Question: Who was the actor that played Edna Garrett in the Facts of Life.
Context: St. Elmo is a 1914 American silent drama film produced by the Balboa Amusement Producing Company and distributed by William Fox's Box Office Attractions Company.  It was the first feature-length film adaptation of Augusta Jane Evans's 1866 novel of the same name.  The story follows the life of the title character (played by William Jossey), who kills his cousin (Francis McDonald) over the love of Agnes (Madeline Pardee), falls from grace, and eventually finds redemption and love with Edna (Gypsy Abbott).  It is disputed who directed the film; many sources credit Bertram Bracken, while others list "St. Elmo" as J. Gordon Edwards's directorial debut. Jefferson De Angelis (November 30, 1859 – March 20, 1933) born Thomas Jefferson De Angelis in San Francisco was a 19th-20th century stage actor who specialized in comedy and acrobatic clowning and who achieved fame in vaudeville and on Broadway.  He was also a stage director and producer.  He began in Baltimore at age 10.  Near the end of his life he appeared in the hit 1927 Broadway play "The Royal Family" by Edna Ferber.  He sporadically appeared in silent films, mostly shorts.  De Angelis wrote his autobiography in 1931 titled "A Vagabond Trouper" with Alvin E. Harlow. Johnny Haymer (January 19, 1920 – November 18, 1989) was an American actor who played Staff Sergeant Zelmo Zale, a recurring character in the television series "M*A*S*H".  Haymer also was one of the announcers for the Nipsey Russell-hosted game show "Your Number's Up", and appeared as one of the servers in the original McDonald's "You deserve a break today" commercial, and in the mid-1980s, provided his voice for the characters Swindle, Vortex, Highbrow, and Caliburst in "The Transformers".  He played butler Walter Pinkerton to puppet Madame in 1982-83 on "Madame's Place".  Haymer also appeared in the next-to-last episode of "", "".  Among Haymer's many TV appearances are his role as a cop on an episode of "The Facts of Life" (entitled "Under Pressure") in 1983, and his appearance on "The Golden Girls" in 1986 in the season one episode "It's a Miserable Life" as a judge.  These two were only brief appearances on screen. Charlotte Rae (born Charlotte Rae Lubotsky; April 22, 1926) is an American character actress of stage, comedian, singer and dancer whose career spans six decades. Frank S. Hagney (March 20, 1884 – June 25, 1973) was an Australian actor who appeared in more than 350 Hollywood films between 1919 and 1966.  Most of his film roles were small and uncredited.  Because of his tall and strong appearance, Hagney often played officers or henchmens.  He is perhaps best-known to modern audiences as Mr. Potter's wordless wheelchair pusher in Frank Capra's classic "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946).  Frank Hagney was also a guest star on more than 70 television programs such as "The Cisco Kid", "The Adventures of Kit Carson", "The Lone Ranger", "The Rifleman", "Perry Mason" and "Daniel Boone".  Hagney was married to Edna Shephard. The Facts of Life is an American sitcom and a spin-off of "Diff'rent Strokes" that originally aired on NBC from August 24, 1979, to May 7, 1988, making it one of the longest-running sitcoms of the 1980s.  The series focuses on Edna Garrett (Charlotte Rae) as she becomes a housemother (and after the second season, a dietitian as well) at the fictional Eastland School, an all-female boarding school in Peekskill, New York. William Shakespeare was an actor, playwright, poet, and theatre entrepreneur in London during the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean eras.  He was baptised on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England, in the Holy Trinity Church.  At age 18 he married Anne Hathaway with whom he had three children.  He died in his home town of Stratford on 23 April 1616 at the age of 52.  Though more is known about Shakespeare's life than those of most other Elizabethan and Jacobean writers, few personal biographical facts survive about him, which is unsurprising in the light of his social status as a commoner, the low esteem in which his profession was held, and the general lack of interest of the time in the personal lives of writers.  Information about his life derives from public instead of private documents: vital records, real estate and tax records, lawsuits, records of payments, and references to Shakespeare and his works in printed and hand-written texts.  Nevertheless, hundreds of biographies have been written and more continue to be, most of which rely on inferences and the historical context of the 70 or so hard facts recorded about Shakespeare the man, a technique that sometimes leads to embellishment or unwarranted interpretation of the documented record. Melinda Heather "Mindy" Cohn (born May 20, 1966) is an American actress, voice actress, comedian and singer.  She is known for her role as Natalie Green, the student of Edna Garrett (played by Charlotte Rae) in the long-running sitcom "The Facts of Life", and for being the voice of Velma Dinkley in the "Scooby-Doo" franchise from 2002 to 2015. Mother Knows Best is a 1928 American film directed by John G. Blystone, based on a novel by Edna Ferber, fictionalizing the life of vaudevillian Elsie Janis.  The film was Fox's first real talkie, using the Movietone sound system which had been used for sound effects in "Sunrise", although it still contained silent sections.  The sound sections were directed by actor Charles Judels.  The film starred Madge Bellamy, with Louise Dresser as her domineering mother, Barry Norton, and Albert Gran. Diff'rent Strokes is an American sitcom that aired on NBC from November 3, 1978, to May 4, 1985, and on ABC from September 27, 1985, to March 7, 1986.  The series stars Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges as Arnold and Willis Jackson, two African American boys from Harlem who are taken in by a rich white Park Avenue businessman and widower named Phillip Drummond (Conrad Bain) and his daughter Kimberly (Dana Plato), for whom their deceased mother previously worked.  During the first season and first half of the second season, Charlotte Rae also starred as the Drummonds' housekeeper, Mrs. Garrett (who ultimately spun off into her own successful sitcom, "The Facts of Life").
Answer: Edna Garrett (Charlotte Rae)