Martha Ellen Scott (September 22, 1912 – May 28, 2003) was an American actress best known for her roles as mother of the lead character in numerous films and television shows.

Scott was born in Jamesport, Missouri, the daughter of Letha (née McKinley) and Walter Scott, an engineer and garage owner; her mother was a second-cousin of U.S. President William McKinley. Scott became interested in acting in high school. She got her start acting in shortened Shakespeare productions at the Century of Progress world's fair in Chicago (1933–34).

Scott eventually went to New York City, where she was cast as the original Emily in the Broadway production of Our Town. Her film debut in Our Town in 1940 saw her receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her critically acclaimed performance as Emily Webb. Scott's co-star was William Holden, in the role of George Gibbs.

She appeared in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, Airport 1975 and The Turning Point. In both The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur, she played Charlton Heston's character's mother.

Martha of Bethany (Aramaic מַרְתָּא Martâ) is a biblical figure described in the Gospels of Luke and John. Together with her siblings Lazarus and Mary, she is described as living in the village of Bethany near Jerusalem. She is the middle child of her family with Lazarus being the eldest and her sister Mary Magdalene the youngest. She was witness to Jesus' resurrection of her brother, Lazarus.

The name Martha is a Latin transliteration of the Koine Greek Μαρθα, itself a translation of the Aramaic מַרְתָּא Martâ, "The mistress" or "the lady", from מרה "mistress", feminine of מר "master". The Aramaic form occurs in a Nabatean inscription found at Puteoli, and now in the Naples Museum; it is dated AD. 5 (Corpus Inscr. Semit., 158); also in a Palmyrene inscription, where the Greek translation has the form Marthein.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus visits the home of two sisters named Mary and Martha. The two sisters are contrasted: Martha was "cumbered about many things" while Jesus was their guest, while Mary had chosen "the better part", that of listening to the master's discourse. The name of their village is not recorded, nor any mention of whether Jesus was near Jerusalem:

William Holden (April 17, 1918 – November 12, 1981) was an American actor. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1954 and the Emmy Award for Best Actor in 1974. One of the most popular and well known movie stars of all time, Holden was one of the biggest box office draws of the 1950s, he was named one of the "Top 10 Stars of the Year" six times (1954–1958, 1961) and appeared on the American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years…100 Stars list as number 25. He starred in some of the most popular and critically acclaimed films of all time, including such blockbusters as Sunset Boulevard, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Wild Bunch, The Towering Inferno, and Network.

Holden was born William Franklin Beedle, Jr. in O'Fallon, Illinois, the son of Mary Blanche (née Ball), a schoolteacher, and William Franklin Beedle, Sr., an industrial chemist. He had two younger brothers, Robert and Richard. Holden's paternal great-grandmother, Rebecca Westfield, was born in England in 1817, while some of his mother's ancestors settled in Virginia's Lancaster County after emigrating from England in the 17th century. Growing up, Holden was raised in the Methodist church, and while some sources cite him as a Congregationalist, Holden identified himself as a Methodist throughout his life. His family moved to South Pasadena when he was three.

Willard Herman Scott, Jr. (born March 7, 1934) is an American media personality and author best known for his television work on NBC's The Today Show and as the creator of the Ronald McDonald character.

Scott grew up in the Rosemont section of Alexandria, Virginia, and attended George Washington High School. He showed an interest in broadcasting as a 16-year-old, working in 1950 as an NBC page at WRC-AM, NBC's owned-and-operated radio station in Washington, D.C. Scott then attended American University, where he worked alongside fellow student Ed Walker at WAMU-AM, the university's radio station (1951–1953). Scott became a member of Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity while at American University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy and religion.

From 1955 to 1972, Scott teamed with Ed Walker as co-host of the nightly Joy Boys radio program on WRC-AM. (This was interrupted from 1956-1958 when Scott served on active duty with the U.S.Navy.) Scott routinely sketched a list of characters and a few lead lines setting up a situation, which Walker would commit to memory or make notes on with his Braille typewriter (he was blind since birth). In a 1999 article recalling the Joy Boys at the height of their popularity in the mid-1960s, The Washington Post said they "dominated Washington, providing entertainment, companionship, and community to a city on the verge of powerful change". The Joy Boys show played on WRC until 1972 when they moved to cross-town station WWDC for another two years. Scott wrote in his book, The Joy of Living, of their close professional and personal bond which has continued to the present, saying that they are "closer than most brothers".

William Smith (June 5, 1878 - July 4, 1961), better known by his screen name, Franklyn Farnum, was an American character actor and Hollywood extra who appeared in 433 productions between the years 1916 and 1961.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1878, Farnum became a vaudeville actor at the age of 12 and was featured in a number of theatre and musical productions by the time he entered silent films near the age of 40. He appeared to be at his most comfortable in a saddle, his career dominated mostly by westerns. Some of his more famous films include the serial Vanishing Trails (1920) and the features The Clock (1917), The Firebrand (1922), The Drug Store Cowboy (1925), and The Gambling Fool (1925). He left films in 1925 but returned five years later at the advent of sound, only to find himself billed much further down the credits, if billed at all. He continued on, however, in these obscure roles well into the 1950s.

One of his three wives was the ill-fated actress Alma Rubens, to whom he was briefly married in 1918. He had one daughter, Martha Lillian Smith, who was born in 1898.