In the 1950s, few actors dominated Broadway the way Yul Brynner did.

Playing the lead in the Rodgers and Hammerstein's play “The King and I,” Brynner eEstablished himself as a top-tier performer. 

He won two Tonys for his portrayal of the King of Siam, as well as an Academy Award when the play was adapted to film.

Later he was cast in such big budget movies as the Ten Commandments, The Magnificent Seven, and Westworld. 

Naomi Judd was born "Diana Judd" not long after World War II ended. Her dad ran a gas station in Ashland, Kentucky,

By the time she was in her mid 30s, Judd was a divorced single mom with two daughters, struggling to keep a household going.

That's when she and her older daughter discovered that they liked to sing and harmonize with each other. And they got pretty good at it.

Before long, they came to the attention of the right people, and in 1983, they formed The Judds.

As a young journalist in the 1950s, Carl T. Rowan covered the emerging civil rights movement, and its leaders, including people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.

The reputation he built came to the attention of President John F. Kennedy, who, in 1961, name Rowan to a high level position in the State Department. 

And in 1963, Kennedy appointed Rowan ambassador to Finland.

Row and remain in the government for three years after Kennedy's assassination, before resuming what would be a long and acclaimed journalism career.

It's not always easy to babysit money of a very famous politician.

But, perhaps, especially if you're a lesbian and your brother is one of the nation's leading right-wing conservatives.

In 1994 a republican wave took over Congress, and Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House.

And suddenly, his half-sister Candace -- who pronounces the family name “Ging-rick” -- found themselves, as they later described it, as an “accidental activist.”

For decades, going back to the 1970s, one of the most popular contemporary British mystery writers was PD James.

In a style sometimes reminiscent of Agatha Christie, James wrote about cases solved by her fictional detective she named Adam Dalgliesh.  

He was a character she named after a teacher at Cambridge High School.

Book after book, a reputation and popularity grew, until in 1991 James was amed a Life Peer in Britain's House of Lords. She was Baroness James of Holland Park.

Robert Osbourne Denver graduated from  college with a degree in political science, then caoched physical education and even taught math and history at a California elementary school.

But today, this well-educated, smart, soft-spoken man is best remembered for this... Gilligan's Island.

Gilligan's Island only lasted three seasons in the mid-1960s, but thaks to reruns and syndication the show has effectively never been off the air since.

And, like so many other popular TV actors, Bob Denver found himself typecast. 

Julia Child is probably the reason many people became professional chefs. She's also the reason many many millions of us have attempted things in the kitchen we never thought we could do.

For many years Child was America's most famous chef, thanks largely to herpublic television series The French Chef.

In 1993, as another of her TV series was premiering, Child collected culinary wisdom from some of her peers, for a book called "Cooking With Master Chefs."

Do you have to be kind of an SOB to be a success?

What kind of connotation does that term even have anymore?

Those were two of the key questions that Al Neuharth tried to address in his bestselling memoir “Confessions Of An S.O.B.”

Al Neuharth  was the founder of USA Today, as well as The Freedom Forum, and the Newseum.  So apparently being an SOB helped him.

Memorial Day is an occasion to pause and honor those who have given their lives in military service.

But we can also remember those who went to war to save lives.

In 1963, a 21-year old student nurse named winning Smith joined the Army, and in 1966 was sent to Vietnam, where the war was escalating.  She was there until 1967,

But it wasn't until years later that she realized that she, like many of the servicemen she treated, or suffering from PTSD.

We learned recently that daytime TV's Ellen DeGeneres Show is coming to an end next year after 19 seasons.

Her show made its debut just a couple of years after I met and interviewed her mom, Betty DeGeneres.

In 1999, Betty published a book called “Love, Ellen,” a memoir of her relationship with her famous daughter -- and the challenges both mother and daughter experienced when Ellen revealed her sexual orientation.