when he burst into an Augusta, GA insurance seminar wielding a shotgun. He subsequently jumped into a car, hit the interstate, and was chased by troopers down the freeway -- across two states. Upon apprehension, Brown faced a number of serious charges, including assault on a law officer and possession of angel dust. Brown was then sentenced by a judge to six years in prison, but paroled after only three. He returned to performing immediately thereafter. Meanwhile, the tabloids swirled with allegations of spousal battery as well. Brown remained thoroughly active on the musical scene during the last 15 years of his life, touring constantly, before he succumbed to pneumonia in the early hours of Christmas Day, 2006. A notorious ladies' man, he was survived by four wives and at least four children. In addition to his career as an entertainer, Brown was also a fervent social activist.