Who's On What and What's On Next? Quiz

Answer: The West Wing

Ramón Gerardo Antonio Estévez was the birth name of Martin Sheen who was born in 1940. He is the father of a very impressive family of actors which includes Charlie Sheen, and Emilio and Ramon and Renee Estevez. He is also the brother of actor, Joe Estevez.

The TV series, "The West Wing" in which he played the role of the President of the United States, ran for seven years, from 1999 until 2006.

Answer: Betty Joan Perske

Betty Joan Perske, aka Lauren Bacall, rose to fame as a model and film and stage actress in the mid 1940s. She has appeared in almost sixty films, several documentaries, five voice acting roles, two short films, eight stage productions, and seventeen television shows.

Not only that, this talented woman has written three books. She has received fourteen of the top awards for her acting, and been nominated for three others. These included an Academy Award nomination for the 1996 film "The Mirror Has Two Faces", which also won her a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award.

This film tells the tale of a once homely woman who becomes beautiful and the problems this causes in her life. I sadly fear my own story is the exact reversal of hers.

Answer: Joseph Yule Jr

Actor and entertainer Mickey Rooney was born in 1920 and has been acting in film, stage and television almost his entire life. He has won many acting awards during his life. These include an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his role in "Bill", a movie in which he plays an intellectually disabled man trying to make it in the world - excellent movie, by the way.

He has also won an Academy Juvenile Award in 1938, and an Academy Honorary Award in 1983 for a lifetime of achievement in the acting business.

Answer: Frances Gumm

What can one say about the lovely and tragic Judy Garland that hasn't already been said? Singer, dancer and actress, this tiny actress, only 4 foot 11 and a 1/2 inches in height, suffered from massive insecurity all her life over her looks, her weight and a slight curvature to her spine. Because of this, Louis B. Mayer, charming pig that he is, used to refer to her as his "little hunchback". Judy received many awards in her relatively short life - she died aged 47 - and is identified most of all for her role in the 1939 film, "The Wizard of Oz" in which she plays a young girl lost in a world of enchantment trying to find her way back home. How that also sums up the life of this lovely, lost actress is quite amazing - except that Dorothy in the film does have her happy ending - while Judy did not.

Answer: Doris Kappelhoff

By the year 2009, Doris Day was the highest ranking female star of all time in the film industry. Singer, actress, dancer, television star, she began her entertainment career singing with a big band orchestra in nightclubs, and went on to become a box office smash.

Her films include light-hearted comedies, musicals and dramas and included her dramatic portrayal of singer Ruth Etting in the 1954 film "Love Me Or Leave Me" opposite her "gangster" husband played so brilliantly by James Cagney, a film which Day would describe, in a later book that she wrote on her life, as the best movie she ever made.

Answer: Dino Crocetti

Dean Martin switched from having his brains bashed out in his boxing career to that of small time nightclub singer. On meeting Jerry Lewis in 1946, the pair came up with the idea of a duo incorporating clown and straight man. This went on to become the most popular act in America in the 1950s, but the team eventually split, after ten years together, over Martin's dissatisfaction with the puerile scripts they were constantly given. Martin went on from here to forge a separate career of his own in dramatic roles on the big screen such as that of the 1958 movie "Some Came Running" in which he plays a gambler.

He then hosted his own television variety show for almost ten years. Following that, he withdrew more and more from the world of entertainment and made his last public performance in 1991.

He died, aged 78, on Christmas Day 1995, of acute respiratory failure.

Answer: Roy Scherer Jr

Born an only child to a woman whose abusive husband deserted the small family during the great depression, Hudson grew up a shy boy who did odd jobs around town to help swell the family budget. During World War II, he served as an aircraft mechanic for the navy, and then moved to Los Angeles where he worked as a truck driver while struggling with his studies at drama school.

Then his was the dream come true that most actors can only wish for. He was discovered by a talent scout and from that point on, the world was his oyster for the tall, good-looking actor.

He has a total of 76 films to his credit, including the 1956 movie, "Giant" in which he plays the head of a rich ranching Texan family. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in this film, and, in addition, during his career, this actor won four Golden Globe Awards. Rock Hudson died in 1985, aged 59.

Answer: Margaret Hyra

American actress Meg Ryan was born in 1961. She specialises in light hearted romantic comedies, such as her starring roles in the 1989 film "When Harry Met Sally" and the 1998 film "You've Got Mail". She has also proved herself to be a fine dramatic actress as well, in roles such as that portrayed in the 2000 "Proof of Life" film, in which she plays a woman who does everything in her power to have her kidnapped husband returned to her. Meg has a vulnerability and sweetness about her which gives any character she plays a special kind of magic - but at the same time she has the ability to make an audience laugh heartily, and in that double whammy of skills, she can be likened to the beautiful, funny, tragic Marilyn Monroe.

Answer: Frederick Austerlitz

Actor, dancer, singer, choreographer, Fred Astaire was born in 1899 and died in 1987 after a lifetime of entertaining the public with his brilliant dancing and understated acting. This charming man appeared in 32 musicals in all where his dancing virtuosity was displayed to perfection - films such as the excellent 1935 movie "Top Hat" where he plays an American dancer come to London to star in a show, and where he falls in love (on screen) with a star there, played by his long time dance partner, Ginger Rogers.

The list of awards that Fred Astaire won during his lifetime of entertaining is astonishing, and can be found on Wikipedia if you wish to read these for yourself. Just before his death in 1987, this charming and sensitive man sent a message out to all his fans world wide, thanking them for a lifetime of support. How's that for pure class?

Answer: Virginia McMath

Actress singer, dancer and actress, and born in 1911, the name of Ginger Rogers will be forever linked to that of her long time dancing partner Fred Astaire, even though they only danced together in ten films, out of the seventy-three films that this actress made in all.

She won an Academy Award for her role in the 1940 film "Kitty Foyle" in which she plays a woman agonising over a choice between two men in her life. Ginger Rogers died in 1995 at the age of 83. She and Fred only had one argument during their long career appearing together in film. That was when, in one dance number in the 1935 musical "Top Hat", she insisted on wearing a particularly feathery dress which irritated him immensely to dance with because it kept shedding feathers everywhere. On their exhange of a few sharp words, he shouted that the dress was "like a chicken attacked by a coyote!" and Ginger burst into tears - and her mother charged onto the film set, in Fred's words, "Like a mother rhinoceros protecting her young." Ginger got to wear her dress after all, and in that particular dancing scene in the film, if you watch carefully, small feathers can indeed be seen floating everywhere in the air.