Richard Pryor

Friday, 14 December 2012

Richard Pryor Live And Smokin' (1971) FULL LENGTH

Richard Pryor owns at his own roast! part 1/2

The Richard Pryor Show - Stand Up (1 of 4)

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Aladdin, Las Vegas
Planet Hollywood Las Vegas, previously known as The Aladdin, is a casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip, in the unincorporated locale of Paradise, Nevada, United States. Hilton Hotels operates the condo portion of the property, known as Elara.
Planet Hollywood is owned by Caesars Entertainment Corp. In April 2010, Total Rewards replaced the "A-List" Player rewards card at Planet Hollywood.
The Tally-Ho was originally opened in 1963. In 1964, it was renamed King's Crown and failed after six months, when it was denied a gaming license. In 1966, it was purchased by Milton Prell, and the hotel got a $3 million renovation, including a new 500-seat "Baghdad Theater" showroom. Prell turned the English-themed hotel into an Arabian Nights theme, but kept the original Tudor style room wings. A serrated canopy and a $750,000 15-story "Aladdin's Lamp" sign were added.
The Aladdin opened on March 31, 1966, with flower petals pouring from the ceiling and onto guests as they entered the hall. The opening entertainment included comedian Jackie Mason, the "Jet Set Revue," a musical review that showcased The Three Cheers and the Petite Rockette Dancers in the Baghdad Theatre. Prell introduced an innovative main showroom policy by offering three completely different shows twice nightly with no cover or minimum charges.

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Berkeley, California
Berkeley ( /ˈbɜrkliː/ BURK-lee) is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington. The eastern city limits coincide with the county line (bordering Contra Costa County), which generally follows the ridge line of the Berkeley Hills. Berkeley is located in northern Alameda County. The population was 112,580 at the 2010 census. The city is named after Bishop George Berkeley.
Berkeley is the site of the University of California, Berkeley, the oldest of the University of California system, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It is also home to the Graduate Theological Union. The city is noted as one of the most politically liberal in the nation, with one study placing it as the third most liberal city in the United States.
The site of today's City of Berkeley was the territory of the Chochenyo/Huchiun band of the Ohlone people when the first Europeans arrived. Evidence of their existence in the area include pits in rock formations, which they used to grind acorns, and a shellmound, now mostly leveled and covered up, along the shoreline of San Francisco Bay at the mouth of Strawberry Creek. Other artifacts were discovered in the 1950s in the downtown area during remodeling of a commercial building, near the upper course of the creek.

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Encino, California
Encino (Spanish for evergreen or holm oak) is a hilly district of the city of Los Angeles, California, United States. Specifically, it is located in the central portion of the southern San Fernando Valley and on the north slope of the Santa Monica Mountains. It derives its name from the Rancho Los Encinos (Ranch of the Evergreens), a parcel of land given to three Mission Indians by the Mexican government following its secularization of the California missions beginning in 1834. Rancho Encino was established in 1845.
The portion of the Los Angeles River that runs through the Encino area is one of only two unpaved areas necessitated by the high water table.^{[clarification needed]} The original aquifer that fed the city of Los Angeles is the one located below Encino.
Encino is bordered by Tarzana on the west, the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area on the north, Sherman Oaks on the east, and the Encino Reservoir of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power on the south. The district's boundaries are roughly Mulholland Drive on the south, Lindley Avenue on the west, Victory Boulevard on the north, and the San Diego Freeway on the east. Major thoroughfares include Ventura, Magnolia and Burbank Boulevards, as well as White Oak Avenue, Balboa Boulevard, Haskell Avenue and Hayvenhurst Avenue.

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Germany
Germany (ⁱ/ˈdʒɜrməni/), officially the Federal Republic of Germany (German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pronounced [ˈbʊndəsʁepuˌbliːk ˈdɔʏtʃlant] ( listen)), is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km² and has a largely temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants, it is the most populous member state and the largest economy in the European Union. It is one of the major political powers of the European continent and a technological leader in many fields.
A region named Germania, inhabited by several Germanic peoples, was documented before AD 100. During the Migration Period, the Germanic tribes expanded southward, and established successor kingdoms throughout much of Europe. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation while southern and western parts remained dominated by Roman Catholic denominations, with the two factions clashing in the Thirty Years' War, marking the beginning of the Catholic–Protestant divide that has characterized German society ever since. Occupied during the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of Pan-Germanism inside the German Confederation resulted in the unification of most of the German states into the German Empire in 1871 which was Prussian dominated. After the German Revolution of 1918–1919 and the subsequent military surrender in World War I, the Empire was replaced by the Weimar Republic in 1918, and partitioned in the Treaty of Versailles. Amidst the Great Depression, the Third Reich was proclaimed in 1933. The latter period was marked by Fascism and World War II. After 1945, Germany was divided by allied occupation, and evolved into two states, East Germany and West Germany. In 1990 Germany was reunified.

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Kennedy Center
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (on the building itself called the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, and commonly referred to as the Kennedy Center) is a performing arts center located on the Potomac River, adjacent to the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. The Center, which opened on September 8, 1971, produces and presents theater, dance, ballet, orchestral, chamber, jazz, popular, and folk music, in addition to multi-media performances for all ages.
It is the busiest performing arts facility in the United States and annually hosts approximately 2,000 performances for audiences totaling nearly two million; Center-related touring productions, television, and radio broadcasts welcome 20 million more. Now in its 40th season, the Center presents the greatest examples of music, dance and theater; supports artists in the creation of new work; and serves the nation as a leader in arts education. With its artistic affiliate, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Center's achievements as a commissioner, producer, and nurturer of developing artists have resulted in over 200 theatrical productions, dozens of new ballets, operas, and musical works.

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Las Vegas Valley
The Las Vegas Valley is a metropolitan area in the southern part of the US state of Nevada, and is the heart of the Las Vegas–Paradise, NV MSA also known as the Las Vegas–Paradise–Henderson MSA which includes all of Clark County, Nevada. The Valley is defined by the Las Vegas Valley landform, a 600 sq mi (1,600 km²) basin area that contains the largest concentration of people in the state. The history of the Valley significantly intertwines with the history of the city of Las Vegas and one of the two primary cities (as used by the census bureau) in the MSA, with the other being Paradise. The valley is home to the three largest incorporated cities in Nevada: Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas.
The names Las Vegas and Vegas are used to indicate the valley, the strip, the city and are used as a brand by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and used to denominate the entire region. The metropolitan area's population was at 741,459 in 1990. The population was approximately 2 million in 2010 (estimated). The valley is an area generally defined by the Spring Mountains on the west, Sheep Mountains to the north, Muddy Mountains and Lake Mead to the east, and the Black Mountains to the south.^{[citation needed]}

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New York
New York (/njuː ˈjɔrk/; locally IPA: [nɪu ˈjɔək] or [nuː ˈjɔɹk] ( listen)) is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. New York is the 27th most extensive, the 3rd most populous, and the 7th most densely populated of the 50 United States. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east. The state has a maritime border with Rhode Island east of Long Island, as well as an international border with the Canadian provinces of Ontario to the west and north, and Quebec to the north. The state of New York is often referred to as New York State to distinguish it from New York City.
New York City, with a population of over 8.1 million, is the most populous city in the United States. Alone, it makes up over 40 percent of the population of New York state. It is known for its status as a center for finance and culture and for its status as the largest gateway for immigration to the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, New York City is also a destination of choice for many foreign visitors. Both the state and city were named for the 17th century Duke of York, James Stuart, future James II and VII of England and Scotland.

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United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe. The country includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea.
The United Kingdom is a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system, with its seat of government in the capital city of London. It is a country in its own right and consists of four countries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There are three devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff, the capitals of Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Associated with the UK, but not constitutionally part of it, are three Crown Dependencies. The United Kingdom has fourteen overseas territories. These are remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in 1922, encompassed almost a quarter of the world's land surface and was the largest empire in history. British influence can still be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former territories.

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United States
The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.

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Village Gate
The Village Gate was a nightclub at the corner of Thompson and Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, New York. Art D'Lugoff opened the club in 1958, on the ground floor and basement of 158 Bleecker Street. The large 1896 Chicago School structure by architect Ernest Flagg was known at the time as Mills House No. 1 and served as a flophouse for transient men. In its heyday, the Village Gate also included an upper-story performance space, known as the Top of the Gate.
Throughout its 38 years the Village Gate featured such musicians as John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, Vasant Rai, Nina Simone, Herbie Mann and Aretha Franklin, who made her first New York appearance there. The show Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, debuted at the Village Gate in 1968.

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Adam Sandler
Adam Richard Sandler (born September 9, 1966) is an American actor, comedian, screenwriter, musician and film producer. After becoming a Saturday Night Live cast member, Sandler went on to star in several Hollywood feature films that grossed over $100 million at the box office. He is best known for his comedic roles, such as in the films Billy Madison (1995), Happy Gilmore (1996), The Waterboy (1998), Big Daddy (1999), and Mr. Deeds (2002), though he has ventured into more dramatic territory. In 1999, Sandler founded Happy Madison, a film and television production company that has produced numerous films and developed the 2007 television series Rules of Engagement.
Adam Sandler was born in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish parents, Stanley, an electrical engineer, and Judy Sandler, a nursery school teacher. When he was five, his family moved to Manchester, New Hampshire, where he attended Manchester Central High School. He found he was a natural comic, and nurtured his talent while at New York University by performing regularly in clubs and on campuses. Sandler graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts in 1988.

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Al Bell
Al Bell (born Alvertis Isbell on March 15, 1940 in Brinkley, Arkansas, USA ) is an American record producer, songwriter, and record executive. Bell is best known as one of the key figures behind and a co-owner of Memphis, Tennessee-based Stax Records during the later half of the label's nineteen-year existence. A former disc jockey in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas, Bell was vital to the careers of Stax's soul stars such as The Staples Singers and Isaac Hayes, The Emotions, The Dramatics, and Mel and Tim. Bell's promotional efforts drove the “Memphis Sound” internationally, and made Stax the second-largest African American-owned business in the 1970s. In 2009, the BBC profiled Bell as "one of the icons of soul music" and "the driving force behind Stax Records"
Following his career at Stax, Bell became President of Motown Records Group during its restructuring for sale to MCA and Boston Ventures Group, and later started his own label, Bellmark, whose releases included Tag Team's single “Whoomp! (There It Is)” (1993). Today, Bell works in the independent music scene in Memphis, as well as maintaining an online music website and radio show at AlBellPresents.com

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Al Jackson, Jr.
Al Jackson, Jr. (November 27, 1935 – October 1, 1975) was a drummer, producer, and songwriter. He is best known as a founding member of Booker T. & the M.G.'s, a group of session musicians who worked for Stax Records and produced their own instrumentals. Jackson was called "The Human Timekeeper" for his drumming ability.
Jackson's father, Al Jackson Sr., led a jazz/swing dance band in Memphis, Tennessee. The young Jackson started drumming at an early age and began playing on stage with his father's band in 1940 at the age of five. He later played in producer/trumpeter Willie Mitchell's band and at the same time was holding down a chair in the popular Ben Branch Band. Future band mates Steve Cropper and Donald "Duck" Dunn first saw Jackson playing in Mitchell's band at the all-white Manhattan Club.
In an interview with DRUM! Magazine, Mitchell says,
"Al Junior was about 14 years old then. I said to his father, 'Hey, let’s use your son!' He said, 'Oh, man, he can’t play this sh*t!' But he did make the gig. He set up his kit – a cymbal, a snare drum, and a bass drum – and I kicked the thing off. And, man, that thing went off at 20 tempos! But that was around 7:00 o'clock. And by the time Al Senior came in an hour later, at 8:00 o'clock, Al Jackson Jr. was swinging that damn band like a pro."

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Alan Alda
Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo (born January 28, 1936), better known as Alan Alda, is an American actor, director, screenwriter, and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he is best known for his role as Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook School of Journalism and a member of the advisory board of The Center for Communicating Science.
In 1996, Alda was ranked #41 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.
Alda was born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo in The Bronx, New York City. His father, Robert Alda (born Alphonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D'Abruzzo), was an actor and singer, and his mother, Joan Browne, was a former showgirl. His father was of Italian descent and his mother was of Irish ancestry. His adopted surname, "Alda," is a portmanteau of ALphonso and D'Abruzzo. When Alda was seven years old, he contracted Poliomyelitis. To combat the disease, his parents administered a painful treatment regimen developed by Sister Elizabeth Kenny that consisted of applying hot woolen blankets to his limbs and stretching his muscles. Alda attended Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, New York. In 1956, he received his Bachelor of Science degree in English from Fordham College of Fordham University in the Bronx, where he was a student staff member of its FM radio station, WFUV. Alda's half-brother, Antony Alda, was born the same year and would also become an actor.

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Albert King
Albert King (April 25, 1923 – December 21, 1992) was an American blues guitarist and singer, and a major influence in the world of blues guitar playing.
One of the "Three Kings of the Blues Guitar" (along with B.B. King and Freddie King), Albert King stood 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) (some reports say 6 ft 7 in (2.01 m)) and weighed 250 pounds (110 kg) and was known as "The Velvet Bulldozer". He was born Albert Nelson on a cotton plantation in Indianola, Mississippi. Although unrelated, Albert occasionally referred to himself as "B.B. King's half brother". During his childhood he would sing at a family gospel group at a church where his father played the guitar. One of 13 children, King grew up picking cotton on plantations near Forrest City, Arkansas, where the family moved when he was eight.
He began his professional work as a musician with a group called In The Groove Boys in Osceola, Arkansas. Moving north to Gary, Indiana and later St. Louis, Missouri, he briefly played drums for Jimmy Reed's band and on several early Reed recordings. Influenced by blues musicians Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lonnie Johnson, but also, interestingly enough, Hawaiian music, the electric guitar became his signature instrument, his preference being the Gibson Flying V which he named "Lucy". King earned his nickname "The Velvet Bulldozer" during this period as he drove one of them and also worked as a mechanic to make a living.

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Angie Stone
Angie Stone (born Angela Laverne Brown on December 18, 1961) is an American R&B and soul singer-songwriter, record producer, and occasional actress. She has been nominated for three Grammy Awards. She has been most successful on the R&B charts, with four Top 10 albums, including a number one album, and ten singles, including a Top 10. She has sold over 1.4 millions albums in the U.S. and over 5 millions albums worldwide.
Stone was born in Columbia, South Carolina, where she began singing gospel music at First Nazareth Baptist Church, under the leadership of Reverend Blakely N. Scott.
She has a daughter and son. Her daughter Diamond (born 1984) is from her marriage to Rodney Stone (also known as Lil' Rodney C!, from the hip hop group Funky Four Plus One). Diamond contributed background vocals to her 2007 song "Baby", and gave birth to Stone's grandson in 2008. During the 1990s Stone dated neo soul singer D'Angelo. Their son Michael was born in 1998. Stone lives in Atlanta, Georgia with Michael and fiancé Ashanti, an airline auditor who has two children of his own.

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Armen Keteyian
Armen Keteyian (born March 6, 1953) is an American television journalist and author. He is currently CBS News' Chief Investigative Correspondent based out of New York, reporting primarily for the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley, while also contributing to 60 Minutes.
Keteyian was born in Detroit, Michigan of Armenian descent. A 11-time Emmy award winner Armen Keteyian was named CBS News' Chief Investigative Correspondent in March 2006 after spending nine years as a Sportscaster for HBO and CBS Sports. Keteyian is a 1971 graduate of Bloomfield Hills Lahser High School in Bloomfield Hills, MI and graduated cum laude from San Diego State University with a BA degree in journalism in 1976.
Keteyian began his journalism career as a sports and feature writer in San Diego, freelancing for the San Diego Union-Tribune and San Diego Magazine (1980–82) after spending two years at the Times-Advocate in Escondido (1978–80). He then joined NBC Sports as a reporter and producer, working on a wide range of programming, including the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul.

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Artie Lange
Arthur Steven "Artie" Lange, Jr. (born October 11, 1967) is an American actor, comedian and radio personality best known for his tenures with the The Howard Stern Show and the comedy sketch series MADtv.
Lange performed his first stand-up comedy routine at 19 years of age. He took up work as a longshoreman to help support his family, following the death of his quadriplegic father. In 1995, Lange starred in the first season of MADtv before leaving halfway through the second due to cocaine abuse and his subsequent arrest. After a period of rehabilitation, Lange featured in Dirty Work with Norm MacDonald, who brought Lange into the second season of his sitcom, The Norm Show. In 2001, Lange replaced Jackie Martling on The Howard Stern Show and stayed until late 2009, before a suicide attempt in early 2010 led to an eight-month stay in a psychiatric ward. Lange has released recordings of comedy performances – It's the Whiskey Talkin' (2004) and Jack and Coke (2009). He co-wrote, produced and starred in his film Artie Lange's Beer League in 2006, and co-wrote, with Anthony Bozza, the book Too Fat to Fish in 2008, which entered The New York Times Best Seller list at number one. In 2011, Lange returned to radio with Nick DiPaolo to co-host The Nick and Artie show.

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Barry Michael Harman
Barry Michael Harman (b. 14 March 1952; Brooklyn, New York) is an American writer and producer for television, and a Tony nominated book writer and lyricist for the Broadway theater. He wrote and directed the Broadway musical Romance/Romance, which starred Scott Bakula and Alison Fraser, and which received five Tony nominations (including Best Musical, Best Lyrics and Best Book), four Outer Critics Circle Awards and a Drama Desk nomination for Best Lyrics. His off-Broadway musical Olympus On My Mind won him an Outer Critics Award for Best Lyrics and received three Drama Desk nominations. His work in TV includes winning Emmy Awards on his first professional job, working a staff writer on The Carol Burnett Show. He won an Emmy Award for an episode of All In The Family, and he also co-wrote the premiere episode of The Jeffersons.
Barry Michael Harman at the Internet Movie Database

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Bernie Mac
Bernard Jeffrey McCullough (October 5, 1957 – August 9, 2008), better known by his stage name, Bernie Mac, was an American actor and comedian. Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Mac gained popularity as a stand-up comedian. He joined comedians Steve Harvey, Cedric the Entertainer, and D. L. Hughley as The Original Kings of Comedy.
After briefly hosting the HBO show Midnight Mac, Mac appeared in several films in smaller roles. His most noted film role was as Frank Catton in the remake Ocean's Eleven and the titular character of Mr. 3000. He was the star of The Bernie Mac Show, which ran from 2001 through 2006, earning him two Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. His other films included starring roles in Booty Call, Friday, The Players Club, Head of State, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, Bad Santa, Guess Who, Pride, Soul Men, Transformers and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.
Mac suffered from sarcoidosis, a disease in which abnormal collections of chronic inflammatory cells (granulomas) form as nodules in multiple organs, particularly the lungs and lymph nodes. Lung scarring or infection may lead to respiratory failure and death. Mac had said the condition was in remission in 2005. His death on August 9, 2008 was caused by complications from pneumonia.

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Big Star
Big Star was an American rock band formed in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1971 by Alex Chilton, Chris Bell, Jody Stephens and Andy Hummel. The group broke up in 1974, but reorganized with a new line-up nearly 20 years later. In its first era, the band's musical style drew on the work of British Invasion groups including The Beatles and The Kinks, as well as The Byrds, The Beach Boys, and other US acts. To the resulting power pop, Big Star added dark, nihilistic themes, and produced a style that foreshadowed the alternative rock of the 1980s and 1990s. Before it broke up, Big Star created a "seminal body of work that never stopped inspiring succeeding generations" in the words of Rolling Stone, as the "quintessential American power pop band" and "one of the most mythic and influential cult acts in all of rock & roll".
Big Star's first album—1972's #1 Record—was met by enthusiastic reviews, but ineffective marketing by Stax Records and limited distribution stunted its commercial success. Frustration took its toll on band relations, and by the time a second album was completed in January 1974 both Bell and Hummel had left the group. Like #1 Record, Radio City received excellent reviews, but label issues again thwarted sales—Columbia Records, which had assumed control of the Stax catalog, likewise effectively vetoed its distribution. After a third album was deemed non-commercially viable and shelved before receiving a title, the band broke up late in 1974. Four years later, the first two Big Star LPs were released together as a double album. The band's third album was finally issued soon afterward; entitled Third/Sister Lovers, it found limited commercial success. Shortly thereafter, Chris Bell was tragically killed in a car accident at the age of 27.

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Bill Hicks
William Melvin "Bill" Hicks (December 16, 1961 – February 26, 1994) was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, and musician. His material largely consisted of general discussions about society, religion, politics, philosophy, and personal issues. Hicks' material was often controversial and steeped in dark comedy. In both his stand-up performances and during interviews, he often criticized consumerism, superficiality, mediocrity, and banality within the media and popular culture, describing them as oppressive tools of the ruling class, meant to "keep people stupid and apathetic".
Hicks was 16 years old when he started performing stand-up comedy at the Comedy Workshop in Houston, Texas, in 1978. During the 1980s he toured the United States extensively and performed a number of high profile television appearances. It was in the UK, however, where Hicks first amassed a significant fan base, packing large venues with his 1991 tour. Hicks died of pancreatic cancer in 1994 at the age of 32. In the years after his death, his work and legacy achieved acclaim in creative circles. In 2007 he was voted the fourth-greatest stand-up comic on the UK's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups on Channel 4, and appeared again in the updated 2010 list as the fourth-greatest comic.

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Billy Crystal
William Edward "Billy" Crystal (born March 14, 1948) is an American actor, writer, producer, comedian, and film director. He gained prominence in the 1970s for playing Jodie Dallas on the ABC sitcom Soap and became a Hollywood film star during the late 1980s and 1990s, appearing in the critical and box office successes When Harry Met Sally... and City Slickers. He has hosted the Academy Awards nine times, including the 84th Academy Awards in 2012.
Crystal was born in the Doctor's Hospital in Manhattan and raised on Long Island in Long Beach, the son of Helen (née Gabler), a housewife, and Jack Crystal, a record company executive and jazz producer who also owned and operated the Commodore Record store. His babysitter was occasionally Billie Holiday. His uncle was musician and songwriter Milt Gabler, and his brother, Richard "Rip" Crystal, is a television producer. Crystal grew up in a Jewish family that he has described as "large" and "loving".
After graduation from Long Beach High School, Crystal attended Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia on a baseball scholarship, having learned the game from his father, who pitched for St. John's University. Crystal never played a game at Marshall because the program was suspended during his freshman year, and because he was too busy being the Editor in Chief of The BG News from 1969–70. He did not return to Marshall as a sophomore, staying back in New York with his future wife. He instead attended Nassau Community College and later New York University, where he graduated in 1970 with a BFA from its Tisch School of the Arts.

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Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan ( /ˈdɪlən/), born Robert Allen Zimmerman on May 24, 1941, is an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist. He has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly reluctant figurehead of social unrest. A number of Dylan's early songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", became anthems for the US civil rights and anti-war movements. Leaving his initial base in the culture of folk music behind, Dylan's six-minute single "Like a Rolling Stone" has been described as radically altering the parameters of popular music in 1965. However, his recordings employing electric instruments attracted denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement.
Dylan's lyrics incorporated a variety of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed hugely to the then burgeoning counterculture. Initially inspired by the songs of Woody Guthrie,Robert Johnson, and Hank Williams, as well as the music and performance styles of Buddy Holly and Little Richard, Dylan has both amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning fifty years, has explored numerous distinct traditions in American song—from folk, blues and country to gospel, rock and roll, and rockabilly to English, Scottish, and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and swing.

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Bob Newhart
George Robert "Bob" Newhart (born September 5, 1929), is an American stand-up comedian and actor. Noted for his deadpan and slightly stammering delivery, Newhart came to prominence in the 1960s when his album of comedic monologues The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart was a worldwide bestseller and reached #1 on the Billboard pop music charts—it remains the 20th best-selling comedy album in history. The follow-up album, The Button-Down Mind Strikes Back! was also a massive success, and both albums held the Billboard #1 and #2 spots simultaneously, a feat unequaled until the 1991 release of Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II by hard rock band Guns N' Roses.
Newhart later went into acting, starring in two long-running and prize-winning situation comedies, first as psychologist Dr. Robert "Bob" Hartley on the 1970s sitcom The Bob Newhart Show and then as innkeeper Dick Loudon on the 1980s sitcom Newhart. He also had a third, short-lived sitcom in the nineties titled Bob. Newhart also appeared in film roles such as Major Major in Catch-22, and Papa Elf in Elf. He provided the voice of Bernard in the Walt Disney animated films The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under. One of his most recent roles is the library head Judson in The Librarian. In 2011, Newhart appeared in the film Horrible Bosses.

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Bob Schiller
Bob Schiller (b. November 8, 1918) is an American screenwriter, most notably for the television series I Love Lucy (1955-1957) and All in the Family (1977-1979). For the latter series, he received an Emmy Award in 1978 as one of the writers of the episode "Cousin Liz".
Schiller, born in San Francisco, California, began writing for television in 1950. His credits include the 1955 CBS sitcom Professional Father, starring Stephen Dunne as a child psychologist and Barbara Billingsley as his wife. That same year, he wrote for two competing series, NBC's The Jimmy Durante Show and CBS's It's Always Jan, starring Janis Paige as a widowed single mother in New York City. During 1954-1955, Schiller was one of the writers for the CBS sitcom That's My Boy, starring Eddie Mayehoff and Gil Stratton.
Schiller's producing credits include the CBS sitcoms The Good Guys and All's Fair.
Bob Schiller at the Internet Movie Database

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Bob Weiskopf
Bob Weiskopf (13 March 1914; Chicago, Illinois – 20 February 2001; Los Angeles, California) was an American screenwriter and producer for television. He has credits for I Love Lucy which he and his writing partner Bob Schiller joined in the fifth season. They also wrote for The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Maude, All in the Family (for which he won a 1978 Emmy for co-writing the episode "Cousin Liz"), Archie Bunker's Place, The Red Skelton Show, the short-lived Pete and Gladys, and Sanford (the spin-off of Sanford and Son).

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Booker T. Jones
Booker T. Jones (born November 12, 1944) is a multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, record producer and arranger, best known as the frontman of the band Booker T. & the M.G.'s. He has also worked in the studios with many well-known artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, earning him a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement.
Booker T. Jones was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1944. He was named in honor of Booker T. Washington, but unlike Washington (whose middle name was Taliaferro), Jones was only given the middle initial "T": "Booker T. Jones" is his full name.
Jones was a prodigy, playing the oboe, saxophone, trombone, and piano at school and serving as organist at his church. He attended Booker T. Washington High School, the alma mater of Rufus Thomas and shared the hallowed halls with future stars like Isaac Hayes's writing partner David Porter; saxophonist Andrew Love of The Memphis Horns; soul singer/songwriter William Bell and Earth, Wind, & Fire's Maurice White.
Jones's first entry into professional music came at age sixteen, when he played baritone saxophone on Satellite (soon to be Stax) Records' first hit, "Cause I Love You", by Rufus Thomas and Carla Thomas.

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Cactus Pryor
Richard "Cactus" Pryor (January 7, 1923 – August 30, 2011) was an American broadcaster. He received his nickname after the old Cactus Theater on Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas, which was run by his father, "Skinny" Pryor.
His son, Don Pryor, works on the News Team at Austin Radio News Station 590 KLBJ, working as a Mid-Day sky-watch traffic broadcaster, and occasionally filled in for his father when he was unavailable for his segments. Another of Cactus's son, Paul Pryor, once worked in Austin radio as well.
Pryor was first heard on Lady Bird Johnson's radio station 590 KLBJ, though his face became as well known as his voice once he moved to television broadcasting on Austin television station KTBC.
In addition to his work in radio and television, Pryor also appeared in two movies, Hellfighters and The Green Berets with John Wayne. He is the author of a 1995 collection of some 40 essays entitled Playback. At KTBC, Pryor served as programming manager and hosted a variety of shows. He conducted interviews with celebrities such as Arthur Godfrey and Dan Blocker and narrated behind-the-scenes programs about KTBC.

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Carl Reiner
Carl Reiner (born March 20, 1922) is an American actor, film director, producer, writer and comedian. He has won nine Emmy Awards and one Grammy Award during his career.
Reiner was born in the Bronx, New York, the son of Bessie (née Mathias) and Irving Reiner, who was a watchmaker. His parents were Jewish immigrants, his father from Romania and his mother from Austria. When he was sixteen, his older brother Charlie read in the New York Daily News about a free dramatic workshop being put on by the Works Progress Administration and told him about it. He had been working as a machinist fixing sewing machines. He credits Charlie with changing his career plans.
Reiner performed in several Broadway musicals, including Inside U.S.A., and Alive and Kicking, and had the lead role in Call Me Mister. In 1950, he was cast by producer Max Leibman in Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, appearing on air in skits while also working alongside writers such as Mel Brooks and Neil Simon. He also worked on Caesar's Hour with Brooks, Simon, Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin, Mike Stewart, Aaron Ruben, Sheldon Keller and Gary Belkin.

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Carla Thomas
Carla Thomas (born December 21, 1942, Memphis, Tennessee) is an American singer, who is often referred to as the Queen of Memphis Soul. She is the daughter of Rufus Thomas.
Carla Thomas was born on December 21, 1942, in the Foote Homes Housing Project in Memphis, Tennessee. Her parents, Rufus and Lorene Thomas, brought three musically gifted children into this world: Carla, Marvell and Vaneese. Despite growing up in the projects, the Thomas family lived in close proximity to the locally celebrated Palace Theater on world-famous Beale Street, as Rufus was the theater’s emcee for their amateur shows. This access not only gave Thomas her first taste of the music world but it also provided a springboard for her transformation into the Queen of the Memphis Sound.
In Memphis, the African American centered WDIA radio station sponsored a rotating musical group of high school students called the Teen Town Singers; notable alumni include Anita Louis and Isaac Hayes. Although the requirements to join the Teen Town Singers stated that the person should be of high school age, Thomas became a member in 1952 at the age of 10. She was able to sneak into their ranks thanks to the fact that her father Rufus was an on-air personality for the radio station. This opportunity with the Teen Town Singers did not come without its drawbacks though. As a 10 year old student, Thomas was responsible for not only attending classes and completing her schoolwork, but she also had to attend rehearsals on Wednesdays and Fridays after school and then perform at the station on Saturday. However, despite this grueling schedule, Thomas thoroughly enjoyed the experience. According to her, “It was a lot of fun, it really was.” She remained with the Teen Town Singers up until the end of her senior year.

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Carol Burnett
Carol Creighton Burnett (born April 26, 1933) is an American actress, comedian, singer, dancer and writer. Burnett started her career in New York. After becoming a hit on Broadway, she made her television debut. After successful appearances on The Garry Moore Show, Burnett moved to Los Angeles and began an eleven-year run on The Carol Burnett Show which was aired on CBS television from 1967 to 1978. With roots in vaudeville, The Carol Burnett Show was a variety show which combined comedy sketches, song, and dance. The comedy sketches included film parodies and character pieces. Burnett created many characters during the show's television run.
Burnett was born in San Antonio, Texas, the daughter of Ina Louise (née Creighton), a publicity writer for movie studios, and Joseph Thomas Burnett, a movie theater manager. Both of her parents suffered from alcoholism, and at a young age she was left with her grandmother, Mabel Eudora White. Her parents divorced in the late 1930s, and Burnett and her grandmother moved to an apartment near her mother’s in an impoverished area of Hollywood. There, they stayed in a boarding house with her younger half-sister Chrissy.

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Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston (born John Charles Carter; October 4, 1923 – April 5, 2008) was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes. He also is well known for his roles in the films The Greatest Show on Earth and Touch of Evil.
Heston was also known for his political activism. In the 1950s and 1960s he was one of a handful of Hollywood actors to speak openly against racism and was an active supporter of the Civil Rights Movement. Initially a moderate Democrat, he later supported conservative Republican policies and was president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 to 2003.
Heston was born John Charles Carter, the son of Lilla (née Charlton; 1899–1994) and Russell Whitford Carter (1897–1966), a sawmill operator. Most sources state that he was born in Evanston, Illinois. Heston's autobiography, however, and some other sources place his birth in No Man's Land, Illinois, which usually refers to a then-unincorporated area now part of Wilmette, a wealthy northern suburb of Chicago. Heston said in a 1995 interview that he was not very good at remembering addresses or his early childhood.

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Chevy Chase
Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase (/ˈtʃɛvi/; born October 8, 1943) is an American comedian, writer, and television and film actor. Born into a prominent New York family, Chase worked a plethora of odd jobs before moving into comedy acting with National Lampoon. He quickly became a key cast member in the inaugural season of Saturday Night Live, where his Weekend Update skit soon became a staple of the show. Chase is also well known for his portrayal of the character Clark Griswold in four National Lampoon's Vacation films, and for his roles in other successful comedies such as Caddyshack (1980), Fletch (1985), and ¡Three Amigos! (1986). He has hosted the Academy Awards twice (1987 and 1988) and briefly had his own late-night talk show, The Chevy Chase Show. Since 2009, he has appeared as Pierce Hawthorne on the NBC comedy series Community.
Chase was born in Lower Manhattan, New York City. His father, Edward Tinsley "Ned" Chase, was a prominent Manhattan book editor and magazine writer. His mother, Cathalene Parker (née Browning), a concert pianist and librettist, was the daughter of Miles Browning, who served a critical role at the Battle of Midway in World War II; she was adopted as a child by her stepfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt Crane, heir to Crane Plumbing, and took the name Cathalene Crane. As a child, Chase vacationed at Castle Hill, the Cranes' summer estate in Ipswich, Massachusetts.^{[citation needed]}

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Cleavon Little
Cleavon Jake Little (June 1, 1939 – October 22, 1992) was an American film and theatre actor.
Little was widely known for his lead role as Sheriff Bart in the 1974 Mel Brooks comedy Blazing Saddles. He also was the irreverent Dr. Jerry Noland in the early 1970s sitcom Temperatures Rising.
In 1978, he played "The Prince of Darkness" in the radio station comedy FM, previously having played the role of radio personality Super Soul in the 1971 action film Vanishing Point. His later work included the 1984 film Toy Soldiers.
Little was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma, and was the brother of singer DeEtta Little, best known for her performance of "Gonna Fly Now", the main theme to Rocky. He grew up in California and attended college initially at San Diego City College, and then at San Diego State University where he earned a bachelor's degree in dramatic arts. After receiving a full scholarship to graduate school at Juilliard he moved to New York. After completing studies at Juilliard, Little trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

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Colin Quinn
Colin Edward Quinn (born June 6, 1959) is an American stand-up comedian and writer best known for his five years in the cast of Saturday Night Live, as the sidekick/announcer of MTV's late 1980s gameshow Remote Control and as host of Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn on Comedy Central from 2002–2004.
Quinn was born in Brooklyn, the son of teachers of Irish descent, and was raised in the Park Slope section of the borough. He attended and graduated from John Dewey High School. His natural idiosyncratic mannerisms are trademarks of his stand-up act, headlining at top comedy clubs across the country, including Caroline's Comedy Club in New York City. Before becoming a comedian, Quinn attended Stony Brook University for a year and worked as a bartender. He stopped drinking in the early 1980s after several bad experiences with alcohol, including drunken blackouts and nights spent in jail.
After quitting bartending, Quinn began his stand-up career in 1984. He first achieved fame in 1987 as co-host of the MTV game show Remote Control, which he did for three years. In 1989, he hosted A&E stand-up showcase Caroline's Comedy Hour, and acted in and wrote the comedic short/music video Going Back to Brooklyn along with Ben Stiller. Much of his early comedy career focused on stand-up and writing for shows like In Living Color. He later co-wrote the story and was an associate producer for the movie Celtic Pride, starring Damon Wayans and Dan Aykroyd.

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Dave Chappelle
David Khari Webber "Dave" Chappelle (/ʃəˈpɛl/; born August 24, 1973) is an American comedian, screenwriter, television/film producer, actor, and artist. Chappelle began his film career in the film Robin Hood: Men in Tights in 1993 and continued to star in minor roles in the films The Nutty Professor, Con Air, and Blue Streak. His first lead role in a film was in Half Baked in 1998. In 2003, he became widely known for his popular sketch comedy television series, Chappelle's Show, which ran until his abrupt retirement from the show in 2005. Chappelle is ranked forty-third in Comedy Central Presents: 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time.
Chappelle was born David Khari Webber Chappelle in Washington, D.C. on August 24, 1973. His father, William David Chappelle III, was a professor at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. His mother, Yvonne (née Reed), was a professor at Howard University, Prince George's Community College, and the University of Maryland and is also a Unitarian Universalist minister. Chappelle grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland and attended Woodlin Elementary School. During young Chappelle's formative years, his comic inspiration came from various comedians, particularly Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor.

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David Letterman
David Michael Letterman (born April 12, 1947) is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC. Letterman recently surpassed friend and mentor Johnny Carson for having the longest late-night hosting career in the United States of America.
Letterman is also a television and film producer. His company Worldwide Pants produces his show as well as its network follow-up The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Worldwide Pants has also produced several prime-time comedies, the most successful of which was Everybody Loves Raymond, currently in syndication.
In 1996, David Letterman was ranked #45 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.
Letterman was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father, Harry Joseph Letterman (April 1915 – February 1973), was a florist of British descent; his mother Dorothy Letterman (née Hofert, now Dorothy Mengering), a Presbyterian church secretary of German descent, is an occasional figure on the show, usually at holidays and birthdays.

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David Lloyd (writer)
David Lloyd (July 7, 1934 – November 10, 2009) was an American screenwriter and producer for television.
He wrote for many popular and award-winning sitcoms, such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Taxi, Cheers, Frasier and Wings. Lloyd wrote the Emmy-winning "Chuckles Bites the Dust", an episode of the long-running Mary Tyler Moore Show. He won an Emmy for "Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series" in 1976.
He was the father of Stephen and Christopher, both of whom are television writers. He also has three other children, Julie, Amy, and Douglas with his wife Arline.
He died on November 10, 2009, aged 75, from prostate cancer at his home in Beverly Hills, California.
The November 18, 2009 episode of Modern Family (which was created by his son Christopher), "Great Expectations", on ABC ended with an "In Memory" screen dedicating the episode to David's life and quoting the famous line from "Chuckles Bites the Dust": "A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants."

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David Lynch
David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, comic book artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery, and meticulous sound design. The surreal, and in many cases violent, elements to his films have earned them the reputation that they "disturb, offend or mystify" their audiences.
Born to a middle class family in Missoula, Montana, Lynch spent his childhood traveling around the United States, before going on to study painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he first made the transition to producing short films. Deciding to devote himself more fully to this medium, he moved to Los Angeles, where he produced his first motion picture, the surrealist horror Eraserhead (1977). After Eraserhead became a cult classic on the midnight movie circuit, Lynch was employed to direct The Elephant Man (1980), from which he gained mainstream success. Then being employed by the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, he proceeded to make two films: the science-fiction epic Dune (1984), which proved to be a critical and commercial failure, and then a neo-noir crime film, Blue Velvet (1986), which was highly critically acclaimed.

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David Niven
James David Graham Niven (1 March 1910 – 29 July 1983), was a British actor and novelist, best known for his roles as Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days and Sir Charles Lytton, a.k.a. "the Phantom", in The Pink Panther. He was awarded the 1958 Academy Award for Best Actor in Separate Tables.
Born in London, Niven attended Heatherdown and Stowe before gaining a place at Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He was gazetted a Lieutenant in the Highland Light Infantry. Having developed an interest in acting, he left the Highland Light Infantry, travelled to Hollywood and had several minor roles in film. He first appeared as an extra in the British film There Goes the Bride (1932). From there, he hired an agent and had several small parts in films from 1933, 1934 and 1935, including a non-speaking part in MGM's Mutiny on the Bounty. This brought him to wider attention within the film industry and he was spotted by Samuel Goldwyn. Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, Niven returned to England, and rejoined the army and was recommissioned as a lieutenant.

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Dean Martin
Dean Martin (born Dino Paul Crocetti; June 7, 1917 – December 25, 1995) was an American singer, film actor, television star and comedian. Martin's hit singles included "Memories Are Made of This", "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "You're Nobody till Somebody Loves You", "Sway", "Volare" and "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?". Nicknamed the "King of Cool", he was one of the members of the "Rat Pack" and a major star in four areas of show business: concert stage/night clubs, recordings, motion pictures, and television.
Martin was born in Steubenville, Ohio, to Italian parents, Gaetano and Angela Crocetti (née Barra). His father was from Montesilvano, Pescara, Abruzzo, Italy, and his mother was an Italian of part Neapolitan and part Sicilian ancestry. Martin was the younger of two sons. His brother was named Bill. Martin spoke only Italian until he started school. He attended Grant Elementary School in Steubenville, and took up the drums as a hobby as a teenager. He was the target of much ridicule for his broken English and ultimately dropped out of Steubenville High School in the 10th grade because he thought that he was smarter than his teachers. He delivered bootleg liquor, served as a speakeasy croupier, was a blackjack dealer, worked in a steel mill and boxed as welterweight. He grew up a neighbor to Jimmy the Greek.

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Deborah Mcguire
Deborah McGuire (sometimes credited as Debora McGuire) is an American actress.
She is probably best known for appearing as SuperEula in the sexploitation-satire film Supervixens (1975), directed by Russ Meyer.
She was married to actor and comedian Richard Pryor from September 22, 1977, to August 1978.

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Denis Leary
Denis Colin Leary (born August 18, 1957) is an American actor, comedian, writer and director. Leary is known for his biting, fast paced comedic style and chain smoking. He is the star and co-creator of the television show Rescue Me, which ended its seventh and final season on September 7, 2011.
Leary was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, the son of Irish Catholic immigrants. His mother, Nora (née Sullivan), was a maid, and his father, John Leary, was an auto mechanic. As both of his parents are from Killarney, County Kerry, Ireland, Leary holds both Irish and U.S. citizenship. Through marriage, Leary is a third cousin of talk show host Conan O'Brien. He attended Saint Peter-Marian High School, in Worcester.
Leary is a graduate of Emerson College, in Boston. While at Emerson, he met fellow comic Mario Cantone, whom to this day Leary considers his closest friend. Comedian Steven Wright and actress Gina Gershon also attended Emerson at the same time as Leary.^{[citation needed]} At the school, he founded the Emerson Comedy Workshop, a troupe that continues on-campus as of 2011. After graduating with the Emerson Class of 1979, he took a job at the school teaching comedy writing classes and maintained the job for five years. Leary received an honorary doctorate and spoke briefly at his alma mater's undergraduate commencement ceremony on May 16, 2005; he is thus credited as "Dr. Denis Leary" on the cover of his 2009 book, Why We Suck.

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Diana Ross
Diana Ernestine Earle Ross (born March 26, 1944) is an American singer, record producer, and actress.
Diana Ross was lead singer of the Motown group The Supremes during the 1960s. After leaving the group in 1970, Ross began a solo career that has included successful ventures into film and Broadway. She received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her role as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues (1972), for which she won a Golden Globe award. She has won seven American Music Awards, was honored with a 2012 Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award, and won a Tony Award for her one-woman show, An Evening with Diana Ross, in 1977.
In 1976, Billboard magazine named her the "Female Entertainer of the Century." In 1993, the Guinness Book of World Records declared Diana Ross the most successful female music artist in history due to her success in the United States and United Kingdom for having more hits than any female artist in the charts with a career total of 18 number one records in the United States. Diana Ross has sold more than 100 million records worldwide.

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Dick Gregory
Richard Claxton "Dick" Gregory (born October 12, 1932 in St. Louis, Missouri) is an American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur.
Gregory is an influential American comic who has used his performance skills to convey to both white and black audiences his political message on civil rights. His social satire helped change the way white Americans perceived African American comedians since he first performed in public.
As a poor student who excelled at running, Gregory was aided by teachers at Sumner High School, among them Warren St. James. Gregory earned a track scholarship to Southern Illinois University Carbondale. There he set school records as a half-miler and miler. His college career was interrupted for two years in 1954 when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. The army was where he got his start in comedy, entering and winning several Army talent shows at the urging of his commanding officer, who had taken notice of Gregory's penchant for joking. In 1956, Gregory briefly returned to SIU after his discharge, but dropped out because he felt that the university "didn't want me to study, they wanted me to run".

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Donald "Duck" Dunn
Donald “Duck” Dunn (November 24, 1941 – May 13, 2012) was an American bass guitarist, session musician, record producer, and songwriter. Dunn was notable for his 1960s recordings with Booker T. & the M.G.'s and as a session bassist for Stax Records, which specialized in blues and gospel-infused southern soul and Memphis soul music styles. Dunn also performed on recordings with The Blues Brothers, Muddy Waters, Freddie King, Albert King, Levon Helm, Neil Young, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Wilson Pickett, Sam & Dave, Guy Sebastian, Rod Stewart, Bob Dylan, Roy Buchanan, Steely Dan and Arthur Conley.
Dunn was born in Memphis, Tennessee. His father nicknamed him "Duck" while watching Disney cartoons with him one day. Dunn grew up playing sports and riding his bike with fellow future professional musician Steve Cropper. After Cropper began playing guitar with mutual friend Charlie Freeman, Dunn decided to pick up the bass guitar. Eventually, along with drummer Terry Johnson, the four became "The Royal Spades". The Messick High School group picked up keyboardist Jerry "Smoochy" Smith, singer Ronnie Angel (also known as Stoots), and a budding young horn section in baritone saxophone player Don Nix, tenor saxophone player Charles "Packy" Axton, and trumpeter (and future co-founder of The Memphis Horns) Wayne Jackson.

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Douglas Sirk
Douglas Sirk (born Hans Detlef Sierck; April 26, 1897 – January 14, 1987) was a Danish-German film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas in the 1950s.
Sirk was born Hans Detlef Sierck in Hamburg, Germany to Danish parents. He was raised in Denmark, but later moved to Germany as a teenager. He spread his education over three universities. He started his career in 1922 in the theatre of the Weimar Republic, including the direction of an early production of The Threepenny Opera. He joined UFA (Universum Film AG) in 1934, but left Germany in 1937 because of his political leanings and Jewish wife. On arrival in the United States, he soon changed his German name. By 1942 he was in Hollywood, directing the stridently anti-Nazi Hitler's Madman.
He made his name with a series of lush, colorful melodramas for Universal-International Pictures from 1952 to 1958: Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Written on the Wind (1956), and Imitation of Life (1959). But it was at the pinnacle of his high-profile accomplishments as Universal's most successful director that he left the United States and filmmaking. He died in Lugano, Switzerland nearly thirty years later, with only a brief and obscure return behind the camera in Germany in the 1970s.

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Dudley Moore
Dudley Stuart John Moore, CBE (19 April 1935 – 27 March 2002) was an English actor, comedian, composer and musician.
Moore first came to prominence as one of the four writer-performers in the ground-breaking comedy revue Beyond the Fringe in the early 1960s, and then became famous as half of the highly popular television double-act he formed with Peter Cook.
His fame as a comedy film actor was later heightened by success in hit Hollywood films such as 10 with Bo Derek and Arthur in the late 1970s and early 1980s, respectively. He received an Oscar nomination for the latter role. He was frequently referred to in the media as "Cuddly Dudley" or "The Sex Thimble", a reference to his short stature and reputation as a "ladies' man".
Moore was born in Charing Cross Hospital, London, the son of Ada Francis (née Hughes), a secretary, and John Moore, a railway electrician. He was brought up in Dagenham, Essex. He was notably short: 5 ft 2.5 in (1.588 m) and was born with club feet that required extensive hospital treatment and which, coupled with his diminutive stature, made him the butt of jokes from other children. His right foot responded well to corrective treatment and had straightened itself by the time he was six, but his left foot became permanently twisted and consequently his left leg below the knee was withered. Seeking refuge from his problems, he became a choirboy at the age of six and took up piano and violin. He rapidly developed into a highly talented pianist and organist and was playing the pipe organ at church weddings by the age of 14. He attended Dagenham County High School (now The Sydney Russell School) where he received musical tuition from a dedicated teacher, Peter Cork. Cork became a friend and confidant to Moore, corresponding with him until 1994.

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Ed. Weinberger
Edwin B. “Ed.” Weinberger is an American screenwriter and television producer.
Ed. Weinberger began his career writing for such stand-up comedians as Dick Gregory, Richard Pryor, and Bill Cosby. His first job in television was writing on “The Tonight Show” for Johnny Carson. He also wrote for The Bob Hope Show, The Bill Cosby Show and the Dean Martin Variety Hour.
Weinberger, along with James L. Brooks, David Davis, Allan Burns and Stan Daniels, formed the core of MTM Enterprises. In 1977, they left for Paramount Pictures and started the John Charles Walters Company. The series Taxi was created the following year. He also wrote and co-created The Cosby Show, which was on for 8 years. Weinberger went on to create and executive produce several other sitcoms, including Amen, Dear John, Baby Talk, and Sparks.
With his son, Jack, Weinberger wrote and produced the musical play: “Mary and Joseph” which had its national tour in 2007-8.
He has won a Peabody Award, 3 Golden Globe Awards, and 9 Emmy Awards. He has also received the Writer’s Guild Lifetime Achievement Award.

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Eddie Floyd
Eddie Lee Floyd (born June 25, 1937) is an American soul/R&B singer and songwriter, best known for his work on the Stax record label in the 1960s and 1970s and the song "Knock on Wood".
Floyd was born in Montgomery, Alabama, but grew up in Detroit, Michigan. He founded The Falcons, which also featured Mack Rice. They were forerunners to future Detroit vocal groups such as The Temptations and The Four Tops. Their most successful songs included "You're So Fine" and later, when Wilson Pickett was recruited into the group as the lead singer, "I Found a Love". Pickett then embarked on a solo career, and The Falcons disbanded.
Floyd signed on with the Memphis based Stax Records as a songwriter in 1965. He wrote a hit song, "Comfort Me" recorded by Carla Thomas. He then teamed with Stax's guitarist Steve Cropper to write songs for Wilson Pickett, now signed to Atlantic Records. Atlantic distributed Stax and Jerry Wexler brought Pickett down from New York to work with Booker T. & the MGs. The Pickett sessions were successful, yielding several pop and R&B hits, including the Floyd co-written "Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won't Do)" and "634-5789 (Soulsville USA)".

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Eddie Izzard
Edward John "Eddie" Izzard (born 7 February 1962) is an English stand-up comedian, actor, and writer. His comedy style takes the form of rambling, whimsical monologue and self-referential pantomime. He had a starring role in the television series The Riches as Wayne Malloy and has appeared in many motion pictures such as Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen, Mystery Men, Shadow of the Vampire, The Cat's Meow, Across the Universe, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and Valkyrie. He is also the voice of Nigel in the 2006 animated film The Wild and Miles Axlerod in the 2011 Disney/Pixar animated film Cars 2.
He has cited his main comedy role model as Monty Python, and John Cleese once referred to him as the "Lost Python". In 2009, he completed 43 marathons in 51 days for Sport Relief in spite of having no prior history of long distance running. He is also known for his transvestism. He has won numerous awards including a Primetime Emmy Award for Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program for his comedy special Dress to Kill, in 2000. Izzard's web site won the Yahoo People's Choice Award and earned the Webby Award.

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Eddie Murphy
Edward Regan "Eddie" Murphy (born April 3, 1961) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, singer, director, and musician.
Box office takes from Murphy's films make him the second-highest grossing actor in the United States. He was a regular cast member on Saturday Night Live from 1980 to 1984 and has worked as a stand-up comedian. He was ranked #10 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time.
He has received Golden Globe Award nominations for his performances in 48 Hrs, Beverly Hills Cop series, Trading Places, and The Nutty Professor. In 2007, he won the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of soul singer James "Thunder" Early in Dreamgirls.
Eddie Murphy's work as a voice actor includes Thurgood Stubbs in The PJs, Donkey in the Shrek series and the dragon Mushu in Disney's Mulan. In some of his films, he plays multiple roles in addition to his main character, intended as a tribute to one of his idols Peter Sellers, who played multiple roles in Dr. Strangelove and elsewhere. Murphy has played multiple roles in Coming to America, Wes Craven's Vampire In Brooklyn, the Nutty Professor films (where he played the title role in two incarnations, plus his father, brother, mother, and grandmother), Bowfinger, Norbit, and Meet Dave.

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Ellen Burstyn
Ellen Burstyn (born December 7, 1932) is an American actress. Her career began in theatre during the late 1950s, and over the next decade included several films and television series.
Burstyn's performance in the acclaimed 1971 ensemble drama The Last Picture Show brought her first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress nomination, after which she moved from supporting to leading film and stage roles. Burstyn received a second Academy Award nomination for her lead performance in The Exorcist (1973), and won the Academy Award for Best Actress the following year for her work in Martin Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. In 1975, she won the Tony Award for her lead performance in the Broadway production of Same Time, Next Year, and received a Golden Globe Award and a fourth Academy Award nomination for her performance in the 1978 film version of the play. Burstyn has worked consistently in film, television and theatre since, receiving multiple awards and nominations along the way, including an Emmy Award and two more Academy Award nominations for her performances in the films Resurrection (1980) and Requiem for a Dream (2000).

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Ellen DeGeneres
Ellen Lee DeGeneres ( /dɨˈdʒɛnərəs/; born January 26, 1958) is an American stand-up comedian, television host and actress. She hosts the syndicated talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
DeGeneres has hosted both the Academy Awards and the Primetime Emmys. As a film actress, she starred in Mr. Wrong, appeared in EDtv and The Love Letter, and provided the voice of Dory in the Disney-Pixar animated film Finding Nemo, for which she was awarded a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first and only time a voice performance won a Saturn Award. She was a judge on American Idol for one year, having joined the show in its ninth season. She also starred in two television sitcoms, Ellen from 1994 to 1998 and The Ellen Show from 2001 to 2002. During the fourth season of Ellen in 1997, DeGeneres came out publicly as a lesbian in an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Shortly afterwards, her character Ellen Morgan also came out to a therapist played by Winfrey, and the series went on to explore various LGBT issues including the coming out process. She has won thirteen Emmys and numerous other awards for her work and charitable efforts.

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Estelle Axton
Estelle Axton (September 11, 1918 – February 25, 2004) was the co-founder, with her brother Jim Stewart, of Stax Records.
Born in Middleton, Tennessee, Estelle Stewart grew up on a farm. She moved to Memphis as a school teacher, married Everett Axton, and was working in a bank when, in 1958, her brother Jim Stewart asked for help to develop Satellite Records, which he had set up to issue recordings of local country and rockabilly artists. She convinced her husband that they should remortgage their house and, in 1959, joined Satellite as an equal partner. The following year, Axton and Stewart turned the Capitol Theatre, in a black Memphis neighbourhood, into a recording studio and record shop, and began making hit records with predominantly black artists.
Satellite was forced to change its name after it was discovered that a Los Angeles label already owned the title, and it changed its name to Stax, taking its name from Axton and Stewart's surnames. Axton was actively involved with selecting and developing the artists on the label, who included Rufus Thomas, Otis Redding, Booker T & the MGs, and Isaac Hayes.

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Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra, /sɨˈnɑːtrə/, (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and film actor.
Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the "bobby soxers", he released his first album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra in 1946. His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1953 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in From Here to Eternity.
He signed with Capitol Records in 1953 and released several critically lauded albums (such as In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice 'n' Easy). Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records in 1961 (finding success with albums such as Ring-a-Ding-Ding!, Sinatra at the Sands and Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim), toured internationally, was a founding member of the Rat Pack and fraternized with celebrities and statesmen, including John F. Kennedy. Sinatra turned 50 in 1965, recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and scored hits with "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way".

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Gene Kelly
Eugene Curran "Gene" Kelly (August 23, 1912 - February 2, 1996) was an American dancer, actor, singer, film director and producer, and choreographer. Kelly was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks and the likeable characters that he played on screen.
Although he is known today for his performances in Singin' in the Rain and An American in Paris, he was a dominant force in Hollywood musical films from the mid 1940s until this art form fell out of fashion in the late 1950s. His many innovations transformed the Hollywood musical film, and he is credited with almost single-handedly making the ballet form commercially acceptable to film audiences.
Kelly was the recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 1952 for his career achievements. He later received lifetime achievement awards in the Kennedy Center Honors, and from the Screen Actors Guild and American Film Institute; in 1999, the American Film Institute also numbered him 15th in their Greatest Male Stars of All Time list.

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Gene Wilder
Gene Wilder (born Jerome Silberman; June 11, 1933) is an American stage and screen actor, director, screenwriter, author and activist.
Wilder began his career on stage, making his screen debut in the TV series Armstrong Circle Theatre in 1962. Although his first film role was portraying a hostage in the 1967 motion picture Bonnie and Clyde, Wilder's first major role was as Leopold Bloom in the 1968 film The Producers for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. This was the first in a series of collaborations with writer/director Mel Brooks, including 1974's Young Frankenstein, a script which garnered the pair an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Wilder is known for his portrayal of Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) and for his four films with Richard Pryor: Silver Streak (1976), Stir Crazy (1980), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989), and Another You (1991). Wilder has directed and written several of his films, including The Woman in Red (1984).

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Goldie Hawn
Goldie Jeanne Hawn (born November 21, 1945) is an American actress, film director, producer, and occasional singer. Hawn is known for her roles in Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Private Benjamin, Foul Play, Shampoo, Overboard, Bird on a Wire, Death Becomes Her, The First Wives Club, and Cactus Flower, for which she won the 1969 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She is the mother of actors Oliver and Kate Hudson. Hawn has maintained a relationship with actor Kurt Russell since 1983.
Hawn was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Laura (née Steinhoff), a jewelry shop/dance school owner, and Edward Rutledge Hawn, a band musician who played at major events in Washington. She was named after her mother's aunt. She has a sister, Patricia; her brother, Edward, died before she was born. Through her father, Hawn is a direct descendant of Edward Rutledge, the youngest signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Hawn was raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she went to Montgomery Blair High School. Her father was Presbyterian and her mother was Jewish, the daughter of immigrants from Hungary; Hawn had a Jewish upbringing.

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Gregory Hines
Gregory Oliver Hines (February 14, 1946 – August 9, 2003) was an American actor, singer, dancer and choreographer.
Born in New York City to Maurice Hines Sr. and Alma Hines, Gregory Hines began tapping when he was around three years old, and began dancing semi-professionally at the age of five. Since then, he and his older brother Maurice performed together, studying with choreographer Henry LeTang. The two brothers were known as "The Hines Kids", making nightclub appearances, and later as "The Hines Brothers". When their father joined, Maurice Hines, Sr., the name changed again in 1963 to "Hines, Hines, and Dad".
Hines performed as the lead singer and musician in a rock band called Severance in 1975/1976 based in Venice, California. Severance was one of the house bands at an original music club called Honky Hoagies Handy Hangout, otherwise known as the 4H Club. In 1986, he sang a duet with Luther Vandross, entitled "There's Nothing Better Than Love", which reached the #1 position on the Billboard R&B charts.

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Harve Brosten
Harve Brosten (born 15 May 1943) is an American Emmy Award-winning screenwriter for television.Harve is best known for work on All in the Family,a sitcom from the mid 1970's.
Harve Brosten at the Internet Movie Database

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Heart attack
Myocardial infarction (MI) or acute myocardial infarction (AMI), commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die. This is most commonly due to occlusion (blockage) of a coronary artery following the rupture of a vulnerable atherosclerotic plaque, which is an unstable collection of lipids (cholesterol and fatty acids) and white blood cells (especially macrophages) in the wall of an artery. The resulting ischemia (restriction in blood supply) and ensuing oxygen shortage, if left untreated for a sufficient period of time, can cause damage or death (infarction) of heart muscle tissue (myocardium).
Classical symptoms of acute myocardial infarction include sudden chest pain (typically radiating to the left arm or left side of the neck), shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting, palpitations, sweating, and anxiety (often described as a sense of impending doom). Women may experience fewer typical symptoms than men, most commonly shortness of breath, weakness, a feeling of indigestion, and fatigue.A sizeable proportion of myocardial infarctions (22–64%) are "silent", that is without chest pain or other symptoms.

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Hilton Als
Hilton Als (born 1960) is an American writer and theater critic who writes for The New Yorker magazine.
Als is a former staff writer for The Village Voice and former editor-at-large at Vibe magazine.
His 1996 book The Women focuses on his mother, who raised him in Brooklyn, Dorothy Dean, and Owen Dodson, who was a mentor and lover of Als. In the book, Als explores his identification of the confluence of his ethnicity, gender and sexuality, moving from identifying as a "Negress" and then an "Auntie Man", a Barbadian term for homosexuals.
Als received a Guggenheim fellowship in 2000 for creative writing and the 2002–03 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. In 2004 he won the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin which provided him half a year of free working and studying in Berlin. He has taught at Smith College, Wesleyan, and Yale university, and his work has also appeared in The Nation, The Believer, and the New York Review of Books.

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Ice-T
Tracy Marrow (born February 16, 1958), better known by his stage name Ice-T, is an American musician and actor. He was born in Newark, New Jersey, and moved to the Crenshaw district of Los Angeles when he was in the 7th grade. After graduating from high school, he served in the United States Army for four years. He began his career as a rapper in the 1980s and was signed to Sire Records in 1987, when he released his debut album Rhyme Pays, the first hip-hop album to carry an explicit content sticker. The next year, he founded the record label Rhyme Syndicate Records (named after his collective of fellow hip-hop artists called the Rhyme Syndicate) and released another album, Power.
He co-founded the heavy metal band Body Count, which he introduced in his 1991 album O.G.: Original Gangster. Body Count released its self-titled debut album in 1992. Ice-T encountered controversy over his track "Cop Killer", which was perceived to glamorize killing police officers. Ice-T asked to be released from his contract with Warner Bros. Records, and his next solo album, Home Invasion, was released later in the fall of 1993 through Priority Records. Body Count's next album was released in 1994, and Ice-T released two more albums in the late 1990s. Since 2000, he has portrayed NYPD Detective Odafin Tutuola on the NBC police drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

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Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Scott Reed (born 22 February 1938) is an American poet, essayist, playwright and novelist. Reed is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression.
Reed's work has often sought to represent neglected African and African-American perspectives, his energy and advocacy have centered more broadly on neglected peoples and perspectives, irrespective of their cultural origins.
Reed was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but grew up in Buffalo, New York, where he attended the University of Buffalo, a private university that became part of the state public university system after he left. The university awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1995.
In 1998, Reed spoke about his influences in an interview: "I've probably been more influenced by poets than by novelists — the Harlem Renaissance poets, the Beat poets, the American surrealist Ted Joans. Poets have to be more attuned to originality, coming up with lines and associations the ordinary prose writer wouldn't think of."

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Jack Benny
Jack Benny (born Benjamin Kubelsky, February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974) was an American comedian, vaudevillian, radio, television, and film actor, and also a notable violinist. Widely recognized as one of the leading American entertainers of the 20th century, Benny played the role of the comic penny-pinching miser, insisting on remaining 39 years old on stage despite his actual age, and often playing the violin badly.
Benny was known for his comic timing and his ability to get laughs with either a pregnant pause or a single expression, such as his signature exasperated "Well!" His radio and television programs, tremendously popular from the 1930s to the 1960s, were a foundational influence on the situation comedy genre. Dean Martin, on the celebrity roast for Johnny Carson in November 1973, introduced Benny as "the Satchel Paige of the world of comedy".
Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky on February 14, 1894, in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in neighboring Waukegan, Illinois. He was the son of Meyer Kubelsky and Emma Sachs Kubelsky. Meyer was a Jewish saloon owner, later to become a haberdasher, who had emigrated to America from Poland. Emma had emigrated from Lithuania. Benny began studying the violin, an instrument that would become his trademark, when he was just six, with his parents' hopes that he would be a great classical violinist. He loved the violin, but hated practice. By age 14, he was playing in local dance bands as well as in his high school orchestra. Benny was a dreamer and a poor student and he was expelled from high school. He did equally badly in business school and at his father's trade. At age 17, he began playing the instrument in local vaudeville theaters for $7.50 a week. He was joined by Ned Miller, a young composer and singer, on the vaudeville circuit. They became life-long friends and Miller eventually joined the cast of The Jack Benny Program in the 1960s.

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Jack Lemmon
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001) was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts (for which he won the 1955 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award), Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger (for which he won the 1973 Best Actor Academy Award), The Out-of-Towners, The China Syndrome, Missing (for which he won 'Best Actor' at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival), Glengarry Glen Ross, Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men.
Lemmon was born in an elevator^{[citation needed]} at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He was the only child of Mildred Burgess LaRue (née Noel) and John Uhler Lemmon, Jr., who was the president of a doughnut company. Lemmon attended John Ward Elementary School in Newton and The Rivers School in Weston, Massachusetts. He had stated that he knew he wanted to be an actor from the age of eight. Lemmon attended Phillips Academy (Class of 1943) and Harvard University (Class of 1947), where he lived in Adams House and was an active member of several Drama Clubs - becoming president of the Hasty Pudding Club - as well as a member of the Delphic Club for Gentleman, a final club at Harvard. After Harvard, Lemmon joined the Navy, receiving V-12 training and serving as an ensign. On being discharged, he took up acting professionally, working on radio, television and Broadway. He studied acting under coach Uta Hagen. He also became enamored of the piano and learned to play it on his own. He could also play the harmonica, organ, and the double bass.

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Jackie Gleason
Jackie Gleason (February 26, 1916 – June 24, 1987) was an American comedian, actor and musician. He was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy style, especially by his character Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners. His most noted film roles were as Minnesota Fats in the drama film The Hustler (1961) starring Paul Newman, and as Buford T. Justice in the Smokey and the Bandit movie series.
Gleason was born at 364 Chauncey Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York. He grew up nearby at 328 Chauncey Street, an address that he later used as the address for Ralph and Alice Kramden on his show The Honeymooners. Originally named Herbert Walton Gleason, Jr., he was baptized as John Herbert Gleason. His parents were Mae "Maisie" (née Kelly), a subway change-booth attendant, and Herbert John "Herb" Gleason, an insurance auditor. His mother was from Farranree,^{[citation needed]}Cork, Ireland. Gleason was one of their two children. Gleason's brother, Clemence, died of spinal meningitis at age 14, and his father abandoned the family.

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Jackson Browne
Clyde Jackson Browne (born October 9, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and musician who has sold over 17 million albums in the United States alone.
Coming to prominence in the 1970s, Browne has written and recorded several notable songs throughout his career including "These Days", "The Pretender", "Running On Empty", "Lawyers in Love", "Doctor My Eyes", "Take It Easy", "For a Rocker", and "Somebody's Baby". In 2004, he was both inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, and bestowed an Honorary Doctorate of Music by Occidental College in Los Angeles, California.
Browne was born in Heidelberg, Germany, where his father, an American serviceman, was stationed. Browne's mother, Beatrice Amanda (née Dahl), was a Minnesota native of Norwegian ancestry. Browne has three siblings: Roberta "Berbie" Browne who was born in 1946 in Nuernberg, Germany (Nuremberg) and Edward Severin Browne who was born in 1949 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His younger sister, Gracie Browne, was born a number of years later. Browne moved to the Highland Park district of Los Angeles, California, at the age of 3 and in his teens began singing folk music in local venues like the Ash Grove and The Troubador Club. He attended Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, California, graduating in 1966.

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James L. Brooks
James Lawrence Brooks (born May 9, 1940) is an American director, producer and screenwriter. Growing up in North Bergen, New Jersey, Brooks endured a fractured family life and passed the time by reading and writing. After dropping out of New York University, he got a job as an usher at CBS, going on to write for the CBS News broadcasts. He moved to Los Angeles in 1965 to work on David L. Wolper's documentaries. After being laid off he met producer Allan Burns who secured him a job as a writer on the series My Mother the Car.
Brooks wrote for several shows before being hired as a story editor on My Friend Tony and later creating the series Room 222. Grant Tinker hired Brooks and Burns at MTM Productions to create The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1970. The show, one of the first to feature an independent working woman as its lead character, was critically acclaimed and won Brooks several Primetime Emmy Awards. Brooks and Burns then created two successful spin-offs from Mary Tyler Moore in the shape of Rhoda (a comedy) and Lou Grant (a drama). Brooks left MTM Productions in 1978 to co-create the sitcom Taxi which, despite winning multiple Emmys, suffered from low ratings and was canceled twice.

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Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda (born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda; December 21, 1937) is an American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. She rose to fame in the 1960s with films such as Barbarella and Cat Ballou. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other movie awards and nominations during more than 50 years as an actress. After 15 years of retirement, she returned to film in 2005 with Monster in Law, followed by Georgia Rule two years later. She also produced and starred in over 20 exercise videos released between 1982 and 1995, and once again in 2010.
Fonda has been an activist for many political causes; her opposition to the Vietnam War and associated activities were controversial. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women. She describes herself as a liberal and a feminist. In 2005, Fonda worked alongside Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem to co-found the Women's Media Center, an organization that works to amplify the voices of women in the media through advocacy, media and leadership training, and the creation of original content. Fonda currently serves on the board of the organization. Since 2001, Fonda has been a Christian. She published an autobiography in 2005, and in 2011, she published a second memoir, Prime Time.

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Jerry Seinfeld
Jerome Allen "Jerry" Seinfeld (born April 29, 1954) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and television and film producer, best known for playing a semi-fictional version of himself in the sitcom Seinfeld (1989–1998), which he co-created and co-wrote with Larry David, and, in the show's final two seasons, co-executive-produced.
In his first major foray back into the media since the finale of Seinfeld, he co-wrote and co-produced the film Bee Movie, also taking on the lead role of Barry B. Benson. In February 2010, Seinfeld premiered a reality TV series called The Marriage Ref on NBC. Seinfeld directed Colin Quinn in the Broadway show Long Story Short at the Helen Hayes Theater in New York which ran until January 8, 2011.
Seinfeld is known for specializing in observational humor, often focusing on personal relationships and uncomfortable social obligations. Comedy Central ranked Jerry Seinfeld as one of the twelve greatest stand-up comedians of all time in its four-part special The 100 Greatest Standups Of All Time.

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Jerry Wexler
Gerald "Jerry" Wexler (January 10, 1917 – August 15, 2008) was a music journalist turned music producer, and was regarded as one of the major record industry players behind music from the 1950s through the 1980s. He coined the term "rhythm and blues", and was integral in signing and/or producing many of the biggest acts of the last 50 years, including Ray Charles, the Allman Brothers, Chris Connor, Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin, Wilson Pickett, Dire Straits, Dusty Springfield and Bob Dylan. Wexler was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. Jerry Wexler was one of the most highly-regarded A&R men in popular music history, a status bolstered by his accomplishments with Aretha Franklin.
Wexler was born in The Bronx, New York City, into a Jewish family, and grew up in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Upper Manhattan. He graduated from George Washington High School (New York City) in Washington Heights at age 15 and dropped out after two semesters at City College of New York. In 1935, Wexler enrolled at what is now Kansas State University and dropped out several times. Following his service in the army, Wexler became a serious student, and he graduated from Kansas State, with a degree in journalism in 1946.

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Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. (born October 8, 1941) is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to form Rainbow/PUSH. Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. is his eldest son. In an AP-AOL "Black Voices" poll in February 2006, Jackson was voted "the most important black leader".
Jackson was born Jesse Louis Burns in Greenville, South Carolina, to Helen Burns, a 16-year-old single mother. His biological father, Noah Louis Robinson, a former professional boxer and a prominent figure in the community, was married to another woman when Jesse was born. He was not involved in his son's life, and died January 28, 1997 in Greenville, S.C. In 1943, two years after Jesse's birth, his mother married Charles Henry Jackson, who would adopt Jesse 14 years later. Jesse went on to take the surname of his stepfather.

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Jim Stewart (music)
Jim Stewart (born July 29, 1930) is a former record company executive and producer who co-founded Stax Records.
Raised on a farm in Middleton, Tennessee, Stewart moved to Memphis in 1948, after graduating from high school. He worked at Sears, at First National Bank, and then was drafted into the United States Army. After serving for two years, Stewart returned to his job as a bank clerk in Memphis in 1953.
Stewart was a part-time fiddle player and joined a local country music group called the Canyon Cowboys. He worked days as a banker at Union Planters Bank. In 1957, Stewart launched his own record label, then called Satellite Records, which issued country music records. His sister, Estelle Axton, mortgaged her home to invest in her brother's venture by buying an Ampex 300 tape recorder. In 1959, the label moved into the former Capitol Theatre in Memphis. The auditorium was converted to studio space and the stage converted to a control room. To save money, Stewart did not level the floor. This created unique acoustics, which showed up in the recordings made there. After Stax went bankrupt in 1976, Stewart kept a low profile and intensely protected his privacy. When he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, he sent his two granddaughters to the induction ceremony to accept the award on his behalf.

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Joan Rivers
Joan Alexandra Molinsky (born June 8, 1933), better known by her stage name Joan Rivers, is an American television personality, comedian, and actress. She is known for her brash manner; her loud, raspy voice with a heavy New York accent; and her numerous cosmetic surgeries. Rivers' comic style relies heavily on her ability to poke fun at herself and other Hollywood celebrities.
Joan Rivers was born Joan Alexandra Molinsky in Brooklyn, a borough of New York City, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants Beatrice (née Grushman; January 6, 1906 – October 1975) and Meyer C. Molinsky (December 7, 1900 – January 1985). She was raised in Brooklyn, New York, and her family later moved to Larchmont, in Westchester County, New York. She attended Connecticut College between 1950 and 1952 and graduated from Barnard College in 1954 with a bachelor-of-arts degree in English literature and anthropology. Before entering show business, Rivers worked at various jobs such as a tour guide at Rockefeller Center, a writer/proofreader at an advertising agency and as a fashion consultant at Bond Clothing Stores. During this period, the agent Tony Rivers advised her to change her name, so she chose Joan Rivers as her stage name.

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Joe Rogan
Joseph James "Joe" Rogan (born August 11, 1967) is an American martial artist, stand-up comedian, actor, writer and color commentator. He is best known for playing Joe Garrelli on the NBC sitcom NewsRadio, commentating for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, hosting the NBC reality show Fear Factor and The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
Rogan was born in Newark, New Jersey. His paternal grandfather was Irish and the remainder of his ancestry is Italian.
In 1981, at age fourteen, he became a practitioner of Kenpo Karate before transitioning to Taekwondo. He eventually gained a 2nd dan black belt. A four-time state champion in Massachusetts, in 1987 he was the USA Taekwondo U.S. Open Champion. In 1996, he began training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu under Jean Jacques Machado, eventually earning his brown belt. In addition, he holds a brown belt in 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu under Eddie Bravo.
He also practiced and competed in kickboxing.
In 1994, he co-starred on the Fox comedy Hardball as Frank Valente, the young, ego-centric star player on a fictional professional baseball team. From 1995 to 1999, he co-starred on the comedy NewsRadio. He portrayed Joe Garrelli, the electrician at WNYX, a news radio station in New York City. In 2002, he appeared on the episode "A Beautiful Mind" of Just Shoot Me as Chris, Maya Gallo's boyfriend. In 2011, Rogan played his first major character in a movie in the Kevin James movie Zookeeper. He is slated to play himself in an upcoming action-comedy starring Kevin James called Here Comes the Boom, set to be released in the summer of 2012.

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John Huston
John Marcellus Huston (August 5, 1906 – August 28, 1987) was an American film director, screenwriter and actor. He wrote the screenplay for most of the 37 feature films he directed, many of which are today considered classics: The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948), The Asphalt Jungle (1950), The African Queen (1951), Moulin Rouge (1952), The Misfits (1961), and The Man Who Would Be King (1975). During his 46-year career, Huston received 15 Oscar nominations, winning twice, and directed both his father, Walter Huston, and daughter, Anjelica Huston, to Oscar wins in different films.
Huston was known to direct with the vision of an artist, having studied and worked as a fine art painter in Paris in his early years. He continued to explore the visual aspects of his films throughout his career: sketching each scene on paper beforehand, then carefully framing his characters during the shooting. In addition, while most directors rely on post-production editing to shape their final work, Huston instead created his films while they were being shot, making his films both more economical and more cerebral, with little editing needed.

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Johnnie Taylor
Johnnie Harrison Taylor (May 5, 1934 – May 31, 2000) was an American vocalist in a wide variety of genres, from rhythm and blues, soul, blues and gospel to pop, doo-wop and disco.
Johnnie Taylor was born in Crawfordsville, Arkansas. As a child, he grew up in West Memphis, Arkansas and performed in gospel groups as a youngster. As an adult, he had one release, "Somewhere to Lay My Head", on Chicago's Chance Records label in the 1950s, as part of the gospel group Highway QCs, which had been founded by a young Sam Cooke. His singing was strikingly close to that of Sam Cooke, and he was hired to take Cooke's place in the latter's gospel group, the Soul Stirrers, in 1957.
A few years later, after Cooke had established his independent SAR Records, Taylor signed on as one of the label's first acts and recorded "Rome Wasn't Built In A Day" in 1962. However, SAR Records quickly became defunct after Cooke's death in 1964.
In 1966, Taylor moved to Stax Records in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was dubbed "The Philosopher of Soul". Whilst there he recorded with the label's house band, Booker T. & the MGs. His hits included "I Had a Dream", "I've Got to Love Somebody's Baby" (both written by the team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter) and most notably "Who's Making Love", which reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and No. 1 on the R&B chart in 1968. "Who's Making Love" sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.

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Johnny Carson
John William "Johnny" Carson (October 23, 1925 – January 23, 2005) was an American television host and comedian, known for thirty years as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962–1992). Carson received six Emmy Awards, the Governor Award, and a 1985 Peabody Award. He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987. Johnny Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1993.
Although his show was already successful by the end of the 1960s, during the 1970s Carson became an American icon and remained so until his retirement in 1992. He adopted a casual, conversational approach with extensive interaction with guests, an approach pioneered by Arthur Godfrey and previous Tonight Show hosts Steve Allen and Jack Paar. Late night hosts David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O'Brien, Craig Ferguson, and Jimmy Fallon have all cited Carson's influence on their late-night talk shows, which resemble his in format and tone.
Carson was born in Corning, Iowa, in the year 1925, to Homer Lloyd "Kit" Carson, a power company manager, and Ruth Hook Carson, who was of Irish descent. He grew up in the nearby towns of Avoca, Clarinda, and Red Oak in southwest Iowa before moving to Norfolk, Nebraska, at the age of eight. At the age of twelve, Carson found a book on magic at a friend's house and immediately purchased a mail-order magician's kit. He debuted as "The Great Carsoni" at fourteen and was paid $3; many other performances at local picnics and country fairs followed.

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Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart (born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz; November 28, 1962) is an American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian. He is widely known as host of The Daily Show, a satirical news program that airs on Comedy Central.
Stewart started as a stand-up comedian, but branched into television as host of Short Attention Span Theater for Comedy Central. He went on to host his own show on MTV, called The Jon Stewart Show, and then hosted another show on MTV called You Wrote It, You Watch It. He has also had several film roles as an actor. Stewart became the host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central in early 1999. He is also a writer and co-executive-producer of the show. After Stewart joined, The Daily Show steadily gained popularity and critical acclaim, resulting in his sixteen Emmy Awards.
Stewart has gained acclaim as an acerbic, satirical critic of personality-driven media shows, in particular those of the US media networks such as CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC. Critics say Stewart benefits from a double standard: he critiques other news shows from the safe, removed position of his "fake news" desk. Stewart agrees, saying that neither his show nor his channel purports to be anything other than satire and comedy. In spite of its self-professed entertainment mandate, The Daily Show has been nominated for news and journalism awards. Stewart hosted the 78th and 80th Academy Awards. He is the co-author of America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, which was one of the best-selling books in the U.S. in 2004 and Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race released in 2010.

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Jonathan Winters
Jonathan Harshman Winters III (born November 11, 1925) is an American comedian, actor, and artist.
Winters was born in Bellbrook, Ohio, the son of Alice Kilgore (née Rodgers), a radio personality, and Jonathan Harshman Winters II, an investment broker. He is a descendant of Valentine Winters, founder of the Winters National Bank in Dayton, Ohio (now part of JPMorgan Chase). Of English and Scotch-Irish ancestry, Winters has described his father as an alcoholic who had trouble holding a job.^{[citation needed]} When he was seven, his parents separated, and Winters' mother took him to Springfield, Ohio to live with his maternal grandmother.^{[citation needed]}
At age 17, Winters quit high school and joined the United States Marine Corps and served two and a half years in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Upon his return he attended Kenyon College. He later studied cartooning at Dayton Art Institute, where he met Eileen Schauder, whom he married in 1948.
Winters is a brother of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Lambda chapter).

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Lalah Hathaway
Eulaulah Donyll Hathaway (born December 16, 1968) best known as Lalah Hathaway referred to as the First Daughter of Soul, is a contemporary R&B and jazz singer. She is the daughter of soul singer Donny Hathaway and a classically trained vocalist. In 1990, Lalah Hathaway released a self-titled album. The album's first single was "Heaven Knows", produced by Derek Bramble. The follow-up single was "Baby Don't Cry" produced by Angela Winbush.
In 1991, Hathaway released her extended play, Night & Day in Japan. A Moment was released in 1994, debuting at #34 on the Top R&B albums chart. The lead single "Let Me Love You" charted on the Hot R&B charts at #37. In 1999, Lalah Hathaway collaborated with Joe Sample and released her third album The Song Lives On. After a five year hiatus, Hathaway returned with her fourth album Outrun the Sky. The single "Forever, For Always, For Love" peaked #1 on the Hot Adult R&B Airplay.
In 2007, Hathaway signed to Stax Records and in 2008 released her fifth album Self Portrait. It was released on June 3, 2008 in the United States, debuted at #63 on the Billboard's Hot 200 and reached the top ten on the Top R&B albums chart, making this album, Hathaway's most successful album to date. She received a Best Female R&B Vocal Performance Grammy Award nomination for "That Was Then".

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Lee Kalcheim
Lee Kalcheim (June 27, 1938, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American Emmy Award-winning screenwriter.
Kalcheim has written numerous television shows including episodes for:
Lee's website is: http://LeeKalcheim.com
Among his plays are:
Lee Kalcheim at the Internet Movie Database

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Leela James
Leela James (born June 2, 1983 in Los Angeles, California) is an American R&B and soul singer-songwriter. James cites singers James Brown, Roberta Flack, Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway, Gladys Knight, Mavis Staples, and Stevie Wonder as her influences. Her deep, rich, gritty vocals have drawn comparisons to Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, and Tina Turner.
James' debut album, entitled A Change Is Gonna Come, was released on June 21, 2005. The album was conceived as a throwback to an earlier era of American soul music, building upon the legacy of 1960s and 1970s soul singers while incorporating elements of contemporary R&B, funk, and gospel.
In the lyrics to the album's lead single, entitled "Music", James laments the current state of contemporary popular music. She condemns the glorification of materialism and misogyny that has often been attributed to the lyrical content of contemporary R&B and hip hop songs while pleading for the return of the artistry, dedication, and sincerity displayed by musicians of earlier decades.

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Lenny Bruce
Leonard Alfred Schneider (October 13, 1925 – August 3, 1966), better known by the stage name Lenny Bruce, was a Jewish-American comedian, social critic and satirist. His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial was followed by a posthumous pardon, the first in New York state history. His open, free-style, dangerous and critical form of comedy which brought in politics and religion and sex in a heady mix, combined with his devil may care attitude, his epic consumption of drugs, sex and alcohol, his messy, desperate life in which he conned money in order to keep his wife from having to work as a stripper, makes him a compelling figure. He paved the way for future outspoken comedians, and he paved the way for freedom of speech. His trial for obscenity for saying the word "cocksucker", in which – after being forced into bankruptcy – he was eventually found not guilty is seen as landmark trial for freedom of speech.
Lenny Bruce was born Leonard Alfred Schneider in Mineola, New York, grew up in nearby Bellmore, and attended Wellington C. Mepham High School. His parents divorced when he was five years old, and Lenny moved in with various relatives over the next decade. His mother, Sally Marr (née Sadie Kitchenberg), was a stage performer who had an enormous influence on Bruce's career. After spending time working on a farm, Bruce joined the United States Navy at the age of 17 in 1942, and saw active duty in Europe. In May 1945 he reported to his ship's medical officer that he was experiencing homosexual urges. This led to his Dishonorable Discharge in July 1945. However, he had not admitted to or been found guilty of any breach of naval regulations and successfully applied to have his discharge changed to "Under Honorable Conditions ... by reason of unsuitability for the naval service".

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Leon Ware
Leon Ware is a soul music singer, songwriter and producer. Best known for crafting the hit album, I Want You, originally recorded for Ware, until friend and Motown icon Marvin Gaye was assigned to the album in 1976. Ware also is notable for writing the Top 5 R&B single, "I Wanna Be Where You Are", for a young Michael Jackson in 1972, and creating the Body Heat album along with Quincy Jones. He also collaborated with Maxwell on his debut album Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite.

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Lewis Black
Lewis Niles Black (born August 30, 1948) is an American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor. He is known for his comedy style, which often includes simulating a mental breakdown, or an increasingly angry rant, ridiculing history, politics, religion, trends and cultural phenomena. He hosted the Comedy Central series Lewis Black's Root of All Evil, and makes regular appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart delivering his “Back in Black” commentary segment. When not on the road performing, he resides in Manhattan. He also maintains a residence in Chapel Hill, N.C. He is currently the spokesman for Aruba Tourism, appearing in television ads that aired in late 2009 and 2010. He was voted 51st of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time by Comedy Central in 2004; and was voted 5th in Comedy Central's Stand`Up Showdown in 2008 and 11th in 2010.
Black is the son of Jeannette, a teacher, and Sam Black, an artist and mechanical engineer. He was born and raised in a middle-class Jewish family in Silver Spring, Maryland, graduating from Springbrook High School in 1966, summa cum laude.

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Lily Tomlin
Mary Jean "Lily" Tomlin (born September 1, 1939) is an American actress, comedian, writer, and producer. Tomlin has been a major force in American comedy since the late 1960s when she began a career as a stand up comedian and became a featured performer on television's Laugh-in. Her career has spanned television, comedy recordings, Broadway, and motion pictures, enjoying acclaimed success in each medium. She has won many awards including Tony Awards, Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award and has also been nominated for an Academy Award. Tomlin's humor is often sharp and insightful in the traditions of standup comedians, but also frequently endearing, slightly wacky, and generally quite "family friendly" in the tradition of television comediennes such as Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, and Eve Arden.
Tomlin was born in Detroit, Michigan, the daughter of Lillie Mae (née Ford), a housewife and nurse's aide, and Guy Tomlin, a factory worker. Tomlin's parents were Southern Baptists who moved to Detroit from Paducah, Kentucky, during the Great Depression. She is a 1957 graduate of Cass Technical High School. Tomlin attended Wayne State University, where her interest in the theater and performing arts began. After college, Tomlin began doing stand-up comedy in nightclubs in Detroit and later in New York City. Her first television appearance was on The Merv Griffin Show in 1965.

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Linda Lyndell
Linda Lyndell (born as Linda Rowland, November 22, 1946) is an American soul singer from Gainesville, Florida.
Lyndell sang in gospel churches as a child; though she was white, she sang in both white and black churches, and eventually began singing with R&B groups as a teenager. In the 1960s she sang as a support act with James Brown and Ike & Tina Turner, and in 1967 Atlanta disc jockey Dave Crawford tipped her to Stax Records producers Isaac Hayes and David Porter. They recorded her first single, "Bring Your Love Back to Me", in December 1967 and released it on Volt Records, but the song did not become a hit. In 1968 she did a second session, cutting the tune "What a Man"; this song reached #50 on the Billboard R&B charts. In response to the success of her single, she received threats from white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, and retired from performance soon after. She remained out of music and lived in Gainesville for the next 25 years.
In 1993, rap group Salt-n-Pepa sampled "What a Man" for their hit single "Whatta Man", which was a massive hit. In the wake of the single's success, Lyndell began performing again, and in 2003, at the opening of the Stax Museum, she performed "What a Man" live for the first time ever.

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Liza Minnelli
Liza May Minnelli (born March 12, 1946) is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli.
Already established as a nightclub singer and musical theatre actress, she first attracted critical acclaim for her dramatic performances in the movies The Sterile Cuckoo (1969), and Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970); Minnelli then rose to international stardom for her appearance as Sally Bowles in the 1972 film version of the Broadway musical Cabaret, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. She later made a great star turn in Arthur (1981), co-starring with Dudley Moore (in the title role) and Sir John Gielgud, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor as Arthur's snobbish but loveable butler.
While film projects such as Lucky Lady, A Matter of Time and New York, New York were less favorably received than her stage roles, Minnelli became one of the most versatile, highly regarded and best-selling entertainers in television, beginning with Liza with a Z in 1972, and on stage in the Broadway productions of Flora the Red Menace, The Act and The Rink. Minnelli also toured internationally and did shows such as Liza Minnelli: At Carnegie Hall, Frank, Liza & Sammy: The Ultimate Event, and Liza Live from Radio City Music Hall.

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Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels, CM (born November 17, 1944) is a Canadian-American television producer, writer, and comedian best known for creating and producing Saturday Night Live and producing the various film and TV projects that spun off from it.
Michaels was born Lorne David Lipowitz in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the son of Florence (née Becker) and Henry Abraham Lipowitz, a furrier. He was the eldest of the Lipowitz children. He has a sister, Barbara Lipowitz, who currently resides in Toronto, and a brother, Mark Lipowitz, who died from a brain tumor. Michaels attended the Forest Hill Collegiate Institute in Toronto and graduated from University College, University of Toronto, where he majored in English, in 1966. Michaels began his career as a writer and broadcaster for CBC Radio. He moved to Los Angeles from Toronto in 1968 to work as a writer for Laugh-In and The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show. He starred with Hart Pomerantz in The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour, a Canadian comedy series which ran briefly in the early 1970s. During the late 1960s, Michaels married Rosie Shuster, who later worked with him on Saturday Night Live as a writer. She was the daughter of Frank Shuster, one half of the famous comedy team, Wayne and Shuster. Michaels and Shuster were divorced in 1980.

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Margaret Cho
Margaret Cho (born December 5, 1968) is an American comedian, fashion designer, actress, author, and singer-songwriter. Cho, of Korean descent, is best known for her stand-up routines, through which she critiques social and political problems, especially those pertaining to race and sexuality. She has also directed and appeared in music videos and has her own clothing line. She has frequently supported LGBT rights and has won awards for her humanitarian efforts on behalf of women, Asians, and the LGBT community.
As an actress she has played more serious parts, such as Charlene Lee in It's My Party and that of John Travolta's FBI colleague in the action movie Face/Off. She is part of the TV series Drop Dead Diva on Lifetime Television, playing the role of Teri Lee, a paralegal assistant.
Cho was born into a Korean family in San Francisco, California. She grew up in a racially diverse neighborhood in the 1970s and 1980s, which she described as a community of "old hippies, ex-druggies, burn-outs from the '60s, drag queens, Chinese people, and Koreans. To say it was a melting pot — that's the least of it. It was a really confusing, enlightening, wonderful time."

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Margot Kidder
Margaret Ruth "Margot" Kidder (born October 17, 1948) is a Canadian-born American actress. She has appeared in a wide range of films during the 1970s and 1980s such as Sisters, Black Christmas, The Great Waldo Pepper, The Amityville Horror and Heartaches. She is best known for her role as Lois Lane in four Superman movies opposite Christopher Reeve, beginning with Superman: The Movie in 1978.
Kidder, one of five children, was born in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, the daughter of Jocelyn Mary "Jill" (née Wilson), a history teacher, and Kendall Kidder, an explosives expert and mining engineer. Her mother was from British Columbia and her father was from New Mexico in the United States. She was born in Yellowknife because of her father's job, which required the family to live in remote locations. She has a sister, Annie, and three brothers, John, Michael and Peter. Kidder's niece, Janet Kidder, is also an actress. A short residential street near Yellowknife's Old Town is named Lois Lane in her honor.^{[citation needed]}

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Martin Lawrence
Martin Fitzgerald Lawrence (born April 16, 1965) is an actor, film director, film producer, screenwriter, and stand up comedian. He came to fame during the 1990s, establishing a Hollywood career as a leading actor, most notably the films Bad Boys, Blue Streak, and Big Momma's House. Lawrence has acted in numerous film roles and starred in his own television series, Martin, which ran from 1992 to 1997.
Lawrence was born in Frankfurt am Main, Hesse in Germany on April 16, 1965, to American parents. He was given his first name after civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and his middle name after US President John F. Kennedy. His father, John Lawrence, served in the US Military. After his parents divorced when he was eight, Lawrence rarely saw his father, who worked as a police officer at the time. His mother, Chlora (née Bailey), began working several jobs to support her family. During his teen years, Lawrence excelled at boxing. He lived in Maryland, and attended Thomas G. Pullen School of Creative and Performing Arts (Landover, Maryland), Fairmont Heights High School (Fairmount Heights, Maryland), Eleanor Roosevelt High School, and also Friendly High School in Fort Washington, Maryland, becoming a Mid-Atlantic Golden Gloves boxing contender.

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Mel and Tim
Mel and Tim were an American soul music duo active in the 1960s and early 1970s, and best known for the hit, "Backfield in Motion" (1969). They are also well known for: "Hope, Life's Goal" and "Starting All Over Again" (1972).
Melvin McArthur Hardin and Hubert Timothy McPherson were cousins from Holly Springs, Mississippi, who traveled to Chicago where they were discovered by Gene Chandler. Hardin's mother and McPherson's aunt, Yolanda Hardin, cousin Walita, Catha, Donny and Darris Maxwell helped the duo with their writing and publicity, as she was once a singer herself. She signed them to a recording contract with her Bamboo Records record label, and they recorded their own song, "Backfield in Motion". It was immediately successful, reaching #3 on the U.S. Billboard R&B chart and #10 in the pop equivalent in 1969. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. Their follow-up song was "Good Guys Only Win in the Movies", which was also the name of their first album.
Hardin and McPherson subsequently moved to the Stax label, where they recorded a second Top 5 R&B hit with the ballad "Starting All Over Again". Released in the U.S. in June 1972, the record climbed to #19 on the Hot 100 and stayed on that chart for 20 weeks. It was their second million seller, taking five months to shift that number of gramophone records. This was also the title track of their second album in 1972, recorded in Muscle Shoals and produced by Phillip Mitchell. They performed at the Wattstax charity concert that year, but later recordings could not repeat their earlier successes.

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Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks (born Melvin Kaminsky; June 28, 1926) is an American film director, screenwriter, composer, lyricist, comedian, actor and producer. He is best known as a creator of broad film farces and comic parodies. He began his career as a stand-up comic and as a writer for the early TV variety show Your Show of Shows. He became well known as part of the comedy duo with Carl Reiner, The 2000 Year Old Man. In middle age he became one of the most successful film directors of the 1970s, with many of his films being among the top ten money makers of the year that they were released. His most well known films include The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, History of the World, Part I and Spaceballs. More recently he has had a smash hit on Broadway with the musical adaptation of his first film, The Producers. He was married to the actress Anne Bancroft from 1964 until her death in 2005.
Brooks is a member of the short list of entertainers with the distinction of having won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony award. Three of his films ranked in the American Film Institute's list of the top 100 comedy films of all-time: Blazing Saddles at number 6, The Producers at number 11, and Young Frankenstein at number 13.

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Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE (born Maurice Joseph Micklewhite; 14 March 1933) is an English actor.
Caine is one of two actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting in every decade from the 1960s to 2000s, the other one being Jack Nicholson. In 2000, Caine was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his contribution to cinema.
Caine was born in St Olave's Hospital, Rotherhithe, Southwark in South East London, the son of Ellen Frances Marie (née Burchell; 1900-1989), a cook and charwoman, and Maurice Joseph Micklewhite, a fish market porter. His father was of English, Irish, and, reportedly, Irish Traveller ancestry. Caine was brought up in his mother's Protestant religion (his father was Catholic).
Caine grew up in Southwark, South London, and during the Second World War he was evacuated to North Runcton near King's Lynn in Norfolk. After the war, when his father was demobilised, the family was rehoused by the council in Marshall Gardens at the Elephant and Castle in a pre-fabricated house made in Canada, as much of London's housing stock had been damaged during the Blitz in 1940-41.

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N'dambi
'N'dambi is an American soul/jazz singer.
N'dambi (born Chonita Gilbert) is the ninth of eleven children born to a Baptist minister and missionary. Her father was a minister and singer in a quartet group. She got her professional start singing with Gaye Arbuckle, a local gospel singer, touring with Arbuckle for two years (from the ages of 18 to 20). Shortly thereafter she sang as background singer and collaborator with Erykah Badu.
She released three independent albums: Little Lost Girls Blues, Tunin' Up & Cosignin' and A Weird Kind of Wonderful. As a result of her success as an independent artist, she was signed to the re-activated Stax Records (Concord Music Group) in 2006 and released her 2011 Grammy-nominated album, Pink Elephant in 2009.
Her name, "N'dambi" was taken from a Central African language. It means "Most beautiful", N'dambi told RNation.com. "NDambi" is not uncommon as a name in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola. As a model, N'dambi has posed for fashion photographer Marc Baptiste.

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Neil Simon
Neil Simon (born July 4, 1927) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that were made into movies. He also has written the books for several musicals, including Sweet Charity.
Neil Simon was born on July 4, 1927 in The Bronx, New York City to Irving Simon, a garment salesman, and his wife Mamie. He was their second son and grew up in Washington Heights, Manhattan during the Great Depression. His father often abandoned the family, causing financial and emotional difficulties. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School and graduated at the age of sixteen.
He attended New York Universitybriefly from 1944 to 1945, where he was enlisted in the Army Air Force Reserve training program. He was assigned to Lowry Air Force Base during 1945 and attended the University of Denver from 1945 to 1946. He was a sports editor for the military magazine Rev-Meter.

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Nigger
Nigger is a noun in the English language, most notable for its usage in a pejorative context to refer to black people (generally people of Sub-Saharan African descent), and also as an informal slang term, among other contexts. It is a common ethnic slur, and suggests that its target is extremely unsophisticated. The word originated as a term used in a neutral context to refer to black people, as a variation of the Spanish/Portuguese noun negro, a descendant of the Latin adjective niger (“color black”).
The variants neger and negar, derive from the Spanish and Portuguese word negro (black), and from the now-pejorative French nègre (nigger). Etymologically, negro, noir, nègre, and nigger ultimately derive from nigrum, the stem of the Latin niger (black) (pronounced [ˈniɡer] which, in every other grammatical case, grammatical gender, and grammatical number besides nominative masculine singular, is nigr-, the r is trilled).

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Nina Simone
Eunice Kathleen Waymon (February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003), better known by her stage name Nina Simone /ˈniːnə sɨˈmoʊn/, was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist widely associated with jazz music. Simone aspired to become a classical pianist while working in a broad range of styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel, and pop.
Born the sixth child of a preacher's family in North Carolina, Simone aspired to be a concert pianist as a child. Her musical path changed direction after she was denied a scholarship to the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, despite a well-received audition. Simone was later told by someone working at Curtis that she was rejected because she was black. She then began playing in a small club in Philadelphia to fund her continuing musical education to become a classical pianist and was required to sing as well. She was approached for a recording by Bethlehem Records, and her rendition of "I Loves You Porgy" became a smash hit in the United States in 1958. Over the length of her career, Simone recorded more than 40 albums, mostly between 1958 — when she made her debut with Little Girl Blue — and 1974.

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Otis Redding
Otis Ray Redding, Jr. (September 9, 1941 – December 10, 1967) was an American soul singer-songwriter, record producer, arranger, and talent scout. He is considered one of the major figures in soul music and rhythm and blues (R&B), and one of the greatest singers in popular music. His open-throated singing was an influence on other soul singers of the 1960s, and he helped to craft the lean and powerful style of R&B that formed the basis of the Stax Sound. After appearing at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, he wrote and recorded "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay", which became a number-one record on both the pop and R&B charts after his death in a plane crash.
Redding was born and raised in the American state of Georgia. At age 15, he left school to support his family by working with Little Richard's backing band, The Upsetters, and by playing talent shows for prize money. In 1958, he joined Johnny Jenkins's band, The Pinetoppers, and toured the Southern United States while serving as driver and musician. An unscheduled appearance on a session led to a turning point in his career. He signed a contract with Stax Records and released his debut album, Pain in My Heart, in 1964. This album produced his first Stax single, "These Arms of Mine".

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Pam Grier
Pamela Suzette "Pam" Grier (born May 26, 1949) is an American actress. She became famous in the early 1970s, after starring in a string of moderately successful women in prison and blaxploitation films such as 1974's Foxy Brown. Her career was revitalized in 1997 after her appearance in Quentin Tarantino's film Jackie Brown. She received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. She has also been nominated for a SAG as well as a Satellite Award for her performance in the iconic film Jackie Brown. She received an Emmy Award nomination for her work in an Animated Program Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child. Rotten Tomatoes has ranked her as the second Greatest Female Action Heroine in film history. Director Quentin Tarantino remarked that she may have been cinema's first female action star.
Grier was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the daughter of Gwendolyn Sylvia (née Samuels), a homemaker and nurse, and Clarence Ransom Grier,Jr., who worked as a mechanic and Technical Sergeant in the United States Air Force. She has one sister and one brother. At age 6, Grier was raped by two boys when she was left unattended at her aunt's house. "It took so long to deal with the pain of that", she says, "You try to deal with it, but you never really get over it", she adds. "And not just me; my family endured so much guilt and anger that something like that happened to me." Because of her father's military career, her family moved frequently during her childhood, to various places such as England, and eventually settled in Denver, Colorado, where she attended East High School. While in Denver, Colorado she appeared in a number of stage productions, and participated in beauty contests to raise money for college tuition toward Metropolitan State College. Contrary to previous reports, she states that she is not the cousin of National Football League great Roosevelt Grier or to National Hockey League player Mike Grier.

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Patton Oswalt
Patton Oswalt (born January 27, 1969) is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and voice actor known for roles such as Spencer Olchin in the popular sitcom The King of Queens, and voicing Remy from the film Ratatouille and Thrasher from the Cartoon Network original series Robotomy.
Oswalt was born January 17, 1969 in Portsmouth, Virginia, to Carla and Larry J. Oswalt, a career United States Marine Corps officer. He was named after George S. Patton. While a military brat, he later lived in Ohio and Tustin, California, before settling in Sterling, Virginia. He is a 1987 graduate of Broad Run High School in Ashburn, Virginia and later attended the College of William and Mary, where he majored in English and was initiated into the Alpha Theta Chapter of the Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity.^{[citation needed]}
Oswalt first began performing standup comedy in the late 1980s or early 1990s, by his own reckoning. After writing for MADtv and starring in his own 1996 comedy special for HBO, he went on to garner notable roles in films and television shows. His most prominent and long-running role was as Spence Olchin on The King of Queens. His first starring film role was as the voice of Remy, the lead character in the 2007 Pixar film Ratatouille. He has also appeared in smaller roles in such films as Magnolia and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. He lent his voice as in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as a caller on the WTCR show "The Tight End Zone", and was the voice of a caller on "Chatterbox" on LCFR in the game Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories. He was also the voice of a reporter on "New World Order", a radio show on VCPR in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories. He supposedly lent his voice as Randall Tugman in the zombie game Dead Rising 2, although he denies this. The character Randall Tugman is credited to have been voiced by John Murphy.

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Paul Hogan
Paul Hogan, AM (born 8 October 1939) is an Australian actor best known for his role as Michael "Crocodile" Dundee from the Crocodile Dundee film series, for which he won a Golden Globe award.
Hogan was born in Lightning Ridge, New South Wales. He grew up in the Sydney suburb of Granville and attended Parramatta Marist High School. Hogan went on to become a rigger working on the Sydney Harbour Bridge before rising to fame in the early 1970s after an interview on A Current Affair. Hogan followed this with his own comedy sketch program The Paul Hogan Show, which he produced, wrote, and in which he played characters with John Cornell. The series, which ran for 60 episodes between 1973 and 1984, was popular both in his native country and in the UK, and showcased his trademark lighthearted but laddish ocker humour. The early series was on Channel Seven and by 1975, it was screened on Channel Nine where it remained until 1984.
In the 1970s, he advertised Winfield cigarettes in television, print and billboard advertisements in which he wore a formal dinner suit. These ads always ended with the catchphrase "Anyhow, have a Winfield". During the early 1980s, Hogan filmed a series of television ads promoting the Australian tourism industry, which aired in the United States. An advertisement featuring the phrase "shrimp on the barbie" which aired from 1984, was particularly successful.

wn.com/Paul_Hogan
Paul Schrader
Paul Joseph Schrader (born July 22, 1946) is an American screenwriter, film director, and former film critic. Apart from his credentials as a director, Schrader is most known for his screenplays for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.
Schrader was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the son of Joan (née Fisher) and Charles A. Schrader, an executive. Schrader's family practiced in the Calvinist Christian Reformed Church, and his early life was based upon the religion's strict principles and parental education. He did not see a film until he was seventeen years old, and was able to sneak away from home. In an interview he stated that The Absent-Minded Professor was the first film he saw. In his own words, he was "very unimpressed" by it, while Wild in the Country, which he saw some time later, had quite some effect on him. Schrader refers his intellectual rather than emotional approach towards movies and movie making to his having no adolescent's movie memories.
Schrader received his BA from Calvin College, with a minor in Theology. He then earned an MA in Film Studies from the UCLA Film School graduate program upon the recommendation of Pauline Kael. With her as his mentor, he became a film critic, writing for the Los Angeles Free Press, and later for Cinema magazine. His book Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer, which examines the cross-cultural similarities between Robert Bresson, Yasujirō Ozu and Carl Theodor Dreyer, was published in 1972. The endings of Schrader's films American Gigolo and Light Sleeper bear obvious resemblance to that of Bresson's 1959 film Pickpocket. His essay Notes on Film Noir from the same year has become a much cited source in literature on film.

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People (magazine)
People (originally called People Weekly) is a weekly American magazine of celebrity and human-interest stories, published by Time Inc. As of 2006, it has a circulation of 3.75 million and revenue expected to top $1.5 billion. It was named "Magazine of the Year" by Advertising Age in October 2005, for excellence in editorial, circulation and advertising.People ranked #6 on Advertising Age's annual "A-list" and #3 on Adweek's "Brand Blazers" list in October 2006.
The magazine runs a roughly 50/50 mix of celebrity and human-interest articles. People's editors claim to refrain from printing pure celebrity gossip, enough so to lead celebrity publicists to propose exclusives to the magazine, evidence of what one staffer calls a "publicist-friendly strategy".
People's website, People.com, focuses exclusively on celebrity news. In February 2007, the website drew 39.6 million page views "within a day" of the Golden Globes. However "the mother ship of Oscar coverage" broke a site record with 51.7 million page views on the day after the Oscars, beating the previous record set just a month before from the Golden Globes.^{[not in citation given]}

wn.com/People_(magazine)
PETA
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) (stylized PeTA) is an American animal rights organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, and led by Ingrid Newkirk, its international president. A non-profit corporation with 300 employees and two million members and supporters, it claims to be the largest animal rights group in the world. Its slogan is "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment."
Founded in March 1980 by Newkirk and fellow animal rights activist Alex Pacheco, the organization first caught the public's attention in the summer of 1981 during what became known as the Silver Spring monkeys case, a widely publicized dispute about experiments conducted on 17 macaque monkeys inside the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland. The case lasted ten years, involved the only police raid on an animal laboratory in the United States, triggered an amendment in 1985 to that country's Animal Welfare Act, and established PETA as an internationally known organization. Since then, in its campaigns and undercover investigations, it has focused on four core issues—opposition to factory farming, fur farming, animal testing, and animals in entertainment—though it also campaigns against fishing, the killing of animals regarded as pests, the keeping of chained backyard dogs, cock fighting, dog fighting, and bullfighting.

wn.com/PETA
Rain Pryor
Rain Pryor (born July 16, 1969) is an American actress and comedian.
Pryor was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Shelley R. (Bonis) and American comedian Richard Pryor. Rain Pryor's mother was a Jewish go-go dancer and Rain was largely raised with her Jewish maternal grandparents, who taught her about Jewish culture. Her mother was urged by her family to put Rain up for adoption, rather than deal with bringing up a child "in a world that wasn’t ready for biracial children." Rain was rejected by the African Americans and the Jewish Americans in her life, thus creating a unique voice in her award winning solo show Fried Chicken and Latkes that explores racism in the late '60s and early '70s. In regard to her background, Pryor has joked that while growing up she felt "proud, but guilty about it."
Pryor graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1987.
She went on to star in the ABC series Head of the Class in the role of Theola June 'T.J.' Jones. Pryor's role was created from a series of characters she performed at her audition for the producers. Pryor starred for several years as Jackie, the lipstick lesbian drug addict on the Showtime series Rude Awakening and has guest starred on network television series such as The Division and Chicago Hope. She has appeared numerous times on both The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, as well as The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and Tavis Smiley.

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Ray Parker, Jr.
Ray Erskine Parker, Jr. (born May 1, 1954), is an American guitarist, songwriter, producer and recording artist. Parker is known for writing and performing the theme song to the motion picture Ghostbusters, for his solo hits, and performing with his band Raydio as well as Barry White.
Parker was born in Detroit to Venolia and Ray Parker, Sr. He has two siblings: his brother Opelton and his sister Barbara. His father died on March 12, 1992 at age 82; his mother died on December 18, 1993 at age 83.
Parker is a 1972 graduate of Northwestern High School in the Motor City. He was raised in the Dexter-Davison neighborhood on its West Side.
Parker gained his reputation during the late 1960s as a member of the house band at the legendary 20 Grand nightclub. This Detroit hot-spot often featured Tamla/Motown acts, one of which the (Detroit) Spinners, was so impressed with the young guitarist's skills that they added him to their touring group. Parker was also employed as a teenaged studio musician for the emergent Holland-Dozier-Holland's Invictus/Hot Wax stable and his choppy style was particularly prevalent on 'Want Ads', a number one single for Honey Cone.

wn.com/Ray_Parker,_Jr.
Redd Foxx
John Elroy Sanford (December 9, 1922 – October 11, 1991), better known by his stage name Redd Foxx, was an American comedian and actor, best known for his starring role on the sitcom Sanford and Son.
Foxx was born in St. Louis, Missouri and raised there and on Chicago's South Side. His mother was half Seminole.^{[citation needed]} His father, an electrician, left his family when Foxx was four years old. Foxx was raised by his mother, his minister, and his grandmother. He briefly attended DuSable High School with future Chicago mayor Harold Washington.
In the 1940s, he was an associate of Malcolm Little, later known as Malcolm X. In Malcolm's autobiography, Foxx is referred to as "Chicago Red, the funniest dishwasher on this earth." Foxx earned the nickname due to his reddish hair and complexion. His stage surname was taken from baseball star Jimmie Foxx. During World War II, Foxx dodged the draft by eating half a bar of soap before his physical, a trick that resulted in heart palpitations.
Foxx gained notoriety with his nightclub act (considered by the standards of the time to be raunchy). His big break came after singer Dinah Washington insisted that Foxx come to Los Angeles, where Dootsie Williams of Dootone records caught his act at the Brass Rail nightclub. He was signed to a long term contract and released a series of comedy albums that quickly became cult favorites.

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Richard Pryor
Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor (December 1, 1940 – December 10, 2005) was an American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, writer, and MC. Pryor was known for uncompromising examinations of racism and topical contemporary issues, which employed colorful vulgarities, and profanity, as well as racial epithets. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of his era: Jerry Seinfeld called Pryor "The Picasso of our profession";Bob Newhart has called Pryor "the seminal comedian of the last 50 years.". This legacy can be attributed, in part, to the unusual degree of intimacy Pryor brought to bear on his comedy. As Bill Cosby reportedly once said, "Richard Pryor drew the line between comedy and tragedy as thin as one could possibly paint it."
His body of work includes the concert movies and recordings Richard Pryor: Live & Smokin' (1971), That Nigger's Crazy (1974), ...Is It Something I Said? (1975), Bicentennial Nigger (1976), Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (1979), Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip (1982), and Richard Pryor: Here and Now (1983). He also starred in numerous films as an actor, such as Superman III (1983) but was usually in comedies such as Silver Streak (1976), and occasionally in dramatic roles, such as Paul Schrader's film Blue Collar (1978). He collaborated on many projects with actor Gene Wilder. Another frequent collaborator was actor/comedian/writer Paul Mooney.

wn.com/Richard_Pryor
Robin Williams
Robin McLaurin Williams (born July 21, 1951) is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork & Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. He has also won two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and five Grammy Awards.
Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Laura McLaurin (née Smith, 1922–2001), was a former model from New Orleans, Louisiana. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams (September 10, 1906 – October 18, 1987), was a senior executive at Ford Motor Company in charge of the Midwest region. His maternal great-great-grandfather was senator and Mississippi governor Anselm J. McLaurin. Williams is of English, Welsh, Irish, and French ancestry. He was raised in the Episcopal Church (his mother practiced Christian Science). He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he was a student at the Detroit Country Day School, and later moved to Woodacre, Marin County, California, where he attended the public Redwood High School. Williams studied at Claremont McKenna College (then called Claremont Men's College) for four years. He has two half-brothers: Todd (who died August 14, 2007) and McLaurin.

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Rufus Thomas
Rufus Thomas, Jr. (March 27, 1917 – December 15, 2001) was an American rhythm and blues, funk and soul singer and comedian from Memphis, Tennessee, who recorded on Sun Records in the 1950s and on Stax Records in the 1960s and 1970s. He was the father of soul singer Carla Thomas and keyboard player Marvell Thomas. A third child, Vaneese, a former French teacher, has a recording studio in upstate New York and sings for television commercials.
Born a sharecropper's son in the rural community of Cayce, Mississippi, Thomas moved to Memphis with his family at age 2. His mother was “a church woman.” Thomas made his artistic debut at the age of 6 playing a frog in a school theatrical production. Much later in life, he would impersonate all kinds of animals: screeching cats, funky chickens and penguins, and mournful dogs. By age 10, he was a tap dancer, performing in amateur productions at Memphis' Booker T. Washington High School.

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Sammy Davis, Jr.
Samuel George "Sammy" Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American entertainer and was also known for his impersonations of actors and other celebrities.
Primarily a dancer and singer, Davis started as a child vaudevillian who became known for his performances on Broadway and Las Vegas. He went on to become a world famous recording artist, television and film star. Davis was also a member of Frank Sinatra's "Rat Pack".
At the age of three Davis began his career in vaudeville with his father and "uncle" as the Will Mastin Trio, toured nationally, and after military service, returned to the trio. Davis became an overnight sensation following a nightclub performance at Ciro's after the 1951 Academy Awards. With the trio, he became a recording artist. In 1954, he lost his left eye in an automobile accident.
His film career began as a child in 1933. In 1960 he appeared in the first Rat Pack film, Ocean's 11. After a starring role on Broadway in 1956's Mr Wonderful, Davis returned to the stage in 1964's Golden Boy, and in 1966 had his own TV variety show, The Sammy Davis Jr. Show. Davis' career slowed in the late sixties, but he had a hit record with "The Candy Man", in 1972, and became a star in Las Vegas earning him the nickname Mister Show Business.

wn.com/Sammy_Davis,_Jr.
Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLean Beaty (born April 24, 1934), known professionally as Shirley MacLaine, is an American film and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author, well known for her beliefs in New Age spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career. She was nominated for an Academy Award five times before winning the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1983 for her role in Terms of Endearment. Her younger brother is Warren Beatty.
Named after Shirley Temple, MacLaine was born in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Ira Owens Beaty, was a professor of psychology, public school administrator, and real estate agent, and her mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a drama teacher originally from Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada; MacLaine's grandparents were also teachers.The family was devoutly Baptist. Her uncle (her mother's brother-in-law) was A.A. MacLeod, a Communist member of the Ontario legislature in the 1940s.

wn.com/Shirley_MacLaine
Stan Daniels
Stanley Edwin Daniels (July 31, 1934 – April 6, 2007) was a Canadian-American screenwriter, producer and director, who won eight Emmy Awards for his work on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Taxi.
Born in Toronto to Jewish parents involved in vaudeville, Daniels earned a bachelor's degree and master's degree from the University of Toronto, then began studying for a doctorate from Oxford University. His first television writing job was for The Dean Martin Show in 1956. There, he met his writing partner Ed. Weinberger.
Daniels' influence in comedy is noted by the joke setup credited to him ("Stan Daniels turn") wherein, "a character says something and then does an immediate 180-degree shift on what he just said," according to The Simpsons producer Al Jean. An example of this may be Tony Blair claiming that the Good Friday Agreement is not a day for soundbites, then, immediately going on to say that he, "feel[s] the hand of history on [his] shoulders.". I composed the music and wrote the lyrics of So Long, 174th Street

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Steve Cropper
Steve Cropper (born Steven Lee Cropper, October 21, 1941, Dora, Missouri), also known as Steve "The Colonel" Cropper, is an American guitarist, songwriter and record producer. He is best known as the guitarist of the Stax Records house band, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and has backed artists such as Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla, Rufus Thomas and Johnnie Taylor, also acting as producer on many of these records. He later gained fame as a member of the Blues Brothers band.Rolling Stone lists him 36th on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.Mojo ranks Cropper as the second-best guitarist ever.
When he was nine years old, Cropper moved with his family to Memphis, Tennessee. At the age of ten, he strummed his brother-in-law's Gibson guitar for the first time^{[citation needed]}. Cropper received his first guitar by mail order at 14 and started playing with local musicians. His guitar heroes at the time included Lowman Pauling of the "5" Royales, as well as Chet Atkins, Chuck Berry, Tal Farlow, Jimmy Reed, and the guitarist of the Bill Doggett band, Billy Butler.

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Steve Martin
Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin (born August 14, 1945) is an American actor, comedian, author, playwright, producer, musician and composer. Martin came to public notice as a writer for the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and later became a frequent guest on The Tonight Show. In the 1970s, Martin performed his offbeat, absurdist comedy routines before packed houses on national tours. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Martin at sixth place in a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics.
Since the 1980s, having branched away from stand-up comedy, Martin has become a successful actor in both comedic and dramatic roles, as well as an author, playwright, pianist, and banjo player, eventually earning Emmy, Grammy, and American Comedy awards, among other honors.

wn.com/Steve_Martin
Teena Marie
Mary Christine Brockert (March 5, 1956 – December 26, 2010), better known by her stage name Teena Marie, was an American singer, songwriter and producer. She was known as Tina before taking the stage name Teena Marie, then she later acquired the nickname of Lady Tee (sometimes spelled as Lady T), given to her by collaborator and friend, Rick James.
She was known for her distinctive soulful vocals which initially caused many listeners to believe she was African-American. Her success in R&B and soul and loyalty to these genres would earn her the title Ivory Queen of Soul. She played rhythm guitar, keyboards and congas. She also wrote, produced, sang, and arranged virtually all of her songs since her 1980 release, Irons in the Fire, which she later said was her favorite album.
Mary Christine, or Teena as she was called, was the fourth of five children born in Santa Monica, California^{[citation needed]} to construction worker Thomas Leslie Brockert and his wife, home renovator Mary Anne. She spent her early childhood in Mission Hills. Her ethnic heritage was Portuguese, Italian, Irish and Native American.^{[citation needed]} In 2005, while visiting Louisiana, she had discovered that her paternal ancestors once lived in New Orleans. Brockert took to singing naturally, performing Harry Belafonte's Banana Boat Song by age two. She also developed a fondness for singing the songs of Motown, and her self-professed “gift from God” would become fine-tuned as the years progressed.

wn.com/Teena_Marie
Tina Fey
Elizabeth Stamatina "Tina" Fey ( /ˈfeɪ/; born May 18, 1970) is an American actress, comedian, writer and producer, known for her work on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live (SNL), the NBC comedy series 30 Rock, and films such as Mean Girls (2004) and Baby Mama (2008).
Fey first broke into comedy as a featured player in the Chicago-based improvisational comedy group The Second City. She then joined SNL as a writer, later becoming head writer and a performer, known for her position as co-anchor in the Weekend Update segment. In 2004 she adapted the screenplay Mean Girls in which she also co-starred. After leaving SNL in 2006, she created the television series 30 Rock, a situation comedy loosely based on her experiences at SNL. In the series, Fey portrays the head writer of a fictional sketch comedy series. In 2008, she starred in the comedy film Baby Mama, alongside former SNL co-star Amy Poehler. Fey next appeared in the 2010 comedy films Date Night and Megamind.
She has received seven Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, four Screen Actors Guild Awards, four Writers Guild of America Awards and has been nominated for a Grammy Award for her autobiographical book Bossypants, which topped the The New York Times Best Seller list for five weeks. She was singled out as the performer who had the greatest impact on culture and entertainment in 2008 by the Associated Press, which gave her its AP Entertainer of the Year award for her satirical portrayal of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in a guest appearance on SNL. In 2010, Fey was the recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the youngest-ever winner of the award.

wn.com/Tina_Fey
Treva Silverman
Treva Silverman is an American Emmy Award-winning screenwriter.

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Walter Matthau
Walter Matthau (October 1, 1920 – July 1, 2000) was an American actor best known for his role as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple and his frequent collaborations with Odd Couple star Jack Lemmon, as well as his role as Coach Buttermaker in the 1976 comedy The Bad News Bears. He won an Academy Award for his performance in the 1966 Billy Wilder film The Fortune Cookie.
Matthau was born Walter John Matthow in New York City's Lower East Side on October 1, 1920, the son of Rose (née Berolsky; from Lithuania), who worked in a sweatshop, and Milton Matthow, an electrician and peddler (from Russia), both Jewish immigrants. His surname has often incorrectly been listed as Matuschanskayasky (see below for a detailed discussion). As a young boy, Walter attended a Jewish non-profit sleepaway camp, Tranquillity Camp, where he first began acting in the shows the camp would stage on Saturday nights. He also attended Surprise Lake Camp. His high school was Seward Park High School.
During World War II, Matthau served in the U.S. Army Air Forces with the Eighth Air Force in England as a B-24 Liberator radioman-gunner, in the same 453rd Bombardment Group as James Stewart. He reached the rank of staff sergeant and became interested in acting. He took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator. He often joked that his best early review came in a play where he posed as a derelict. One reviewer said, "The others just looked like actors in make-up, Walter Matthau really looks like a skid row bum!" Matthau was a respected stage actor for years in such fare as Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and A Shot in the Dark. He won the 1962 Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a play.

wn.com/Walter_Matthau
Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty ( /ˈbeɪti/ BAY-tee; born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has been nominated for 15 Academy Awards, including winning the Best Director Award and its highest honor, the Irving G. Thalberg Award. He has been nominated for 16 Golden Globe Awards and won six, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award, which he received in 2007. Only Beatty and Orson Welles have been nominated for producer, director, writer and actor in the same film. Welles did it once (for Citizen Kane), Beatty did it twice (for Heaven Can Wait and Reds).
Beatty was born Henry Warren Beaty in Richmond, Virginia. His mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a Nova Scotia-born teacher, and his father, Ira Owens Beaty, was a Ph.D. of educational psychology, a public school administrator, and dealt in real estate. Beatty's grandparents were also educators. The family was Baptist. In 1945, the family moved from Richmond to Arlington, Virginia. Beatty's sister is the multi-award winning actress and writer Shirley MacLaine.

wn.com/Warren_Beatty
Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg ( /ˈhwʊpi/, born Caryn Elaine Johnson; November 13, 1955) is an American comedienne, actress, singer-songwriter, political activist, author and talk show host.
Goldberg made her film debut in The Color Purple (1985) playing Celie, a mistreated black woman in the Deep South. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won her first Golden Globe Award for her role in the film. In 1990, she starred as Oda Mae Brown, a psychic helping a slain man (Patrick Swayze) find his killer in the blockbuster film Ghost. This performance won her a second Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Notable later films include Sister Act and Sister Act 2, The Lion King, Made in America, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Girl, Interrupted and Rat Race. She is also acclaimed for her roles as the bartender Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation and as Terry Doolittle in Jumpin' Jack Flash. More recently, she had performed the voice of Stretch in Toy Story 3 and made an appearance in Glee as Carmen Tibideaux.

wn.com/Whoopi_Goldberg
Woody Allen
Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg, December 1, 1935) is an award-winning American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, and playwright, whose career spans over half a century.
He began as a comedy writer in the 1950s, penning jokes and scripts for television and also publishing several books of short humor pieces. In the early 1960s, Allen started performing as a stand-up comic, emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes. As a comic, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he insists is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics, while a UK survey ranked Allen as the third greatest comedian.
By the mid-1960s Allen was writing and directing films, first specializing in slapstick comedies before moving into more dramatic material influenced by European art films during the 1970s. He is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late '70s. Allen often stars in his own films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup. The best-known of his over 40 films include the Academy Award-winners Annie Hall (1977), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Midnight in Paris (2011); and the Golden Globe-winning The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). Critic Roger Ebert has described Allen as "a treasure of the cinema."

wn.com/Woody_Allen

Richard Pryor clips

A few clips of Rychard Pryor. Very old clip. Richard and the audience. Richard on Boxing. ...

published: 14 Sep 2009

author: Steen Frantzen

Richard Pryor Vs Hostile Audience

Richard Pryor Vs Audience...

published: 13 Jul 2008

author: Mynjunkyard

Richard Pryor Live And Smokin' (1971) FULL LENGTH

Early in his career he was light hearted and clean like Bill Cosby (his idol). I believe t...

published: 30 Jan 2012

author: lilbro209

Richard Pryor, 1st black President

Richard Pryor, 1st black President...

published: 30 Mar 2008

author: MyWorldinPeace

The "N" Word

Richard Pryor, Live on Sunset...

published: 02 Oct 2006

author: kingryan01

Richard Pryor owns at his own roast! part 1/2

Check out my site for more funny stuff thesportsclown.com Maybe the funniest man who ever ...

published: 18 Jan 2010

author: TheSportsClown

Foul-mouthed Richard Pryor

Richard Pryor INSULTS EVERYONE...

published: 01 Jan 2008

author: wzxd8rm

Richard Pryor -- Star Wars Bar

Bartender, Richard Pryor, with real costumes from the original Star Wars. No annoying adve...

published: 08 Jul 2007

author: almostpink

The Richard Pryor Show - Stand Up (1 of 4)

hq...

published: 15 Mar 2011

author: gregdeanness

Richard Pryor

Richard discusses his accident, and life then introduces Robin Williams in this excellent ...

published: 17 Aug 2009

author: TehComedyStore

Richard Pryor "Being Cool" on The Ed Sullivan Show

goo.gl - Performed on "The Ed Sullivan Show" on November 27, 1966. Available on "The Very ...

published: 24 Aug 2009

author: TheEdSullivanShow

Richard pryor

to funny...

published: 06 Sep 2007

author: akabigron

Richard Pryor: Gun Shop

The Richard Pryor Show - Gun Shop Sketch, 1977. Featuring voice overs by Tim Reid & Robin ...

published: 18 Apr 2007

author: hitman101

Classic Sesame Street - Richard Pryor's alphabet

Good clean humor from the late great Pryor....

published: 10 May 2007

author: sawing14s

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photo: AP / Nick Ut

File - Demonstrators are arrested by police after protesting outside a Walmart store Friday Nov. 23, 2012, in Paramount, Calif.

Walmart's horrific treatment of workers is too big to ignore

Al Jazeera

14 Dec 2012

Former President Bill Clinton, President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, meet 55-year-old Martha Sellers. For the past nine years, Sellers has worked as a Walmart cashier in Paramount, California ... More than 10,000 community members joined more than 30 striking employees who walked off the job to demand better working conditions. . "It was wonderful ... That's not too much to ask for." ... 1698 ... ....(size: 23.6Kb)

photo: AP / Manu Brabo

A Free Syrian Army fighter takes position close to a military base, near Azaz, Syria, Monday, Dec. 10, 2012.

Syria Rebels Holding Reporter Threaten Attacks on Russians

Novosti

13 Dec 2012

MOSCOW, December 13 (RIA Novosti) – Syrian rebels behind the kidnapping of Ukrainian journalist Ankhar Kochneva have released a video threatening more attacks on Russians and Ukrainians, as a deadline for her execution approaches on Thursday. Kochneva, a 40-year-old Ukrainian citizen, was abducted in October by Syrian rebels as she traveled to the city of Homs, and has been held there by them since, they claim ... ....(size: 2.1Kb)

photo: AP / Bullit Marquez

Soldiers unload another victim of typhoon Bopha as retrieval operations continue at the hardest hit New Bataan township, Compostela Valley in southern Philippines Sunday Dec. 9, 2012. The number of missing in the wake of a typhoon that devastated parts of the southern Philippines has jumped to nearly 900 after families and fishing companies reported losing contact with more than 300 fishermen in the South China Sea and Pacific Ocean, officials said Sunday.

Typhoon ‘Pablo’ toll: 714 confirmed dead, 890 missing

The Daily Tribune

11 Dec 2012

The death toll brought about by typhoon “Pablo” continued to rise with 714 persons confirmed dead by the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) yesterday while those missing ballooned to 890 as massive search, retrieval and relief operations continue in the typhoon-ravaged areas in Mindanao ... 4 ... They were subsequently brought to Caraga Regional Hospital ... (NHMFC) (P100,000) ... With AFP ....(size: 5.4Kb)

photo: AP / KCNA

In this Dec. 12, 2012 photo released by Korean Central News Agency, North Korea's Unha-3 rocket lifts off from the Sohae launch pad in Tongchang-ri, North Korea. The satellite that North Korea launched on board the long-range rocket is orbiting normally, South Korea said on Thursday.

North Koreans mark rocket success as South finds debris

BBC News

14 Dec 2012

North Koreans have gathered in Pyongyang for a mass rally to celebrate Wednesday's long-range rocket launch. State television showed huge crowds cheering to mark the launch, which has been condemned by many nations as a banned test of missile technology. South Korea, meanwhile, says it has retrieved debris from the rocket and will study it to assess its technology. The first stage of the rocket fell west of the Korean peninsula ... ....(size: 2.7Kb)

photo: AP / Manu Brabo

In this Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012 photo, a Free Syrian Army fighter poses as he carries his weapon in the northern province of Aleppo, Syria. Syria's civil war has killed more than 40,000 people.

Russia says Syrian rebels might win

CNTV

14 Dec 2012

One of Syria's key allies has admitted for the first time the Assad regime is losing the 20-month ground war. Russia’s deputy foreign minister’s comments are significant because Russia has blocked action to stem the violence, supplied weapons to the Assad regime, and vetoed three UN resolutions -- even as other countries called for Assad to step down. The comments are expected to put new pressure on the Syrian leader ... Reporter ...   ... ....(size: 6.6Kb)

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Theater Listings for Dec. 14-20

The New York Times

14 Dec 2012

Theater ... ★ ‘Fried Chicken and Latkes’ Rain Pryor, the daughter of the comedian Richard Pryor (who died in 2005), stars in this effervescent solo show, which recounts her upbringing in a biracial household (her mother is Jewish) in Beverly Hills, Calif ... Pryor, who sings and portrays a range of characters (including, poignantly, her father in a spot-on impression) is an ebullient performer with a robust singing voice ... J....(size: 46.9Kb)

Joe DeRosa Encounters A Heckler In 'Some Things Happened' Episode Of 'Modern Comedian' (VIDEO)

Huffington Post

12 Dec 2012

... funny in any context."</a>Michael Richards ... Richard Pryor. Many consider Richard Pryor a king of comedy -- and of controversy. With his short-lived TV show, "The Richard Pryor Show," Pryor had a skit where he played a rock star who killed all his white fans with a machine gun. The show's final episode has the famous roast of Pryor....(size: 12.7Kb)

Balls Brothers of London - Andy and Owen Farrell Christmas Dinner 12th December listings

Skiddle

12 Dec 2012

MINSTER PAVEMENT MINCING LANE EC3R 7PP LONDON, London Wed 12th December 2012. Minster Exchange are delighted to invite you to join us at one of our legendary sporting dinners. Date. Wednesday 12th December 2012. Venue. MINSTER PAVEMENT MINCING LANE EC3R 7PP LONDON ». Location. London ». Doors. 7.00pm til 11.00pm (last entry 7.30am). Short url ... For bookings contact Richard on 07720591928. or email richard.pryor@ballsbrothers.co.uk ... 18....(size: 2.7Kb)

The art and craft of acting solo

The Examiner

10 Dec 2012

One actor, alone on stage. The story had better be good ... But is it an actor’s nightmare, or a dream come true? ... Lily Tomlin, Ian McKellen, Ed Asner, Tovah Feldshuh (‘Golda’s Balcony’), Frank Ferrante (‘An Evening With Groucho’), Eve Ensler (‘The Vagina Monologues’), Hershey Felder (‘George Gershwin Alone’), Heather Woodbury, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Ruth Draper, John Gielgud are among the many solo artists whose work is discussed ... ....(size: 3.2Kb)

An atheist on reading fantasy fiction

The Examiner

10 Dec 2012

I was with a group including some friends who are Christian and who know I am an unbeliever. I mentioned that I was nearly done reading Gregory McGuire’s fourth volume in his series about the fantasy world of OZ. I added that I had enjoyed the series ... --- ... L. Frank Baum wrote nearly 20 stories about the world of Oz ... “The Wiz” is notable for its cast that included Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, Lena Horne, and Richard Pryor ... ....(size: 6.4Kb)

Ben Bolch's NBA rankings

Chicago Tribune

09 Dec 2012

1. Thunder (16-4). Kevin Durant's humanity trumps role model Kobe Bryant's 30,000 points. (2). 2. Heat (12-5). Wizards, Knicks are double trouble in week LeBron James nets triple-double. (1). 3. Spurs (16-4). Leaked Halloween photo of Duncan, Parker ends spooky stretch. (3). 4 ... 5 ... Richard Hamilton's injury makes trainer's room busier than runways at ORD ... Andre Miller entertaining offers to portray Richard Pryor after retirement ... ....(size: 2.3Kb)

The Times' NBA rankings

The Los Angeles Times

09 Dec 2012

HOW THEY RANK. BEN BOLCH'S RANKINGS, COMMENTS THROUGH SATURDAY. ATOP THE BCS STANDINGS. 1. OKLAHOMA CITY (16-4) Kevin Durant's humanity trumps role model Kobe Bryant's 30,000 points. (2). 2 ... (1). HOPING FOR A PLUS-ONE SCENARIO. 3 ... (3). 4 ... 5 ... (6). 6 ... Baby Geniuses 2 ." ... 7 ... CHICAGO (10-8) Richard Hamilton's injury makes trainer's room busier than runways at O'Hare ... DENVER (10-10) Andre Miller entertaining offers to portray Richard Pryor after retirement ... ....(size: 35.6Kb)

RECAP: Jamie Foxx brings perspective to 'SNL'

New York Post Online

09 Dec 2012

Good luck with the new name, Mr. President. Jamie Foxx renamed President Obama, donned a Ding Dong costume and served as a tree pimp, of all things, during this weekend’s episode of “Saturday Night Live.” ... “Madea, please stop.” ... Some of Saturday Night Live’s iconic moments have involved black standouts such as Richard Pryor and Gil Scott-Heron (1975), Ray Charles (1977), and Stevie Wonder (1983) ... ....(size: 4.4Kb)

Snoop Dogg On Katt Williams: 'I Really Wanna See Him Get Some Help' (VIDEO)

Huffington Post

07 Dec 2012

Sagittarius, the story teller of the zodiac

The Examiner

07 Dec 2012

Sagittarius, the story teller of the zodiac, is philosophical, tolerant of differences, has the ability to maintain an open mind and can show great wisdom. It easily sees the promise of tomorrow and is constantly seeking adventurous and philanthropic opportunities ... Humorist Mark Twain and cartoonist Charles Schultz were Sagittarians, as well as comedians - Richard Pryor, Woody Allen, Jon Stewart, Gary Shandling and Ben Stiller ... ....(size: 2.8Kb)

Joan Rivers: Bad Blood With Johnny Carson Hurt My Career

The Inquisitr

07 Dec 2012

Posted. December 6, 2012. Joan Rivers has been known for having thick skin, but the famous comedian said bad blood between herself and Johnny Carson hurt her career and showed her just how hard it was being a woman in comedy ... Even Joan Rivers bought into that idea. She wrote. ... ‘You’re very funny ... Joan Riverssaid she settled in with a crowd that included Woody Allen, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, and Rodney Dangerfield....(size: 8.3Kb)

Joan Rivers: Why Johnny Carson 'Never Ever Spoke to Me Again'

Yahoo Daily News

07 Dec 2012

When I started out, a pretty girl did not go into comedy. If you saw a pretty girl walk into a nightclub, she was automatically a singer. Comedy was all white, older men. It was Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Bob Hope, Shelley Berman, Red Skelton ... even Amos and Andy were white men, which is hilarious if you think about it. Phyllis Diller was happening right before me ... My group was Woody and George and Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby ... Dick Cavett ... ....(size: 9.1Kb)

Chris Rock thinks today's comedians aren't bringing the funny

Yahoo Daily News

06 Dec 2012

Compared to greats like George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby, they just aren't bringing the funny ... "Show me one guy or woman as funny as Rodney Dangerfield or as good as George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, or Joan Rivers," Rock wrote ... Richard Pryor could do 'The Ed Sullivan Show' and play the Apollo ." ... "Seinfeld can work any crowd ... ....(size: 1.7Kb)

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For the Texas radio broadcaster, see Cactus Pryor.

Richard Pryor
Richard Pryor, February 1986
Birth name	Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor
Born	(1940-12-01)December 1, 1940 Peoria, Illinois, United States
Died	December 10, 2005(2005-12-10) (aged 65) Encino, California, United States
Medium	Stand-up, Film, Television
Nationality	American
Years active	1958–1999
Genres	Satire, Observational comedy, Black comedy, Improvisational comedy, Character comedy
Subject(s)	Racism, Race relations, American politics, African-American culture, Human sexuality, Self-deprecation, Everyday life, Recreational drug use
Influences	Lenny Bruce,^[1] Jack Benny, Jonathan Winters, Bill Cosby, Dick Gregory, Redd Foxx, Paul Mooney
Influenced	George Carlin,^[2] Martin Lawrence,^[3] George Lopez,^[4] Denis Leary, Margaret Cho,^[5] Eddie Izzard, Dave Chappelle,^[6] Chris Rock,^[7] Eddie Murphy,^[7] Whoopi Goldberg,^[8] Bill Hicks,^[9] Robin Williams,^[8] Lewis Black^[10] Colin Quinn,^[11] Bernie Mac,^[7] Joe Rogan, Chris Tucker^[12], Louis C.K.,^[13] Patton Oswalt^[14] Artie Lange,^[15] Jon Stewart,^[16]Richard Lewis,^[17] and Jim Norton^[18]
Spouse	Patricia Price (1960–1961; divorced) 1 child Shelley R. Bonis (1968–1969; divorced) 1 child Deborah McGuire (1977–1978; divorced) Jennifer Lee (1979–1982; divorced) Flynn Belaine (1986–1987; divorced) 2 children Flynn Belaine (1990–1991; divorced) Jennifer Lee (2001–2005; widow)
Notable works and roles	Himself in Richard Pryor: Live in Concert and Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip Daddy Rich in Car Wash Wally Karue in See No Evil, Hear No Evil Harry Monroe in Stir Crazy Gus Gorman in Superman III
Website	RichardPryor.com

Emmy Awards
Writing in Variety or Music 1974 Lily
Grammy Awards
Best Comedy Album 1975 That Nigger's Crazy 1976 ...Is It Something I Said? 1977 Bicentennial Nigger 1982 Rev. Du Rite 1983 Live on the Sunset Strip
American Comedy Awards
Lifetime Achievement Award in Comedy 1993

Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor (December 1, 1940 – December 10, 2005) was an American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, writer, and MC.^[19] Pryor was known for uncompromising examinations of racism and topical contemporary issues, which employed colorful vulgarities, and profanity, as well as racial epithets. He reached a broad audience with his trenchant observations and storytelling style. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of his era: Jerry Seinfeld called Pryor "The Picasso of our profession";^[20] Bob Newhart has called Pryor "the seminal comedian of the last 50 years.".^[21] This legacy can be attributed, in part, to the unusual degree of intimacy Pryor brought to bear on his comedy. As Bill Cosby reportedly once said, "Richard Pryor drew the line between comedy and tragedy as thin as one could possibly paint it."

His body of work includes the concert movies and recordings Richard Pryor: Live & Smokin' (1971), That Nigger's Crazy (1974), ...Is It Something I Said? (1975), Bicentennial Nigger (1976), Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (1979), Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip (1982), and Richard Pryor: Here and Now (1983). He also starred in numerous films as an actor, such as Superman III (1983) but was usually in comedies such as Silver Streak (1976), and occasionally in dramatic roles, such as Paul Schrader's film Blue Collar (1978). He collaborated on many projects with actor Gene Wilder. Another frequent collaborator was actor/comedian/writer Paul Mooney.

Pryor won an Emmy Award (1973), and five Grammy Awards (1974, 1975, 1976, 1981, and 1982). In 1974, he also won two American Academy of Humor awards and the Writers Guild of America Award. The first ever Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor was presented to him in 1998. Pryor is listed at Number 1 on Comedy Central's list of all-time greatest stand-up comedians.

1 Early life
2 Career
- 2.1 Early career
- 2.2 Mainstream success
3 Personal life
4 Later life
5 Death
6 Remembrance and legacy
7 Discography
- 7.1 Albums
- 7.2 Compilations
8 Filmography
9 References
10 External links

Early life [link]

Born in Peoria, Illinois, Pryor grew up in his grandmother's brothel, where his mother, Gertrude L. (Thomas), practiced prostitution. His father, LeRoy "Buck Carter" Pryor was a former bartender and boxer.^[22]

After his mother abandoned him when he was 10, he was raised primarily by his grandmother Marie Carter,^[23] a violent woman who would beat him for any of his eccentricities.^[24] Pryor was one of four children raised in his grandmother's brothel and was molested as a child.^[22]^[25]

He was expelled from school at the age of 14. His first professional performance was playing drums at a night club. Pryor served in the U.S. Army from 1958 to 1960, but spent virtually the entire stint in an army prison. According to a 1999 profile about Pryor in The New Yorker, Pryor was incarcerated for an incident that occurred while stationed in Germany. Angered that a white soldier was a bit too amused at the racially charged sections of Douglas Sirk's movie Imitation of Life, Pryor and some other black soldiers beat and stabbed him, though not fatally.^[26] According to Live on the Sunset Strip, when he was 19, he worked at a Mafia-owned nightclub in Youngstown, Ohio, as the MC. On hearing that they would not pay a stripper friend of his, he attempted to hold up the owners with a cap pistol. The owners were greatly amused.

During this time, Pryor's girlfriend gave birth to a girl named Renee. Years later, however, he found out that she was not his child. In 1960, he married Patricia Price and they had one child together, Richard Jr. (his first child and first son). They divorced in 1961.

Career [link]

Early career [link]

In 1963, Pryor moved to New York City and began performing regularly in clubs alongside performers such as Bob Dylan and Woody Allen. On one of his first nights, he opened for singer and pianist Nina Simone at New York's Village Gate. Simone recalls Pryor's bout of performance anxiety:

“

He shook like he had malaria, he was so nervous. I couldn't bear to watch him shiver, so I put my arms around him there in the dark and rocked him like a baby until he calmed down. The next night was the same, and the next, and I rocked him each time.^[27]

”

Publicity photo of Richard Pryor for one of his Mister Kelly's appearances, 1968 - 1969.

Inspired by Bill Cosby, Pryor began as a middlebrow comic, with material far less controversial than what was to come. Soon, he began appearing regularly on television variety shows, such as The Ed Sullivan Show and The Tonight Show. His popularity led to success as a comic in Las Vegas. The first five tracks on the 2005 compilation CD Evolution/Revolution: The Early Years (1966–1974), recorded in 1966 and 1967, capture Pryor in this era.

In September 1967, Pryor had what he called in his autobiography Pryor Convictions an "epiphany" when he walked onto the stage at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas (with Dean Martin in the audience), looked at the sold-out crowd, exclaimed over the microphone "What the f@#k am I doing here!?", and walked off the stage. Afterward, Pryor began working profanity into his act, including "nigger". His first comedy recording, the eponymous 1968 debut release on the Dove/Reprise label, captures this particular period, tracking the evolution of Pryor's routine. Around this time, his parents died — his mother in 1967 and his father in 1968.

In 1967, his second child and first daughter, Elizabeth Ann, was born to his girlfriend Maxine Anderson. Later that year, he married Shelley Bonis. In 1969, his third child and second daughter, Rain Pryor, was born. Pryor and Bonis divorced later that year.

Mainstream success [link]

In 1969, Pryor moved to Berkeley, California, where he immersed himself in the counterculture and rubbed elbows with the likes of Huey P. Newton and Ishmael Reed. He signed with the comedy-oriented independent record label Laff Records in 1970, and in 1971 recorded his second album, Craps (After Hours). In 1973, the relatively unknown comedian appeared in the documentary Wattstax, where he riffed on the tragic-comic absurdities of race relations in Watts and the nation. Not long afterward, Pryor sought a deal with a larger label, and after some time, signed with Stax Records. His third, breakthrough album, That Nigger's Crazy, was released in 1974 and, Laff, who claimed ownership of Pryor's recording rights, almost succeeded in getting an injunction to prevent the album from being sold. Negotiations led to Pryor's release from his Laff contract. In return for this concession, Laff was enabled to release previously unissued material, recorded between 1968 and 1973, at will.

During the legal battle, Stax briefly closed its doors. At this time, Pryor returned to Reprise/Warner Bros. Records, which re-released That Nigger's Crazy, immediately after ...Is It Something I Said?, his first album with his new label. With every successful album Pryor recorded for Warner (or later, his concert films and his 1980 freebasing accident), Laff would quickly publish an album of older material to capitalize on Pryor's growing fame—a practice they continued until 1983. The covers of Laff albums tied in thematically with Pryor movies, such as The Wizard of Comedy for his appearance in The Wiz, Are You Serious? for Silver Streak, and Insane for Stir Crazy.

Pryor also performed in the Lilly Tomlin specials. He is seen here with Tomlin and Alan Alda in Tomlin's 1973 special.

In the 1970s, Pryor wrote for such television shows as Sanford and Son, The Flip Wilson Show and a Lily Tomlin special, for which he shared an Emmy Award^[28]. During this period, Pryor tried to break into mainstream television. He was a guest host on the first season of Saturday Night Live. Richard took long time girlfriend, actress-talk show host Kathrine McKee (sister of Lonette McKee) with him to New York, and she made a brief guest appearance with Pryor on SNL. He participated in a "racist word association" skit^[29] with Chevy Chase.

The Richard Pryor Show premiered on NBC in 1977, but was canceled after only four episodes. Television audiences did not respond to the show's controversial subject matter, and Pryor was unwilling to alter his material for network censors. During the short-lived series, he portrayed the first African-American President of the United States, spoofed the Star Wars cantina, took on gun violence, and in another skit, used costumes and visual distortion to appear nude.^[30]

In 1974, Pryor was arrested for income tax evasion and served 10 days in jail. He married actress Deborah McGuire in 1977, but they divorced in 1978. He soon began dating Jennifer Lee and they married in 1981. They divorced the following year.

In 1979, at the height of his success, Pryor visited Africa. Upon returning to the United States, Pryor swore he would never use the word "nigger" in his stand-up comedy routine again.^[31] (However, his favorite epithet, "motherf@#ker", remains a term of endearment on his official website.)

In the 1970s and 1980s, Pryor appeared in several popular films, including Lady Sings the Blues; The Mack; Uptown Saturday Night; Silver Streak; Which Way Is Up?; Car Wash; Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings; Greased Lightning; Blue Collar & Bustin' Loose. In 1982, Pryor co-starred with Jackie Gleason in The Toy.

Pryor in February 1986.

In 1983, Pryor signed a five-year contract with Columbia Pictures for $40,000,000.^[32] This resulted in the gentrification of Pryor's onscreen persona and softer, more formulaic films like Superman III, (which earned Pryor $4,000,000), Brewster's Millions, Stir Crazy, Moving, and See No Evil, Hear No Evil. The only film project from this period that recalled his rough roots was Pryor's semi-autobiographic debut as a writer-director, Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling, which was not a major success. Though he made four films with Gene Wilder, the two comic actors were never as close as many thought, according to Wilder's autobiography.

Pryor co-wrote Blazing Saddles, directed by Mel Brooks and starring Gene Wilder. Pryor was to play the lead role of Bart, but the film's production studio would not insure him, and Mel Brooks chose Cleavon Little instead. Before his infamous 1980 freebasing accident, Pryor was about to start filming Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I, but was replaced at the last minute by Gregory Hines. Pryor was also originally considered for the role of Billy Ray Valentine on Trading Places, before Eddie Murphy won the part.

Despite a reputation for constantly using profanity on and off camera, Pryor briefly hosted a children's show on CBS in 1984 called Pryor's Place. Like Sesame Street, Pryor's Place featured a cast of puppets, hanging out and having fun in a surprisingly friendly inner-city environment along with several children and characters portrayed by Pryor himself. However, Pryor's Place frequently dealt with more sobering issues than Sesame Street. It was canceled shortly after its debut, despite the efforts of famed puppeteers Sid and Marty Krofft and a theme song by Ray Parker, Jr. of Ghostbusters fame.

Pryor co-hosted the Academy Awards twice, and was nominated for an Emmy for a guest role on the television series, Chicago Hope.

Pryor developed a reputation for being demanding and disrespectful on film sets, and for making selfish and difficult demands. In his autobiography Kiss Me Like a Stranger, co-star Gene Wilder says that Pryor was frequently late to the set during filming of Stir Crazy, and that he demanded, among other things, a helicopter to fly him to and from set because he was the star. Pryor was also accused of using allegations of on-set racism to force the hand of film producers into giving him more money. Also from Wilder's book:

“

One day during our lunch hour in the last week of filming, the craft service man handed out slices of watermelon to each of us. Richard, the whole camera crew, and I sat together in a big sound studio eating a number of watermelon slices, talking and joking. As a gag, some members of the crew used a piece of watermelon as a Frisbee, and tossed it back and forth to each other. One piece of watermelon landed at Richard's feet. He got up and went home. Filming stopped. The next day, Richard announced that he knew very well what the significance of watermelon was... He said that he was quitting show business and would not return to this film. The day after that, Richard walked in, all smiles... I wasn't privy to all the negotiations that went on between Columbia and Richard's lawyers, but the camera operator who had thrown that errant piece of watermelon had been fired that day. I assume now that Richard was using drugs during "Stir Crazy".

”

In 1989, he appeared in Harlem Nights, a comedy-drama crime film starring Eddie Murphy. It was a financial success, grossing three times the amount it cost to make it (worldwide) and is well known for starring three generations of black comedians (Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and Redd Foxx).

Personal life [link]

Health problems [link]

Pryor suffered a mild heart attack in November 1977. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1986.^[33] In 1990, Pryor suffered a second and more severe heart attack and underwent triple heart bypass surgery. By the early 1990s, he was confined to using a wheelchair as well as a motor powered scooter for the remainder of his life to get around when his multiple sclerosis began to take its toll on his body.

The freebasing incident [link]

On June 9, 1980, during the making of the film Bustin' Loose, Pryor set himself on fire after freebasing cocaine while drinking 151-proof rum. He ran down Parthenia Street from his Northridge, California, home, on fire, until subdued by police. He was taken to the hospital, where he was treated for burns covering more than half of his body. Pryor spent six weeks in recovery at the Grossman Burn Center at Sherman Oaks Hospital. His daughter, Rain Pryor, stated that Pryor poured high-proof rum over his body and set himself on fire in a bout of drug-induced psychosis.^[34]

Pryor incorporated a description of the incident into his comedy show Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip in 1982. He joked that the event was caused by dunking a cookie into a glass of low-fat and pasteurized milk, causing an explosion. At the end of the bit, he poked fun at people who told jokes about it by waving a lit match and saying, "What's that? Richard Pryor running down the street."

After his "final performance", Pryor did not stay away from stand-up comedy long. In 1983, he filmed and released a new concert film and accompanying album, Richard Pryor: Here and Now, which he directed himself. In 1986, he wrote and directed a fictionalized account of his life, Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling which revolved around the 1980 freebasing incident.

In 1984, his fourth child and second son, Steven, was born to his girlfriend Flynn Belaine. Pryor married Belaine in October 1986. They divorced in July 1987. Before their divorce was final, Belaine conceived Kelsey Pryor. Meanwhile, another of Pryor's girlfriends, Geraldine Mason, gave birth to Franklin Mason, his fifth child and third son, in April 1987. Six months later in October 1987, Belaine gave birth to Kelsey Pryor, Richard's sixth child and third daughter.

Marriages and relationships [link]

Pryor was married seven times to five different women:

Patricia Price (1960–1961, divorced) with one child named Richard Pryor Jr.
Shelly Bonis (1967–1969, divorced) with one child named Rain Pryor
Deborah McGuire (September 22, 1977 – 1979, divorced)
Jennifer Lee (August 1981 – October 1982, divorced)
Flynn Belaine (October 1986 – July 1987, divorced) with son Steven (born before the marriage) and daughter Kelsey (before divorce finalized)
Flynn Belaine (1 April 1990 – July 1991, divorced)
Jennifer Lee (June 29, 2001 – December 10, 2005, his death)

His marriages were characterized by accusations of domestic violence, except for his relationship with Belaine. Most of these allegations were connected to Pryor's drug use. The exception was Patricia Price, who was married to Pryor before his rise to stardom. During his relationship with Pam Grier, Pryor proposed to Deborah McGuire (1977).

He had six children: Richard Jr., Elizabeth, Rain, Steven, Franklin and Kelsey.

Pryor had a relationship with actress Margot Kidder.^[35]

Later life [link]

In his later years starting in the early 1990s, Richard Pryor used a power operated vehicle/scooter due to multiple sclerosis (M.S., which he said stood for "More S#!t"). He appears on the scooter in his last film appearance, a small role in David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997) playing an auto repair garage manager named Arnie.

In 1998, Pryor won the first Mark Twain Prize for American Humor from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. According to former Kennedy Center President Lawrence J. Wilker,

“

Richard Pryor was selected as the first recipient of the new Mark Twain Prize because as a stand-up comic, writer, and actor, he struck a chord, and a nerve, with America, forcing it to look at large social questions of race and the more tragicomic aspects of the human condition. Though uncompromising in his wit, Pryor, like Twain, projects a generosity of spirit that unites us. They were both trenchant social critics who spoke the truth, however outrageous.

”

In 2000, Rhino Records remastered all of Pryor's Reprise and WB albums for inclusion in the box set ...And It's Deep Too! The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968–1992).

In early 2000, he appeared in the cold open of The Norm Show in the episode entitled "Norm vs. The Boxer". He played an elderly man in a wheelchair who lost the rights to in-home nursing when he kept attacking the nurses, before attacking Norm himself (using a body double).^[36]

In 2001, he remarried Jennifer Lee, who had also become his manager.

In 2002 a television documentary depicted Pryor's life and career. Broadcast in the UK as part of the Channel 4 series Kings of Black Comedy, it was produced, directed and narrated by David Upshal. It featured rare clips from Pryor's 1960s stand-up appearances and movies such as Silver Streak, Blue Collar, Stir Crazy, and Richard Pryor Live In Concert. Contributors included Whoopi Goldberg, Dave Chappelle, Lily Tomlin, George Carlin, Joan Rivers, Ice-T, and Paul Mooney. The show tracked down the two cops who rescued Pryor from his "freebasing incident", former managers and even school friends from Pryor's home town of Peoria, Illinois. In the US the show went out as part of the Heroes of Black Comedy series on Comedy Central, narrated by Don Cheadle.

In 2002, Pryor and his wife and manager, Jennifer Lee Pryor, won legal rights to all the Laff material, which amounted to almost 40 hours of reel-to-reel analog tape. After going through the tapes and getting Richard's blessing, Jennifer Lee Pryor gave access to the tapes to Rhino Records in 2004. These tapes, including the entire Craps album, form the basis of the double-CD release Evolution/Revolution: The Early Years (1966–1974).

A 2003 television documentary, Richard Pryor: I Ain't Dead Yet, #*%$#@!! consisted of archival footage of Pryor's performances and testimonials from fellow comedians, including Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Wanda Sykes, and Denis Leary, on Pryor's influence on comedy.

In 2004, Pryor was voted #1 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time. In a 2005 British poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, Pryor was voted the 10th greatest comedy act ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

In late 2004, his sister said he had lost his voice as result of his multiple sclerosis. However, on January 9, 2005, Pryor's wife, Jennifer Lee, rebutted this statement in a post on Pryor's official website,^[37] citing Richard as saying: "I'm sick of hearing this s#!t about me not talking... not true... I have good days, bad days... but I still am a talkin' motherf@#ker!"

Pryor was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.^[38] The animal rights organization PETA gives out an award in Pryor's name to people who have done outstanding work to alleviate animal suffering. Pryor was active in animal rights and was deeply concerned about the plight of elephants in circuses and zoos.

Death [link]

Richard Pryor's star at the Hollywood Walk of Fame covered with flowers, beer bottles, fan letters etc.

On December 10, 2005, nine days after his birthday, Pryor suffered a heart attack in Encino, California. He was taken to a local hospital after his wife's attempts to resuscitate him failed. He was pronounced dead at 7:58 am PST. He was 65 years old. His widow Jennifer was quoted as saying, "At the end, there was a smile on his face."^[32] He was cremated and his ashes were given to his family.

Remembrance and legacy [link]

A planned biopic entitled "Richard Pryor: Is It Something I Said?" is being produced by Chris Rock and Adam Sandler.^[39] The film will star Marlon Wayans as the young Pryor.^[40] Other actors previously attached include Mike Epps and Eddie Murphy. The film will be directed by Bill Condon and is still in development who no release start set as of 11th April 2012.^[41]

On December 19, 2005, BET aired a Pryor special. It included commentary from fellow comedians, and insight into his upbringing.

An image of Pryor can be seen on the Rage Against the Machine music video for their Soulsonic Force cover of "Renegades of Funk".

There is a street just west of the downtown Peoria area named in his honor.

On March 1, 2008, fellow comedian George Carlin performed his final HBO special. An image of Pryor can be seen in the background throughout his set. Carlin would mention Pryor's death in his memoir, Last Words, noting their friendly rivalry that lasted until Carlin finally beat him "in the Heart Attack 5000."

In Jackson Browne's tribute to the roadies and fans, The Load-Out, released on the 1977 album Running on Empty, the lyrics state that "we got Richard Pryor on the video" on the tour bus.

Discography [link]

Albums [link]

Official canon

1968 - Richard Pryor (Dove/Reprise)
1971 - Craps (After Hours) (Laff Records, reissued 1993 by Loose Cannon/Island)
1974 - That Nigger's Crazy, (Partee/Stax, reissued 1975 by Reprise)
1975 - ...Is It Something I Said?, (Reprise, reissued 1991 on CD by Warner Archives)
1976 - Holy Smoke!, (Laff)
1976 - Bicentennial Nigger, (Reprise)
1976 - L.A. Jail, (Tiger Lily)
1977 - Are You Serious ???, (Laff)
1977 - Who Me? I'm Not Him, (Laff)
1978 - Black Ben The Blacksmith, (Laff)
1978 - The Wizard of Comedy, (Laff)
1978 - Wanted: Live in Concert (2-LP set), (Warner Bros. Records);Others
1979 - Outrageous, (Laff)
1980 - Insane, (Laff)
1981 - Rev. Du Rite, (Laff)
1982 - Richard Pryor Live! (picture disc), (Phoenix/Audiofidelity)
1982 - Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip (Warner Bros. Records)
1983 - Here and Now, (Warner Bros. Records)
1983 - Supernigger, (Laff)

Compilations [link]

1973 - Pryor Goes Foxx Hunting, (Laff.)
- Split LP with Redd Foxx, containing previously released tracks from Craps (After Hours)
1975 - Down And Dirty, (Laff.)
- Split LP with Redd Foxx, containing previously released tracks from Craps (After Hours)
1976 - Richard Pryor Meets... Richard & Willie And... The SLA!!, (Laff)
- Split LP with black ventriloquist act Richard And Willie, containing previously released tracks from Craps (After Hours)
1977 - Richard Pryor's Greatest Hits, (Warner Bros. Records)
- Contains tracks from Craps (After Hours), That Nigger's Crazy, and ...Is It Something I Said?, plus a previously unreleased track from 1975, "Ali".
2000 - ...And It's Deep Too! The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968–1992) (9-CD box set) (Warner Bros. Records/Rhino)
- Box set collection containing all Warner Bros. albums plus a bonus disc of previously unissued material from 1973 to 1992.
2002 - The Anthology (1968–1992) (2-CD set) (Warner Bros. Records/Rhino, 2002 in music)
- Highlights culled from the albums collected in the ...And It's Deep Too! box set.
2005 - Evolution/Revolution: The Early Years (1966–1974) (2-CD set) (Warner Bros. Records/Rhino, 2005 in music)
- Pryor-authorized compilation of material released on Laff, including the entire Craps (After Hours) album.

Filmography [link]

1967 - The Busy Body
1968 - Uncle Tom's Fairy Tales
1968 - Wild in the Streets
1970 - Black Brigade
1970 - The Phynx
1971 - You've Got to Walk It Like You Talk It or You'll Lose That Beat
1972 - Dynamite Chicken
1972 - Lady Sings the Blues
1973 - The Mack
1973 - Wattstax
1973 - Hit!
1973 - Some Call It Loving
1974 - Uptown Saturday Night
1975 - The Lion Roars Again
1976 - Adios Amigo
1976 - Car Wash
1976 - The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings
1976 - Silver Streak
1977 - Which Way Is Up?
1977 - Greased Lightning
1978 - Blue Collar
1978 - The Wiz
1978 - California Suite
1979 - Richard Pryor: Live in Concert
1979 - The Muppet Movie - (cameo)

1980 - Wholly Moses
1980 - In God We Tru$t
1980 - Stir Crazy
1981 - Bustin' Loose
1982 - Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip
1982 - Some Kind of Hero
1982 - The Toy
1983 - Superman III
1983 - Richard Pryor: Here and Now
1983 - Motown 25
1985 - Live & Smokin'
1985 - Brewster's Millions
1986 - Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling
1987 - Critical Condition
1988 - Moving
1989 - See No Evil, Hear No Evil
1989 - Harlem Nights
1991 - The Three Muscatels
1991 - Another You
1994 - A Century of Cinema
1996 - Mad Dog Time
1997 - Lost Highway
1999 - The Norm Show - (Cameo in Opening of Season 2, Episode 11)
2003 - Bitter Jester
2003 - I Ain't Dead Yet, #*%$@!!
2005 - Richard Pryor: The Funniest Man Dead Or Alive (BET Special)
2009 - Black Dynamite - Cameo via archive footage

References [link]

^ Staff writer (2004-05-21). "Pryor: I Owe It All to Lenny Bruce". Contactmusic.com. http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/story/pryor.-i-owe-it-all-to-lenny-bruce. Retrieved 2009-08-23.
^ "George Carlin". Inside the Actors Studio. episode 4. season 1. 2004-10-31. Bravo.
^ Allis, Tim (1993-04-12). "Court Jester". People. http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20110142,00.html. Retrieved 2009-08-23.
^ Lopez, George; Keteyian, Armen (2004). Why You Crying?: My Long, Hard Look at Life, Love, and Laughter. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-5994-7.
^ Margaret Cho. "Richard Pryor". http://www.margaretcho.com/content/2003/12/04/richard-pryor/. Retrieved 4 December 2003.
^ "Dave Chappelle". Inside the Actors Studio. episode 10. season 12. 2006-02-12. Bravo.
^ ^a ^b ^c Reid, Shaheem (December 12, 2005). "Chris Rock, Bernie Mac, Eddie Murphy Call Pryor The Real King Of Comedy — 'Without Richard, There Would Be No Me,' Bernie Mac Says". MTV. Retrieved January 11, 2010.
^ ^a ^b Richard Pryor: I Ain't Dead Yet, #*%$@!!, 2003, Comedy Central
^ Fade to Black - Interviews - Bill Hicks^{[dead link]}
^ Gillette, Amelie (2006-06-07). "Lewis Black". The A.V. Club. http://www.avclub.com/content/node/49217. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
^ "Colin Quinn". Popentertainment.com. http://www.popentertainment.com/quinn.htm. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
^ Chris Tucker – Movie and Film Biography and Filmography – AllRovi.com
^ "Interview with Louis C.K.". One Night Stand. HBO. 2005. http://www.hbo.com/onenightstand/interviews/louis_ck.html. Retrieved 2007-12-06.
^ "aspecialthing.com :: View topic - THE AST INTERVIEW: PATTON OSWALT". Web.archive.org. Archived from the original on 2007-10-13. http://web.archive.org/web/20071013165258/http://aspecialthing.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1465. Retrieved 2010-09-24.
^ Kirschling, Gregory (2008-11-07). "Artie Lange: 'F--- It, I'll Write a Book'". Entertainment Weekly. http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20239025_3,00.html. Retrieved 2008-11-11.
^ Jeremy Gillick; Nonna Gorilovskaya (November/December 2008). "Meet Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz (aka) Jon Stewart: The wildly zeitgeisty Daily Show host". Moment. http://www.momentmag.com/Exclusive/2008/12/JonStewart.html. Retrieved August 10, 2009.
^ Interview with Bill Zehme, Richard Lewis: Concerts from Hell: The Vintage Years, Image Entertainment, Released 2005-09-13
^ "Interview with Jim Norton". One Night Stand. HBO. 2005. http://www.hbo.com/onenightstand/interviews/jim_norton.html. Retrieved 2009-08-23.
^ Richard Pryor-the Mafia Night Club YouTube
^ Morton, Bruce (December 28, 2005). "Those We Lost". CNN. Retrieved January 11, 2010.
^ American Masters . Bob Newhart PBS
^ ^a ^b http://www.richardpryor.com/0/4113/0/1240D1271/ Richard Pryor's official biography
^ "Richard Pryor website". Richardpryor.com. http://www.richardpryor.com/0/4113/0/1240D1271/. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
^ "Richard Pryor". Nndb.com. http://www.nndb.com/people/342/000022276/. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
^ Jones, Steve. "Comedian Richard Pryor dies at 65" USA Today. December 10, 2005
^ Als, Hilton (September 13, 1999). "A Pryor Love". The New Yorker.
^ Simone, Nina; Cleary, Stephen (1991). I Put a Spell on You — The Autobiography of Nina Simone. Pantheon Books (New York City, New York). pp. 70–71. ISBN 978-0-679-41068-3
^ Richard Pryor Emmy Winner
^ "SNL Transcripts: Richard Pryor: 12/13/75: Racist Word Association Interview". Snltranscripts.jt.org. http://snltranscripts.jt.org/75/75ginterview.phtml. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
^ Silverman, David S. (2007). "You Can't Air That": Four Cases of Controversy and Censorship in American Television Programming. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
^ The word 'Nigger' - Richard Pryor & George Carlin YouTube
^ ^a ^b Staff writer (December 10, 2005). "Comedian Richard Pryor Dead at 65 — Groundbreaking Black U.S. Comedian Richard Pryor Has Died after Almost 20 Years with Multiple Sclerosis". BBC News. Retrieved January 11, 2010.
^ "Richard Pryor". Richard Pryor. http://www.richardpryor.com/0/4113/0/1240/. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
^ Interview with Rain Pryor, November 6, 2006, edition of People, page 76.
^ Nathan Rabin. Random Roles: Margot Kidder (interview) The A.V. Club, March 3, 2009
^ "The Norm Show - Norm vs. the Boxer". Internet Movie Database. IMDb.com Inc. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0662160/. Retrieved 23 August 2011.
^ "Richard Pryor". Richard Pryor. http://www.richardpryor.com. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
^ ^{[dead link]}"Richard Pryor to Get Posthumous Grammy Award". VOA News (Voice of America). January 11, 2006. http://voanews.com/english/archive/2006-01/Richard-Pryor-to-Get-Posthumous-Grammy-Award.cfm. Retrieved January 4, 2009.
^ All Voices Article July 5th 2010
^ Flick Direct article 10th September 2009
^ Richard Pryor: Is It Something I Said? at the Internet Movie Database

External links [link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Richard Pryor

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Richard Pryor

Richard Pryor at Emmys.com

Obituaries

"Entertainment | Comedian Richard Pryor dead at 65". BBC News. 2005-12-10. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4517714.stm. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
"CNN.com - Comedian Richard Pryor dies at 65 - Dec 11, 2005". Edition.cnn.com. http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/12/11/pryor.obit/. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
Feeney, Mark (2005-12-11). "Richard Pryor, whose profane, incisive humor revolutionized American comedy, dies at 65 - The Boston Globe". Boston.com. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2005/12/11/richard_pryor_whose_profane_incisive_humor_revolutionized_american_comedy_dies_at_65/. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
Schudel, Matt (2005-12-11). "With Humor and Anger On Race Issues, Comic Inspired a Generation". washingtonpost.com. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/10/AR2005121001406.html. Retrieved 2010-06-17.
Watkins, Mel (2005-12-11). "Richard Pryor, Iconoclastic Comedian, Dies at 65 - New York Times". Nytimes.com. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/arts/11pryor.html?ex=1291957200&en=ea88c61b92de25e6&ei=5090. Retrieved 2010-06-17.

v t e Hosts of the Academy Awards ceremonies (1961–1980)

Bob Hope (1961) Bob Hope (1962) Frank Sinatra (1963) Jack Lemmon (1964) Bob Hope (1965) Bob Hope (1966) Bob Hope (1967) Bob Hope (1968) None (1969) None (1970) None (1971) Helen Hayes / Alan King / Sammy Davis, Jr. / Jack Lemmon (1972) Carol Burnett / Michael Caine / Charlton Heston / Rock Hudson (1973) John Huston / Burt Reynolds / David Niven / Diana Ross (1974) Sammy Davis, Jr. / Bob Hope / Shirley MacLaine / Frank Sinatra (1975) Goldie Hawn / Gene Kelly / Walter Matthau / George Segal / Robert Shaw (1976) Warren Beatty / Ellen Burstyn / Jane Fonda / Richard Pryor (1977) Bob Hope (1978) Johnny Carson (1979) Johnny Carson (1980)

Complete list (1927–1940) (1941–1960) (1961–1980) (1981–2000) (2001–2020)

v t e Hosts of the Academy Awards ceremonies (1981–2000)

Johnny Carson (1981) Johnny Carson (1982) Liza Minnelli / Dudley Moore / Richard Pryor / Walter Matthau (1983) Johnny Carson (1984) Jack Lemmon (1985) Alan Alda / Jane Fonda / Robin Williams (1986) Chevy Chase / Goldie Hawn / Paul Hogan (1987) Chevy Chase (1988) None (1989) Billy Crystal (1990) Billy Crystal (1991) Billy Crystal (1992) Billy Crystal (1993) Whoopi Goldberg (1994) David Letterman (1995) Whoopi Goldberg (1996) Billy Crystal (1997) Billy Crystal (1998) Whoopi Goldberg (1999) Billy Crystal (2000)

Complete list (1927–1940) (1941–1960) (1961–1980) (1981–2000) (2001–2020)

v t e Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series (1970–1979)

James L. Brooks / Allan Burns for "Support Your Local Mother" (1971) Burt Styler for "Edith's Problem" (1972) Lee Kalcheim / Michael Ross / Bernie West for "The Bunkers and the Swingers" (1973) Treva Silverman for "The Lou and Edie Story" (1974) Stan Daniels / Ed. Weinberger for "Will Mary Richards Go to Jail?" (1975) David Lloyd for "Chuckles Bites the Dust" (1976) James L. Brooks / Allan Burns / Stan Daniels / Bob Ellison / David Lloyd / Ed. Weinberger for "The Last Show" (1977) Harve Brosten / Barry Harman / Bob Schiller / Bob Weiskopf for "Cousin Liz"(1978)

Complete list (1955–1959) (1960–1969) (1970–1979) (1980–1989) (1990–1999) (2000–2009) (2010–present)

v t e Richard Pryor

Albums	Richard Pryor Craps (After Hours) That Nigger's Crazy ...Is It Something I Said? Bicentennial Nigger Wanted: Live in Concert

Compilations	L.A. Jail Richard Pryor's Greatest Hits …And It's Deep Too! The Anthology (1968–1992) Evolution/Revolution

TV & Films	Live & Smokin' The Richard Pryor Show Live in Concert Live on the Sunset Strip Here and Now Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling I Ain't Dead Yet The Funniest Man Dead or Alive

v t e Mark Twain Prize winners

Richard Pryor (1998) · Jonathan Winters (1999) · Carl Reiner (2000) · Whoopi Goldberg (2001) · Bob Newhart (2002) · Lily Tomlin (2003) · Lorne Michaels (2004) · Steve Martin (2005) · Neil Simon (2006) · Billy Crystal (2007) · George Carlin (2008) · Bill Cosby (2009) · Tina Fey (2010) · Will Ferrell (2011) · Ellen DeGeneres (2012)

v t e Stax/Volt Records

Major figures	Jim Stewart · Estelle Axton · Al Bell · Steve Cropper · Booker T. Jones · Donald "Duck" Dunn · Al Jackson, Jr. · Isaac Hayes · David Porter · Jerry Wexler · Clive Davis

Major artists (Atlantic years)	Otis Redding · Sam & Dave · Carla Thomas · Rufus Thomas · The Mar-Keys · Booker T. & The MG's · William Bell · Eddie Floyd · Johnnie Taylor · Albert King · The Bar-Kays

Major artists (Post-Atlantic)	Isaac Hayes · David Porter · Eddie Floyd · Johnnie Taylor · The Rance Allen Group · The Soul Children · The Staple Singers · The Temprees · The Emotions · Mel & Tim · The Bar-Kays · Linda Lyndell · Richard Pryor · Bill Cosby · William Bell · Little Milton · Jesse Jackson · Big Star

Modern Stax artists	Soulive · Angie Stone · Lalah Hathaway · Leela James · Isaac Hayes · Leon Ware · N'dambi · Nikka Costa · Teena Marie

Related articles	Memphis soul · Wattstax · Stax Museum of American Soul Music · Atlantic Records · Union Planters Bank · CBS Records · Fantasy Records · Concord Records

Persondata
Name	Pryor, Richard
Alternative names
Short description	American comedian and actor
Date of birth	December 1, 1940
Place of birth	Peoria, Illinois
Date of death	December 10, 2005
Place of death	Encino, Los Angeles, California

http://wn.com/Richard_Pryor

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http://es.wn.com/Richard Pryor

http://ru.wn.com/Прайор, Ричард

http://nl.wn.com/Richard Pryor

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This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pryor

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

The N-Word
File:THE N WORD DVD COVER.jpg Movie cover for The N-Word
Directed by	Todd Larkins Williams
Produced by	Helena Echegoyen Nelson George
Written by	Todd Larkins Williams
Starring	Various actors, actresses, comedians, musicians, politicians, and activists
Music by	Michael Cohen
Distributed by	Trio Films
Release date(s)	June 26, 2004
Running time	86 min.
Language	English

The N-Word is a 2004 documentary directed and written by Todd Larkins Williams. The movie, as the title may suggest, looks into the history and usage of the word nigger and its variations.

Interviews With:

External links [link]

The N-Word at the Internet Movie Database

This article about a documentary film is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

http://wn.com/The_N-Word

This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_N-Word

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

This article is about Ed Sullivan, the person. For his TV show, see The Ed Sullivan Show.

For other people named Edward Sullivan, see Edward Sullivan (disambiguation).

Ed Sullivan
Sullivan in 1955
Born	Edward Vincent Sullivan (1901-09-28)September 28, 1901 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	October 13, 1974(1974-10-13) (aged 73) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Television host Writer
Years active	1932–1973
Spouse	Sylvia (m. 1930–1973)

Edward Vincent "Ed" Sullivan (September 28, 1901 – October 13, 1974) was an American entertainment writer and television host, best known as the presenter of the TV variety show The Ed Sullivan Show. The show was broadcast from 1948 to 1971 (a total of 23 years), which made it one of the longest-running variety shows in U.S. broadcast history.^[1]

In 1996, Ed Sullivan was ranked #50 on TV Guide's "50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time".^[2]

1 Early life and career
2 Television
3 Sullivan, the starmaker
4 Personality
5 Politics
6 Later years and death
7 Personal life
8 References
9 Further reading
10 External links

Early life and career [link]

Sullivan was born in New York City, New York, the son of Elizabeth F. (née Smith) and Peter Arthur Sullivan, a customs house employee.^[3] He was of Irish descent.^[4] A former boxer, Sullivan began his media work as a newspaper sportswriter for The New York Evening Graphic.^[5] When Walter Winchell, one of the original gossip columnists and the most powerful entertainment reporter of his day, left the newspaper for the Hearst syndicate, Sullivan took over as theatre columnist. His theatre column was later carried in The New York Daily News. His column, 'Little Old New York', concentrated on Broadway shows and gossip, as Winchell's had and, like Winchell, he also did show business news broadcasts on radio. Again echoing Winchell, Sullivan took on yet another medium in 1933 by writing and starring in the film Mr. Broadway, which has him guiding the audience around New York nightspots to meet entertainers and celebrities. Sullivan soon became a powerful starmaker in the entertainment world himself, becoming one of Winchell's main rivals, setting the El Morocco nightclub in New York as his unofficial headquarters against Winchell's seat of power at the nearby Stork Club. Sullivan continued writing for The News throughout his broadcasting career and his popularity long outlived that of Winchell.

Television [link]

Sullivan with Cole Porter on Toast of the Town in 1952.

In 1948, the CBS network hired Sullivan to do a weekly Sunday night TV variety show, Toast of the Town, which later became The Ed Sullivan Show. Debuting in June 1948, the show was broadcast from CBS Studio 50, at 1697 Broadway (at 53rd Street) in New York City, which in 1967 was renamed the Ed Sullivan Theater (and is now the home of The Late Show with David Letterman).^[6]

Television critics gave the new show and its host poor reviews.^[7] Harriet Van Horne alleged that "he got where he is not by having a personality, but by having no personality." (The host wrote to the critic, "Dear Miss Van Horne: You bitch. Sincerely, Ed Sullivan."^[8]) Sullivan had little acting ability; in 1967, 20 years after his show's debut, Time magazine asked "What exactly is Ed Sullivan's talent?"^[8] His mannerisms on camera were so awkward that some viewers believed the host suffered from Bell's palsy.^[8] Time in 1955 stated that Sullivan resembled

a cigar-store Indian, the Cardiff Giant and a stone-faced monument just off the boat from Easter Island. He moves like a sleepwalker; his smile is that of a man sucking a lemon; his speech is frequently lost in a thicket of syntax; his eyes pop from their sockets or sink so deep in their bags that they seem to be peering up at the camera from the bottom of twin wells.^[7]

The magazine concluded, however, that "Yet, instead of frightening children, Ed Sullivan charms the whole family."^[7] Sullivan appeared to the audience as an average guy who brought the great acts of show business to their home televisions. ("Ed Sullivan will last", comedian Fred Allen said, "as long as someone else has talent",^[7] and frequent guest Alan King said "Ed does nothing, but he does it better than anyone else in television."^[8]) He had a newspaperman's instinct for what the public wanted, and programmed his variety hours with remarkable balance. There was something for everyone.^[7] A typical show would feature a vaudeville act (acrobats, jugglers, magicians, etc.), one or two popular comedians, a singing star, a hot jukebox favorite, a figure from the legitimate theater, and for the kids, a visit with puppet "Topo Gigio, the little Italian mouse." The bill was often international in scope, with many European performers augmenting the American artists.^[8]

Sullivan had a healthy sense of humor about himself and permitted—even encouraged—impersonators such as John Byner, Frank Gorshin, Rich Little and especially Will Jordan to imitate him on his show. Johnny Carson also did a fair impression, and even Joan Rivers imitated Sullivan's unique posture. The impressionists exaggerated his stiffness, raised shoulders, and nasal tenor phrasing, along with some of his commonly used introductions, such as "And now, right here on our stage...", "For all you youngsters out there...", and "a really big shew" (his pronunciation of the word "show"). Will Jordan portrayed Sullivan in the films I Wanna Hold Your Hand, The Buddy Holly Story, The Doors, Mr. Saturday Night, Down with Love, and in the 1979 TV movie Elvis.^[9]

In 1963, Ed Sullivan appeared as himself in the film Bye Bye Birdie.

Sullivan, the starmaker [link]

Ed Sullivan congratulates Izhak Perlman after a concert at Tel-Aviv, in 1958.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Sullivan was a respected starmaker because of the number of performers that became household names after appearing on the show. He had a knack for identifying and promoting top talent and paid a great deal of money to secure that talent for his show.

When Elvis Presley became popular, Sullivan was wary of the singer's bad-boy style and said that he would never invite Presley on his program. However, Presley became too big a name to ignore, and Sullivan scheduled him to appear on September 8, 1956. In August, however, Sullivan was injured in an automobile accident that occurred near his country home in Southbury, Connecticut. Sullivan had to take a medical leave from the series and missed the Elvis Presley show. Charles Laughton wound up introducing Presley on the Sullivan hour.^[10] After Sullivan got to know Presley personally, he made amends by telling his audience, "This is a real decent, fine boy."^[11]

Sullivan's failure to scoop the TV industry with Presley made him determined to get the next big sensation first. In 1964, he achieved that with the first live American appearance of The Beatles, on February 9, 1964, the most-watched program in TV history to that point and still one of the most-watched programs of all time.^[12] The Beatles appeared three more times on the Sullivan show in person, and submitted filmed performances later. Sullivan struck up such a rapport with the Beatles that he agreed to introduce them at their momentous Shea Stadium concert on August 15, 1965. The Dave Clark Five, heavily promoted as having a "cleaner" image than the Beatles, made 13 appearances on the Sullivan show, more than any other UK group.

Unlike many shows of the time, Sullivan asked that most musical acts perform their music live, rather than lip-synching to their recordings. Some of these performances have recently been issued on CD.^[13] Examination of performances show that exceptions were made, as when a microphone could not be placed close enough to a performer for technical reasons. An example was B.J. Thomas' 1969 performance of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", in which actual water was sprinkled on him as a special effect. In 1969, Sullivan presented the Jackson 5 with their first single "I Want You Back", which ousted the B. J. Thomas song from the top spot of Billboard's pop charts.

Sullivan, shown here dressed up in a clown suit, hosted the 1972 special Clownaround.

Sullivan appreciated African American talent. He paid for the funeral of dancer Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson out of his own pocket. He also defied pressure to exclude African American musicians from appearing on his show. One of Sullivan's favorite and most frequent acts was The Supremes, who appeared 17 times on the show, helping to pave the way for other Motown acts to appear on the show such as The Temptations, The Four Tops, and Martha and the Vandellas.

At a time when television had not yet embraced country and Western music, Sullivan was adamant about featuring Nashville performers on his program. This insistence paved the way for shows such as Hee Haw and variety shows hosted by country singers like Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell.

The act that appeared most frequently through the show's run was the Canadian comedy duo of Wayne & Shuster, making 67 appearances between 1958 and 1969.

Sullivan also appeared as himself on other television programs, including an April 1958 episode of the Howard Duff and Ida Lupino CBS sitcom, Mr. Adams and Eve. On September 14, 1958 Sullivan appeared on What's My Line? as a mystery guest, and showed his comedic side by donning a rubber mask. In 1961, Sullivan was asked by CBS to fill in for an ailing Red Skelton on The Red Skelton Show. Sullivan took Skelton's roles in the various comedy sketches; Skelton's hobo character "Freddie the Freeloader" was renamed "Eddie the Freeloader."

Personality [link]

There was another side to Sullivan: he could be very quick to take offense if he felt he had been crossed, and could hold a grudge for a long time. This could sometimes be seen as a part of his TV personality. Jackie Mason, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, and The Doors became intimately familiar with Sullivan's negative side.

On November 20, 1955, Bo Diddley was asked by Sullivan to sing Tennessee Ernie Ford's hit "Sixteen Tons". Diddley sensed the choice of song would end his career then and there, and instead sang his #1 hit "Bo Diddley". He was banned from the show.

Buddy Holly and the Crickets had first appeared on the Sullivan show in 1957, singing two songs and making a favorable impression on Sullivan. He invited the band to make another appearance in January 1958. Sullivan thought their record hit "Oh, Boy!" was too raucous and ordered Holly to substitute another song. Holly had already told his hometown friends in Texas that he would be singing "Oh, Boy!" for them, and told Sullivan as much. Sullivan was unaccustomed to having his instructions disobeyed. When the band was summoned to the rehearsal stage on short notice, only Holly was in their dressing room. Sullivan said, "I guess The Crickets are not too excited to be on The Ed Sullivan Show," to which Holly, still annoyed by Sullivan's attitude, replied, "I hope they're damn more excited than I am." Sullivan, already bothered by the choice of songs, was now even angrier. He cut the Crickets' act from two songs to one, and when introducing them mispronounced Holly's name, so it came out vaguely as "Buddy Hollett." In addition, Sullivan saw to it that the microphone for Holly's electric guitar was turned off. Holly tried to compensate by singing as loudly as he could. The band was received so well that Sullivan was forced to invite them back for a third appearance. Holly's response was that Sullivan did not have enough money. Footage of the performance survives; photographs taken that day show Sullivan looking angry and Holly smirking and perhaps ignoring Sullivan.

In 1963, Bob Dylan was set to appear on the show, but network censors rejected the song he wanted to perform, "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues", as potentially libelous to the John Birch Society. Refusing to perform a different song, Dylan walked off the set at dress rehearsal. Sullivan, who had approved the song at a previous rehearsal, backed Dylan's decision. The incident resulted in accusations against the network of engaging in censorship. This was not the first incident of apparent network censorship on Sullivan's show. In 1956, Sullivan flew to Europe and was able to film an interview with Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner, and Helen Hayes on the set of the film Anastasia. When he arrived home, Sullivan learned he would not be able to air the Bergman material from it.^[10]

Jackie Mason was banned from the series in October 1964 (the ban was removed a year and a half later, and Mason made his final appearance on the show). During a taping of Mason's monologue Sullivan, off camera, gestured that Mason should wrap things up, as the show was suddenly shown live following an abbreviated address by President Lyndon Johnson, which was expected to preempt the entire show.^[14] The nervous Mason told the audience, "I'm getting two fingers here!" and made his own frantic hand gesture: "Here's a finger for you!" Videotapes of the incident are inconclusive as to whether Mason's upswept hand was intended to be an indecent gesture, but Sullivan's body language immediately afterward made it clear that he was convinced of it, despite Mason's panic-stricken denials later.^[15] Sullivan later invited Mason back for a return engagement, but the notoriety of the "finger" incident lingered with the studio audience.

When The Byrds performed on December 12, 1965, David Crosby got into a shouting match with the show's director. They were never asked to return.^[16]^[17]

On January 15, 1967 The Rolling Stones were told to change the chorus of "Let's Spend the Night Together" to "Let's spend some time together". Lead singer Mick Jagger complied, but deliberately called attention to this censorship by rolling his eyes and mugging when he uttered the new words.^[18] Shortly, after the performance, the Stones went backstage, and came back on stage, dressed in Nazi uniforms with swastikas, which caused an angry Sullivan to tell them to go back to their dressing rooms and change back into their performing outfits, however, the Stones left the studio and Sullivan banned the group from ever appearing on his show again.^[19]^{[Full citation needed]}^{[page needed]} Nonetheless, the Stones appeared on the show one final time on November 23, 1969.^[20]

The Doors were banned on September 17, 1967 after they were asked to remove the lyric "Girl, we couldn't get much higher" from their song "Light My Fire" (CBS censors believed that it was too overt a reference to drug use). The band was asked to change the lyric to "girl we couldn't get much better". Morrison sang the original lyric.^[21]

Moe Howard of the Three Stooges recalled in 1975 that Sullivan had a memory problem of sorts: "Ed was a very nice man, but for a showman, quite forgetful. On our first appearance, he introduced us as the Three Ritz Brothers. He got out of it by adding, 'who look more like the Three Stooges to me'."^[22] Joe DeRita, who worked with the Stooges after 1959, had commented that Sullivan had a personality "like the bottom of a bird cage."^[23]

Diana Ross later recalled Sullivan's forgetfulness during the many occasions The Supremes performed on his show. In a 1995 appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman (which is filmed in Ed Sullivan Theater), Ross stated, "he could never remember our names. He called us 'the girls'." ^[24]^[25]

In a 1990 press conference Paul McCartney recalled meeting Sullivan again in the early 1970s. Sullivan apparently had no idea who McCartney was. McCartney tried to remind Sullivan that he was one of The Beatles but Sullivan obviously could not remember and, nodding and smiling, simply shook McCartney's hand and left.

Politics [link]

Sullivan, like many American entertainers, was pulled into the Cold War fervor of the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1949, Sullivan booked dancer Paul Draper to appear on Toast of the Town. However, Draper’s scheduled appearance in January 1950 was met with opposition from Hester McCullough, a woman who involved herself in the hunt for subversives. McCullough accused Draper of sympathizing with the communist party, and although Draper denied the accusation, McCullough demanded that Sullivan’s lead sponsor, the Ford Motor Company, cancel Draper’s appearance. Despite McCullough’s protest, Draper was a guest on Toast of the Town, as was originally scheduled. After the program was broadcast, Ford received over a thousand angry letters and telegraphs in response to Draper’s appearance. Consequently, Sullivan was obligated to write a letter of apology to Ford’s advertising agency, Kenyon & Eckhardt, promising to never again move forward with such a controversial guest. Meanwhile, Draper was forced to move to Europe to earn a living.^[26]

Another guest who never appeared on the show because of the controversy surrounding him was legendary African-American singer-actor Paul Robeson, who, at the time of the Draper incident, was undergoing his own troubles with the industry's hunt for supposed Communist sympathizers.

After the Draper incident, Sullivan began to work closely with Theodore Kirkpatrick of the anti-communist Counterattack newsletter. Sullivan would check with Kirkpatrick if a potential guest had some "explaining to do" about his politics. Sullivan wrote in his June 21, 1950 New York Daily News column that "Kirkpatrick has sat in my living room on several occasions and listened attentively to performers eager to secure a certification of loyalty."^[27] Jerome Robbins, in his PBS American Experience biography, claimed that he was forced to capitulate to the House Un-American Activities Committee, identifying eight Communist sympathizers and disgracing himself among his fellow artists, allegedly because Sullivan threatened to reveal Robbins's homosexuality to the public.

Later years and death [link]

In the fall of 1965, CBS began televising the weekly programs in color. Although the Sullivan show was seen live in the Central and Eastern time zones, it was taped for airing in the Pacific and Mountain time zones. Most of the taped programs (as well as some early kinescopes) were preserved, and excerpts have been released on home video.

By 1971, the show's ratings had plummeted. In an effort to refresh their lineup, CBS cancelled the program along with some of its other longtime shows. Sullivan was angered by this so greatly that he refused to do a final show, although he remained with the network in various other capacities and hosted a 25th anniversary special in 1973.

In early September 1974, X-rays revealed that Sullivan had advanced esophageal cancer. Only his family was told, however, and as the doctors gave Sullivan very little time, the family chose to keep the diagnosis from him. Sullivan, still believing his ailment to be yet another complication from a long-standing battle with ulcers, died five weeks later, on October 13, 1974, at New York's Lenox Hill Hospital.^[28] His funeral was attended by 3,000 at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York on a cold, rainy day. Sullivan is interred in a crypt at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Personal life [link]

Sullivan was engaged to champion swimmer Sybil Bauer, but she died of cancer in 1927 at the age of 23.^[29] He was married to the former Sylvia Weinstein from April 28, 1930, until her death on March 16, 1973. They had one daughter, Betty Sullivan (who married the Ed Sullivan Show's producer, Bob Precht). Sullivan was in the habit of calling Sylvia after every program to get her immediate critique.

Sullivan has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6101 Hollywood Blvd.

References [link]

^ Ed Sullivan Bio on EdSullivan.com
^ "Special Collectors' Issue: 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time". TV Guide (December 14–20). 1996.
^ [1]
^ [2]
^ Yagoda, Ben (1981), "The True Story of Bernarr Macfadden," American Heritage 33(1), December, 1981; reference used for this article was the online version,Ben Yagoda (December 1981). "The True Story of Bernarr Macfadden: Lives and Loves of the Father of the Confession Magazine". American Heritage. http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1981/1/1981_1_22.shtml. Retrieved 2006-12-13.
^ The Ed Sullivan Theater at EdSullivan.com
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e "Big As All Outdoors" Time, 17 October 1955.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e "Plenty of Nothing" Time, 13 October 1967.
^ Will Jordan at the Internet Movie Database
^ ^a ^b Merwin, Gregory (May 1957). Fifty Million People Can't Be Wrong. TV-Radio Mirror. pp. 32–33. http://www.otrr.org/FILES/Magz_pdf/TV_Radio_Mirror/TV%20Radio%20Mirror%205705.pdf. Retrieved 12 February 2012. (PDF)
^ Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show at EdSullivan.com
^ The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show on EdSullivan.com
^ www.amazon.com
^ http://emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/vince-calandra
^ CBS special, The Very Best of the Ed Sullivan Show
^ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2105166789756539416&q=the+ed+sullivan+show+byrds&ei=e2NwSLuhCYSSrgLNvPylBw&hl=en
^ The Byrds on The Ed Sullivan Show at EdSullivan.com
^ The video of this performance can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uewUcr-BYo
^ "Dick Clark's 25 Years of Rock and Roll" (1981)
^ The Rolling Stones on The Ed Sullivan Show at EdSullivan.com
^ The Doors on Ed Sullivan at EdSullivan.com
^ Howard, Moe. (1977, rev. 1979) Moe Howard and the Three Stooges, p. 165; Citadel Press. ISBN 978-0-8065-0723-1.
^ Lenburg, Jeff; Howard Maurer, Joan; Lenburg, Greg; (1982). The Three Stooges Scrapbook, Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8065-0946-5
^ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMeZCg98_2U&feature=related
^ The Supremes on The Ed Sullivan Show at EdSullivan.com
^ Barnouw, E. (1990). Tube of plenty : the evolution of American television / Erik Barnouw. New York : Oxford University Press, 1990.
^ Tube of Plenty, Eric Barnouw, Oxford University Press, 1990
^ "Ed Sullivan Dies Of Cancer At Age 72". Associated Press. October 14, 1974. http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=tiAtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=hqQEAAAAIBAJ&pg=628,4719415&dq=ed+sullivan+dead&hl=en. Retrieved 2010-09-18. "... the Great Stone Face whose "really big shew" entertained millions of American television viewers on Sunday nights for more than two ..."
^ Sisson, Richard; Zacher, Christian K.; Cayton, Andrew R. L. (2007). The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. p. 901. ISBN 0-253-34886-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=n3Xn7jMx1RYC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA901#v=onepage&q&f=false.

External links [link]

Biography portal

The Official Ed Sullivan Show Website
Ed Sullivan at the Internet Movie Database
Ed Sullivan at TVGuide.com
Overview of Ed Sullivan's life
The Ed Sullivan Show – Rock 'n' Roll Classics

Persondata
Name	Sullivan, Ed
Alternative names
Short description	American entertainment writer and television host
Date of birth	September 28, 1901
Place of birth	New York City, New York, U.S.
Date of death	October 13, 1974
Place of death	New York City, New York, U.S.

This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Sullivan

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

Famous quotes by Richard Pryor:

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"Everyone carries around his own monsters"

"Marriage is really tough because you have to deal with feelings... and lawyers."

"I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, I wanna grow up and be a critic."

"I believe in the institution of marriage, and I intend to keep trying till I get it right."

"It's been a struggle for me because I had a chance to be white and refused"

"I went to Zimbabwe...I know how white people feel in America now, relaxed! Cause when I heard the police car I knew they weren't coming after me!"

"I'd like to make you laugh for about ten minutes though I'm gonna be on for an hour."

"There's nothing worse than being an aging young person."

"There's a thin line between to laugh with and to laugh at."

"When you ain't got no money, you gotta get an attitude."

"Everyone carries around his own monsters"

"Marriage is really tough because you have to deal with feelings... and lawyers."

"I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, I wanna grow up and be a critic."

"I believe in the institution of marriage, and I intend to keep trying till I get it right."

"It's been a struggle for me because I had a chance to be white and refused"

"I went to Zimbabwe...I know how white people feel in America now, relaxed! Cause when I heard the police car I knew they weren't coming after me!"

Born: 1940-12-01

Died: 2005-12-10

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