Mel Brooks

Adam Guettel
Adam Guettel (

/ˈɡɛtəl/; born December 16, 1964) is an American composer-lyricist of musical theater and opera . He is best known for the musical The Light in the Piazza, for which he won two Tony Awards, for Best Score and Best Orchestrations, and two Drama Desk Awards, for Best Music and Best Orchestrations.
Guettel was born and raised on the Upper West Side of New York City. He performed as a boy soprano soloist in operas including Pelléas et Mélisande and The Magic Flute, both at the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Opera, and in another production of Pelléas with the Santa Fe Opera. He was also slated to play Amahl in the film remake of Gian Carlo Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors". He later claimed that he ended his career as a boy soprano at age 13, by faking that his voice was changing; he turned to music composition soon afterward. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy, Interlochen Center for the Arts and graduated from Yale University in 1987.
His early works include 1996's Floyd Collins, Love's Fire, and Saturn Returns (which was recorded as Myths and Hymns). Guettel's music was almost immediately characterized by its complexity and chromaticism. His major influences include Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, Benjamin Britten, and Stevie Wonder. Stephen Sondheim has referred to Guettel's work as "dazzling." Guettel's songs have been recorded by such artists as Audra McDonald and Brian d'Arcy James. He also contributed original scores to several documentary films, including Arguing the World and Jack: The Last Kennedy Film. In 1999, he performed a concert evening of his own work at New York's Town Hall.

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Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] (

listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.
A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.

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Alan Johnson
Alan Arthur Johnson (born 17 May 1950) is a British Labour Party politician who served as Home Secretary from June 2009 to May 2010. Before that, he filled a wide variety of cabinet positions in both the Blair and Brown governments, including Health Secretary and Education Secretary. Until 20 January 2011 he was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. Johnson has been the Member of Parliament for Hull West and Hessle since 1997.
Born in London on 17 May 1950, the son of Stephen and Lillian Johnson, he was orphaned at the age of 12 when his mother died. Johnson was then in effect brought up by his older sister when the two were assigned a council flat by their child welfare officer. He passed the 11 plus exam and attended Sloane Grammar School in Chelsea, now part of Pimlico Academy, and left school at the age of 15. He then stacked shelves at Tesco before becoming a postman at 18. He was interested in music and joined two pop music bands. Johnson joined the Union of Communication Workers, becoming a branch official. He joined the Labour Party in 1971, although he considered himself a Marxist ideologically aligned with the Communist Party of Great Britain. A full-time union official from 1987, he became General Secretary of the newly formed Communication Workers Union in 1993 following a series of union mergers.

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Albert Whitlock
Albert J. Whitlock (September 15, 1915 – October 26, 1999) was a British-born motion picture matte artist best known for his work with Disney and Universal Studios.
His film career began as a page at Gaumont Studios in London in 1929, before going on to build sets and work as a grip. Trained as a sign painter, he began a life-long association with Alfred Hitchcock, assisting in the miniature effects for The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and then completing all of the signs for The 39 Steps (1935).
Whitlock began working as a matte artist during World War II. Recruited by Walt Disney, who was an admirer of his work, he relocated to the United States in the early 1950s. At Disney, where the head of the Matte Department was fellow-Londoner and near-exact contemporary Peter Ellenshaw, he successfully mastered the impressionistic approach to matte painting that he would become known for. He remained with the studio for seven years, helping with the design of Disneyland as well as film work, before moving to Universal in 1961. There he served as the head of their matte department, resuming his collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock and many other directors, until retiring from the company in 1985 (though he continued to work on the odd production for a few years afterwards).

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Alex Karras
Alexander George "Alex" Karras (born July 15, 1935), nicknamed "The Mad Duck", is an American football player, professional wrestler, and actor.
He played football with the Detroit Lions in the National Football League from 1958–1962 and 1964-1970. As an actor, Karras is noted for his role as the thuggish Mongo in the 1974 comedy film Blazing Saddles, and for starring in the ABC sitcom Webster (1983-87), alongside real-life wife Susan Clark, as the titular character's adoptive father.
Alex Karras is the son of Dr. George Karras, a Greek immigrant (Chios) who graduated from the University of Chicago and got his medical degree in Canada. There, George Karras met and married a Canadian woman, Alex's mother. George Karras opened a medical practice in Gary, Indiana, but he died when Alex was 13 years old. By that time, Alex Karras had learned to play football in a parking lot near his home, and he blossomed into a four-time Indiana all-state selection at Gary Emerson High School.
His older brothers, Lou (a future member of the Redskins) and Ted (who later played with the Bears and Lions), had played at Purdue but later Ted transferred to Indiana. Because of this, Alex said, "Indiana had the inside track" on recruiting him, but shortly after he graduated high school, several coaches from the University of Iowa took Karras up to Spencer, Iowa, and persuaded him to sign with the Hawkeyes. The coaches had taken Karras to secluded Spencer to keep him away from rival recruiters.

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Alex Timbers
Alex Timbers is a Tony-nominated writer and director and the recipient of Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, as well as two OBIE Awards.
His Broadway directing credits include Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, for which he was also wrote the book and was nominated for a 2011 Tony Award, as well as The Pee-Wee Herman Show, which was filmed for HBO and was nominated for a 2011 Emmy Award. Timbers is also Artistic Director of the New York-based company Les Freres Corbusier.
Timbers grew up in New York City. Between 1994 and 1997, he attended Lake Forest High School in Lake Forest, IL, one of the wealthiest cities in the Midwest. He graduated from Yale University in 2001, where he served as president of the Yale Dramat.
In March 2011, Timbers co-directed Peter and the Starcatcher for Disney Theatricals at New York Theatre Workshop. The show opened to a rave review from Ben Brantley in The New York Times, and Timbers won the 2011 Obie Award for Direction. The production was the fastest-selling show in New York Theatre Workshop's history and extended three times.

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Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood. On 19 April 1955, he became an American citizen while remaining a British subject.
Over a career spanning more than half a century, Hitchcock fashioned for himself a distinctive and recognisable directorial style. He pioneered the use of a camera made to move in a way that mimics a person's gaze, forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism. He framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative film editing. His stories frequently feature fugitives on the run from the law alongside "icy blonde" female characters. Many of Hitchcock's films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring depictions of violence, murder, and crime, although many of the mysteries function as decoys or "MacGuffins" meant only to serve thematic elements in the film and the extremely complex psychological examinations of the characters. Hitchcock's films also borrow many themes from psychoanalysis and feature strong sexual undertones. Through his cameo appearances in his own films, interviews, film trailers, and the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he became a cultural icon. Hitchocks reputation as a filmmaker is offset by claims that he engaged in obsessive and controlling behaviour towards many of his leading ladies, and that in some cases this extended to physical abuse and sexual harrassment.

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Alfredo Giannetti
Alfredo Giannetti (1924-1995) is an Italian screenwriter and film editor. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1962 for his work in Divorce, Italian Style.

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Allan Manings
Allan Manings (March 28, 1924 – May 12, 2010) was an American television producer and comedy writer. He was active in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and was best known for his work in co-creating with his wife, actress Whitney Blake, One Day at a Time, as well as serving as producer (and later executive producer) of the Bud Yorkin-Norman Lear Tandem show, Good Times.
Manings was born on March 28, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey and was raised on Staten Island. He served in the United States Army during World War II in the Pacific theater. After completing his military service, he went to college on the GI Bill as one of the first men to attend the newly-coeducational Sarah Lawrence College. Manings felt uneasy during the McCarthyist period, during which time several friends were blacklisted, and moved to Canada until the early 1960s.
He worked as a writer and script supervisor on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In in the 1960s, for which he received an Emmy. He also wrote episodes of McHale's Navy and Leave It to Beaver.

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Amy Yasbeck
Amy Marie Yasbeck (born September 12, 1962) is an American film and television actress. She is best known for her role as Casey Chapel Davenport on the sitcom Wings from 1994-1997.
Yasbeck was born in Blue Ash, Ohio, the daughter of Dorothy Murphy (1922–1984), a homemaker, and John Yasbeck (1921–1982), a butcher and grocery store owner. She is of half Irish and half Lebanese descent. As a child, Yasbeck was featured on the package art for the Betty Crocker Easy-Bake Oven. Years later, in 2000, she was presented with a new Easy-Bake Oven on the show I've Got a Secret, for which she was a regular panel member.
She spent her elementary, middle, and high school years at two different Catholic schools: Summit Country Day School and Ursuline Academy. After losing both of her parents, her father from a heart attack and her mother from emphysema, Yasbeck moved to New York.
Yasbeck has had starring roles in the sitcoms Wings, Alright Already, and Life on a Stick and in movies such as House II: The Second Story, Pretty Woman, Problem Child, Problem Child 2,and The Mask. She has twice worked with Mel Brooks, in 1993's Robin Hood: Men in Tights and 1995's Dracula: Dead and Loving It. She also played the part of Madison the mermaid in the Disney TV movie Splash, Too in 1988. (The role of Madison was originated by Daryl Hannah in the 1984 movie Splash.)

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Andrew Bergman
Andrew Bergman (20 February 1945) is an American screenwriter, film director, and novelist. New York magazine in 1985 dubbed him "The Unknown King of Comedy".
He graduated from Binghamton University and earned a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His dissertation, a study of Depression-era Hollywood films, was published in 1971 by NYU Press under the title We're In the Money: Depression America and Its Films. He wrote James Cagney: The Pictorial Treasury of Film Stars.
He wrote the original screenplay (titled Tex X) that served as the basis for Mel Brooks's classic Blazing Saddles, and was among the co-writers who adapted it into its final state. Since then, he has written or co-written the cult classics The In-Laws, Fletch, and Soapdish; written and directed The Freshman, Honeymoon in Vegas and It Could Happen To You; written and produced Striptease with Demi Moore; and directed the Jacqueline Susann biopic Isn't She Great.
Bergman has written four novels: The Big Kiss-Off of 1944, Hollywood and LeVine, Tender Is LeVine, and Sleepless Nights. He also wrote the Broadway comedy, Social Security, and Working Title.

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Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber Kt. (born 22 March 1948) is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre.
Lloyd Webber has achieved great popular success in musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage from the British Government for services to Music, seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, fourteen Ivor Novello Awards, seven Olivier Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006.
Several of his songs have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals, notably "The Music of the Night" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" and "You Must Love Me" from Evita, "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and "Memory" from Cats.

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Andy Samberg
David Andrew "Andy" Samberg (born August 18, 1978) is an American actor, comedian, rapper, and writer best known as a member of the comedy group The Lonely Island and as a cast member on Saturday Night Live from 2005 to 2012. On Saturday Night Live, he and The Lonely Island have been credited with popularizing the Emmy-winning SNL Digital Shorts, the comical short films and music videos starring Samberg and other members of the SNL cast. As a film actor, Samberg has appeared in Hot Rod; Space Chimps; Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist; I Love You, Man; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs; Friends with Benefits; and What's Your Number?
Samberg was born in Mill Valley California, the son of Joe Samberg, a photographer, and Margi (née Marrow), an elementary school teacher who taught at Old Mill School. Samberg also has two sisters, Johanna and Darrow. He was raised in a Jewish household. His maternal grandfather, Alfred J. Marrow, served as the executive chair of the American Jewish Congress, although Samberg describes himself as "not particularly religious." Samberg discovered Saturday Night Live as a child while sneaking past his parents to watch professional wrestling on television. He became "obsessed" with the show, and his devotion to comedy became frustrating to teachers who felt he was unfocused on his schoolwork.

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Angela Lansbury
Angela Brigid Lansbury, CBE (born 16 October 1925) is an English-born US-naturalized actress and singer in theatre, television, and motion pictures. Her career has spanned eight decades and earned an unsurpassed number of performance Tony Awards (tied with Julie Harris), with five wins. Her first film appearance was in the film Gaslight (1944) as a conniving maid, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. Among her other films are The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Anastasia (1997).
She expanded her repertoire to Broadway musicals and television in the 1950s and was particularly successful in Broadway productions of Gypsy, Mame and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Lansbury is perhaps best known to modern audiences for her twelve-year run starring as writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher on the American television series Murder, She Wrote (1984–1996). Her recent roles include Lady Adelaide Stitch in the film Nanny McPhee (2005), Leona Mullen in the 2007 Broadway play Deuce, Madame Arcati in the 2009 Broadway revival of the play Blithe Spirit and Madame Armfeldt in the 2010 Broadway revival of the musical A Little Night Music.

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Anne Bancroft
Anne Bancroft (September 17, 1931 – June 6, 2005) was an American actress associated with the method acting school, which she had studied under Lee Strasberg. Respected for her acting prowess and versatility, Bancroft was often acknowledged for her work in film, theatre and television. She won one Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globes, two Tony Awards and two Emmy Awards, and several other awards and nominations.
She made her film debut in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) and, following a string of supporting film roles during the 1950s, won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Miracle Worker (1962), receiving subsequent nominations for her roles in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Graduate (1967), The Turning Point (1977), and Agnes of God (1985). Bancroft's other acclaimed movies as a lead actress include Young Winston (1972), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), To Be or Not to Be (1983), and 84 Charing Cross Road (1987).
Later in her career, she made the transition back to supporting roles in theatrical films such as Point of No Return (1993), Home for the Holidays (1995), Great Expectations (1998), Antz (1998), Keeping the Faith (2000), and Heartbreakers (2001). She also starred in seven television films, the last of which was The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003) for which she received Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations.

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Anthony Hopkins
Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins, CBE (born 31 December 1937), best known as Anthony Hopkins, is a Welsh actor of film, stage and television, and a composer. Considered to be one of the greatest living actors, Hopkins is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Other prominent film credits include The Lion in Winter, Magic, The Elephant Man, 84 Charing Cross Road, Dracula, Legends of the Fall, The Remains of the Day, Amistad, Nixon, The World's Fastest Indian, and Fracture. Hopkins was born and brought up in Wales. Retaining his British citizenship, he became a U.S. citizen on 12 April 2000. Hopkins' films have spanned a wide variety of genres, from family films to horror. As well as his Academy Award, Hopkins has also won three BAFTA Awards, two Emmys and the Cecil B. DeMille Golden Globe Award. Hopkins was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1993 for services to the arts. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003, and was made a Fellow of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2008.

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Barbra Streisand
Barbra Joan Streisand (/ˈstraɪsænd/; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, writer, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, five Emmy Awards including one Daytime Emmy, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.
She is one of the most commercially and critically successful entertainers in modern entertainment history, with more than 71.5 million albums shipped in the United States and 140 million albums sold worldwide. She is the best-selling female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Artists list, the only female recording artist in the top ten, and the only artist outside of the rock and roll genre. Along with Frank Sinatra, Cher, and Shirley Jones, she shares the distinction of being awarded an acting Oscar and also recording a number-one single on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.

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Barry Levinson
Barry Levinson (born April 6, 1942) is an American screenwriter, film director, actor, and producer of film and television. His most notable films include Good Morning, Vietnam, Rain Man, Bugsy, Sleepers and Wag the Dog.
Levinson was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the son of Violet "Vi" (née Krichinsky) and Irvin Levinson, who worked in the furniture and appliance business. His family is of Russian Jewish descent. After growing up in Baltimore and graduating from Forest Park Senior High School, Levinson attended Baltimore City Community College, and American University in Washington, D.C. at the American University School of Communication, before moving to Los Angeles to work as an actor and writer. Levinson at one time shared an apartment with would-be drug smuggler (and basis for the movie Blow) George Jung.
Levinson's first writing work was for variety shows such as The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine, The Lohman and Barkley Show, The Tim Conway Show, and The Carol Burnett Show. After some success as a screenwriter — notably the Mel Brooks comedies Silent Movie (1976) and High Anxiety (1977) (in which he played a bellboy) and the Oscar-nominated script (co-written by then-wife Valerie Curtin) …And Justice for All (1979) — Levinson began his career as a director with Diner (1982), for which he had also written the script and which earned him a Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay.

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Bernadette Peters
Bernadette Peters (born Bernadette Lazzara; February 28, 1948) is an American actress, singer and children's book author from Ozone Park, Queens, New York. Over the course of a career that has spanned five decades, she has starred in musical theatre, films and television, as well as performing in solo concerts and recordings. She is one of the most critically acclaimed Broadway performers, having received nominations for seven Tony Awards, winning two, and nine Drama Desk Awards, winning three. Four of the Broadway cast albums on which she has starred have won Grammy Awards.
Regarded by many as the foremost interpreter of the works of Stephen Sondheim, Peters is particularly noted for her roles on the Broadway stage, including Mack and Mabel, Sunday in the Park with George, Song and Dance, Into the Woods and Annie Get Your Gun.
Peters first performed on the stage as a child and then a teenage actor in the 1960s, and in film and television in the 1970s. She was praised for this early work and for appearances on The Muppet Show, The Carol Burnett Show and in other television work, and for her roles in films like Silent Movie, The Jerk, Pennies from Heaven and Annie. In the 1980s, she returned to the theatre, where she became one of the best-known Broadway stars over the next three decades. She also has recorded six solo albums and several singles, as well as many cast albums, and performs regularly in her own solo concert act. Peters also continues to act in films and on television, where she has been nominated for three Emmy Awards and three Golden Globe Awards, winning once.

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Bill Persky
Bill Persky (born 1931) is an American Emmy Award-winning director, screenwriter, producer, and actor for television. With his long time late collaborator Sam Denoff he wrote and created the television show "That Girl" starring Marlo Thomas.

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Bill Pullman
William James "Bill" Pullman (born December 17, 1953) is an American film, television, and stage actor. Pullman made his film debut in the supporting role of Earl Mott in the 1986 film Ruthless People. He has since gone on to star in other films, including Spaceballs, Independence Day, Lost Highway, Casper and Scary Movie 4. He has starred in a number of plays and is also a Jury Member for Filmaka.
Pullman was born in Hornell, New York, the son of James Pullman, a physician, and his wife Johanna (née Blaas), a nurse. His father's family descends from England, and his maternal grandparents immigrated from the Netherlands. After graduating from Hornell High School in 1971, he attended the State University of New York at Delhi and the State University of New York at Oneonta in the 1970s. He eventually received his Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Pullman taught theater at SUNY Delhi and Montana State University's School of Film and Photography, where he was convinced by his students to attempt film.

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Bo Goldman
Robert "Bo" Goldman (born September 10, 1932) is an American writer, Broadway playwright and screenwriter. To date, he has received two Academy Awards out of three nominations.
Born in New York City, Goldman's father, Julian, owned a chain of well known eastern department stores called The Goldman Stores. An early pioneer of "time payments" his business thrived. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a close friend and also his attorney. Goldman Store ads typically featured men in business suits and fashionably dressed women in furs. While this was an old strategy for appealing to those with dreams of upper-class status, the ad copy explicitly addressed middle-income customers. "He Makes only $3,000 a year," blazoned one Goldman ad, "But is worth $112,290!" Julian loved the theatre, and was an "angel" or backer, to many Broadway Shows and reviews. His young son, Robert "Bo," accompanied Julian to an average of two shows a week. This had an impact on what the boy would choose to do later in life, convinced from an early age that he was meant to work in the theatre. In 1939 Julian was looking for a school where he could send his son. Eleanor Roosevelt admired the work of Helen Parkhurst and was in the midst of expanding the population and resources of the Dalton School by promoting a merger between the Todhunter School for girls (founded by Winifred Todhunter). Julian Goldman became an early backer, and it was this school where Bo would begin his education. He followed this by skipping his last year at Dalton in favor of fast tracking through Exeter, NH, an experience that informed a script he would write years later, Scent of a Woman.

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Bob Einstein
Stewart Robert "Bob" Einstein (born November 20, 1942) is an American actor and comedy writer best known for his portrayal of the fictional stuntman Super Dave Osborne.
Einstein was born in Los Angeles, California in 1942. His parents were Harry Einstein and Thelma Leeds. His younger brother is comedian and writer Albert Brooks, and his older brother, Cliff Einstein, is a retired advertising executive in Los Angeles, CA.
Einstein got his start writing for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour for which he won an Emmy Award. The writing team also included Steve Martin and Rob Reiner. He also appeared on the show as Officer Judy.
His best-known character, Super Dave Osborne, made his first appearance on The John Byner Comedy Hour, a 1972 TV series, was a regular on the 1980 TV series Bizarre and was a frequent guest on Late Night With David Letterman. In 1987 he got his own variety show named Super Dave, which ran from 1987 to 1991 on the Global Television Network in Canada (where the show was produced at the networks' Toronto studio) and Showtime in the US. In 1992, an animated series Super Dave: Daredevil for Hire aired on Fox. Einstein later extended the "Super Dave" franchise by starring in the 2000 movie, The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave.

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Bob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS (born Leslie Townes Hope; May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was an English-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel. Throughout his long career, he was honored for his humanitarian work. In 1996, the U.S. Congress honored Bob Hope by declaring him the "first and only honorary veteran of the U.S. armed forces." Bob Hope appeared in or hosted 199 known USO shows.
Hope was born in Eltham, London, England, the fifth of seven sons. His English father, William Henry Hope, was a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, and his Welsh mother, Avis Townes, was a light opera singer from Barry who later worked as a cleaning woman. She married William Hope in April 1891 and the couple set up home at 12 Greenwood Street in the town, then moved to Whitehall and St George in Bristol, before eventually moving to Cleveland, Ohio in 1908. The family emigrated to the United States aboard the SS Philadelphia, and passed inspection at Ellis Island on March 30, 1908. Hope became a U.S. citizen in 1920 at the age of 17. In a 1942 legal document, Hope's legal name is given as Lester Townes Hope. His name on the Social Security Index is also listed as Lester T. Hope. His name as registered at birth was Leslie Towns [sic] Hope.

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Brian Wilson
Brian Douglas Wilson (born June 20, 1942) is an American musician, best known as the leader and chief songwriter of the group The Beach Boys. On stage, Wilson provided many of the lead vocals, and often harmonized with the group in falsetto. Early during his on-stage career, Wilson primarily played bass on stage, but gradually transitioned to primarily playing piano/keyboards. Besides being the primary composer in The Beach Boys, he also functioned as the band's main producer and arranger. After signing with Capitol Records in mid-1962, Wilson wrote or co-wrote more than two dozen Top 40 hits including "Surfin' Safari", "Surfin' USA", "Shut Down", "Little Deuce Coupe", "Be True to Your School", "In My Room", "Fun, Fun, Fun", "I Get Around", "Dance Dance Dance", "Help Me Rhonda", "California Girls" and "Good Vibrations". These songs and their accompanying albums were internationally popular, making The Beach Boys one of the biggest acts of their time.
In the mid-60s Wilson used his increasingly creative ambitions to compose and produce Pet Sounds, considered one of the greatest albums of all time. At this point his music was considered to rival that of Lennon–McCartney. The intended follow up to Pet Sounds, Smile, was cancelled for various reasons, including Wilson's deteriorating mental health. Wilson's contributions to The Beach Boys diminished as the years went by, and his erratic behavior led to tensions with the band. After years of treatment and recuperation, he began a solo career in 1988 with Brian Wilson, the same year that he and The Beach Boys were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Since then he has toured for the first time in decades with a new band and released acclaimed albums such as a reworked version of Smile in 2004, for which Wilson won a Grammy Award for "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow (Fire)" as Best Rock Instrumental, That Lucky Old Sun, and Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin.

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Brian Yorkey
Brian Yorkey is an American playwright, lyricist, and theatre director. He shared the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2009 Tony Award for Best Original Score with composer Tom Kitt, and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical for Next to Normal.
A native of Issaquah, Washington, Yorkey graduated from Columbia University, where he served as the artistic director of the Varsity Show. He also is an alumnus of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop.
Prior to bringing Next to Normal to Broadway, Yorkey was affiliated with Village Theatre, where he began as a KidStage student and eventually progressed to a six-year tenure as associate artistic director. Five musicals written by Yorkey - Funny Pages (1993), Making Tracks (2002), The Wedding Banquet (2003), Play it by Heart (2005), and A Perfect Fall (2007) - were staged there.
Next to Normal began as a ten-minute-long piece called Feeling Electric recent college graduates Yorkey and Kitt wrote as a final project for the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop at the end of the 1990s. Their inspiration was a segment about electroconvulsive therapy Yorkey saw on Dateline NBC. Yorkey has observed it's "exponentially harder to write an original musical. Musicals that go wrong can be ridiculous because it’s a ridiculous art form. People bursting into song can be ridiculous. But musicals that go right can be sublime."

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Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 23, 1949), nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter-performer who records and tours with the E Street Band. Springsteen is widely known for his brand of heartland rock, poetic lyrics, and Americana sentiments centered on his native New Jersey.
Springsteen's recordings have included both commercially accessible rock albums and more somber folk-oriented works. His most successful studio albums, Born in the U.S.A. and Born to Run, showcase a talent for finding grandeur in the struggles of daily American life; he has sold more than 65 million albums in the United States and more than 120 million worldwide and he has earned numerous awards for his work, including 21 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes and an Academy Award. He is widely regarded by many as one of the most influential songwriters of the 20th century, and in 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him as the 23rd Greatest Artist of all time.
Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and spent his childhood and high school years in Freehold Borough. He lived on South Street in Freehold Borough and attended Freehold Borough High School. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was of Dutch and Irish ancestry and worked, among other vocations, as a bus driver, although he was frequently unemployed; his surname is Dutch for jump stone. His mother, Adele Ann (née Zerilli), was a legal secretary and was of Italian ancestry. His maternal grandfather was born in Vico Equense, a city near Naples. He has two younger sisters, Virginia and Pamela. Pamela had a brief film career, but left acting to pursue still photography full time; she took photos for the Human Touch and Lucky Town albums.

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Bruce Willis
Walter Bruce Willis (born March 19, 1955) is a German-born American actor, producer, and musician. His career began in television in the 1980s and has continued both in television and film since, including comedic, dramatic, and action roles. He is well known for the role of John McClane in the Die Hard series, which were mostly critical and uniformly financial successes. He has also appeared in over sixty films, including box office successes like Pulp Fiction (1994), 12 Monkeys (1995), The Fifth Element (1997), Armageddon (1998), The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000), Sin City (2005), Over the Hedge (2006) and Red (2010).
Motion pictures featuring Willis have grossed US$2.64 billion to 3.05 billion at North American box offices, making him the ninth highest-grossing actor in a leading role and twelfth highest including supporting roles. He is a two-time Emmy Award–winning, Golden Globe Award–winning and four-time Saturn Award–nominated actor. Willis was married to actress Demi Moore and they had three daughters before their divorce in 2000, following thirteen years of marriage. He is currently married to model Emma Heming, with whom he has one daughter.

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Buck Henry
Henry Zuckerman, better known as Buck Henry (born December 9, 1930), is an American actor, writer, film director, and television director.
Henry was born in New York City, the son of silent film actress Ruth Taylor and Paul Stuart Zuckerman (April 15, 1899–1965), a former Air Force general and stockbroker.
Buck Henry attended The Choate School (now Choate Rosemary Hall) and Dartmouth College, where he worked on the Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern humor magazine. From 1959 to 1962, as part of an elaborate hoax by comedian Alan Abel, he pretended to be G. Clifford Prout, the quietly outraged president of the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, who presented his point of view on talk shows.^{[citation needed]}
Henry's dry humor attracted attention in the entertainment community. He became a cast member on TV programs such as The New Steve Allen Show (1961) and That Was The Week That Was (1964–65). He was a co-creator and writer for Get Smart (1965–70), with Mel Brooks. Two of his TV projects had short runs but are fondly remembered by fans: Captain Nice (1967) with William Daniels as a reluctant superhero, and Quark (1978), with Richard Benjamin in command of a garbage scow in outer space.

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Buddy Rich
Bernard "Buddy" Rich (September 30, 1917 – April 2, 1987) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. Rich was billed as "the world's greatest drummer" and was known for his virtuosic technique, power, groove, and speed.
Rich was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish vaudevillians Robert and Bess Rich. His talent for rhythm was first noted by his father, who saw that Buddy could keep a steady beat with spoons at the age of one. He began playing drums in vaudeville when he was 18 months old, billed as "Traps the Drum Wonder." At the peak of Rich's childhood career, he was reportedly the second-highest paid child entertainer in the world (after Jackie Coogan). At 11 he was performing as a bandleader. He received no formal drum instruction, and went so far as to claim that instruction would only degrade his musical talent. He also never admitted to practicing, claiming to play the drums only during performances^{[citation needed]} and was not known to read music. He expressed great admiration for, and was influenced by, the playing of Chick Webb, Gene Krupa, Dave Tough, and Jo Jones, among others.^{[citation needed]}.

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Burt Reynolds
Burton Milo "Burt" Reynolds, Jr. (born February 11, 1936) is an American actor, director and voice artist. Some of his memorable roles include Bo 'Bandit' Darville in Smokey and the Bandit, Lewis Medlock in Deliverance, Bobby "Gator" McCluskey in White Lightning and sequel Gator, Paul Crewe and Coach Nate Scarborough in The Longest Yard and its 2005 remake respectively, Billy Clyde Puckett in Semi-Tough, J.J. McClure in The Cannonball Run, the voice of Charlie B. Barkin in All Dogs Go to Heaven, and Jack Horner in Boogie Nights.
Reynolds' parents were Burton Milo Reynolds, Sr. (1906–2002), who had Cherokee and Irish ancestry, and his wife, Fern H. (née Miller). Reynolds was born in Lansing, Michigan. He states in his autobiography that his family was living in Lansing, Michigan, when his father was drafted into the United States Army. Reynolds, his mother and his sister joined his father at Fort Leonard Wood, where they lived for two years. When Reynolds's father was sent to Europe, the family returned to Lansing. In 1946, Reynolds moved to Riviera Beach, Florida, with his parents. His father, Burt Sr., later became Chief of Police of Riviera Beach. Riviera Beach is the next town north of West Palm Beach.

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Busby Berkeley
Busby Berkeley (November 29, 1895 – March 14, 1976) was a highly influential Hollywood movie director and musical choreographer. Berkeley was famous for his elaborate musical production numbers that often involved complex geometric patterns. Berkeley's works used large numbers of showgirls and props as fantasy elements in kaleidoscopic on-screen performances.
Berkeley was born to stage actress Gertrude Berkeley. Among Gertrude's friends were actress Amy Busby and actor William Gillette, then only four years away from playing Sherlock Holmes. Gertrude apparently named her son after both Busby and Gillette after they agreed to be the boy's godparents. The boy was named Busby Berkeley William Enos.
In addition to her stage work, Gertrude played mother roles in silent films while Berkley was still a child. Berkeley made his stage debut at five, acting in the company of his performing family. During World War I, Berkeley served as a field artillery lieutenant. Watching soldiers drill may have inspired his later complex choreography. During the 1920s, Berkeley was a dance director for nearly two dozen Broadway musicals, including such hits as A Connecticut Yankee. As a choreographer, Berkeley was less concerned with the terpsichorean skill of his chorus girls as he was with their ability to form themselves into attractive geometric patterns. His musical numbers were among the largest and best-regimented on Broadway.^{[citation needed]}

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Carl Gottlieb
Carl Gottlieb (born March 18, 1938) is an American screenwriter, actor, comedian and executive. He is probably best known for co-writing the screenplay for Jaws, as well as directing the 1981 low-budget cult film Caveman.
Gottlieb was born in New York City, to Jewish parents: the son of Elizabeth, a medical administrative assistant, and Sergius M. Gottlieb, an engineer. After studying drama at Syracuse University, he became a member, in the 1960s, of the San Francisco improvisational comedy troupe "The Committee". They made one feature film: A Session with the Committee.
He began writing comedy for TV, contributing to The Bob Newhart Show, All in the Family, and The Odd Couple. Minor acting roles have included Robert Altman's M*A*S*H and the film Clueless.
Gottlieb also cowrote David Crosby's two autobiographies, 1989's "Long time Gone" and 2006's "Since Then".
Gottlieb was hired as an actor to appear as Meadows, the editor of the local newspaper, in Jaws. He was hired by his friend, Steven Spielberg, to redraft the script, adding more dimensions to the characters, particularly humour. Ironically, his redrafts reduced the role of Meadows (who still appears in the Town Hall corridor and the Tiger Shark scene).

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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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Carol Arthur
Carol Arthur (born August 4, 1935, Hackensack, New Jersey) is an American producer and film/television actress, mainly recognizable as playing supporting roles in films produced by Mel Brooks. She is probably best remembered as the outspoken town suffragette Harriett Johnson, in Brooks' Blazing Saddles. She has also guest-starred in many television shows throughout the last four decades, including The Dom Deluise Show, Emergency!, Sanford and Son, Rhoda, Alice, Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories, St. Elsewhere, and 7th Heaven.
She is the widow of Dom DeLuise, and the mother of actors Peter DeLuise, Michael DeLuise and David DeLuise.

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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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Charles Durning
Charles Durning (born February 28, 1923) is an American actor. With appearances in over 100 films, Durning's memorable roles include police officers in the Oscar-winning The Sting (1973) and crime drama Dog Day Afternoon (1975), along with the comedies Tootsie, To Be Or Not To Be and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the last two of which earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor. He won a Tony award for his portrayal of Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1990.
Durning was born in Highland Falls, New York, the second youngest of five children, James G. (1915–2000), Clifford John (1916–1994), Frances (born 1919) and Gerald J. Durning (born 1926). His mother, Louise M. (1894–1982), was a laundress at West Point, and his father was James Durning.
Durning served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Drafted at age 21, he was first assigned as a rifleman with the 398th Infantry Regiment, and later served overseas with the 3rd Army Support troops and the 386th Anti-aircraft Artillery (AAA) Battalion. For his valor and the wounds he received during the war, Durning was awarded the Silver Star and three Purple Heart medals.

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Charles Strouse
Charles Strouse (born June 7, 1928) is an American composer and lyricist.
Strouse was born and raised in New York City, the son of Ira and Ethel (Newman) Strouse. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, Strouse studied under David Diamond, Aaron Copland and Nadia Boulanger.
Strouse's first Broadway musical was the 1960 hit Bye Bye Birdie, with lyrics by Lee Adams, who would become his long time collaborator. Strouse won his first Tony Award for best score for this musical, which is considered the precursor of the rock musical. Strouse's next show, All American, with a book by Mel Brooks and lyrics by Adams, came in 1962 and produced the standard “Once Upon a Time” (recorded by Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Bobby Darin, among others). Following this was Golden Boy (1964, also with Adams), starring Sammy Davis, Jr. and It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman (1966, based on the popular comic strip) which introduced the song "You've Got Possibilities" sung by Linda Lavin.
In 1970, Applause (starring Lauren Bacall, with book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and lyrics by Adams) won Strouse his second Tony Award. In 1977, Strouse adapted another comic strip for the stage, creating the hit Annie, which garnered him his third Tony Award and two Grammy Awards. Other Strouse musicals include Charlie and Algernon (1979), Dance a Little Closer (1983, with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner), Rags (1986), Nick & Nora (1993), and An American Tragedy (1995, with lyrics by David Shaber). Strouse also wrote a number of musical revues, many with Adams.

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Charlie Callas
Charlie Callas (December 20, 1924 – January 27, 2011) was an American comedian and actor most commonly known for his work with Mel Brooks, Jerry Lewis, and Dean Martin and his many stand-up appearances on television talk shows in the 1970s. He was also known for his role as Malcolm Argos, the restaurant owner and former con man, on the Eddie Albert and Robert Wagner television series Switch.
Tony Belmont, executive director of the National Comedy Hall of Fame in St. Petersburg, Florida said of Callas: "There were two things he could do that made his career, He could think very fast on his feet, and he had an unbelievable number of sounds that he made with his voice. He would tell a joke about two guys hunting. If you or I told it, the joke wasn't so funny. But Charlie made it hysterical by sticking in these sounds; so you would hear the gun cocking, the duck flying overhead, the explosion of the shotgun and then the duck falling and screaming all the way to the ground."
Callas was born in Brooklyn, New York as Charles Callias and served in the United States Army during World War II. He began his career as a drummer playing in groups with Bernie Cummins,Tommy Dorsey, Claude Thornhill, and Buddy Rich. He dropped a vowel from his legal name, Callias, when he took to the stage.

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Chita Rivera
Chita Rivera (born January 23, 1933) is an American actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musical theater. She is the first Hispanic woman to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award (December 2002). She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
Rivera (birth name: Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero) was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Katherine, a government clerk, and Pedro Julio Figueroa del Rivero, a clarinetist and saxophonist for the United States Navy Band. Her father was Puerto Rican and her mother was of Scottish and Italian descent. Rivera was seven years old when her mother was widowed and went to work for The Pentagon.
In 1944, Rivera's mother enrolled her in the Jones-Haywood School of Ballet (now the Jones Haywood School of Dance). Later, when she was 15, a teacher from George Balanchine's School of American Ballet visited their studio and Rivera was one of two students picked to audition in New York City; she was accompanied to the audition by Doris Jones, one of the people who ran the Jones-Haywood School. Rivera's audition was successful and she was accepted into the school and given a scholarship

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Chris Bearde
Chris Bearde (born 18 June 1936) is a comedy writer, producer and director best known for his work as a writer on the '60s zeitgeist hit Laugh In and for co-writing and producing TV specials for Elvis Presley, Bob Hope, Sonny and Cher, Bill Cosby, Steve Martin, Jim Carrey, Andy Williams, The Jackson Five, The Osmonds, Dinah Shore, Diana Ross, and Lucille Ball. He also created the format for the original Gong Show and a number of network and pay-cable comedy series including That's My Mama and Sherman Oaks.
==Early career== http://www.chrisbearde.com Chris Bearde's career started in the 1950s in Sydney, Australia. After working in radio and serving two years in the Australian Army, at 23 he became host of the children's television series Smalltime. His appearances in this show and his writing for other Australian comedy shows was recognised by visiting Canadian and American producers, and Bearde was contracted by the Canadian commercial network CTV to write a comedy series in the early 1960s, titled Network. He created two shows for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Front and Centre and Canada's first late night political satire show Nightcap.

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Christopher Hewett
Christopher Michael Hewett (5 April 1921 – 3 August 2001) was an English actor and theatre director best known for his role as Lynn Belvedere on the ABC sitcom Mr. Belvedere.
Hewett was born in Worthing, Sussex, England, to an army officer father and an Irish mother who was a descendant of Daniel O'Connell. He was educated at Beaumont College, and at age 7, he made his acting debut in Dublin stage production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. At 16, Hewett joined the Royal Air Force, leaving in 1940. Hewett then joined the Oxford Repertory Company and made his West End theatre debut in 1943.
He later appeared on Broadway in the musicals My Fair Lady, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Music Is, and Kean and in the plays Sleuth and The Affair, among others, and directed the 1960 Broadway revue From A to Z and the 1967 Off Broadway revival of the Rodgers and Hart musical By Jupiter. Hewett also directed several stage productions including The Marriage-Go-Round and Beyond the Fringe and Camelot.

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Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Allen Lloyd (born October 22, 1938) is an American actor. He is best known for playing Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy, Uncle Fester in The Addams Family and its sequel Addams Family Values, and Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He rose to prominence in the 1980s as Jim Ignatowski in the television series Taxi.
Lloyd has used his vocal talents in animation, frequently voicing villains. He provided voice to the character The Hacker on the animated PBS series Cyberchase. Lloyd has won three Primetime Emmy Awards and an Independent Spirit Award, and has been nominated for two Saturn Awards and a Daytime Emmy Award.
Lloyd was born in Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Samuel R. Lloyd, a lawyer, and his wife Ruth (née Lapham), a singer and sister of San Francisco mayor Roger Lapham. His maternal grandfather, Lewis Lapham, was one of the founders of the Texaco oil company, and Lloyd is also a descendant of Mayflower passenger John Howland. Lloyd attended the Fessenden School, a preparatory school in Newton, Massachusetts. Lloyd was raised in New Canaan, Connecticut, and Westport, Connecticut, where he graduated from Staples High School in 1958.

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Chuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry (born October 18, 1926) is an American guitarist, singer and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Chuck Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics focusing on teen life and consumerism and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music.
Born into a middle class family in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student he served a prison sentence for armed robbery between 1944 and 1947. On his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of blues player T-Bone Walker, he was performing in the evenings with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955, and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess of Chess Records. With Chess he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching No. 1 on Billboard's Rhythm and Blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star with several hit records and film appearances to his name as well as a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis-based nightclub, called Berry's Club Bandstand. But in January 1962, Berry was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines.

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Claude Lelouch
Claude Barruck Joseph Lelouch (born 30 October 1937) is a French film director, writer, cinematographer, actor and producer.
Lelouch was born in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, the son of Charlotte (née Abeilard) and Simon Lelouch. His father was an Algerian Jew and his mother was a convert to Judaism. His father gave him a camera to give him a fresh start after his failure in the baccalaureat. He started his career with reportage - one of the first to film daily life in the U.S.S.R., the camera hidden under his coat as he made his personal journey. He also filmed sporting events like the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Tour de France.
His first full length film as director, Le Propre de l'homme, was decried by the critics - 'Claude Lelouch, remember this name well, because you will not hear it again' - Cahiers du cinéma said. La Femme Spectacle (1963), following prostitutes, women shopping, going for nose-jobs, was censored for its misogynist tendency. Un homme et une femme changed his fortunes and was met with favour even by the Cahiers group. Legend has it that Lelouch found himself one morning on the beach at Deauville when he caught sight of a young woman and her child on the sand. He thought about her story, tried to put together the story of how she had arrived at that moment. The scenario for the film was born. Lelouch set in place here some of the techniques of his filming he will use all his career. He used the locations for decor (here, the Grand Hotel at Deauville), recycled images from his old films (here, the 24 Hours of Le Mans), and used product placement as a means of financing his work (here, Jean-Louis Trintignant and his Ford Mustang.)

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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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Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide (1959–1965). He rose to fame for playing the Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy of spaghetti westerns (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) during the late 1960s, and as Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry films (Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact, and The Dead Pool) throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These roles, among others, have made him an enduring cultural icon of masculinity.
For his work in the films Unforgiven (1992) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), Eastwood won Academy Awards for Best Director and Producer of the Best Picture, as well as receiving nominations for Best Actor. These films in particular, as well as others including Play Misty for Me (1971), Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Tightrope (1984), Pale Rider (1985), Heartbreak Ridge (1986), In the Line of Fire (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), and Gran Torino (2008), have all received commercial success and critical acclaim. Eastwood's only comedies have been Every Which Way but Loose (1978) and its sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980), which are his two most commercially successful films after adjustment for inflation.

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Cloris Leachman
Cloris Leachman (born April 30, 1926) is an American actress of stage, film and television. She has won eight Primetime Emmy Awards—more than any other performer—and one Daytime Emmy Award. She co-starred in the 1971 film The Last Picture Show. Leachman's longest running role was the nosy, self-centered and manipulative landlady Phyllis Lindstrom on the 1970s TV series Mary Tyler Moore, and later on the spinoff series, Phyllis. She also appeared in three Mel Brooks films, including Young Frankenstein. She had a regular role on the last two seasons of The Facts of Life portraying the character Beverly Ann Stickle. In recent years, she had a recurring role as Lois's mother Ida Gorski on Malcolm in the Middle. She also starred in the roast of Bob Saget in 2008. Leachman was a contestant on Season 7 (2008) of Dancing with the Stars, paired with Corky Ballas. At the age of 82, she was the oldest contestant to dance on the series.
Leachman was the grand marshal for the 2009 New Year's Day Tournament of Roses Parade and Rose Bowl Game in Pasadena, California. She presided over the 120th parade, the theme being "Hats Off to Entertainment", and the 95th Rose Bowl game. Leachman plays a supporting role in Raising Hope, a sitcom that premiered in the fall of 2010 on Fox. She will star with Tara Reid in The Fields, and with Colin Firth and Cameron Diaz in Gambit, a remake of a 1966 film.

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Coleman Jacoby
Coleman Jacoby (April 16, 1915 – October 20, 2010) was a comedy writer for radio and television.
Born Coleman Jacobs in Pittsburgh, his father abandoned the family mother died when he was young. He was raised at the Jewish Home for Babies and Children from age 7. After studying art, he moved to New York, where he worked paining murals for nightclubs. He also started writing jokes for comedians. Joke-writing for Bob Hope and Fred Allen paved the way for steady work in radio. He changed his name to "Jacoby" on the recommendation of Earl Wilson
He wrote for Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca on Your Show of Shows. Later, after teaming up with his longtime partner Arnie Rosen, he wrote extensively for Jackie Gleason and Art Carney. The team also wrote for Phil Silvers's character Sargent Ernie Bilko for You'll Never Get Rich (later renamed The Phil Silvers Show.
Jacoby was married twice, first to Violeta Velero in 1940, from whom he divorced, and later to Gaby Monet, who predeceased him. He had one daughter. He died of pancreatic cancer in East Meadow, New York on October 20, 2010.

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Count Basie
William "Count" Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. His mother first taught him piano and he started performing in his teens. Dropping out of school, he learned to operate lights for vaudeville and improvised to accompany silent films at a local theater in his town of Red Bank, New Jersey. By 16, he increasingly played jazz piano at parties, resorts and other venues. In 1924, he went to Harlem, where his performing career expanded; he toured with groups to the major jazz cities of Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City. In 1929 he joined Bennie Moten's band in Kansas City, and played with them for years, until Moten's death in 1935.
That year Basie formed his own jazz orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and others. Many notable musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, the guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison and singers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. Basie's theme songs were "One O'Clock Jump," developed in 1935 in the early days of his band, and "April In Paris".

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Curb Your Enthusiasm
Curb Your Enthusiasm is an American comedy television series produced and broadcast by HBO, which premiered on October 15, 2000. As of 2011, it has completed 80 episodes over eight seasons. The series was created by Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, who stars as a fictionalized version of himself. The series follows David in his life as a semi-retired television writer and producer in Los Angeles and later New York City. Also starring are Cheryl Hines as David's wife Cheryl, Jeff Garlin as David's manager Jeff, and Susie Essman as Jeff's wife Susie. Curb Your Enthusiasm often features guest stars, and many of these appearances are by celebrities playing versions of themselves fictionalized to varying degrees.
The plots and subplots of the episodes are established in an outline written by David and the dialogue is largely improvised by the actors themselves. Much like Seinfeld, the subject matter in Curb Your Enthusiasm often involves the minutiae of daily life, and plots often revolve around Larry David's many faux pas, and his problems with certain social conventions and expectations, as well as his annoyance with other people's behavior. The character has a hard time letting such annoyances go unexpressed, which leads him often into awkward situations.

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Dan Curtis
Dan Curtis (August 12, 1927 – March 27, 2006) was an American director and producer of television and film, probably best known for his miniseries The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, his afternoon TV series Dark Shadows, and the made for TV movie, Trilogy of Terror. Dark Shadows originally aired from 1966 to 1971 and has aired in syndication for nearly 40 years. Curtis was responsible for the 1991 remake of Dark Shadows, which was canceled due to low ratings. He was the executive producer for Dark Shadows for The WB Television Network; however, it was canceled before the pilot episode aired.
His series of macabre films include House of Dark Shadows, Night of Dark Shadows, The Night Stalker (which inspired the series Kolchak: The Night Stalker), Intruders, The Night Strangler, Burnt Offerings, Trilogy of Terror, The Norliss Tapes (a 1973 pilot for an unproduced series starring Roy Thinnes), Curse of the Black Widow, Dead Of Night, Scream of the Wolf and others. He worked frequently with sci-fi/horror writer Richard Matheson. Curtis was producer and/or director of a number of television adaptations of horror-related productions including The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Turn of the Screw, all made between 1968 and 1975.

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Danny Simon
Danny Simon (December 18, 1918, New York City – July 26, 2005, Portland, Oregon) was an American television writer and comedy teacher. He was also older brother to acclaimed American playwright Neil Simon.
The elder Simon wrote for television shows including Your Show of Shows, The Colgate Comedy Hour, The Phil Silvers Show, Make Room for Daddy, My Three Sons, The Carol Burnett Show, Kraft Music Hall, Diff'rent Strokes, and The Facts of Life. He later became a comedy teacher.
Woody Allen said about Simon, "I've learned a couple of things on my own since and modified things he taught me, but everything, unequivocally, that I learned about comedy writing I learned from him".
Jimmy Boyd, "Being around Danny always makes me and everyone else happy. He is always up and positive, and he sees humor in absolutely everything. It is endless funny one-liners. In rehearsal I could read the same comedy line a hundred times, and Danny would be laughing". [1]
Simon was married to Arlene Friedman from 1953 to 1962. The couple had two children, Michael and Valerie. In 2011, Michael Simon was appointed by President Barack Obama to be a judge on the United States District Court for the District of Oregon.

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Daphne Zuniga
Daphne Eurydice Zuniga (born October 28, 1962) is an American actress known for her roles as Jo Reynolds on the Fox primetime soap Melrose Place, as Victoria Davis on The CW teen drama One Tree Hill, and as Princess Vespa in Spaceballs.
Zuniga was born in Berkeley, California. Her father is an emeritus professor of philosophy originally from Guatemala and her mother is a Unitarian minister of Polish and Finnish descent. Zuniga became interested in acting in high school, performing in a variety of school plays. She attended the Young Conservatory of ACT (American Conservatory Theater) of San Francisco in her early teens. Zuniga, her mother, and her sister moved from Berkeley to Reading, Vermont after her parents divorced. Zuniga graduated from Woodstock Union High School in Woodstock, Vermont, in 1980. After graduating from high school she became a Theater Arts major at University of California at Los Angeles.
Zuniga is best known for playing Jo Reynolds in the 1990s TV series Melrose Place. However, her television career began nearly ten years earlier when she appeared in several episodes of Family Ties (1984) as a girlfriend of Alex P. Keaton. She also co-starred with Lucille Ball in the TV drama Stone Pillow in 1985 and was in the 1985 television miniseries Degrees of Guilt. She was also one of many voice actors for the animated television series Stories from My Childhood (1998). Zuniga also had a lead role in the TV mini-series Pandora's Clock (1996).

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Dave Brubeck
David Warren "Dave" Brubeck (born December 6, 1920) is an American jazz pianist. He has written a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranges from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills. His music is known for employing unusual time signatures, and superimposing contrasting rhythms, meters, and tonalities.
His long-time musical partner, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, wrote the Dave Brubeck Quartet's best remembered piece, "Take Five", which is in 5/4 time and has endured as a jazz classic on the top-selling jazz album, Time Out. Brubeck experimented with time signatures throughout his career, recording "Pick Up Sticks" in 6/4, "Unsquare Dance" in 7/4, and "Blue Rondo à la Turk" in 9/8. He is also a respected composer of orchestral and sacred music, and wrote soundtracks for television such as Mr. Broadway and the animated mini-series This Is America, Charlie Brown.
Brubeck was born in Concord, California and grew up in Ione. He is of English (maternal), Swiss and possibly Native American Modoc Tribe multi-ethnic (paternal) ancestry His father, Howard "Pete" Brubeck, was a cattle rancher, and his mother, Elizabeth (née Ivey), who had studied piano in England under Myra Hess and intended to become a concert pianist, taught piano for extra money. Brubeck originally did not intend to become a musician (his two older brothers, Henry and Howard, were already on that track), but took lessons from his mother. He could not read sheet music during these early lessons, attributing this difficulty to poor eyesight, but "faked" his way through, well enough that this deficiency went mostly unnoticed.

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David Begelman
David Begelman (August 26, 1921 – August 7, 1995) was a Hollywood producer who was involved in a studio embezzlement scandal in the 1970s.
Born in New York City, Begelman worked at the Music Corporation of America (MCA) for more than 11 years, eventually becoming vice president. He left in 1960 to co-found the talent agency Creative Management Associates (CMA) with Freddie Fields. Their clients included Jack Carter, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minnelli, Woody Allen, Richard Burton, Peter Sellers, Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda, Rock Hudson, Carol Channing, and others.
He left CMA in 1973 to take over the floundering Columbia Pictures. Begelman recruited big-name stars from his former company, dramatically changing the company's image by producing such hits as Tommy (1975), Shampoo (1975), Murder by Death (1976), and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Begelman became among the first Hollywood agents to cross over and rise to the top of the studio system.
In February 1977, actor Cliff Robertson received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service indicating he had received $10,000 from Columbia Pictures. He had never received the money, and discovered that his signature on the cashed paycheck had been forged. Robertson's report started a criminal investigation. The LAPD and the FBI verified that the $10,000 check was a forgery, and it was tracked to Begelman. He was ultimately sentenced to community service for the forgeries.

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David Bryan
David Bryan (born David Bryan Rashbaum; February 7, 1962) is the keyboard player of the rock band, Bon Jovi. He is also the writer of the successful Broadway musical Memphis and current Design Manager at Aquatic Eco-Systems Inc.
Bryan was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey and raised in Edison, New Jersey. His father, Eddie Rashbaum, played the trumpet. Bryan was raised Jewish. He attended elementary school at Clara Barton, where he played many instruments as violin, viola, trumpet and clarinet. Also attended Herbert Hoover Middle School, then J. P. Stevens High School, from which he graduated. Bryan began to learn piano at age seven, and played keyboards for a band called Transition with bass player Steve Sileo. He studied with Emery Hack, a professor at Juilliard, for thirteen years. Bryan was accepted into Rutgers University, but dropped out to attend Juilliard, a school devoted to the performing arts in New York City.
In October 1984, Bon Jovi supported the group Kiss at the Queens Hall in Leeds.

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David Clennon
David Clennon (born May 10, 1943) is an American actor perhaps best known for his portrayal of Miles Drentel in the ABC series Thirtysomething, a role he reprised on Once and Again.
Clennon was born in Waukegan, Illinois, the son of Virginia, a homemaker, and Cecil Clennon, an accountant. Clennon is well known for his political activism.^{[citation needed]}
In 1980, David Clennon provided the voice for Admiral Motti in NPR's Star Wars The Original Radio Drama. He was a regular on the TV shows Almost Perfect, The Agency and Saved. Most recently, Clennon played Carl Sessick (a.k.a. Carl the Watcher) on Ghost Whisperer.
In 1993 he won an Emmy award for his guest appearance on the series Dream On.

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David Cronenberg
David Paul Cronenberg, OC, FRSC (born March 15, 1943) is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the psychological is typically intertwined with the physical. In the first half of his career, he explored these themes mostly through horror and science fiction, although his work has since expanded beyond these genres. He has been called "the most audacious and challenging narrative director in the English-speaking world."
Born in Toronto, Canada, Cronenberg was the son of Esther (born Sumberg), a musician, and Milton Cronenberg, a writer and editor. His family has been described as "a nurturing middle class family." He began writing as a child and wrote constantly. He attended high school at Harbord Collegiate Institute. A keen interest in science, especially botany and lepidopterology, led him to enter the Honours Science program the University of Toronto in 1963, but he switched to Honors English Language and Literature later in his first year. Cronenberg's fascination with the film Winter Kept Us Warm (1966) by classmate David Secter sparked his interest in film. He began frequenting film camera rental houses, learning art of filmmaking and made two 16mm films (Transfer and From the Drain). Inspired by the New York underground film scene, he founded the Toronto Film Co-op with Iain Ewing and Ivan Reitman. After taking a year off to travel in Europe, he returned to Canada in 1967, graduating from University College at the top of his class.

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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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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 Cavett
Richard Alva Cavett (English pronunciation: /ˈkævɨt/; born November 19, 1936) — known as Dick Cavett — is a former American television talk show host known for his conversational style and in-depth discussion of issues. Cavett appeared regularly on nationally broadcast television in the United States in five consecutive decades, the 1960s through the 2000s.
In recent years, Cavett has written a blog for the New York Times, promoted DVDs of his former shows, and hosted replays of his classic TV interviews with Groucho Marx, Katharine Hepburn, and others on Turner Classic Movies channel.
Cavett was born in Nebraska, but sources differ as to the specific town, locating his birthplace in either Gibbon, where his family lived, or nearby Kearney, the location of the nearest hospital. His mother Erabel "Era" (née Richards) and his father Alva B. Cavett both worked as educators. When asked by Lucille Ball on his own show about his heritage, he said he was "Scottish, Irish, English, and possibly partly French, and, and uh, a dose of German." He also mentioned that one grandfather "came over" from England, and the other from Wales. Cavett's grandparents all lived in Grand Island, Nebraska. His paternal grandparents were Alva A. Cavett and Gertrude Pinsch. His paternal grandfather was from Diller, Nebraska and his paternal grandmother was an immigrant from Aachen, Germany.^{[citation needed]} His maternal grandparents were the Rev. R. R. and Etta Mae Richards. Rev. Richards was from Carmarthen, Wales and was a Baptist minister who served parishes across central Nebraska.^{[citation needed]}

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Dick Shawn
Dick Shawn (December 1, 1923 – April 17, 1987) was an American actor and comedian.
Shawn was born as Richard Schulefand in Buffalo, New York and raised in adjacent Lackawanna. The best known roles of his career was that of Sylvester Marcus, son of Mrs. Marcus (Ethel Merman), in Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Lorenzo St. DuBois/Adolf Hitler in the musical Springtime for Hitler, the play within the movie The Producers. He also provided the Snow Miser's voice in The Year Without a Santa Claus.
He had continued success with his stand-up comedy act that he successfully performed for over 35 years in nightclubs around the world. His award-winning one-man stage show, The Second Greatest Entertainer in the Whole Wide World, was sometimes performed with a unique opening. When the audience entered the theater, they saw a bare stage with a pile of bricks in stage center. When the play began, Shawn emerged from the pile of bricks. The startling effect of this required complete concentration and breath control because the slightest movement of the bricks could ruin the surprise appearance.

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Dick Van Patten
Richard Vincent "Dick" Van Patten (born December 9, 1928) is an American actor, best known for his role as patriarch Tom Bradford on the television sitcom Eight is Enough. He began work as a child actor and was successful on the New York stage, appearing in more than a dozen plays as a teenager. He later starred in numerous television roles including the long running CBS television series, I Remember Mama and Young Dr. Malone. Later, he would star or co-star in many feature films including Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Charlton Heston's Soylent Green and the Academy Award winning Charly.
Van Patten was born in Kew Gardens, New York, the son of Josephine Rose (née Acerno), an Italian American who worked in advertising, and Richard Byron Van Patten, a Dutch American interior decorator. He began work as a model and actor as a child making his Broadway debut at the age of seven. He was successful on the New York stage, appearing in a dozen theatrical plays before reaching his teen years.He later moved to Hollywood and began a lengthy career in film and television.

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Digby Wolfe
Digby Wolfe (4 June 1929 – 2 May 2012) was an English actor, screenwriter and university lecturer in dramatic writing.
Wolfe was born in London, England, and began writing and performing in comedy series in England in the 1950s. Together with Jimmy Wilson he wrote a revue, with music by John Pritchett and Norman Dannatt, for the Irving Theatre. He appeared alongside Ronnie Corbett, Hattie Jacques and Charles Hawtrey, before moving to Australia in 1959, where he made frequent television appearances and was host of the variety shows Review '61 and Review '62. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he lived at the southern end of Whale Beach, Sydney. At that time, his resident comedian was Dave Allen, who later became a household name in the UK and Australia.
He also taught screenwriting at USC in the MPW (Master of Professional Writing) program
In 1964, he moved to the United States, where his television credits included The Monkees, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and The Munsters, while his film roles included voice parts in The Jungle Book and Father Goose, in which he sang the main theme. His writing credits included Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (for which he won an 'Emmy' in 1968), and The Goldie Hawn Special. He also wrote for John Denver, Shirley MacLaine, Cher and Jackie Mason, among others. In 1976 he hosted two episodes of the Australian version of This Is Your Life.

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Dolly Parton
Dolly Rebecca Parton (born January 19, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter, author, multi-instrumentalist, actress and philanthropist, best known for her work in country music. As a songwriter, she has composed over 3,000 songs, the best known of which include "I Will Always Love You" (a two-time U.S. country chart-topper for Parton, as well an international pop hit for Whitney Houston), "Jolene", "Coat of Many Colors", "9 to 5" and "My Tennessee Mountain Home". As an actress, she starred in the movies 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Steel Magnolias, Straight Talk, Unlikely Angel and Joyful Noise. She is one of the most successful female country artists of all time; with an estimated 100 million in album sales, Dolly Parton is also one of the best selling artists of all time. She is known as "The Queen of Country Music".
She was born in Sevierville, Tennessee, the fourth of twelve children of Avie Lee Parton (née Owens; October 5, 1923 – December 5, 2003) and Robert Lee Parton (March 22, 1921 – November 12, 2000), a tobacco farmer. Her siblings are: Willadeene Parton (born March 24, 1940), David Wilburn Parton (born March 30, 1942), Coy Denver "Denver" Parton (born August 16, 1943), Bobby Lee Parton (born February 18, 1948), Stella Mae Parton (born May 4, 1949), Cassie Nan Parton (February 12, 1951), Randel Huston "Randy" Parton (born December 15, 1953), Larry Gerald Parton (born and died July 6, 1955), Floyd and Frieda Estelle Parton (born June 1, 1957), and Rachel Ann Parton (born August 31, 1959). Her family was, as she has described them, "dirt poor". She outlined her family's lack of money in a number of her early songs, notably "Coat of Many Colors" and "In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)". They lived in a rustic, dilapidated one-room cabin in Locust Ridge, Tennessee, a hamlet just north of the Greenbrier Valley, in the Locust Ridge area of the Great Smoky Mountains in Sevier County, a predominantly Pentecostal area.

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Dom DeLuise
Dominick "Dom" DeLuise (August 1, 1933 – May 4, 2009) was an American actor, comedian, film director, television producer, chef, and author. He was the husband of actress Carol Arthur from 1965 until his death and the father of actor, director, pianist, and writer Peter DeLuise, actor David DeLuise, and actor Michael DeLuise. He starred in a number of movies directed by Mel Brooks, in a series of films with career-long best friend Burt Reynolds, and as a voice actor in various animated films by Don Bluth.
DeLuise was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Italian American parents Vincenza "Jennie" (née DeStefano), a homemaker, and John DeLuise, a public employee (garbage collector). He was the youngest of three children, having an older brother, Nicholas "Nick" DeLuise, and an older sister, Antoinette DeLuise-Daurio. DeLuise graduated from Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts and later attended Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. DeLuise was Roman Catholic and had a particular affinity for the Virgin Mary.

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Don Adams
Don Adams (April 13, 1923 – September 25, 2005) was an American actor, comedian and director. In his five decades on television, he was best known as Maxwell Smart (Agent 86) in the television situation comedy Get Smart (1965–1970, 1995), which he also sometimes directed and wrote. Adams won three consecutive Emmy Awards for his portrayal of Smart (1967–1969). He provided the voices for the animated series Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales (1963–1966) and Inspector Gadget (1983–1986) as their title characters. He voiced Sid Pickles in all episodes of Spike & Mike (1993–1999), and two follow up films, Spike & Mike Movie and Spike and Mike: Got Hostaged.
Adams was born Donald James Yarmy in Manhattan, son of William Yarmy and his wife Consuelo Dieter. His father, a restaurant manager, was Hungarian and Jewish and his mother was Irish and Roman Catholic. Adams and his brother (actor Dick Yarmy) were each raised in the religion of one parent: Don in the Catholic faith of their mother, and Dick in the Jewish faith of their father.

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Don McKellar
Don McKellar (born August 17, 1963) is a Canadian actor, writer, and filmmaker.
McKellar was born in Toronto, Ontario to a lawyer father and teacher mother. He attended Glenview Senior Public School, Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute and later studied English at the University of Toronto's Victoria College. After beginning his career in the theatre, McKellar was lured into the realm of Canadian cinema, where he has since become a ubiquitous presence.
McKellar married his long time partner, Canadian actress Tracy Wright, on January 3, 2010. Wright died from cancer on June 22, 2010.
McKellar was a founding member of Toronto's Augusta Company, along with his future wife Tracy Wright and Daniel Brooks.
McKellar made his first screen appearance in 1989 in Bruce McDonald's film Roadkill, for which he also wrote the screenplay. McKellar's work on Roadkill earned him Genie Award nominations for best supporting actor and best screenwriter, attracting the attention of many in Canada. Roadkill also won the Toronto-Citytv Award for best Canadian feature.

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Douglas Carter Beane
Douglas Carter Beane is an American playwright and screenwriter. Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania and raised in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, Beane now lives in New York.
His works include the screenplay of To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, and several plays including The Country Club and The Little Dog Laughed, which was nominated for the 2007 Tony Award for Best Play and As Bees in Honey Drown, which ran at New York's Lucille Lortel Theatre in 1997. Beane often writes works with sophisticated, "drawing room" humor.
Beane wrote the book for Xanadu, a stage musical adaptation of the 1980 film of the same name, adding new plot twists and humor parodying the original movie. The musical was workshopped in 2006 and early 2007 with director Christopher Ashley and actors Jane Krakowski, Tony Roberts, and Cheyenne Jackson. The musical opened on Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theatre on July 10, 2007, with a budget of $5 million.Kerry Butler and Cheyenne Jackson were the Broadway leads. Beane won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical.

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Duncan Sheik
Duncan Scott Sheik (born November 18, 1969) is an American singer-songwriter and composer. Sheik initially found success as a singer, most notably for his 1996 debut single "Barely Breathing". He later expanded his work to include compositions for motion pictures and the Broadway stage, leading him to involvement in the multiple award-winning musical Spring Awakening. He resides in New York City.
Born in Montclair, New Jersey, Sheik's upbringing was split between his grandparents' home in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and his parents' in New Jersey. His grandmother, a graduate of Juilliard, taught him to play the piano and encouraged his musical development. He has a younger brother, Peter, and a younger sister, Kacie, who is a theatre actress. Sheik graduated from the Eaglebrook School before attending Phillips Academy, Andover, in 1988. He subsequently studied semiotics at Brown University. After college, he moved to Daly City, a suburb near San Francisco where he started his music career.

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Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age. As one of the world's most famous film stars, Taylor was recognized for her acting ability and for her glamorous lifestyle, beauty and distinctive violet eyes.
National Velvet (1944) was Taylor's first success, and she starred in Father of the Bride (1950), A Place in the Sun (1951), Giant (1956), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for BUtterfield 8 (1960), played the title role in Cleopatra (1963), and married her co-star Richard Burton. They appeared together in 11 films, including Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), for which Taylor won a second Academy Award. From the mid-1970s, she appeared less frequently in film, and made occasional appearances in television and theatre.
Her much publicized personal life included eight marriages and several life-threatening illnesses. From the mid-1980s, Taylor championed HIV and AIDS programs; she co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research in 1985, and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1993. She received the Presidential Citizens Medal, the Legion of Honour, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and a Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, who named her seventh on their list of the "Greatest American Screen Legends". Taylor died of congestive heart failure in March 2011 at the age of 79, having suffered many years of ill health.

wn.com/Elizabeth_Taylor

Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John, CBE (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947) is an English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor. He has worked with lyricist Bernie Taupin as his songwriter partner since 1967; they have collaborated on more than 30 albums to date.
In his four-decade career John has sold more than 250 million records, making him one of the most successful artists of all time. His single "Candle in the Wind 1997" has sold over 33 million copies worldwide, and is the best selling single in Billboard history. He has more than 50 Top 40 hits, including seven consecutive No. 1 US albums, 56 Top 40 singles, 16 Top 10, four No. 2 hits, and nine No. 1 hits. He has won six Grammy Awards, four Brit Awards, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Tony Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him Number 49 on its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time.
John was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Having been named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1996, John received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for "services to music and charitable services" in 1998.

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Ennio de Concini
Ennio De Concini (9 December 1923, Rome – 17 November 2008) was an Italian screenwriter and film director, winning the Academy Award in 1962 for the "Best Original Screenplay" for Divorce, Italian Style.
He was the co-screenwriter of The Red Tent a 1969 film starring Sean Connery which was based on Umberto Nobile's disastrous 1928 expedition to the North Pole in the airship Italia. Among the 60 films to his credit are The Twist (1976), The Four of the Apocalypse (1975), Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973), Battle of the Worlds (1961), Black Sunday (1960), Long Night in 1943 (1960), Il Grido (1957), War and Peace (1956), and Mambo (1954).

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Eric Idle
Eric Idle (born 29 March 1943) is an English comedian, actor, author, singer, writer, and comedic composer. He was a member of the British surreal comedy group Monty Python, a member of the The Rutles on Saturday Night Live, and the author of the Broadway musical Spamalot.
Idle was born in South Shields, County Durham (now Tyne and Wear) in Harton Village, the son of Nora Barron (née Sanderson), a health visitor, and Ernest Idle. His father served in the Royal Air Force and survived World War II, only to be killed in a hitch-hiking accident when Idle was only two years old. His mother had difficulty coping with a full-time job and raising a child, so when Idle was seven, she enrolled him into the Royal Wolverhampton School as a boarder. At this time the school was a charitable foundation dedicated to the education and maintenance of children who had lost one or both parents. Idle is quoted as saying: "It was a physically abusive, bullying, harsh environment for a kid to grow up in. I got used to dealing with groups of boys and getting on with life in unpleasant circumstances and being smart and funny and subversive at the expense of authority. Perfect training for Python."

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Ernest Pintoff
Ernest Pintoff (December 15, 1931, Watertown, Connecticut – January 12, 2002, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles) was an American film and television director, screenwriter and film producer.
He won the Oscar for Best Animated Short for The Critic (1963), a satire on modern art written and narrated by Mel Brooks.
Born in Watertown, Connecticut, but raised in New York City, Pintoff originally began as a jazz trumpeter who taught painting and design at Michigan State University. However, he had always shown an interest in the animation of film and began writing in 1956.
His career took off in 1957, when he wrote the script for Flebus, followed by 1959 as a producer for the animated short film, The Violinist. Narrated by Carl Reiner, the film earned Pintoff an Oscar nomination and illustrated a promising young career in directing film ahead of him.
In 1963, he won an Oscar for his direction of the 1963 film, The Critic.
On television, Pintoff directed many episodes of popular television series, including Hawaii Five-O (1968), Kojak (1968), The Six Million Dollar Man (1974), The Dukes of Hazard (1979), Falcon Crest (1981) and Voyagers! (1982). As part of NBC's "Experiments in Television" in the late 1960s, he also directed the documentaries This Is Marshall McLuhan and This Is Sholem Aleichem.

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Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch (January 28, 1892 – November 30, 1947) was a German American film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."
In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his distinguished contributions to the art of the motion picture, and he was nominated three times for Best Director.
Lubitsch was born in Berlin, the son of Anna (née Lindenstaedt) and Simon Lubitsch (Russian: Любич), a tailor. His family was Ashkenazi Jewish, his father born in Grodno and his mother from Wriezen-on-the-Oder, outside Berlin. He turned his back on his father's tailoring business to enter the theater, and by 1911, he was a member of Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater. He made his film debut the following year as an actor, but he gradually abandoned acting to concentrate on directing.
In 1918, he made his mark as a serious director with Die Augen der Mumie Ma (The Eyes of the Mummy), starring Pola Negri. Lubitsch alternated between escapist comedies and large-scale historical dramas, enjoying great international success with both. His reputation as a grand master of world cinema reached a new peak after the release of his spectacles Madame Du Barry (retitled Passion, 1919) and Anna Boleyn (Deception, 1920). Both of these films found American distributorship by early 1921. They, along with Lubitsch's Carmen (released as Gypsy Blood in the U.S. in 1921) were selected by The New York Times on its list of the 15 most important movies of 1921.

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Errol Flynn
Errol Leslie Flynn (20 June 1909 – 14 October 1959) was an Australian-born American actor. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles in Hollywood films and his flamboyant lifestyle.
Errol Flynn was born in Hobart, Tasmania, where his father, Theodore Thomson Flynn, was a lecturer (1909) and later professor (1911) of biology at the University of Tasmania. Flynn was born at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Battery Point. His mother was born Lily Mary Young, but dropped the first names Lily Mary shortly after she was married and changed her name to Marelle. Flynn described his mother's family as "seafaring folk" and this appears to be where his life-long interest in boats and the sea originated. Despite Flynn's claims, the evidence indicates that he was not descended from any of the Bounty mutineers. Married at St John's Church of England, Balmain North, Sydney, New South Wales, on 23 January 1909, both of his parents were native-born Australians of Irish, English, and Scottish descent, with convict links to Tasmania long before Flynn's birth. Flynn, living at Mclean Avenue Chatswood, Sydney in 1926, attended Sydney Church of England Grammar School (Shore School) where he was the classmate of future Australian Prime Minister, John Gorton. He was expelled for fighting and, allegedly, having sex with a school laundress. He was also expelled from several other schools he had attended in Tasmania. At the age of 20 he moved to New Guinea where he bought a tobacco plantation, a business which failed. A copper mining venture in the hills near the Laloki Valley, behind the present national capital, Port Moresby, also failed.

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Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola (

/ˈkoʊpələ/ KOH-pə-lə; born April 7, 1939) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors. He epitomized the group of filmmakers known as the New Hollywood, that includes Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, Robert Altman, Woody Allen, William Friedkin, Philip Kaufman, and George Lucas who emerged in the early 1970s with unconventional ideas that challenged contemporary film-making.
He co-wrote the script for Patton (1970), which won an Academy Award for Best Writing (Original Screenplay). His directorial fame escalated with the release of The Godfather (1972), a film which revolutionized movie-making in the gangster genre, earning praise from critics and public alike. It won three Academy Awards, including his second, for Academy Award for Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), and was instrumental in cementing his position as a prominent American film director.
Coppola followed it with a critically successful sequel, The Godfather Part II (1974), which became the first sequel to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film was highly praised and won him three Academy Awards—for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture. The Conversation, which Coppola directed, produced and wrote, was released that same year, winning the Palme d'Or at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival. He next directed Apocalypse Now (1979); notorious for its overlong and strenuous production, but critically acclaimed for its vivid and stark depiction of the Vietnam War, winning the Palme d'Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. To this day, Coppola is one of only seven filmmakers to win two Palme d'Or awards, and is the only filmmaker to win both in the same decade.

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Frank Langella
Frank A. Langella, Jr. (born January 1, 1938) is an American stage and film actor. He has won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Play for his performance as Richard Nixon in the play Frost/Nixon (2006), and later received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the same role in the film, Frost/Nixon (2008).
Langella, an Italian American, was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of Angelina and Frank A. Langella Sr., a business executive who was the president of the Bayonne Barrel and Drum Company. Langella attended Washington Elementary School and Bayonne High School in Bayonne. After the family moved to South Orange, New Jersey he graduated from Columbia High School, in the South Orange-Maplewood School District, in 1955, and graduated from Syracuse University in 1959 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in drama. He remains a brother of the Alpha Chi Rho fraternity.

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Frank Pierson
Frank Romer Pierson (born May 12, 1925) is an American screenwriter and film director.
Pierson was born in Chappaqua, New York, the son of Louise (née Randall), a writer, and Harold C. Pierson. Pierson attended Harvard. He got his break in Hollywood in 1958 as scripted editor for "Have Gun, Will Travel," and moved on to write for the television series Naked City "Route Sixty Six" and others. He went on to write or co-write several notable films, including Cat Ballou and Cool Hand Luke which were both nominated for Academy Awards. He wrote Dog Day Afternoon, which won Pierson his Oscar statuette. He directed and contributed to the screenplay of A Star Is Born, and the in-fighting between himself, Barbra Streisand, Kris Kristofferson and producer (and at the time boyfriend of Streisand) Jon Peters on the film led him to write the notorious and controversial article "My Battles with Barbra and Jon" in New West magazine.
Pierson has directed several notable films produced for television, including Dirty Pictures, Citizen Cohn, Conspiracy, and Somebody Has To Shoot the Picture. His direction on Conspiracy won a Directors' Guild Award for Best Television Movie, and his second Peabody and BAFTA Award.

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Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire (born Frederick Austerlitz; May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987) was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films.
Gene Kelly, another major innovator in filmed dance, said that "the history of dance on film begins with Astaire". Beyond film and television, many classical dancers and choreographers, Rudolf Nureyev, Sammy Davis, Jr., Michael Jackson, Gregory Hines, Mikhail Baryshnikov, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins among them, also acknowledged his importance and influence.
Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Johanna "Ann" (née Geilus) and Frederic "Fritz" Austerlitz (born September 8, 1868, as Friedrich Emanuel Austerlitz). Astaire's mother was born in the United States to Lutheran German immigrants from East Prussia and Alsace, while Astaire's father was born in Linz, Austria, to Jewish parents who had converted to Catholicism.

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Frederic Raphael
Frederic Michael Raphael (born August 14, 1931) is an American-born, British-educated screenwriter, and also a prolific novelist and journalist.
Raphael was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Irene Rose (née Mauser) and Cedric Michael Raphael, an employee of the Shell Oil Co. With his parents, he emigrated to Putney, England, in 1938.
Raphael was educated at two independent schools, Copthorne Preparatory School, near Crawley in West Sussex, and Charterhouse School (Lockites) in Godalming in Surrey, and then at St John's College at the University of Cambridge in Cambridge.
Raphael won an Oscar for the screenplay for the 1965 movie Darling, and two years later received an Oscar nomination for his screenplay for Two for the Road. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1967 film adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd directed by John Schlesinger.
His articles and book reviews appear in a number of newspapers and magazines, including the Los Angeles Times and The Sunday Times. He has published more than twenty novels, the best-known being the semi-autobiographical The Glittering Prizes (1976), which traces the lives of a group of Cambridge University undergraduates in post-war Britain as they move through university and into the wider world. The original six-part BBC television series, from which the book was adapted, won him a Royal Television Society Writer of the Year Award.Fame and Fortune, which continues the story to 1979, was adapted in 2007 and broadcast on BBC Radio 4, television channels having refused to commission the sequel themselves. In 2010, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a further sequel in a series entitled Final Demands, with Tom Conti as Adam Morris, the central character, bringing the story to the late 1990s.

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Gene Hackman
Eugene Allen "Gene" Hackman (born January 30, 1930) is a retired American actor and novelist.
Nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two, Hackman has also won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs in a career that spanned five decades. He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde. His major subsequent films include The French Connection (1971), in which he played Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle; The Poseidon Adventure (1972); The Conversation (1974); Superman (1978), in which he played arch-villain Lex Luthor; Hoosiers (1986); Mississippi Burning (1987); Unforgiven (1992); The Firm (1993); Crimson Tide (1995); Get Shorty (1995); The Birdcage (1996); Enemy of the State (1998); and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).
Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Lyda (née Gray) and Eugene Ezra Hackman. He has a brother, Richard. His family moved frequently, finally settling in Danville, Illinois, where they lived in the house of his English-born maternal grandmother, Beatrice. Hackman's father operated the printing press for the Commercial-News, a local paper. Hackman's parents divorced in 1943 and his father subsequently left the family.

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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 Siskel
Eugene Kal "Gene" Siskel (January 26, 1946 – February 20, 1999) was an American film critic and journalist for the Chicago Tribune. Along with colleague Roger Ebert, he hosted the popular review show Siskel & Ebert At the Movies from 1975 until his death.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Siskel was raised by his aunt and uncle after both his parents died when he was ten years old. He attended Culver Academies, graduated in Philosophy at Yale University in 1967, where he studied writing under Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Hersey, who helped him land a job at the Chicago Tribune in 1969. In 1975, Siskel teamed up with Roger Ebert, film reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times, to host a show on the local Chicago PBS station WTTW which eventually became Sneak Previews. Their "thumbs-up, thumbs-down" system soon became an easily recognizable trademark, popular enough to be parodied on comedy shows such as In Living Color, cartoon strips like Calvin and Hobbes (April, 1988) and in movies such as Hollywood Shuffle and Godzilla. Sneak Previews gained a country-wide audience in 1978 when it was carried on PBS.

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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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George Jones
George Glenn Jones (born September 12, 1931) is an American country music singer known for his long list of hit records, his distinctive voice and phrasing, and his marriage to Tammy Wynette.
Over the past 20 years, Jones has frequently been referred to as the greatest living country singer. Country music scholar Bill C. Malone writes, "For the two or three minutes consumed by a song, Jones immerses himself so completely in its lyrics, and in the mood it conveys, that the listener can scarcely avoid becoming similarly involved."
Throughout his long career, Jones made headlines often as much for tales of his drinking, stormy relationships with women, and violent rages as for his prolific career of making records and touring. His wild lifestyle led to Jones missing many performances, earning him the nickname "No Show Jones." With the help of his fourth wife, Nancy, he has been sober for over 10 years. Jones has had more than 150 hits during his career, both as a solo artist and in duets with other artists. The shape of his nose and facial features have given Jones the nickname "The Possum." Jones said in an interview that he has chosen to tour only about 60 dates a year.

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George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American film producer, screenwriter, director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones. Lucas is one of the American film industry's most financially successful directors/producers, with an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion as of 2011.
George Lucas was born in Modesto, California, the son of Dorothy Ellinore (née Bomberger) and George Walton Lucas, Sr. (1913–1991), who owned a stationery store.
Lucas grew up in the Central Valley town of Modesto and his early passion for cars and motor racing would eventually serve as inspiration for his USC student film 1:42.08, as well as his Oscar-nominated low-budget phenomenon, American Graffiti. Long before Lucas became obsessed with film making, he wanted to be a race-car driver, and he spent most of his high school years racing on the underground circuit at fairgrounds and hanging out at garages. However, a near-fatal accident in his souped-up Autobianchi Bianchina on June 12, 1962, just days before his high school graduation, quickly changed his mind. Instead of racing, he attended Modesto Junior College and later got accepted into a junior college to study anthropology. While taking liberal arts courses, he developed a passion for cinematography and camera tricks. George Lucas graduated from USC in California.

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Gig Young
Gig Young (November 4, 1913 – October 19, 1978) was an American film, stage, and television actor. Known mainly for second leads and supporting roles, Young won an Academy Award for his performance as a dance-marathon emcee in the 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They?.
Born Byron Elsworth Barr in St. Cloud, Minnesota, his parents John and Emma Barr raised him and his older siblings in Washington D.C. He developed a passion for the theatre while appearing in high school plays, and after some amateur experience he applied for and received a scholarship to the acclaimed Pasadena Community Playhouse. While acting in Pancho, a south-of-the-border play by Lowell Barrington, he and the leading actor in the play, George Reeves, were spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout. Both actors were signed to supporting player contracts with the studio. His early work was uncredited or as Byron Barr (not to be confused with another actor with the same name, Byron Barr), but after appearing in the 1942 film The Gay Sisters as a character named "Gig Young", the studio decided he should adopt this name professionally.

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Grace Bumbry
Grace Bumbry (born January 4, 1937), an American opera singer, is considered one of the leading mezzo-sopranos of her generation, as well as a major soprano for many years. She was a member of a pioneering generation of singers who followed Marian Anderson (including Leontyne Price, Martina Arroyo, Shirley Verrett and Reri Grist) in the world of classical music and paved the way for future African American opera and classical singers. Bumbry's voice was rich and sizable, possessing a wide range, and was capable of producing a very distinctive plangent tone. In her prime, she also possessed good agility and bel canto technique (see for example her renditions of the 'Veil Song' from Verdi's Don Carlo in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as her Ernani from the Chicago Lyric Opera in 1984). She was particularly noted for her fiery temperament and dramatic intensity on stage. More recently, she has also become known as a recitalist and interpreter of lieder, and as a teacher. From the late 1980s on, she seemed to concentrate her career in Europe, rather than in the US. A long time resident of Switzerland, she now makes her home in Salzburg, Austria.

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Greg Kotis
Greg Kotis is a New York-based playwright, who specializes in dark, disturbing comedies with socially relevant themes.
Kotis studied political science at the University of Chicago. He dropped out when took a course on the Short Comic Scene, he realised that he wanted to be part of the theatre industry instead. Kotis started working with (and became a member of) the Cardiff Giant Theatre Company and the Neo-Futurists. In 1995 he and his wife, writer and actor Ayun Halliday, moved to New York. They worked day jobs, and then quit them when theatre work came along. They remained in fringe theatre until he started work on Urinetown.
He is best known for writing the book and co-writing the lyrics of Urinetown the Musical. He got the idea for Urinetown the Musical when, on an ill-budgeted visit to Paris in 1995, he had to limit his trips to the pay toilets that are ubiquitous in that city.Urinetown the Musical received ten Tony Award nominations: Best Director, Best Original Score, Best Book of a Musical, Best Musical, Best Actor in a Musical, two nominations for Best Actress in a Musical (Nancy Opel and Jennifer Laura Thompson), Best Featured Actress in a Musical, Best Choreography, and Best Orchestration. Urinetown has been performed around the world and in hundreds of American cities.

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Greg Morrison
Greg Morrison (born 1965) is an Tony Award–winning and Drama Desk Award–winning Canadian writer and composer best known for his work on the music and lyrics of The Drowsy Chaperone, which he wrote with Lisa Lambert. He also has extensive credits for directing and musical directing shows across the United States and Canada. He is a recipient of a Canadian Comedy Award and a Sterling Award for Original Composition.
Morrison’s affiliation with The Drowsy Chaperone started in 1999 when Don McKellar and Lisa Lambert created a spoof of old musicals for the stag party before the wedding of their theatre friends Bob Martin and Janet Van De Graaff.

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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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Hal Goldman
Harold "Hal" Goldman (born 5 December 1919, St. Paul, Minnesota; died 27 June 2001, Los Angeles, California) was an American Emmy Award-winning screenwriter, television director.
Hal Goldman at the Internet Movie Database

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Harvey Korman
Harvey Herschel Korman (February 15, 1927 – May 29, 2008) was an American comedic actor who performed in television and movie productions beginning in 1960. His big break was being a featured performer on The Danny Kaye Show, but he is best remembered for his performances on the sketch comedy series The Carol Burnett Show and in several films by Mel Brooks, most notably as Hedley Lamarr in Blazing Saddles.
Korman, who was of Russian Jewish descent, was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Ellen (née Blecher) and Cyril Raymond Korman, a salesman. He served in the United States Navy during World War II. After being discharged, he studied at the Goodman School of Drama. He was a member of the Peninsula Players summer theater program during the 1950, 1957, and 1958 seasons.
His early television work included voice-over work as the Great Gazoo on The Flintstones. He appeared on numerous television programs, including the role of Blake in the 1964 episode "Who Chopped Down the Cherry Tree?" on the NBC medical drama The Eleventh Hour. He frequently appeared as a supporting player on The Danny Kaye Show from 1963 through 1967. From 1964-1966, he appeared three times in consecutive years on the CBS's comedy The Munsters starring Fred Gwynne and Yvonne De Carlo. During the 1965-1966 season, Korman made regular appearances on The Flintstones as The Great Gazoo, in what would be its final season on network TV. He also starred in the short-lived Mel Brooks TV series The Nutt House.

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Howard Morris
Howard "Howie" Morris (September 4, 1919 – May 21, 2005) was an American comic actor and director who was best known for his role as Ernest T. Bass on The Andy Griffith Show.
Morris was born to a Jewish family in The Bronx, New York, the son of Elsie and Hugo Morris, a rubber company executive. During World War II he was assigned to a US Army Special Services unit where he was the First Sergeant. Maurice Evans was the company commander and Carl Reiner and Werner Klemperer were soldiers in the unit. Based in Honolulu, the unit entertained American troops throughout the Pacific.
He came to prominence in appearances on Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows (a live sketch comedy television series appearing weekly in the United States, from 1950 to 1954). Morris appeared twice in 1957 in episodes of the short-lived NBC comedy/variety show, The Polly Bergen Show.
Although Morris was a classically trained Shakespearean actor, he is best remembered for playing the wily and over the top "mountain man" character Ernest T. Bass on The Andy Griffith Show. He had lampooned southern accents while in the army at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He starred in one of the more comical early hour-long Twilight Zone episodes, "I Dream of Genie". Other roles included that of Elmer Kelp in The Nutty Professor, a movie studio clerk in the short film Star Spangled Salesman, and an art appraiser in an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show.

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Ilf and Petrov
Ilya Ilf (Ilya Arnoldovich Faynzilberg (Russian: Илья Арнольдович Файнзильберг, Ukrainian: Ієхієл-Лейб Арно́льдович Файнзільберг; 1897–1937) and Evgeny or Yevgeni Petrov (Yevgeniy Petrovich Kataev or Katayev (Russian: Евгений Петрович Катаев, Ukrainian: Євген Петрович Катаєв; 1903–1942) were two Soviet prose authors of the 1920s and 1930s. They did much of their writing together, and are almost always referred to as "Ilf and Petrov". They were natives of Odessa.
Ilf and Petrov became extremely popular for their two satirical novels: The Twelve Chairs and its sequel, The Little Golden Calf. The two texts are connected by their main character, Ostap Bender, a con man in pursuit of elusive riches. Both books follow exploits of Bender and his associates looking for treasure amidst the contemporary Soviet reality. They were written and are set in the relatively liberal era in Soviet history, the New Economic Policy of the 1920s. The main characters generally avoid contact with the apparently lax law enforcement. Their position outside the organized, goal-driven, productive Soviet society is emphasized. It also gives the authors a convenient platform from which to look at this society and to make fun of its less attractive and less Socialist aspects. These are among the most widely read and quoted books in Russian culture. The Twelve Chairs was adapted for popular films both in the USSR and in the U.S. (by Mel Brooks in the latter).

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Imogene Coca
Imogene Fernandez de Coca (November 18, 1908 - June 2, 2001) was an American comic actress best known for her role opposite Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows.
Starting out in vaudeville as a child acrobat, she studied ballet and wished to have a serious career in music and dance, graduating to decades of stage musical revues, cabaret and summer stock. Finally in her 40s she began a celebrated career as a comedienne in television, starring in six series and guesting on successful television programs from the 1940s to the 1990s.
She was nominated for five Emmy awards for Your Show of Shows, winning Best Actress in 1951 and singled out for a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting in 1953. Coca was also nominated for a Tony Award in 1978 for On the Twentieth Century and received a sixth Emmy nomination at the age of 80 for an episode of Moonlighting.
She possessed a rubbery face capable of the broadest expressions—Life magazine compared her to Beatrice Lillie and Charlie Chaplin, and described her characterizations as taking "people or situations suspended in their own precarious balance between dignity and absurdity, and push(ing) them over the cliff with one single, pointed gesture"—the magazine noted a "particularly high-brow critic" as observing, "The trouble with most comedians who try to do satire is that they are essentially brash, noisy and indelicate people who have to use a sledge hammer to smash a butterfly. Miss Coca, on the other hand, is the timid woman who, when aroused, can beat a tiger to death with a feather."

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Irvin Kershner
Irvin Kershner (April 29, 1923 – November 27, 2010) was an American film director and occasional actor, best known for directing quirky, independent films early in his career, and then Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.
With Jewish roots, Irvin Kershner's artistic and cultural background was a mixture of music and art. The study of music (violin, viola, and composition) was the most important activity of his early years. He attended the Temple University – Tyler School of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Later, he went to New York and Provincetown to study with the famous painting teacher Hans Hofmann. He then moved to Los Angeles where he studied photography at the Art Center College of Design.
He began his film career at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, teaching photography and taking cinema courses under Slavko Vorkapić, a montage artist and then dean of the School. Kershner then accepted a job as still photographer on a State Department film project in Iran under the Point Four Program, which ultimately led to an assignment as a director and cinematographer of documentaries in Iran, Greece and Turkey with the United States Information Service.

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Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin (May 11, 1888 – September 22, 1989) was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history. He published his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy", in 1907 and had his first major international hit, "Alexander's Ragtime Band" in 1911.
"Alexander's Ragtime Band" sparked an international dance craze in places as far away as Berlin's native Russia, which also "flung itself into the ragtime beat with an abandon bordering on mania." Over the years he was known for writing music and lyrics in the American vernacular: uncomplicated, simple and direct, with his aim being to "reach the heart of the average American" whom he saw as the "real soul of the country."
He wrote hundreds of songs, many becoming major hits, which made him "a legend" before he turned thirty. During his 60-year career he wrote an estimated 1,500 songs, including the scores for 19 Broadway shows and 18 Hollywood films, with his songs nominated eight times for Academy Awards. Many songs became popular themes and anthems, including "Easter Parade", "White Christmas", "Happy Holiday", "This is the Army, Mr. Jones", and "There's No Business Like Show Business". His Broadway musical and 1942 film, This is the Army, with Ronald Reagan, had Kate Smith singing Berlin's "God Bless America" which was first performed in 1938. Smith still performed the song on her 1960 CBS television series, The Kate Smith Show. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Celine Dion recorded it as a tribute, making it #1 on the charts.

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Itzhak Perlman
Itzhak Perlman (Hebrew: יצחק פרלמן‎; born August 31, 1945) is an Israeli-born violinist, conductor, and instructor of master classes. He is regarded as one of the preeminent violinists of the 20th and early-21st centuries.
Perlman was born in Tel Aviv, British Mandate for Palestine. His parents, Chaim and Shoshana Perlman, were natives of Poland and had independently immigrated to Palestine in the mid-1930s before they met and got married. Perlman first became interested in the violin after hearing a classical music performance on the radio. At the age of three, he was denied entrance to the Shulamit Conservatory for being too small to hold a violin. He instead taught himself how to play the instrument using a toy fiddle until he was old enough to study with Rivka Goldgart at the Shulamit Conservatory and at the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv, where he gave his first recital at age 10, before moving to the United States to study at the Juilliard School with the violin pedagogue, Ivan Galamian, and his assistant Dorothy Delay.

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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 Hanrahan
Jack Hanrahan (1933 – April 28, 2008) was an American Emmy Award-winning comedy writer.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, he began writing cartoons for the Cleveland Press. After that, he moved on to Hollywood, California and continued his writing career with work on Get Smart. Then, in 1968, he won an Emmy for his work on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Following this, he moved on to Marcus Welby, M.D., The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, Police Woman, The Waltons, and CHiPs. In the 1980s and '90s, he worked on a scattering of television shows and movies, including co-writing the Super Mario World episode "The Wheel Thing" and serving as a main writer for the second season (1985–86) of the cartoon series Inspector Gadget. Hanrahan teamed-up for a while with Eleanor Burian-Mohr and wrote for many animation shows. He also co-starred in the motion picture 'Up Your Alley' in 1988 for writer/director, Bob Logan.
Hanrahan left Beverly Hills for Eureka in northern California in 1992. Following a garage fire, however, he was evicted, and all of his possessions were seized by the landlord, including his Emmy. After losing his wife in 2004, he began to wander the streets. Jack Riley, an old friend, tried to help Hanrahan, but was unsuccessful. After friends in Eureka bought him a bus ticket, he came back to his hometown of Cleveland, where he had been homeless until his death.

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Jack Nicholson
Not to be confused with Nicholas Jackson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. His twelve Oscar nominations make him the second most nominated actor of all time, behind only Meryl Streep, and tied with Katharine Hepburn.
Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and for As Good as It Gets. He also won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the 1983 film Terms of Endearment. He is tied with Walter Brennan for most acting wins by a male actor (three). Nicholson is well known for playing villainous roles such as Jack Torrance in The Shining, Frank Costello in The Departed, and the Joker in 1989's Batman, among many other roles.
Nicholson is one of only two actors who have been nominated for an Academy Award for acting in every decade from the 1960s to 2000s; the other is Michael Caine. He has won seven Golden Globe Awards, and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2001. In 1994, he became one of the youngest actors to be awarded the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award. Notable films in which he has starred include Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Passenger, The Shining, Reds, Terms of Endearment, Batman, A Few Good Men, As Good as It Gets, About Schmidt, The Departed and Anger Management .

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James Brown
James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of funk music and is a major figure of 20th century popular music and dance.
In a career that spanned decades, Brown profoundly influenced the development of many different musical genres. Brown moved on a continuum of blues and gospel-based forms and styles to a profoundly "Africanized" approach to music making. Brown performed in concerts, first making his rounds across the Chitlin' Circuit, and then across the country and later around the world, along with appearing in shows on television and in movies. Although he contributed much to the music world through his hitmaking, Brown holds the record as the artist who charted the most singles on the Billboard Hot 100 without ever hitting number one on that chart.
For many years, Brown's touring show was one of the most extravagant productions in American popular music. At the time of Brown's death, his band included three guitarists, two bass guitar players, two drummers, three horns and a percussionist. The bands that he maintained during the late 1960s and 1970s were of comparable size, and the bands also included a three-piece amplified string section that played during ballads. Brown employed between 40 and 50 people for the James Brown Revue, and members of the revue traveled with him in a bus to cities and towns all over the country, performing upwards of 330 shows a year with almost all of the shows as one-nighters. In 1986, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 1990 into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

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James Caan
James E. Caan (born March 26, 1940) is an American actor. He is best known for his starring roles in The Godfather, Thief, Misery, A Bridge Too Far, Brian's Song, Rollerball, Kiss Me Goodbye, Elf, and El Dorado. He also starred as "Big Ed" Deline in the television series Las Vegas.
Caan was born in The Bronx, New York City, the son of Sophie (née Falkenstein) and Arthur Caan, Jewish immigrants from Germany. His father was a meat dealer and butcher. Caan had a sister, Barbara, and has a brother, Ronald. He grew up in Sunnyside, Queens, New York City. He was educated at P.S. 150 40-01 43rd Avenue School in Queens, at the private Rhodes Preparatory School, also in New York City, and then attended Michigan State University. He later transferred to Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, but did not graduate. While studying at Hofstra University, however, he became intrigued by acting and was interviewed for, accepted to, and graduated from, New York City's Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. There, one of his instructors was Sanford Meisner.

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James Cameron
James Francis Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian film director, film producer, deep-sea explorer, screenwriter, visual artist and editor. His writing and directing work includes Piranha II: The Spawning (1981), The Terminator (1984), Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), True Lies (1994), Titanic (1997), Dark Angel (2000–02), and Avatar (2009). In the time between making Titanic and Avatar, Cameron spent several years creating many documentary films (specifically underwater documentaries) and co-developed the digital 3D Fusion Camera System. Described by a biographer as part-scientist and part-artist, Cameron has also contributed to underwater filming and remote vehicle technologies. On March 26, 2012, Cameron reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean, in the Deepsea Challenger submersible.
He has been nominated for six Academy Awards overall and won three for Titanic. In total, Cameron's directorial efforts have grossed approximately US$2 billion in North America and US$6 billion worldwide. Without adjusting for inflation, Cameron's Titanic and Avatar are the two highest-grossing films of all time at $2.16 billion and $2.78 billion respectively. In March 2011 he was named Hollywood's top earner by Vanity Fair, with estimated 2010 earnings of $257 million.

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James Earl Jones
James Earl Jones (born January 17, 1931) is an American actor. Since his Broadway debut in 1957, Jones has spent more than five decades as "one of America's most distinguished and versatile actors" and has been termed "one of the greatest actors in American history." On November 12, 2011, Jones received an Honorary Academy Award.
He is well known for his distinctive bass voice and for his portrayal of characters of substance, gravitas and leadership.
James Earl Jones was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi, son of Robert Earl Jones (1910–2006), an actor, boxer, butler, and chauffeur who left the family shortly after James Earl's birth, and his wife Ruth (Connolly) Jones, a teacher and maid. Jones and his father reconciled many years later. Jones was raised by his maternal grandparents, farmers John Henry and Maggie Connolly. He is multiracial, with African, Irish, and Native American ancestry.
Jones describes his grandmother, Maggie, as "the most racist person I have ever known", thus forcing him to develop his own independent thinking. His grandmother was of Cherokee, Choctaw, and black ancestry.

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James Levine
James Lawrence Levine (

/lɨˈvaɪn/; born June 23, 1943) is an American conductor and pianist. He is currently on hiatus from his work as Music Director of the Metropolitan Opera, a situation necessitated by health problems and not due to end before the fall of 2013; the hiatus began in May 2011.
Levine's first performance conducting the Metropolitan Opera was on June 5, 1971, and, as of June 2011, he had conducted 2,442 Met performances, a record. The conductor has held music director positions with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Munich Philharmonic. In 1997, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
Levine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a musical family: his maternal grandfather was a cantor in a synagogue, his father was a violinist who led a dance band, and his mother was an actress. He began to play the piano as a small child. At the age of 10, he made his concert debut as soloist in Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 2 at a youth concert of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

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Jay Thomas
Jay Thomas (born July 12, 1948) is an American actor, comedian and radio talk show host.
Thomas was born Jon Thomas Terrell in Kermit, Texas, the son of Katharine "Kathy" (née Guzzino) and T. Harry Terrell, Sr. He was raised in his Italian American mother's Catholic religion (his father was Protestant).
He attended Jesuit High School in New Orleans, where he grew up. He holds a masters degree in sociology from Jacksonville University. He also attended and played college football at Central Piedmont Community College. He lives in Southern California and is the father of three sons, Samuel, Jacob and J.T.
Thomas fathered J.T. in an out-of-wedlock relationship and the child was adopted by another family. Jay Thomas and his son, known as John Harding, are reunited and have spoken about their reunion on the Dr. Phil Show. John Harding is the lead singer of the band JTX.
Thomas is perhaps best known for his recurring roles. The first on the sitcom Mork and Mindy, on which he played Remo DaVinci, the Italian deli-owner, from 1979 until 1981. He then played the hockey-player-turned-travelling-ice show-skater second husband, Eddie LeBec, of Carla on Cheers (1987–1989). He appeared on Murphy Brown as a tabloid talk show host, Jerry Gold, who was also one of Murphy's love interests (1989–1998). Thomas won 2 Emmy Awards in 1990 and 1991 for "Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series" for his portrayal of Jerry Gold on Murphy Brown.

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Jeff Marx
Jeff Marx (born September 10, 1970) is a composer and lyricist of musicals. He is best known for creating the Broadway musical Avenue Q with collaborator Robert Lopez.
Marx grew up in Hollywood, Florida. He attended Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Following graduation, he attended the University of Michigan, where he was a member of the Men's Glee Club. He also holds a juris doctor degree from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and is a member of the New York State Bar Association, but he does not practice law or represent himself.
After passing the New York State Bar examination Marx enrolled at the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop in order to meet potential clients in the entertainment industry. Here he met Robert Lopez who was also in the course.
Their first major project together, a spec Muppet movie, Kermit, Prince of Denmark, which was very loosely based on Hamlet, won them (as part of a tie) part of the $150,000 Kleban Award.
Together, they created the original concept for Avenue Q and wrote all the show's 21 songs. Avenue Q is currently running Off Broadway, in the West End, on a US National Tour, and continues to have various international productions. (It is now the 21st longest running musical in Broadway history.)

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Jeremy Larner
Jeremy Larner (born March 20, 1937) is an author, poet, journalist and speechwriter. He won an Academy Award in 1972 for Best Original Screenplay, for writing The Candidate.
Jeremy Larner grew up in Indiana, in the quiet but violent '50's, and had some playground rep as a basketball player in Indianapolis, where he encountered Oscar Robertson and other future stars on the playground courts of that city.
Larner graduated from Brandeis University in 1958 (where he was close to Herbert Marcuse, Irving Howe, Philip Rahv, and a fellow student named Abbie Hoffman, who later, running a small bookstore in Worcester, Massachusetts, became an early champion of Larner's first novel.)
In 1959, Larner began a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship at UC Berkeley, but finding himself unsuited for academic life he left graduate school in his first year and came to New York City at 22. He stayed there throughout the 1960s, writing five books in that period.
In 1962, Larner was assigned by Dissent magazine to cover the teacher's strike, and spent several months going to elementary school classes in Harlem. His long account of what he discovered was widely anthologized, having come to the attention of Michael Harrington, author of the book, the Other America: Poverty In The United States, which inspired John Kennedy & Robert Kennedy.

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Jim Carrey
James Eugene "Jim" Carrey (born January 17, 1962) is a Canadian-American actor, comedian, and producer. Carrey has received four Golden Globe Award nominations, winning two. Known for his highly energetic, slapstick performances, he has been described as one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood.
Carrey first gained recognition in 1990 after landing a recurring role in the sketch comedy In Living Color. His first leading roles in major productions came with Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), Dumb and Dumber (1994), The Mask (1994), and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1995). In 1997, he gave a critically acclaimed performance in Liar Liar, which earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor. He then starred in the critically acclaimed hits The Truman Show (1998) and Man on the Moon (1999), both garnering him two Golden Globe Awards for Best Actor.
In 2000, he gained further recognition for his portrayal of the The Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Three years later, Carrey starred in the major blockbuster film Bruce Almighty (2003). The following year he starred in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), for which he received another Golden Globe nomination in addition to a BAFTA Award nomination. He then starred in popular productions Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), Fun with Dick and Jane (2005), Yes Man (2008), A Christmas Carol (2009), and Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011).

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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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Joan Sutherland
Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, OM, AC, DBE (7 November 1926 – 10 October 2010) was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano noted for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s.
One of the most remarkable female opera singers of the 20th century, she was dubbed La Stupenda by a La Fenice audience in 1960 after a performance of the title role in Handel's Alcina. She possessed a voice of beauty and power, combining extraordinary agility, accurate intonation, "supremely" pinpoint staccatos, a splendid trill and a tremendous upper register, although music critics often complained about the imprecision of her diction. Her friend Luciano Pavarotti once called Sutherland the "Voice of the Century"; Montserrat Caballé described the Australian's voice as being like "heaven".
Joan Sutherland was born to Scottish parents in Sydney, and attended St Catherine's School in the suburb of Waverley, New South Wales. As a child, she listened to and imitated her mother's singing exercises. Her mother, a mezzo-soprano, had taken voice lessons but never considered making a career as a professional singer. Sutherland was 18 years old when she began seriously studying voice with John and Aida Dickens. She made her concert debut in Sydney, as Dido in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, in 1947. In 1951, she made her stage debut in Eugene Goossens's Judith. In 1951, after winning Australia's most important competition, the Sun Aria, now known as the Sydney Eisteddfod McDonald's Operatic Aria in 1949. She then went to London to further her studies at the Opera School of the Royal College of Music with Clive Carey. She was engaged by the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as a utility soprano, and made her debut there on 28 October 1952, as the First Lady in The Magic Flute, followed in November by a few performances as Clotilde in Vincenzo Bellini's Norma, with Maria Callas as Norma.

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Joe Dante
Joseph "Joe" Dante, Jr. (born November 28, 1946) is an American film director, producer and actor of films generally with comedy and science fiction content.
His films include Piranha (1978) and The Howling (1981), both from scripts by John Sayles; Segment 3 of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983); Gremlins (1984), his first major hit, and its sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990); Explorers (1985), Innerspace (1987), Amazon Women on the Moon (1987); The 'Burbs (1989), Matinee (1993), Runaway Daughters (1994), The Second Civil War (1997), The Warlord: Battle for the Galaxy (1998), Small Soldiers (1998), Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), and Homecoming (2005). In 1995–1996, Dante worked on The Phantom, and when he was removed from the film, he chose screen credit (as executive producer) rather than pay. He was creative consultant on Eerie, Indiana (1991–1992) and directed five episodes. He played himself in the series finale.
Dante was born in Morristown, New Jersey. His father was a professional golf player. Dante began his movie career working for Roger Corman, similar to Francis Ford Coppola and James Cameron. He worked as an editor on films such as Grand Theft Auto before codirecting Hollywood Boulevard with Allan Arkush. His first full feature film, Piranha, was released in 1978. After the release of The Howling, he was noticed by Steven Spielberg for whom he directed the third segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie, wherein a woman is 'adopted' by an omnipotent child. His first really big hit, Gremlins, which was also produced by Steven Spielberg, was released in 1984. He would work with Spielberg again on Innerspace and Gremlins 2. His films are well known for their movie in-jokes and their special visual effects.

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Joe DiPietro
Joe DiPietro (born 1961 or 1960) is an American playwright and author.
Born in Teaneck, New Jersey, DiPietro grew up in nearby Oradell. Son of the banker Lou, and Jean DiPietro. He attended Oradell Public School and River Dell Regional High School. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Rutgers University in 1984 with a bachelor's degree in English. Wrote the book and lyrics for the long running off-Broadway show I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change.

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John Badham
John MacDonald Badham (born August 25, 1939) is an English film director, best known for films Saturday Night Fever (1977), Blue Thunder (1983), WarGames (1983), Short Circuit (1986), Stakeout (1987), Bird on a Wire (1990) and others.
Badham was born in Luton, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom, the son of Mary Iola (née Hewitt), an actress. Badham's website states that his father "was a U S Army general" who "moved the family back to...Alabama". Henry Lee Badham Jr married Mary Hewitt secondly, his first wife Lottie (née Austin) is buried beside Henry and Mary at Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham, Alabama. Henry Lee Badham Jr was an aviator in both world wars and was posthumously inducted into the Alabama Aviation Hall of Fame in 2007. After retirement from the US Air Force as a Brigadier General, Henry L Badham Jr became a businessman, involved with the development of the Ensley and Bessemer regions near Birmingham, Alabama. This same line of business had brought his father, Henry Lee Badham Sr, into association with Walker Percy, grandfather of writer Walker Percy.

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John Candy
John Franklin Candy (October 31, 1950 – March 4, 1994) was a Canadian actor and comedian. He rose to fame as a member of the Toronto branch of The Second City and its related Second City Television series, and through his appearances in comedy films such as Stripes, Splash, Cool Runnings, The Great Outdoors, Spaceballs, and Uncle Buck. One of his most renowned onscreen performances was as Del Griffith, the loquacious, on-the-move shower-curtain ring salesman in the John Hughes comedy Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Candy was born in Newmarket, Ontario in 1950. The son of Sidney James Candy and his wife Evangeline (Aker) Candy, he was raised in a working-class Roman Catholic family. His grandmother was Polish. Candy graduated from Neil McNeil High School, an all-boys Catholic public school in Toronto, where he played football.
Candy's first movie role was a small uncredited appearance in the 1973 film Class of '44. He appeared in several other low-budget films during the 1970s, including the bank-robbery thriller The Silent Partner with Christopher Plummer and Elliott Gould. In 1976, Candy played a supporting role (with Rick Moranis) on Peter Gzowski's short-lived, late-night television talk show, Ninety Minutes Live. That same year, as a member of Toronto's branch of The Second City, he gained wide North American popularity, which grew when he became a cast member on the influential Toronto-based comedy-variety show Second City Television (SCTV). NBC picked the show up in 1981 and it quickly became a fan favorite. It had won Emmy Awards for the show's writing in 1981 and 1982.

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John Cassavetes
John Nicholas Cassavetes (in Greek: Γιάννης Νικόλαος Κασσαβέτης; December 9, 1929 – February 3, 1989) was an Greek-American actor, screenwriter and filmmaker. He acted in many Hollywood films, notably Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Dirty Dozen (1967). Cassevetes was also a pioneer of American independent film by writing and directing over a dozen movies, which he financed in part with his Hollywood paychecks, and which pioneered the use of improvisation and a realistic cinéma vérité style.
Cassavetes was born in New York as the son of Greek American Katherine Cassavetes (who was to feature in some of his films) and Greek immigrant Nicholas John Cassavetes. His early years were spent with his family in Greece; when he returned at age seven, he spoke no English. He grew up on Long Island, New York. He attended Port Washington High School from 1945 to 1947, participating in Port Weekly (the school paper), Red Domino (interclass play), football, and the Port Light (yearbook). Next to his photo on page 55 of his 1947 year book is written: "'Cassy' is always ready with a wisecrack, but he does have a serious side. A 'sensational' personality. Drives his 'heap' all over." Cassavetes also attended high school at Blair Academy in New Jersey before spending a year at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, before transferring to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After graduating in 1950, he continued acting in the theater, took small parts in films and began working on television in anthology series, such as Alcoa Theatre.

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John Cleese
John Marwood Cleese (/ˈkliːz/; born 27 October 1939) is an English actor, comedian, writer and film producer. He achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s he became a member of Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus and the four Monty Python films: And Now for Something Completely Different, The Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.
In the mid 1970s, Cleese and his first wife, Connie Booth, co-wrote and starred in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers. Later, he co-starred with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis and former Python colleague Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures. He also starred in Clockwise, and has appeared in many other films, including two James Bond films as R/Q, two Harry Potter films and three Shrek films.
With Yes Minister writer Antony Jay he co-founded Video Arts, a production company making entertaining training films.

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John Hurt
John Vincent Hurt, CBE (born 22 January 1940) is an English actor and former voice actor. Among other honours, he has received two Academy Award nominations, a Golden Globe Award, and four BAFTA Awards, with the fourth being a Lifetime Achievement recognition.
Hurt is known for his leading roles as Joseph Merrick (billed as John Merrick) in The Elephant Man, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Braddock in The Hit, Stephen Ward in Scandal, and Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and An Englishman in New York. Recognizable for his distinctive rich voice, he has also enjoyed a successful voice acting career, starring in films such as Watership Down, The Lord of the Rings and Dogville, as well as BBC television series Merlin.
Hurt initially came to prominence for his role as Richard Rich in the 1966 film A Man for All Seasons, and has since appeared in such popular motion pictures as: Alien, Midnight Express, Rob Roy, V for Vendetta, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the first, penultimate, and last Harry Potter films, the Hellboy film series, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Hurt is one of England's best-known, most prolific and sought-after actors, and has had a versatile film career spanning six decades. He is also known for his many Shakespearean roles. His character's final scene in Alien is consistently named as one of the most memorable in cinematic history.

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John Williams
John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932) is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Hook, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, War Horse, Home Alone and the first three Harry Potter films. He has had a long association with director Steven Spielberg, composing the music for all but two (Duel and The Color Purple) of Spielberg's major feature films.
Other notable works by Williams include theme music for four Olympic Games, NBC Sunday Night Football, the NBC Nightly News, the rededication of the Statue of Liberty, and the television series Lost in Space. Williams has also composed numerous classical concerti, and he served as the principal conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra from 1980 to 1993; he is now the orchestra's conductor laureate.
Williams has won five Academy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, seven BAFTA Awards, and 21 Grammy Awards. With 47 Academy Award nominations, Williams is the second most nominated person, after Walt Disney. John Williams was honored with the prestigious Richard Kirk award at the 1999 BMI Film and TV Awards. The award is given annually to a composer who has made significant contributions to film and television music. Williams was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame in 2000, and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 2004.

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Joshua Logan
Joshua Lockwood Logan III (October 5, 1908 – July 12, 1988) was an American stage and film director and writer.
Logan was born in Texarkana, Texas, the son of Susan (née Nabors) and Joshua Lockwood Logan. When he was three years old his father committed suicide. Logan, his mother, and younger sister, Mary Lee, then moved to his maternal grandparents’ home in Mansfield, Louisiana, which Logan used forty years later as the setting for his play The Wisteria Trees. Logan's mother remarried six years after his father's death and he then attended Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana, where his stepfather served on the staff. At school, he experienced his first drama class and felt at home. After his high school graduation he attended Princeton University. At Princeton, he was involved with the intercollegiate summer stock company, known as the University Players, with fellow student James Stewart and also non-student Henry Fonda. During his senior year he served as president of the Princeton Triangle Club. Before his graduation he won a scholarship to study in Moscow with Constantin Stanislavsky, and Logan left school without a diploma.

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Julie Andrews
Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE (née Wells; born 1 October 1935) is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honours.
Andrews is a former child actress and singer who made her Broadway debut in a 1954 production of The Boy Friend, and rose to prominence starring in musicals such as My Fair Lady and Camelot, both of which earned her Tony Award nominations. In 1957, she made her television debut with the title role in Cinderella, which was seen by over 100 million viewers.
Andrews made her feature film debut in Mary Poppins (1964), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She received her second Academy Award nomination for The Sound of Music (1965). Adjusted for inflation, these two films are the 25th and 3rd highest grossing films of all time, respectively. From 1964 to 1967, Andrews was the biggest film star in the world, with the additional box office successes of her films The Americanization of Emily, Hawaii, Torn Curtain, and Thoroughly Modern Millie.

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Julie Harris
Julia Ann "Julie" Harris (born December 2, 1925) is an American stage, screen, and television actress. She has won five Tony Awards, three Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. She is a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. She also received the 2002 Special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award.
Harris's screen debut was in 1952, repeating her Broadway success as the monumentally lonely teenage girl Frankie in Carson McCullers' The Member of the Wedding, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. That film also preserves the original Broadway cast performances of Ethel Waters and Brandon DeWilde. That same year, she won her first Best Actress Tony for originating the role of insouciant Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera, the stage version of Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin (later musicalized as Cabaret on Broadway in 1966 and, in the 1972 film, with Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles.) Harris repeated her stage role in the 1955 film version of I Am a Camera. She also appeared in such films as East of Eden (1955), with James Dean (with whom she became close friends), Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), with Paul Newman in the private-detective film Harper in 1966, and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967).

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Kenneth Mars
Kenneth Mars (April 4, 1935 – February 12, 2011) was an American television, movie, and voice actor. He may be best-remembered for his roles in several Mel Brooks films: the insane Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind in 1968's The Producers, and the relentless Police Inspector Hans Wilhelm Fredrich Kemp in 1974's Young Frankenstein. He also appeared in several seasons of Malcolm in the Middle as Otto, Francis' well-meaning but dim-witted boss. He's also well known as the voice of King Triton in The Little Mermaid and ensuing media. Mars also did several other animated voice over film roles such as Littlefoot's grandpa in the Land Before Time serise and that of King Colbert (Prince Cornelius's father) in Thumbelina.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Kenneth Mars studied fine arts and acting at Northwestern University. After graduation he began acting in the early 1960s, then did small roles in theater followed by TV and film.
Mars made his acting debut in 1962 as a book publisher on the comedy series Car 54, Where Are You?. Afterwards, he appeared on such television series as Gunsmoke, Get Smart, McMillan & Wife, and The Bob Crane Show. Mars played Harry Zarakartos on the sitcom He & She. Mars was featured in a number of small roles in programs such as the Misfits of Science pilot episode and the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Shadowplay".

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Kenneth Strickfaden
Ken Strickfaden, short for Kenneth Strickfaden (1896 - 1984) was an electrician, film set designer, and electrical special effects creator. He created the science fiction apparatus in more than 100 motion picture films and television programs, from 1931’s Frankenstein to The Wizard of Oz and The Mask of Fu Manchu to television's The Munsters, and his final work, Young Frankenstein.

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Kenneth Tynan
Kenneth Peacock Tynan (2 April 1927 – 26 July 1980) was an English theatre critic and writer.
Making his initial impact as a critic at The Observer (1954-1958, 1960-63), he praised Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956), and encouraged the emerging wave of British theatrical talent. In 1963, Tynan was appointed as the new National Theatre Company's literary manager. An opponent of theatre censorship, he was the first person to say 'fuck' on British television, which was very controversial at the time. Later in his life he settled in California where he resumed his writing career.
He was born in Birmingham to Letitia Rose Tynan and (as he was led to believe) "Peter Tynan" (though see below). As a child, he stammered but possessed early on a high degree of articulate intelligence. By the age of six, he was already keeping a diary. At King Edward's School, Birmingham, he was a brilliant student of whom one of his masters said, "He was the only boy I could never teach anything." He played the lead as Doctor Parpalaid in an English translation of Jules Romains' farce Knock. While at school he began smoking, which became a lifelong habit.

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Larry Gelbart
Larry Simon Gelbart (February 25, 1928 – September 11, 2009) was an American television writer, playwright, screenwriter and author.
Gelbart was born in Chicago to Jewish immigrants Harry Gelbart ("a barber since his half of a childhood in Latvia") and Frieda Sturner, who migrated to America from Dombrowa,^{[disambiguation needed ]}Poland. Marcia Gelbart Walkenstein was his sister.
Gelbart began as a writer at the age of sixteen for Danny Thomas' radio show after his father, who was Thomas' barber, showed Thomas some jokes Gelbart had written. During the 1940s Gelbart also wrote for Jack Paar and Bob Hope. In the 1950s, his most important work in television involved writing for Red Buttons, Sid Caesar on Caesar's Hour, in Celeste Holm's Honestly, Celeste!, as well as with writers Mel Tolkin, Michael Stewart, Selma Diamond, Neil Simon, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, and (on two Caesar specials) Woody Allen.
In 1972, Gelbart was one of the main forces behind the creation of the television series M*A*S*H, writing the pilot (for which he received a "Developed for Television by..." credit) and then producing, often writing and occasionally directing the series for its first four seasons (1972–1976). M*A*S*H earned Gelbart a Peabody Award and an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series and went on to considerable commercial and critical success.

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Lee Adams
Lee Richard Adams (born August 14, 1924) is an American lyricist best known for his musical theatre collaboration with Charles Strouse.
Born in Mansfield, Ohio, Adams received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Ohio State University and a Master's from Columbia University.
Adams won Tony Awards in 1961 for Bye Bye Birdie and in 1970 for Applause. In addition, he wrote the lyrics for All American, Golden Boy, It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman, Bring Back Birdie, and A Broadway Musical, and the book and lyrics for Ain't Broadway Grand. Additionally, Strouse and Adams co-wrote "Those Were the Days", the opening theme to the TV situation comedy All in the Family.
Adams was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1989.

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Lee Meredith
Lee Meredith (b. October 22, 1947, River Edge, New Jersey) is an American actress. She was born Judith Lee Sauls and grew up in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. She is married to Burt Stratford.
In 1972 she appeared in a sketch scene in the original Broadway production of The Sunshine Boys as well as repeating her performance in the 1975 film version with Walter Matthau and George Burns. However, she is best known for playing Ulla in the original 1968 version of The Producers. Her most recent appearance is on the DVD edition of that film (2002), where she gives an interview.

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Leon Fleisher
Leon Fleisher (born July 23, 1928) is an American pianist and conductor.
Fleisher was born in San Francisco, where he started studying the piano at age four. He made his public debut at age eight and played with the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Monteux at 16; Monteux famously called him "the pianistic find of the century." He became one of the few child prodigies to be accepted for study with Artur Schnabel and also studied with Maria Curcio. Fleisher was linked via Schnabel to a tradition that descended directly from Beethoven himself, handed down through Carl Czerny and Theodor Leschetizky.
In the 1950s, Fleisher signed an exclusive recording contract with Columbia Masterworks. He is particularly well known for his interpretations of the piano concerti of Brahms and Beethoven, which he recorded with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. They also recorded Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 25, the Grieg and Schumann piano concertos, Franck's Symphonic Variations, and Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

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Liam Dunn
Liam Dunn (November 12, 1916 – April 11, 1976) was an American character actor.
The New Jersey native's early career was spent toiling in television in series such as Bonanza, Room 222, Alias Smith and Jones, Mannix, and Gunsmoke.
Dunn's breakout role was as the judge (and Barbra Streisand's father) in the 1972 film What's Up, Doc?, in which he was noticed by Mel Brooks, who was in the process of forming a stock company of actors. Dunn went on to appear in Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and Silent Movie for the director.
He frequently portrayed characters who were verbally and/or physically abused in a slapstick way. Additional credits include Twigs, Barney Miller, McMillan & Wife, Rhoda, Sanford and Son,The Mary Tyler Moore Show and several episodes of the Disney anthology television series.
Liam Dunn died on April 11, 1976, from emphysema in Granada Hills, California. Though only 59 at his death, he always looked much older, and was cast accordingly.

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Lisa Lambert
Lisa Lambert (born December 1962, in Washington D.C.) is an actress, comedy writer, and Tony Award winning composer, best known for writing the lyrics and music to The Drowsy Chaperone.
Lambert played in the movies Childstar and Slings and Arrows. Her works for television include Getting Along Famously and Skippy's Rangers- The Show They Never Gave.
Lambert also took part in stage productions, including Mirth, People Park, The Irish Musical, The Drowsy Chaperone, The Bargain Musical, All Hams on Deck, Ouch My Toe, An American in Harris, An Awkward Evening with Martin and Johnson.
Lambert won the Tony Award for Best Original Score, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics for The Drowsy Chaperone.

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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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Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn (born Loretta Webb April 14, 1932), is an American country music singer-songwriter, author and philanthropist. Born in Butcher Hollow, near Paintsville, Kentucky in Johnson County to a coal miner father, Lynn married at 15 years old, was a mother soon after, and moved to Washington with her husband, Oliver Vanetta Lynn, Jr. (1926–1996), nicknamed "Doo". Their marriage was sometimes tumultuous; he had affairs and she was headstrong. Their experiences together became inspiration for her music.
On her 21st birthday, Lynn's husband bought her a $17.00 Harmony guitar. She taught herself to play and when she was 24, on her wedding anniversary, Doo encouraged her to become a singer. She learned the guitar better, started singing at the Delta Grange Hall in Washington State with the Pen Brothers' band, The Westerners, then eventually cut her first record in February, 1960. She became a part of the country music scene in Nashville in the 1960s, and in 1967 charted her first of 16 number-one hits (out of 70 charted songs as a solo artist and a duet partner) that include "Don't Come Home A' Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)", "You Ain't Woman Enough", "Fist City", and "Coal Miner's Daughter". She focused on blue collar women's issues with themes of philandering husbands and persistent mistresses, and pushed boundaries in the conservative genre of country music by singing about birth control ("The Pill"), repeated childbirth ("One's on the Way"), double standards for men and women ("Rated "X""), and being widowed by the draft during the Vietnam War ("Dear Uncle Sam"). Country music radio stations often refused to play her songs. Nonetheless, she became known as "The First Lady of Country Music" and continues to be one of the most successful vocalists of all time.

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Luciano Pavarotti
Luciano Pavarotti, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (12 October 1935 – 6 September 2007) was an Italian operatic tenor, who also crossed over into popular music, eventually becoming one of the most commercially successful tenors of all time. He made numerous recordings of complete operas and individual arias, and established himself as one of the finest tenors of the 20th century. He was one of The Three Tenors and became well known for his televised concerts and media appearances. Pavarotti was also noted for his charity work on behalf of refugees and the Red Cross, amongst others.
Pavarotti began his professional career as a tenor in 1961 in Italy. That same year, he made his first international appearance in La traviata in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He sang in opera houses in addition to Italy, in the Netherlands, Vienna, London, Ankara, Budapest and Barcelona. The young tenor earned valuable experience and recognition while touring Australia at the invitation of soprano Joan Sutherland in 1965. He made his United States debut in Miami soon afterwards, also on Sutherland's recommendation. His position as a leading lyric tenor was consolidated in the years between 1966 and 1972, during which time he first appeared at Milan's La Scala and other major European houses. In 1968, he debuted at New York City's Metropolitan Opera as Rodolfo in Puccini's La bohème. At the Met in 1972, in the role of Tonio in Donizetti's La fille du régiment he earned the title "King of the high Cs" when he sang the aria "Ah mes amis ... pour mon âme". He gained worldwide fame for the brilliance and beauty of his tone, especially into the upper register. He was at his best in bel canto operas, pre-Aida Verdi roles and Puccini works such as La bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly. The late 1970s and 1980s saw Pavarotti continue to make significant appearances in the world's foremost opera houses.

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Madeline Kahn
Madeline Kahn (September 29, 1942 – December 3, 1999) was an American actress. Kahn was known primarily for her comic roles in films such as Paper Moon, Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, What's Up, Doc?, and Clue.
Kahn was born Madeline Gail Wolfson in Boston, the daughter of Paula Kahn and Bernard B. Wolfson, who was a garment manufacturer. She was raised in a non-observant Jewish family. Her parents divorced when Kahn was two, and she and her mother moved to New York City. Several years later her parents remarried others and gave Kahn two half-siblings: Jeffrey (from her mother) and Robyn (from her father).
In 1948, Kahn was sent to a progressive boarding school in Pennsylvania and stayed there until 1952. During that time, her mother pursued her acting dream. Kahn soon began acting herself and performed in a number of school productions. In 1960, she graduated from Martin Van Buren High School in Queens, where she earned a drama scholarship to Hofstra University on Long Island. At Hofstra, she studied drama, music, and speech therapy. After changing her major a number of times, Kahn graduated from Hofstra in 1964 with a degree in speech therapy. She was a member of a local sorority on campus, Delta Chi Delta.

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Marc Shaiman
Marc Shaiman (born October 22, 1959) is a Tony, Grammy, Emmy winning and Oscar nominated American composer, lyricist, arranger, and performer for films, television, and theatre. He is perhaps best known for writing the music and co-writing the lyrics for the Broadway musical version of the cult John Waters film Hairspray.
Shaiman was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Claire (née Goldfein) and William Robert Shaiman. He went to Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School. He lives in both Los Angeles and New York City. Shaiman and Scott Wittman have been partners in life and collaborators in theater since 1979.
Shaiman started his career as a theatre/cabaret musical director. He then became vocal arranger for Bette Midler, eventually becoming her musical director and co-producer of many of her recordings, including The Wind Beneath My Wings and From a Distance. He helped create the material for her performance on the penultimate Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. His work with both Bette Midler and Billy Crystal led to his involvement on their films.

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Marcel Marceau
Marcel Marceau (22 March 1923 – 22 September 2007) was an internationally acclaimed French actor and mime most famous for his persona as Bip the Clown.
He was born Marcel Mangel in Strasbourg, France to a Jewish family. His parents were Ann Werzberg and Charles Mangel, a kosher butcher. When Marcel was four years old, the family moved to Lille, but they later returned to Strasbourg. When France entered World War II, Marcel, 16, fled with his family to Limoges. In 1944 Marcel's father was captured and deported to the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was killed. Marcel's mother survived.
Marcel and his older brother, Alain, adopted the last name "Marceau" during the German occupation of France; the name was chosen as a reference to François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers, a general of the French Revolution. The two brothers joined the French Resistance in Limoges, where they saved numerous children from the race laws and concentration camps, and, after the liberation of Paris, joined the French army. Owing to Marcel's excellent command of the English language, he worked as a liaison officer with General George Patton's army. Marcel started miming as a way of keeping children quiet as they were escaping to neutral Switzerland.

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Mark Blankfield
Mark Blankfield (born May 8, 1950) is a comedic actor hailing from Pasadena, California, who is perhaps best known as a regular cast member of the television variety series Fridays, which aired on ABC from 1980-1982. Other work includes roles in Jekyll and Hyde...Together Again, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, and The Jerk, Too, a TV-movie sequel to The Jerk. He has also made appearances in television series such as Night Court, The Jamie Foxx Show, Arrested Development, and Saved by the Bell.
Mark Blankfield at the Internet Movie Database

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Mark Hollmann
Mark Hollmann is an American composer and lyricist.
Hollmann grew up in Fairview Heights Illinois, where he graduated from Belleville Township High School East in 1981. He won a 2002 Tony Award and a 2001 Obie Award for his music and lyrics to Urinetown. He is a former ensemble member of the Cardiff-Giant Theatre Company in Chicago. He played trombone for the Chicago art rock band Maestro Subgum and the Whole, and also played piano for The Second City national touring company and Chicago City Limits, an improv company in New York. He attended the musical theatre writing workshop, Making Tuners, at Theatre Building Chicago and the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop in New York. While at the Making Turners workshop he began a show with Chicago-based writer Jack Helbig that became "The Girl, the Grouch, and the Goat," which has had professional productions in Los Angeles and Chicago.
He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and ASCAP.
He lives in Manhattan with his wife Jillian, and their sons Oliver and Tucker.

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Mark Simone
Mark Simone is an American radio personality. Currently heard on WABC in New York, he also fills-in for ABC Radio hosts such as Don Imus, Mark Levin, and Sean Hannity.
Simone occasionally appears on CNN, MSNBC and PBS.
He and New York Post columnist Linda Stasi co-host the weekly feature What a Week on NY1.
1977–1979 — WPIX-FM 102 (New York) "The Mark Simone Show"
1980–1982 — WMCA 570 (New York) Simone hosted a daily comedy talk show from 8-10 p.m. weekdays and 2-4 p.m. on Saturdays.
1982–1992 — WNEW-AM Simone hosted the afternoon show from 3-7 p.m. The program was a mix of celebrity interviews and music. WNEW ended after 58 years on December 11, 1992. Simone was its final host.
1986–1988 — Simone co-hosted a three-hour daily comedy show with Steve Allen on the NBC Radio network. The team did their last live show at WNEW on March 18, 1988.
1990s — Simone co-hosted a two-hour nightly talk and interview show with Tom Snyder on the CBS Radio Network.
1999–present — WABC Simone hosts a Saturday morning talk show 7-10 a.m. and the Saturday Night Show entertainment show from 6-9 p.m. which combines music, celebrity interviews and features.

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Marshall Brickman
Marshall Brickman (born August 25, 1941) is an American screenwriter, best known for his collaborations with Woody Allen. He is also known for playing the banjo with Eric Weissberg in the 1960s, and for a series of comical parodies published in The New Yorker.
Brickman was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to American parents Pauline (née Wolin) and Abram Brickman. His family was Jewish. After attending the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he became a member of Folk act The Tarriers in 1962, recruited by former classmate Eric Weissberg. Upon the disbanding of The Tarriers in 1965, Brickman joined The New Journeymen with John Phillips and Michelle Phillips, who later had success with The Mamas & the Papas. He left The New Journeymen to pursue a career as a writer, initially writing for television in the 1960s, including Candid Camera, The Tonight Show, and The Dick Cavett Show. It was during this time that he met Allen, with whom he would collaborate on several 1970s film scripts, including Sleeper, Annie Hall (which won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award), and Manhattan.

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Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese (

/skɔrˈsɛsɛ/; born November 17, 1942) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation. He is a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won Academy Award, Palme d'Or, Emmys, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and DGA Awards.
Scorsese's body of work addresses such themes as Italian American identity, Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption,machismo, modern crime, and violence. Scorsese is hailed as one of the most significant and influential filmmakers of all time, directing landmark films such as Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), and Goodfellas (1990) – all of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend Robert De Niro. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), having been nominated a previous five times.

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Martin Sheen
Ramón Antonio Gerardo Estévez (born August 3, 1940), better known by his stage name Martin Sheen, is an American film actor best known for his performances in the films Badlands (1973), Apocalypse Now (1979), Wall Street (1987), The Departed (2006), his role as The Illusive Man in the Mass Effect trilogy and President Josiah Bartlet in the television series The West Wing.
He is considered one of the best actors never to be nominated for an Academy Award despite his acclaimed performances.^[opinion] In film he has won the Best Actor award at the San Sebastián International Film Festival for his performance as Kit Carruthers in Badlands. His portrayal of Capt. Willard in Apocalypse Now earned a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. Sheen has worked with a wide variety of film directors, such as Richard Attenborough, Francis Ford Coppola, Terrence Malick, David Cronenberg, Mike Nichols, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Oliver Stone. He has had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame since 1989. In television he has won both a Golden Globe and two Screen Actors Guild awards for playing the lead role of President Bartlet in The West Wing, and an Emmy for guest acting in the sitcom Murphy Brown.

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Marty Feldman
Martin Alan "Marty" Feldman (8 July 1934 – 2 December 1982) was an English comedy writer, comedian and actor who starred in a series of British television comedy shows, including At Last the 1948 Show, and Marty, which won two BAFTA awards and was the first Saturn Award winner for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Young Frankenstein.
Feldman was born in the East End of London, the son of Jewish immigrants from Kiev. He recalled his childhood as "solitary".
A BBC documentary also explained that an operation due to his Graves' disease resulted in his eyes being more protruded, together with a squint (strabismus). Leaving school at 15, he worked at the Dreamland fun fair in Margate. By the age of 20, he had decided to pursue a career as a comedian.
In 1954, Feldman formed a writing partnership with Barry Took. They wrote situation comedies such as The Army Game and Bootsie and Snudge for British television, and the BBC radio show Round the Horne, which starred Kenneth Horne and Kenneth Williams. This put Feldman and Took "in the front rank of comedy writers" (Denis Norden).

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Mason Williams
Mason Williams (born August 24, 1938) is an American guitarist and composer, best known for his guitar instrumental "Classical Gas". He is also a comedy writer, known for his writing on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, and Saturday Night Live. He is also an eclectic poet and lyricist who has published several books.
Mason Douglas Williams was born in Abilene, Texas; son of Jackson Eugene (a tile setter) and Kathlyn (Nations) Williams; married Sheila Ann Massey, April 22, 1961 (divorced); children: Kathryn Michelle.
He grew up dividing his time between living with his father in Oklahoma and his mother in Oakridge, Oregon. He graduated from Northwest Classen High School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1956. It was in Oklahoma that he began his lifelong friendship with artist Edward Ruscha.
He attended Oklahoma City University, 1957–60, and North Texas State University, one semester. Military Service: U.S. Navy, 1961-63.
Married Katherine Elizabeth Kahn in February, 1994, after first planning to marry in 1971; divorced after ten years.

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Matt Stone
Matthew Richard "Matt" Stone (born May 26, 1971) is an American actor, voice actor, animator, screenwriter, producer, musician, best known for being the co-creator of South Park along with his creative partner and best friend, Trey Parker.
Stone and Parker launched their largely collaborative careers in 1992, making a holiday short titled Jesus vs. Frosty. Their first success came from Alferd Packer: The Musical, subsequently distributed as Cannibal! The Musical. From there he made another short title Jesus vs. Santa, leading him and college friend Parker to create South Park, which has been airing for over fifteen years. He has four Emmy Awards for his role in South Park, winning for both "Outstanding Programming More Than One Hour" and "Outstanding Programming Less Than One Hour".
Stone was born in Houston, Texas to Gerald Whitney Stone, Jr. (1941-2010), an economics professor and textbook author, and Sheila Lois Belasco (who share the first names of South Park character Kyle Broflovski's parents). Stone's mother is Jewish and his father was of Irish descent. Stone and his younger sister, Rachel were raised in Littleton, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, Colorado, where both attended Heritage High School. He graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and was their first student to double major in film and mathematics.

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Matthew Broderick
Matthew Broderick (born March 21, 1962) is an American film and stage actor who, among other roles, played the title character in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, voiced the adult Simba in Disney's The Lion King, and portrayed Leo Bloom in the Hollywood and Broadway productions of The Producers. He has won two Tony Awards, one in 1983 for his featured role in the play Brighton Beach Memoirs and one in 1995 for his leading role in the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He was also nominated for the Tony Award, Best Actor in a Musical, for The Producers but lost to his co-star Nathan Lane. To date, Broderick is the youngest winner of the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.
Broderick was born in New York City, the son of Patricia (née Biow), a playwright, actress, and painter, and James Joseph Broderick, an actor. His mother was Jewish, a descendant of immigrants from Germany and Poland; his father was a Catholic of Irish and English descent. Broderick attended grade school at the City & Country School (a progressive K–8 school in Manhattan) and high school at Walden School (a defunct private school in Manhattan with a strong drama program). After the death of his mother, her paintings were exhibited at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in New York.

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Max Brooks
Maximillian Michael "Max" Brooks (born May 22, 1972) is an American author and screenwriter, with a particular interest in zombies. Brooks is also a television and voice-over actor.
Brooks was born in New York City, the son of the Jewish American director, producer, writer, and actor Mel Brooks and Italian American actress Anne Bancroft.
He is a graduate of Pitzer College, majoring in history, and delivered the commencement speech for the class of 2011.
From 2001 to 2003, Brooks was a member of the writing team at Saturday Night Live.
Brooks is the author of The Zombie Survival Guide. The book touches on what it describes as pop cultural myths about zombies. The book was later followed up in 2009 by The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks, a graphic novel depicting several of the events detailed in the book's latter section.
Brooks' book World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, which deals with the war between the human race and zombies, was released on September 12, 2006. Paramount Pictures has acquired the movie rights; Brad Pitt's production company Plan B Entertainment will produce the film. In the October 2006 issue of Fangoria Magazine, Brooks stated that he will not be writing the screenplay for the motion picture, as he feels he is not an accomplished enough screenwriter to "do it right" (J. Michael Straczynski is writing the screenplay).

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Megan Cavanagh
Megan Cavanagh (born November 8, 1960) is an American actress who portrayed the roles of Marla Hooch in A League of Their Own (1992), Broomhilde in Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), Essie in Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995) and was the voice of Judy Neutron in Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Hilary Higgenbottom in The Mighty B!. She was featured in the short-lived second season of Bob (1993) and played the recurring role of Trudy McHale, who married Al Borland in the series finale, on the sitcom Home Improvement (1998–99). Openly lesbian, Cavanagh stars in Exes & Ohs, a lesbian comedy on Logo TV. She voiced Slog in Tak and the Power of Juju.
Cavanagh was an original member (1984–1987) of the professional theatre troupe New Age Vaudeville (formerly the Comedy Cabaret) founded by Richard O'Donnell and Amy Mckenzie. An Actor’s Equity (AEA) theatre troupe, the Comedy Cabaret landed a summer residence at Peninsula Players in Fish Creek, Wisconsin, where it developed works for a predominately tourist trade and then relocated to their winter home in Chicago at CrossCurrents. Throughout her tenure, Megan Cavanagh (who thus earned her Actors' Equity union card) starred in numerous productions including the cult-hits An Evening with Elmore & Gwendolyn Putts - The Neighbors Next Door and the TV Dinner Hour (the latter featured iO founder Del Close). Rick Kogan of the Chicago Tribune hailed both productions as "Among the most polished and clever productions of the season, a pair of devilishly inventive shows that won over critics and audiences alike".

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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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Mel Tolkin
Mel Tolkin, né Shmuel Tolchinsky(August 3, 1913 – November 26, 2007), was a television comedy writer best known as head writer of the seminal, live TV sketch comedy series Your Show of Shows (NBC, 1950–1954) during the Golden Age of Television. There he presided over a storied staff that at times included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Danny Simon, and Larry Gelbart. The writers' room inspired the film My Favorite Year (1982), produced by Brooks, and the Broadway play Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1993), written by Neil Simon.
Tolkin, who won an Emmy Award and every other major prize for television writing, was the father of screenwriter-novelist Michael Tolkin and TV writer-director Stephen Tolkin.
Mel Tolkin was born Shmuel Tolchinsky (Russian: Тол(ь)чинский, cog. Тульчинский, Ukrainian: Толчинський, Polish: Tolczyński, cog. Tulczyński, means "from Tuľčyn") in a Jewish shtetl near Odessa,Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. This background of anti-Semitic pogroms, shared by other comedy writers of his generation, he noted in 1992, "I’m not happy to have to say ... created the condition where humor becomes anger made acceptable with a joke".

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Mike Nichols
Mike Nichols (born Michael Igor Peschkowsky; November 6, 1931) is a German-born American television, stage and film director, writer, producer and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate. His other noteworthy films include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Carnal Knowledge, Working Girl, Closer and the TV mini-series Angels in America. He also staged the original theatrical productions of Barefoot in the Park, Luv, The Odd Couple and Spamalot.
Nichols is one of a small group of people who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award. His other honors include the Lincoln Center Gala Tribute in 1999, the National Medal of Arts in 2001, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003 and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2010.
Mike Nichols was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Berlin, Germany, the son of Brigitte (née Landauer) and Paul Peschkowsky, a physician. His father was born in Vienna, Austria, to a Russian Jewish immigrant family that had been wealthy and lived in Siberia, leaving after the Russian Revolution and settling in Germany around 1920. His mother's family were German Jews. His maternal grandparents were anarchist Gustav Landauer and author Hedwig Lachmann. Nichols is a third cousin twice removed of scientist Albert Einstein, through Nichols' mother. He moved to the United States to flee the Nazis on April 28, 1939. His father, who had changed his name to Paul Nichols, had successfully set up a medical practice in Manhattan and the family lived near Central Park. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1944 and attended public elementary school in Manhattan (PS 87). After graduating from Walden High School, Nichols briefly attended New York University before dropping out. In 1950, he enrolled in the pre-med program at the University of Chicago.

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Mikhail Baryshnikov
Mikhail Nikolaevich Baryshnikov (Russian: Михаи́л Никола́евич Бары́шников, Latvian: Mihails Barišņikovs) (born January 27, 1948), nicknamed "Misha", is a Russian American dancer, choreographer, and actor, often cited alongside Vaslav Nijinsky and Rudolf Nureyev as one of the greatest ballet dancers in history. After a promising start in the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, he defected to Canada in 1974 for more opportunities in western dance. After freelancing with many companies, he joined the New York City Ballet as a principal dancer to learn George Balanchine's style of movement. He then danced with the American Ballet Theatre, where he later became artistic director.
Baryshnikov has spearheaded many of his own artistic projects and has been associated in particular with promoting modern dance, premiering dozens of new works, including many of his own. His success as a dramatic actor on stage, cinema and television has helped him become probably the most widely recognized contemporary ballet dancer. In 1977, he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe nomination for his work as "Yuri Kopeikine" in the film The Turning Point.

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Morey Amsterdam
Morey Amsterdam (December 14, 1908 – October 28, 1996) was an American television actor and comedian, best known for the role of Buddy Sorrell on The Dick Van Dyke Show in the early 1960s.
Amsterdam was born Moritz Amsterdam in Chicago, Illinois, the youngest of the three sons of Max and Jennie (Finder) Amsterdam, Jewish immigrants from Austria-Hungary. He began working in Vaudeville in 1922 as the straight man for his older brother's jokes. He was also a cellist, a skill he used throughout his career. By 1924, he was working in a speakeasy operated by Al Capone. After being caught in the middle of a gunfight, Amsterdam moved to California and worked writing jokes^{[citation needed]}. His enormous repertoire and ability to come up with a joke on any subject earned him the nickname The Human Joke Machine. He sometimes performed with a mock machine on his chest, hanging by a strap. He turned a hand crank and paper rolled out; he would then read the machine's joke, although actually the paper was blank^{[citation needed]}.

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Morgan Freeman
Morgan Freeman (born June 1, 1937) is an American actor, film director, aviator and narrator. Freeman has received Academy Award nominations for his performances in Street Smart, Driving Miss Daisy, The Shawshank Redemption and Invictus and won in 2005 for Million Dollar Baby. He has also won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Freeman has appeared in many other box office hits, including Unforgiven, Glory, Seven, Deep Impact, The Sum of All Fears, Bruce Almighty, Batman Begins, March of the Penguins, The Bucket List, Wanted, The Dark Knight, and RED.
Morgan Freeman was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of Mayme Edna (née Revere), a teacher, and Morgan Porterfield Freeman, a barber who died April 27, 1961, from cirrhosis. He has three older siblings. Freeman was sent as an infant to his paternal grandmother in Charleston, Mississippi. His family moved frequently during his childhood, living in Greenwood, Mississippi; Gary, Indiana; and finally Chicago, Illinois. Freeman made his acting debut at age 9, playing the lead role in a school play. He then attended Broad Street High School, later named Threadgill Elementary School, in Mississippi. At age 12, he won a statewide drama competition, and while still at Broad Street High School, he performed in a radio show based in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1955, he graduated from Broad Street, but turned down a partial drama scholarship from Jackson State University, opting instead to work as a mechanic in the United States Air Force.

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Murray Roman
Murray Roman (March 8, 1929 – November 6, 1973) was an American stand-up comedian whose career was cut short by a car crash. Many^[who?] consider his style, and material, to be similar to Lenny Bruce.
He was Keith Moon's favorite comedian.^{[citation needed]} Moon helped Roman obtain a contract with Track Records^{[citation needed]}, which had also signed Jimi Hendrix and The Who.
Roman married three times and had 3 daughters.^{[citation needed]}
Roman was sampled by DJ Shadow in "Stem/Long Stem/Transmission 2" of his Endtroducing album.(needs citation)

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Nancy Dowd
Nancy Dowd (born 1945) is a screenwriter most famous for her films Slap Shot and Coming Home. Her brother Ned Dowd inspired the story behind Slap Shot based on his experiences playing minor league hockey. She also acted in a minor role in Slap Shot and wrote lyrics for a song used in Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, another film she wrote.
She often uses pseudonyms such as Ernest or Rob Morton or simply wrote films without being officially credited which can be seen under the subsequent filmography section.

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Nat Hiken
Nat Hiken (June 13, 1914 – December 7, 1968) was an American television writer, producer, and songwriter who rose to prominence in the 1950s.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Hiken worked for Warner Bros. as a screenwriter beginning in 1940 for the studio's short-subject films. Hiken is best known for a number of popular TV series during the 1950s and 1960s, including Car 54, Where Are You? and The Phil Silvers Show, a situation comedy set on a US Army post in which Silvers played Sergeant Ernest G. "Ernie" Bilko; the show was also often referred to as Sgt. Bilko, but Hiken originally titled it You'll Never Get Rich.
Hiken was one of TV's first writer-producers, and he had begun originally in radio by writing for Fred Allen's hit radio show and as the head writer for NBC's Four Star Revue. He moved from radio to TV as a writer for Milton Berle's radio show, which preceded his legendary TV variety show Texaco Star Theater. As a writer for Car 54, Where Are You? and the The Phil Silvers Show, he exhibited a comic flair, and his capacity for spoofing such entities as the United States Army, the U.S. government, and police forces was exceptional. TV historians attest to Hiken's talent to create zany but lovable characters and also to his ability to draw strong comedic performances from such unlikely celebrities as boxer Rocky Graziano on NBC's The Martha Raye Show.

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Nathan Lane
Nathan Lane (born February 3, 1956) is an American actor of stage and screen. He is best known for his roles as Mendy in The Lisbon Traviata, Albert in The Birdcage, Max Bialystock in the musical The Producers, Ernie Smuntz in MouseHunt, Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and his voice work in The Lion King and Stuart Little. In 2006, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 2008, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
Lane was born Joseph Lane in Jersey City, New Jersey, the son of Irish American Catholic parents. He was named after his uncle, a Jesuit priest. His father, Daniel, was a truck driver and an aspiring tenor who died from alcoholism when Lane was eleven; his mother, Nora, was a housewife and secretary who suffered from manic-depression, and died in 2000. He has two brothers, Robert and Daniel. Lane attended Roman Catholic schools in Jersey City, including Jesuit-run St. Peter's Preparatory High School, where he was selected Best Actor in 1974.^{[citation needed]}

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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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Nicholas Meyer
Nicholas Meyer (born December 24, 1945 in New York City, New York) is an American screenwriter, producer, author, and director, most known for his best-selling novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, and for directing the films Time After Time, two of the Star Trek feature film series, and the 1983 television movie The Day After.
For adapting a screenplay from his own novel for The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976), Meyer was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He has also been nominated for a Satellite Award, three Emmy Awards, and has won three Saturn Awards.
Meyer graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in theater and filmmaking.
Meyer first gained public attention for his best selling 1974 Sherlock Holmes novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a story of Holmes confronting his cocaine addiction with the help of Sigmund Freud. Meyer followed this with two additional Holmes novels: The West End Horror (1976), and then The Canary Trainer (1993).
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution was later made into a 1976 film of the same name, for which Meyer wrote the screenplay. The film was directed by Herbert Ross and starred Nicol Williamson, Robert Duvall, Alan Arkin, and Laurence Olivier. For his work adapting the novel, Meyer was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 49th Academy Awards.

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Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1730 – 4 April 1774) was an Anglo-Irish writer and poet, who is best known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), his pastoral poem The Deserted Village (1770), and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man (1768) and She Stoops to Conquer (1771, first performed in 1773). He also wrote An History of the Earth and Animated Nature. He is thought to have written the classic children's tale The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes, the source of the phrase "goody two-shoes".
Goldsmith's birth date and year are not known with certainty. According to the Library of Congress authority file, he told a biographer that he was born on 29 November 1728. The location of his birthplace is also uncertain. He was born either in the townland of Pallas, near Ballymahon, County Longford, Ireland, where his father was the Anglican curate of the parish of Forgney, or at the residence of his maternal grandparents, at the Smith Hill House in the diocese of Elphin, County Roscommon where his grandfather Oliver Jones was a clergyman and master of the Elphin diocesan school. When he was two years old, Goldsmith's father was appointed the rector of the parish of "Kilkenny West" in County Westmeath. The family moved to the parsonage at Lissoy, between Athlone and Ballymahon, and continued to live there until his father's death in 1747.

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Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, writer and producer who worked extensively in theater, radio and film. He is best remembered for his innovative work in all three media, most notably Caesar (1937), a groundbreaking Broadway adaption of Julius Caesar and the debut of the Mercury Theatre; The War of the Worlds (1938), the most famous broadcast in the history of radio; and Citizen Kane (1941), which many critics and scholars name as the best film of all time.
After directing a number of high-profile theatrical productions in his early twenties, including an innovative adaptation of Macbeth and The Cradle Will Rock, Welles found national and international fame as the director and narrator of a 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds performed for the radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was reported to have caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was occurring. Although these reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to instant notoriety.

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Ossie Davis
Ossie Davis (born Raiford Chatman Davis, December 18, 1917 – February 4, 2005) was an Emmy Award winning and Grammy nominated, African- American film, television and Broadway actor, director, poet, playwright, author, and social activist.
Davis was born Raiford Chatman Davis in Cogdell, Clinch County, Georgia, a son of Kince Charles Davis, a railway construction engineer, and his wife Laura (née Cooper). The name Ossie came from a county clerk who misheard his mother's pronunciation of his initials "R.C." when he was born. So he inadvertently became "Ossie" when his mother told the courthouse clerk in Clinch River, Ga., who was filing his birth certificate that his name was R.C. Davis. Davis experienced racism from an early age as the KKK threatened to shoot his father, whose job they felt was too advanced for a black man to have. Following the wishes of his parents, he attended Howard University but dropped out in 1939 to fulfill his acting career in New York; he later attended Columbia University School of General Studies. His acting career, which spanned seven decades, began in 1939 with the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem. He made his film debut in 1950 in the Sidney Poitier film No Way Out. He voiced Anansi the spider on the PBS children's television series Sesame Street in its animation segments.

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Paddy Chayefsky
Sidney Aaron "Paddy" Chayefsky (January 29, 1923 – August 1, 1981), was an American playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He is the one of only two people to have won three solo Academy Awards for Best Screenplay (the other being Woody Allen). The other three time winners, Francis Ford Coppola , Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder , have all shared their awards with co-writers.
He was considered one of the most renowned dramatists of the so-called Golden Age of Television. His intimate, realistic scripts provided a naturalistic style of television drama for the 1950s, and he was regarded as the central figure in the "kitchen sink realism" movement of American television. Martin Gottfried wrote, "He was a successful writer, the most successful graduate of television's slice of life school of naturalism."
Following his critically acclaimed teleplays, Chayefsky continued to succeed as a playwright and novelist. As a screenwriter, he received three Academy Awards for Marty (1955), The Hospital (1971) and Network (1976). The movie Marty was based on his own television drama about a relationship between two lonely people finding love. Network was his scathing satire of the television industry and The Hospital was considered satiric. Film historian David Thomson termed it "daring, uninhibited, and prophetic. No one else would have dreamed of doing it."

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Pamela Stephenson
Pamela Helen Stephenson Connolly (born 4 December 1949) is a New Zealand-born Australian clinical psychologist and writer now resident in the United Kingdom. She is best known for her work as an actress and comedian during the 1980s. She has written several books, which include a biography of her husband Billy Connolly, and presents a psychology-based interview show called Shrink Rap on British television.
Stephenson was born in Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand. She moved to Australia in 1964 and attended the University of New South Wales and then Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art, from which she graduated in 1971. Stephenson was a regular cast member on television series Ryan. She moved to London in 1976, where she continued to perform.
Stephenson began acting on television by 1972. In 1973–74, she starred as Julie King on the Australian TV series Ryan. After numerous television and film appearances, she had another recurring role as Iris Reade in the UK series Funny Man (1981). Probably her most widely recognized television role was in the classic 1980s UK comedy television sketch show Not The Nine O'Clock News, alongside Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones (1979–82). Her parodies included Kate Bush in a song called "Oh England, My Leotard", and Olivia Newton-John in a song called "Typical bloody typical". She also had a small part in three episodes of the British TV police drama series The Professionals. Her personal contribution as a comedian added to the success of Not the Nine O'Clock News and led to a collaboration with comedy and satire writers Mike Lepine and Mark Leigh. This spawned a book, How To Be A Complete Bitch, and a board game. In 1982–83, she starred in the West End production of Joseph Papp's version of The Pirates of Penzance.

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Paul Newman
Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, professional racing driver, auto racing team owner, and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in the 1986 Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money and eight other nominations, three Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards. He also won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open wheel IndyCar racing.
Newman was a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which Newman donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of July 2011, these donations exceeded $300 million.
Newman was born in Shaker Heights (a suburb of Cleveland). He was the son of Theresa (née Fetzer or Fetsko; Slovak: Terézia Fecková) and Arthur Sigmund Newman, who ran a profitable sporting goods store. His father was Jewish (Paul's paternal grandparents, Simon Newman and Hannah Cohn, were immigrants from Hungary and Poland). His mother, who practiced Christian Science, was born to a Slovak Roman Catholic family at Humenné, Ptičie (formerly Pticsie) in the former Kingdom of Hungary, Austria–Hungary (now Humenné in Slovakia). Newman had no religion as an adult, but described himself as a Jew, stating that "it's more of a challenge". Newman's mother worked in his father's store, while raising Paul and his brother, Arthur, who later became a producer and production manager.

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Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is a grammy award winning American singer-songwriter, poet and guitarist.
Simon's international fame and success began as part of the duo Simon & Garfunkel, launched in 1964 with musical partner Art Garfunkel. Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached No. 1 on the U.S. singles charts: "The Sound of Silence", "Mrs. Robinson", and "Bridge Over Troubled Water". The duo split up in 1970 at the height of their popularity, and Simon began a successful solo career, recording three highly acclaimed albums over the next five years. In 1986, he released Graceland, an album inspired by South African township music. Simon also wrote and starred in the film One-Trick Pony in 1980 and co-wrote the Broadway musical The Capeman in 1998.
Simon has earned 12 Grammys for his solo and collaborative work, including the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2001, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2006 was selected as one of the "100 People Who Shaped the World" by Time magazine. Among many other honors, Simon was the first recipient of the Library of Congress' Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2007. In 1986 Simon was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music where he currently serves on the Board of Trustees.

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Paul Verhoeven
Paul Verhoeven (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈpʌu̯l vərˈɦuvə(n)]; born 18 July 1938) is a Dutch film director, screenwriter, and producer who has made movies in both the Netherlands and the United States. Explicitly violent and/or sexual content and social satire are trademarks of both his drama and science fiction films. He is best known for directing the American feature films RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990), Basic Instinct (1992), Starship Troopers (1997), and Hollow Man (2000).
Turkish Delight (1973) received the award for Best Dutch Film of the Century at the Netherlands Film Festival. His films altogether received a total of nine Academy Award nominations, mainly for editing and effects. Both RoboCop and Total Recall won an Special Achievement Academy Award. In contrast, his film Showgirls (1995) was poorly received and won seven Golden Raspberry Awards, but has become a cult film over time.
Verhoeven was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the son of school teacher Wim Verhoeven and hat maker Nel van Schaardenburg. Although born in Amsterdam, the family lived in the village of Slikkerveer.

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Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael (June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic.
Kael was known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated, and sharply focused" reviews, her opinions often contrary to those of her contemporaries. She is often regarded as the most influential American film critic of her day.
She left a lasting impression on many major critics, including Armond White, whose reviews are similarly non-conformist, and Roger Ebert, who has said that Kael "had a more positive influence on the climate for film in America than any other single person over the last three decades."Owen Gleiberman said she "was more than a great critic. She re-invented the form, and pioneered an entire aesthetic of writing. She was like the Elvis or the Beatles of film criticism."
Kael was born on a chicken farm in Petaluma, California, to Isaac Paul Kael and Judith Friedman Kael, Jewish immigrants from Poland. Her parents lost their farm when Kael was eight, and the family moved to San Francisco, California. She matriculated at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1936; she studied philosophy, literature, and the arts but dropped out in 1940 before completing her degree. Nevertheless, Kael intended to go on to law school but fell in with a group of artists and moved to New York City with the poet Robert Horan.

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Perry Como
Pierino Ronald "Perry" Como (May 18, 1912 – May 12, 2001) was an American singer and television personality. During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for the RCA Victor label after signing with them in 1943. "Mr. C.", as he was nicknamed, sold millions of records for Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and pioneered a weekly musical variety television show, which set the standards for the genre and proved to be one of the most successful in television history. Como was seen weekly on television from 1949 to 1963, then continued hosting the Kraft Music Hall variety program on a monthly basis until 1967. His television shows and seasonal specials were broadcast throughout the world. Also a popular recording artist, Perry Como produced numerous hit records with record sales so high the label literally stopped counting at Como's behest. His combined success on television and popular recordings was not matched by any other artist of the time. Como's appeal spanned generations and he was widely respected for both his professional standards and the conduct in his personal life. In the official RCA Records Billboard magazine memorial, his life was summed up in these few words: "50 years of music and a life well lived. An example to all." Composer Ervin Drake said of him, "... [o]ccasionally someone like Perry comes along and won't 'go with the flow' and still prevails in spite of all the bankrupt others who surround him and importune him to yield to their values. Only occasionally."

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Pete Townshend
Peter Dennis Blandford "Pete" Townshend (born 19 May 1945) is an English rock guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and author, known principally as the guitarist and songwriter for the rock group The Who, as well as for his own solo career. His career with The Who spans more than 40 years, during which time the band grew to be considered one of the most influential bands of the 1960s and 1970s, and, according to Eddie Vedder, "possibly the greatest live band ever."
Townshend is the primary songwriter for The Who, having written well over 100 songs for the band's 11 studio albums, including concept albums and the rock operas Tommy and Quadrophenia, plus popular rock and roll radio staples like Who's Next, and dozens more that appeared as non-album singles, bonus tracks on reissues, and tracks on rarities compilations like Odds & Sods. He has also written over 100 songs that have appeared on his solo albums, as well as radio jingles and television theme songs. Although known primarily as a guitarist, he also plays other instruments such as keyboards, banjo, accordion, synthesiser, bass guitar and drums, on his own solo albums, several Who albums, and as a guest contributor to a wide array of other artists' recordings. Townshend has never had formal lessons in any of the instruments he plays.

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Peter Boyle
Peter Lawrence Boyle, Jr. (October 18, 1935 – December 12, 2006) was an American actor, best known for his role as Frank Barone on the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond, and as a comical monster in Mel Brooks' film spoof Young Frankenstein (1974).
Boyle, who won an Emmy Award in 1996 for a guest-starring role on the science-fiction drama The X-Files, won praise in both comedic and dramatic parts following his breakthrough performance in the 1970 film Joe.
Boyle was born in Norristown, Pennsylvania of Irish descent, the son of Alice and Peter Boyle Sr. He moved with his family to nearby Philadelphia. His father was a Philadelphia TV personality from 1951–1963 who, among many other things, played the Western-show host Chuck Wagon Pete, and hosted the afterschool children's program Uncle Pete Presents the Little Rascals, which showed vintage Little Rascals, Three Stooges comedy shorts and Popeye cartoons.
He was raised Roman Catholic and he attended St. Francis de Sales School and West Philadelphia Catholic High School For Boys. After high school Boyle spent three years as a novice of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, or De La Salle Brothers, a Catholic teaching order. He lived in a house of studies with other novices and earned a BA from La Salle University in Philadelphia in 1957, but left the order because he did not feel called to religious life. While in Philadelphia, he worked as a cameraman on the cooking show Television Kitchen, hosted by Florence Hanford.

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Peter Stone
Peter Hess Stone (February 27, 1930 – April 26, 2003) was an American writer for theater, television and movies.
Stone was born in Los Angeles. His mother, Hilda (née Hess), was a film writer, and his father, John Stone (born Saul Strumwasser) was the writer and producer of many silent films, including Shirley Temple and Charlie Chan movies. He graduated from University High School, attended Bard College starting in 1947, and received a Master's degree from Yale University in 1953. In 1964, Stone won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for his screenplay for Charade.
Stone is among that rarefied group of writers who have conquered stage, screen, and television by winning an Oscar, a Tony, and an Emmy. In 1965, he won an Oscar for his work as a screenwriter on Father Goose. He won Tony Awards for his books for the Broadway musicals Titanic, Woman of the Year and 1776. He won an Emmy for a 1962 episode of The Defenders.
Shortly after Stone's death, in a memorial ceremony held June 30, 2003, at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, it was observed that the two most famous ships of all time were Noah's Ark and the Titanic, and that Stone had written Broadway musicals about both of them (Noah's Ark being the topic of Two by Two).

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Philip Kaufman
Philip Kaufman (born October 23, 1936) is an American film director and screenwriter. His movies have adapted novels of widely different types – from Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being to Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun; from Tom Wolfe’s heroic epic The Right Stuff to the erotic writings of Anaïs Nin’s Henry & June. His greatest success has been the film The Right Stuff which received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.
Kaufman was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Elizabeth (Brandau) and Nathan Kaufman. He attended the University of Chicago and later Harvard Law School. After spending some time backpacking in Europe with his wife Rose, Kaufman relocated back to the United States. His time in Europe heavily influenced Kaufman's decision to become a filmmaker, when he and his wife would wander into small movie theaters showcasing the works of John Cassavetes among others. He held some odd jobs including mailman. During his frequent travels he met Anaïs Nin, lover of writer Henry Miller. The relationship between Miller and Nin was the inspiration for Kaufman's film Henry and June.

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Pierre Uytterhoeven
Pierre Uytterhoeven is a screenwriter. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1966 for his work with Claude Lelouch in A Man and a Woman. In 1986 he worked with Lelouch again on the film's sequel, A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later.

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Pietro Germi
Pietro Germi (14 September 1914, Genoa - 5 December 1974) was an Italian actor, screenwriter, and director. Germi was born in Genoa, Liguria, to a lower-middle class family. He was a messenger and briefly attended nautical school before deciding on a career in acting.
He studied acting and directing at Rome's Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. During his time in school, Germi supported himself by working as an extra, bit actor, assistant director, and, on occasion, writer. Germi made his directorial debut in 1945 with the film Il testimone. His early work, this film included, were very much in the Italian Neorealist style; many were social dramas that dealt with contemporary issues pertaining to people of Sicilian heritage.
Through the years, Germi shifted away from social drama towards satirical comedies, but retained his loved element of the Sicilian people. In the 1960s, Germi received worldwide success with the films Divorce, Italian Style, Seduced and Abandoned, and The Birds, the Bees and the Italians. He was nominated for Academy Awards in both directing and writing for Divorce, Italian Style, and, subsequently, won in the writing category. He also won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for The Birds, the Bees.

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Plácido Domingo
Plácido Domingo (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈplaθiðo ðoˈmiŋɡo]; born 21 January 1941), born José Plácido Domingo Embil, is a Spanish tenor and conductor known for his versatile and strong voice, possessing a ringing and dramatic tone throughout its range. In March 2008, he debuted in his 128th opera role, and as of July 2011, his 136 roles give Domingo more roles than any other tenor.
One of The Three Tenors, he has also taken on conducting opera and concert performances, and he is the General Director of the Los Angeles Opera in California.
Plácido Domingo was born on January 21, 1941, in the distrito de Retiro section of Madrid, Spain, and in 1949 moved to Mexico with his family, who ran a zarzuela company. He studied piano at first privately and later at the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City.
In 1957, Domingo made his first professional appearance, performing with his mother in a concert at Mérida, Yucatán. He made his opera debut performing in Manuel Fernández Caballero's zarzuela, Gigantes y cabezudos, singing a baritone role. At that time, he was working with his parents' zarzuela company, taking baritone roles and as an accompanist for other singers. Among his first performances was a minor role in the first Mexican production of My Fair Lady where he was also the assistant conductor and assistant coach. The company gave 185 performances, which included a production of Lehár's The Merry Widow in which he performed alternately as either Camille or Danilo.

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Quincy Jones
Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. (born March 14, 1933) is an American record producer, conductor, arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend Award in 1991. He is particularly recognized as the producer of the album Thriller, by pop icon Michael Jackson, which has sold more than 110 million copies worldwide, and as the producer and conductor of the charity song “We Are the World”.
In 1968, Jones and his songwriting partner Bob Russell became the first African Americans to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song "The Eyes of Love" from the Universal Pictures film Banning. That same year, he became the first African American to be nominated twice within the same year when he was nominated for Best Original Score for his work on the music of the 1967 film In Cold Blood. In 1971, Jones would receive the honor of becoming the first African American to be named musical director/conductor of the Academy Awards ceremony. He was the first African American to win the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1995. He is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the most Oscar-nominated African American, each of them having seven nominations. At the 2008 BET Awards, Quincy Jones was presented with the Humanitarian Award. He was played by Larenz Tate in the 2004 biopic about Ray Charles, Ray.

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Ray Bolger
Raymond Wallace "Ray" Bolger (January 10, 1904 – January 15, 1987) was an American entertainer of stage and screen, best known for his portrayal of the Scarecrow and Kansas farmworker Hunk in The Wizard of Oz.
Bolger was born into an Irish Catholic family in Dorchester, a section of Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Anne (née Wallace) and James Edward Bolger. He was inspired by the vaudeville shows he attended when he was young to become an entertainer himself. He began his career in a vaudeville tab show, creating the act "Sanford & Bolger" with his dance partner. In 1926, he danced at New York City's legendary Palace Theatre, the top vaudeville theatre in the country. His limber body and ability to ad lib movement won him many starring roles on Broadway in the 1930s. Eventually, his career would also encompass film, television and nightclub work.
Bolger's film career began when he signed a contract with MGM in 1936. His best-known film appearance prior to The Wizard of Oz was The Great Ziegfeld (1936), in which he portrayed himself. He also appeared in Sweethearts, (1938) the first MGM film in Technicolor, starring Nelson Eddy, Jeanette MacDonald, and Bolger's future Oz co-star, Frank Morgan, as well as the 1937 Eleanor Powell vehicle Rosalie, which also starred Eddy and Morgan. Following Oz, Bolger moved to RKO.

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Richard Benjamin
Richard Benjamin (born May 22, 1938) is an American actor and film director. He has starred in a number of productions, including Goodbye, Columbus (1969), based on the novella by Philip Roth, and Westworld (1973), and directed, among other films, the 1982 film My Favorite Year.
Benjamin was born in New York City, New York, the son of a garment industry worker. He attended the High School of Performing Arts and graduated from Northwestern University, where he was involved in many plays and studied in the Northwestern theater school.
He married actress Paula Prentiss on October 26, 1961; and they have two children. They appeared together in the short-lived television series He & She (1967–68) and the film Catch-22 (1970). In 1978, he starred in the ambitious, but short-lived, television series Quark.
Benjamin starred in Goodbye, Columbus (1969), based on the novella by Philip Roth. After appearing with a star-studded cast in the Mike Nichols film (1970) version of another best-seller, Catch-22, he starred in Diary of a Mad Housewife, The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker, and yet another film based on a famous Roth novel, Portnoy's Complaint (1972), in the title role.

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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.

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Rick Moranis
Frederick Allan "Rick" Moranis (born April 18, 1953) is an American actor. Moranis came to prominence around 1980 in the sketch comedy show Second City Television, and later appeared in several Hollywood films including Strange Brew; Ghostbusters; Spaceballs; Little Shop of Horrors; Honey, I Shrunk the Kids; Little Giants; Parenthood; The Flintstones; and My Blue Heaven.He is the widower of his only wife Anne Moranis.
Moranis was born in Toronto, Ontario, and went to high school at the Sir Sandford Fleming Secondary School. He went to elementary school with Geddy Lee, frontman of the rock band Rush. His career as an entertainer began as a radio disc jockey in the mid-1970s, using the on-air name of "Rick Alan" at three Toronto radio stations.
In 1980, Moranis was persuaded to join the third-season cast of Second City Television (SCTV) by friend and SCTV writer/performer Dave Thomas. At the time, Moranis was the only cast member who had not come from a Second City stage troupe. He became famous for his impressions of Woody Allen and George Carlin, among many others.

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Ridley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott (born 30 November, 1937) is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists (1977), Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Legend (1985), Black Rain (1989), Thelma & Louise (1991), Gladiator (2000), Hannibal (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), Kingdom of Heaven (2005) American Gangster (2007), Body of Lies (2008), and Prometheus (2012).
Scott has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Directing, as well as Golden Globe and Emmy Awards. He was knighted in the 2003 New Year Honours. In 2011, Scott received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is the older brother of film director Tony Scott.
Scott was born in South Shields, England, the son of Elizabeth and Colonel Francis Percy Scott. He was raised in an Army family, meaning that for most of his early life, his father — an officer in the Royal Engineers — was absent. Ridley's older brother, Frank, joined the Merchant Navy when he was still young and the pair had little contact. During this time the family moved around, living in (among other areas) Cumbria, Wales and Germany. He has a younger brother, Tony, also a film director. After the Second World War, the Scott family moved back to their native north-east England, eventually settling in Teesside (whose industrial landscape would later inspire similar scenes in Blade Runner). He enjoyed watching films, and his favourites include Lawrence of Arabia, Citizen Kane and Seven Samurai. Scott studied in Teesside from 1954 to 1958, at Grangefield Grammar School and later in West Hartlepool College of Art, graduating with a Diploma in Design.

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Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro (pronounced /dəˈnɪəroʊ/; born August 17, 1943) is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973. In 1974, he played the young Vito Corleone in The Godfather Part II, a role that won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
His critically acclaimed, longtime collaborations with Martin Scorsese began with 1973's Mean Streets, and earned De Niro an Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Jake LaMotta in the 1980 film Raging Bull. He was also nominated for an Academy Award for his roles in Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and Cape Fear (1991). In addition, he received nominations for his acting in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (1978) and Penny Marshall's Awakenings (1990). Also in 1990, his portrayal as Jimmy Conway in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas earned him a BAFTA nomination.
He has earned four nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy: New York, New York (1977), Midnight Run (1988), Analyze This (1999) and Meet the Parents (2000). De Niro directed A Bronx Tale (1993) and The Good Shepherd (2006). He has received accolades for his esteemed career, including the AFI Life Achievement Award and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award.

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Robert Lopez
Robert Lopez (born February 23, 1975) is an American composer and lyricist of musicals, best known for co-creating The Book of Mormon and Avenue Q, receiving Tony Awards for both works.
A native of the Manhattan neighborhood of Greenwich Village, Robert Lopez became interested in songwriting from an early age (he wrote his first song at 7.) He attended Hunter College High School and received a B.A. in English from Yale University, where he was a member of the Yale Spizzwinks(?).
In 1998, while participating in the prestigious BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop, he met another aspiring songwriter, Jeff Marx. Their first project together, Kermit, Prince of Denmark, a Muppet parody of Hamlet, won the Kleban Award for lyrics, though The Jim Henson Company rejected the script, saying it did not have enough "kid appeal." The story was considered for the next Muppet film by Chris Curtin in 2004, until Chris left the Disney Company. Highlights from the unproduced musical were performed by Rick Lyon, Rebecca Jones, and Susan Blackwell at the BMI Workshop.

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Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. (born August 18, 1936), better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime Achievement in 2002. In 2010 he was awarded French Knighthood in the Legion d'Honneur. At the height of his fame in the 1970s and 1980s, he was often described as one of the world's most attractive men and remains one of the most popular movie stars. His popular films include Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Downhill Racer (1969), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Candidate (1972), The Sting (1973), The Way We Were (1973), The Great Gatsby (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), All the President's Men (1976), A Bridge Too Far (1977), The Natural (1984), Out of Africa (1985), Sneakers (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993),The Last Castle and Spy Game (2001). As a filmmaker, his notable films include Ordinary People (1980), The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), A River Runs Through It (1992), Quiz Show (1994), The Horse Whisperer (1998) and The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000).

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Robert Ridgely
Robert Ridgely (December 24, 1931—February 8, 1997) was an American actor and vocal artist, known for both on-camera roles and extensive voice-over work.
Ridgely started his television career with guest roles in such 1960s series as Maverick, Sea Hunt and Surfside 6. He landed a regular role as Lt. Kimbro in the short-lived World War II series The Gallant Men. After the series was cancelled he continued with guest appearances in shows like Bonanza, WKRP in Cincinnati, Night Court and Designing Women. He also appeared in many movies, especially Mel Brooks productions such as Blazing Saddles (1974), High Anxiety (1977), Life Stinks (1991), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), and also had roles in films such as Beverly Hills Cop II (1987) and Boogie Nights (1997), and played Wally "Mr. Love" Williams, host of the fictional game show Easy Street in the 1980 movie Melvin and Howard. He was also the announcer of The Hollywood Television Showcase in the 1996 movie That Thing You Do.
In the late 1960s Ridgely acted as co-host to talk show host Woody Woodbury. He also appeared in many commercials, including a classic McDonalds commercial, staged as a Broadway production number, where he sings "There is nothin' so clean - as my burger machine". The commercial is available on YouTube.

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Robert Towne
Robert Towne (born Robert Bertram Schwartz; November 23, 1934) is an American screenwriter and director. His most notable work may be his Academy Award-winning original screenplay for Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974).
Towne is the author of many notable film scripts, including Chinatown (1974), for which he received an Academy Award, plus its sequel, The Two Jakes (1990), and Oscar-nominated screenplays The Last Detail and Shampoo as well as the first two Mission Impossible films. Towne has also a "stellar reputation" in the motion-picture industry as an uncredited script doctor, who has worked in such a capacity for The Godfather, Bonnie and Clyde, The Parallax View, The Rock and dozens of other Hollywood films.
After working for years on a script of Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984) he grew dissatisfied with the production and credited his dog, P.H. Vazak, with the script. Vazak became the first dog nominated for an Oscar for screenwriting, but he did not fetch the award. Towne co-wrote the film 8 Million Ways to Die using the alias David Lee Henry.

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Robert Zemeckis
Robert Lee Zemeckis (born May 14, 1951) is a Lithuanian American film director, producer and screenwriter. Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel Back to the Future film series, as well as the Academy Award-winning live-action/animation epic Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), though in the 1990s he diversified into more dramatic fare, including 1994's Forrest Gump, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director.
His films are characterized by an interest in state-of-the-art special effects, including the early use of match moving in Back to the Future Part II (1989) and the pioneering performance capture techniques seen in The Polar Express (2004), Beowulf (2007) and A Christmas Carol (2009). Though Zemeckis has often been pigeonholed as a director interested only in effects, his work has been defended by several critics, including David Thomson, who wrote that "No other contemporary director has used special effects to more dramatic and narrative purpose."

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Robin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes. The origin of the legend is claimed by some to have stemmed from actual outlaws, or from ballads or tales of outlaws.
Robin Hood became a popular folk figure in the medieval period continuing through to modern literature, films and television. In the earliest sources, Robin Hood is a yeoman, but he was often later portrayed as an aristocrat wrongfully dispossessed of his lands and made into an outlaw by an unscrupulous sheriff.
In popular culture, Robin Hood and his band of "merry men" are usually portrayed as living in Sherwood Forest, in Nottinghamshire, where much of the action in the early ballads takes place. So does the very first recorded Robin Hood rhyme, four lines from the early 15th century, beginning: "Robyn hode in scherewode stod." However, the overall picture from the surviving early ballads and other early references suggest that Robin Hood may have been based in the Barnsdale area of what is now South Yorkshire (which borders Nottinghamshire).

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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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Roger Daltrey
Roger Harry Daltrey, CBE (born 1 March 1944), is an English singer, musician, songwriter and actor, best known as the founder and lead singer of English rock band The Who. He has maintained a musical career as a solo artist and has also worked in the film industry, acting in a large number of films, theatre and television roles and also producing films. In 2008 he was ranked number 61 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 greatest singers of all time.
Roger Harry Daltrey was born in the Hammersmith area of London, but was brought up in Acton, the same working class suburban district that produced fellow Who members Pete Townshend and John Entwistle. He was one of three children born to parents Irene and Harry Daltrey, and grew up with two sisters, Gillian and Carol. Harry Daltrey worked for a water closet manufacturer, and Irene Daltrey was told she would be unable to have children because of losing a kidney in 1937. Nevertheless, she went into labour during a World War II air raid and gave birth to her son at the nearby Hammersmith Hospital, West London. At the age of three, the young Roger swallowed a rusty nail which had to be surgically removed, leaving a visible scar. At the age of five, the rust from the nail caused an ulcer in his stomach which required him to be hospitalised.

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Ron Howard
Ronald William "Ron" Howard (born March 1, 1954) is an American film director, producer and former child actor. He came to prominence playing Opie Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show for eight years, and later the teenaged Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days for six years. He appeared in the films American Graffiti in 1973 and The Shootist in 1976, the latter during his run on Happy Days. Howard made his directorial debut with the 1977 comedy Grand Theft Auto, and left Happy Days in 1980 to focus on directing. His films include the Academy Award-winning Cocoon, Apollo 13, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Beautiful Mind. In 2003, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Asteroid 12561 Howard is named after him.
Howard was born in Duncan, Oklahoma, the son of Jean Speegle Howard, an actress, and Rance Howard, a director, writer and actor. His father was born with the surname "Beckenholdt", and had taken the stage name "Howard" by 1948, for his acting career. Rance Howard was serving three years in the United States Air Force at the time of Ron's birth. The family moved to Hollywood in 1958, the year before the birth of his younger brother, Clint Howard. They rented a house on the block south of the Desilu Studios, where The Andy Griffith Show would later be filmed. They lived in Hollywood for at least three years, before moving to Burbank.

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Ron Moody
Ron Moody (born Ronald Moodnick; 8 January 1924) is an English actor.
Moody was born in Tottenham, North London, England, the son of Kate (née Ogus) and Bernard Moodnick, a studio executive. His father was of Russian Jewish descent and his mother was a Lithuanian Jew. He is a cousin of director Laurence Moody and actress Clare Lawrence. His surname was legally changed to Moody in 1930.
Moody was educated at Southgate County School, which at the time was a state grammar school, and based in Palmers Green in the London Borough of Enfield, in North London, followed by the London School of Economics in Central London, where he trained to become a sociologist.
Despite training to be a sociologist, Moody began appearing in theatrical shows and later decided to become a professional actor.
Moody has worked in a variety of genres, but is perhaps best known for his starring role as Fagin in Lionel Bart's stage and film musical Oliver! based on Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. He created the role in the original West End production, and reprised it in 1984 on Broadway and in the 1968 film, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

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Roscoe Lee Browne
Roscoe Lee Browne (May 2, 1925 – April 11, 2007) was an American actor and director, known for his rich voice and dignified bearing.
Browne was the fourth son of a Baptist minister, Sylvanus S. Browne, and his wife Lovie (née Lovie Lee Usher). Born in Woodbury, New Jersey, Browne first attended historically black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he became a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1946. He undertook postgraduate work at Middlebury College in Vermont, Columbia University in New York City, and at the University of Florence in Italy. Also an outstanding middle-distance runner, Browne won the Amateur Athletic Union 1,000-yard national indoor championship in 1949. He occasionally returned to Lincoln University between 1946 to 1952 to instruct classes in comparative literature, French, and English. Upon leaving academia he earned a living for several years selling wine for Schenley Import Corporation. Despite his limited amateur acting experience, in 1956 he stunned guests at a party – among them opera singer Leontyne Price – when he announced his intention to quit his secure job with Schenley to become a full-time professional actor.

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Ruby Dee
Ruby Dee (born October 27, 1924) is an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and activist. She is perhaps best known for co-starring in the film A Raisin in the Sun (1961) and the film American Gangster (2007) for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has won a Grammy, Emmy, Obie, Drama Desk, Screen Actors Guild Award, Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, and is a recipient of the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors, among scores of others awards.
Dee was born Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, Ohio, the daughter of Gladys Hightower and Marshall Edward Nathaniel Wallace, a cook, waiter, and porter. After her mother left the family, Dee's father married Emma Amelia Benson, a schoolteacher. Dee grew up in Harlem, New York. She attended Hunter College High School and went on to graduate from Hunter College with degrees in French and Spanish in 1944. Dee is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
Dee made several appearances on Broadway before receiving national recognition for her role in the 1950 film The Jackie Robinson Story. Her career in acting has crossed all major forms of media over a span of eight decades, including the films A Raisin in the Sun, in which she recreated her stage role as a suffering housewife in the projects, and Edge of the City. She played both roles opposite Sidney Poitier. During the 1960s, Dee appeared in such politically charged films as Gone Are the Days and The Incident, which is recognized as helping pave the way for young African-American actors and filmmakers.

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Rudy De Luca
Rudy De Luca is an American screenwriter and actor best known for his work with filmmaker Mel Brooks.

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Rupert Holmes
Rupert Holmes (born February 24, 1947) is an English-born American composer, singer-songwriter, musician and author of plays, novels and stories. He is best known for his number one pop hit "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" (1979/1980) and the song "Him", which reached the number 6 position on the Hot 100 U.S. pop chart in 1980. He is also known for his 1985 Tony Award-winning musical Drood (originally The Mystery of Edwin Drood) and his 2007 Drama Desk Award-winning book for the Broadway musical Curtains, and for his television series Remember WENN.
Holmes was born David Goldstein in Northwich, Cheshire, England. His father, Leonard Goldstein, was a United States Army Warrant Officer and bandleader, his mother, Gwen, was English, and both were musical. Holmes has dual American and British citizenship. The family moved when Holmes was six years old to the northern New York City suburb of Nanuet, New York, where Holmes grew up and attended nearby Nyack High School and then the Manhattan School of Music (majoring in clarinet). Holmes' brother, Richard, is an opera singer based in New York City and is the principal lyric baritone of the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players, sings roles with regional opera companies, such as Glimmerglass Opera, Lake George, and Virginia Opera, among others, and has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera.

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Sam Denoff
Samuel Denoff (July 1, 1928 – July 8, 2011) was an American Emmy Award-winning screenwriter, television producer. He was born in Brooklyn, New York. With his long time collaborator Bill Persky he wrote and created the television show "That Girl" starring Marlo Thomas.

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Sandy Helberg
Sandy Helberg (born May 28, 1949) is a German-American actor.
Born in Frankfurt, Germany, grew up in Toledo, Ohio, he moved to New York where he studied acting with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Sandy did stand-up and was part of an improv group that worked clubs in Greenwich Village. He later moved to Los Angeles, becoming an original member of the Los Angeles improv group, The Groundlings. Acting in several comedy films, in particular three Mel Brooks films High Anxiety, History of the World: Part 1 and Spaceballs, he starred in the comedy films The Hollywood Knights and Up the Creek.
Sandy wrote and starred in short lived 1977 TV series The Lorenzo and Henrietta Music Show and the 1979 CBS TV series Flatbush. He has made numerous guest appearances on TV shows, including Trapper John, M.D., Remington Steele, Newhart, The Jeffersons, M*A*S*H, Married... with Children, The Wonder Years, Night Court, Fernwood Tonight, Knight Rider, Too Close for Comfort, Get a Life, House Calls, Cybill, and Days of our Lives among others. Sandy also co-starred in the NBC miniseries, Harold Robbins' 79 Park Avenue and CBS movie of the week, More Wild Wild West.

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Scott Wittman
Scott Wittman (born 1955) is an American director, lyricist, and writer for Broadway, concerts, and television.
Wittman was raised in Nanuet, New York, graduated high Nanuet Senior High School in 1972 and attended Emerson College in Boston for two years before leaving to pursue a career in musical theatre in New York City. While directing a show for a Greenwich Village club he met Marc Shaiman, and the two became collaborators and life partners. While Shaiman wrote for television shows, including Saturday Night Live, Wittman directed concerts for such artists as Bette Midler, Christine Ebersole, Raquel Welch, Dame Edna Everage, and Lypsinka, among others.
In 2002, Shaiman and Wittman collaborated on Hairspray, which won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics, the Tony Award for Best Original Score, and a Grammy Award. In addition to Hairspray, Wittman conceived, wrote lyrics for, and directed Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me and conceived and directed Matters of the Heart, a solo concert by Patti LuPone.

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Sheldon Keller
Sheldon Bernard "Shelly" Keller (20 August 1923 – 1 September 2008) was an American screenwriter and composer.
Keller was born in Chicago, Illinois and attended University of Illinois, where he began writing comedy with his fraternity brother Allan Sherman. He served in the Pacific Theater with the United States Army Signal Corps during World War II.
After the war, Keller came home and married Bernice "Bitsy" Berkowitz. They had 2 children, Casey and Jamie. In 1951 he borrowed $500 from his father-in-law and moved the family to New York hoping to become an entertainer and comedian. He soon began writing for television.
On Caesar's Hour, Keller worked with notable writers Mel Brooks, Selma Diamond, Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin, Michael Stewart and Gary Belkin. In 1956, 1957, and 1958 the show was nominated for Emmy Award for Best Comedy Writing - Variety or Situation Comedy.
Keller also wrote several episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, and M*A*S*H, including For Want of a Boot and The Chosen People Notable screenplays include Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell (written with Melvin Frank and Denis Norden) and Cleopatra Jones (with Max Julien). Keller co-wrote the 1979 film Movie Movie with Gelbart, winning the WGA Award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen. He wrote specials for Frank Sinatra, Danny Kaye and Carol Channing, winning a 1966 Emmy Award with Hal Goldman and Al Gordon for writing An Evening With Carol Channing.

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Sid Caesar
Isaac Sidney "Sid" Caesar (born September 8, 1922) is an Emmy award winning American comic actor and writer known for the 1950s television series Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, and to younger generations as Coach Calhoun in Grease and Grease 2.
Caesar was born in Yonkers, New York, the youngest son of Max Caesar and his wife Ida (née Raphael), Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire who ran a restaurant. Caesar would wait on tables and learned to mimic the accents, something he would use throughout his career. He first tried his double-talk with a group of Italians, his head barely reaching above the table. They enjoyed it so much that they sent him over to a group of Poles to repeat it in Polish, and so on with Russians, Hungarians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Lithuanians and Bulgarians. Despite his apparent fluency in many languages, Caesar can actually speak only English and Yiddish. Sid's older brother David was his comic mentor and "one-man cheering section." They created their earliest family sketches from then current movies like Test Pilot and Wings.

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Sidney Glazier
Sidney Glazer (May 29, 1916 – December 14, 2002) was an American film producer best known for his work on the Mel Brooks film The Producers.
Sidney Glazier was born in Philadelphia on May 29, 1916, the second of three sons born to Russian-Polish émigré parents Jake Glazier and Sophie Schekid from Minsk. His elder brother, Tom Glazer was to become a composer, guitarist, and folk singer. His father, a carpenter, died during the 1918 flu epidemic, and when his mother remarried, her new husband, Solomon Levick did not want her children in the house. As a result, the three boys were placed in the Hebrew Orphan Home in Philadelphia when Glazier was 5. Glazier later reported that "[h]er reasoning and the pain it brought us remain incomprehensible, unfathomable." Glazier ran away from the orphanage after being sexually abused by a volunteer, but returned as he could find nowhere else to go. He later sought psychoanalysis to help him deal with these childhood experiences. Glazier left the home at the age of 15, working as an usher at the Bijou burlesque theater that showed films between acts. He recalled "I instantly realized that films would always be the loveliest and best escape from the troubled life I inherited". He also worked as a part-time pimp for a local madam.

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Slim Pickens
Louis Burton Lindley, Jr. (June 29, 1919 – December 8, 1983), better known by the stage name Slim Pickens, was an American rodeo performer and film and television actor who epitomized the profane, tough, sardonic cowboy, but who is best remembered for his comic roles, notably in Dr. Strangelove and Blazing Saddles.
Pickens was born Louis Burton Lindley, Jr. in Kingsburg, California, the son of Sally Mosher (née Turk) and Louis Bert Lindley, Sr. He was an excellent rider from age 4 and quit school to join the rodeo at 12. He was told that working in the rodeo would be "slim pickings" (very little money), giving him his name, but he did well and eventually became a well-known rodeo clown.
After 20 years on the rodeo circuit, his distinctive Oklahoma-Texas drawl (even though he was a lifelong Californian), his wide eyes and moon face and strong physical presence gained him a role in the western Rocky Mountain (1950) starring Errol Flynn. He appeared in many more westerns, playing both villains and comic sidekicks to the likes of Rex Allen.

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Smokey Robinson
William "Smokey" Robinson, Jr. (born February 19, 1940) is an American R&B singer-songwriter, record producer, and former record executive. Robinson is most notable for being the founder and front man of the popular Motown vocal group, The Miracles, for which he also served as the group's chief songwriter and producer. Robinson led the group from its 1955 origins as The Five Chimes until 1972 when he announced a retirement from the stage to focus on his role as Motown's vice president.
However, Robinson returned to the music industry as a solo artist the following year, later having solo hits such as "Baby That's Backatcha", "Quiet Storm", "The Agony and the Ecstasy", "Cruisin'", "Being With You" and "Just to See Her". Following the sale of Motown Records in 1988, Robinson left Motown in 1990. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.
Robinson was born in Detroit and raised in the city's North End section. At one point, he and Diana Ross were next-door neighbors; he said he has known Ross since she was eight. Robinson later told reporters when he was a child, his uncle christened him "Smokey Joe", which Robinson assumed was a "cowboy name for me" until he was later told that smokey was a pejorative term for dark-skinned Blacks. Robinson, who is mainly of African American descent and is light-skinned, remembers his uncle saying to him, "I'm doing this so you won't ever forget that you're black." Robinson grew up as a fan of Western films.

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Spike Milligan
Terence Alan Patrick Seán "Spike" Milligan KBE (16 April 1918 – 27 February 2002) was a British comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright, soldier and actor. His early life was spent in India, where he was born, but the majority of his working life was spent in the United Kingdom. He became an Irish citizen in 1962 after the British government declared him stateless. He was the co-creator, main writer and a principal cast member of The Goon Show, performing a range of roles including the popular Eccles.
Milligan wrote and edited many books, including Puckoon and his seven-volume autobiographical account of his time serving during the Second World War, beginning with Adolf Hitler: My part in his downfall. He is also noted as a popular writer of comical verse; much of his poetry was written for children, including Silly Verse for Kids (1959). After success with the ground-breaking British radio programme, The Goon Show, Milligan translated this success to television with Q5, a surreal sketch show which is credited as a major influence on the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

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Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick (/ˈkuːbrɪk/; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor. He is regarded as having been one of America's greatest filmmakers. His films, typically adaptations of novels or short stories, were noted for their "dazzling" and unique cinematography, attention to details to achieve realism and an inspired use of music scores. Kubrick's films covered a variety of genres, including war, black comedy, horror and science fiction. Kubrick was also noted for being a perfectionist, using painstaking care with scene staging and working closely with his actors.
Starting out as a photographer in New York City, he taught himself all aspects of film production and directing after graduating high school. His earliest films were made on a shoestring budget, followed by one Hollywood blockbuster, after which he spent most of the rest of his career living and filming in England. His home became his workplace where he did his writing, research, editing and management of production details. This allowed him to have almost complete artistic control, but with the rare advantage of having financial support from major Hollywood studios.

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Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim (

/ˈsɒnd.haɪm/) (born March 22, 1930) is an American composer and lyricist known for his contributions to musical theatre. He is the winner of an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards (more than any other composer) including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award. Described by Frank Rich of the New York Times as "the greatest, and perhaps best-known artist working in musical theatre", his most famous works include (as composer/lyricist) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy.
Sondheim has also written material for movies, including the 1981 Warren Beatty film Reds, contributing the song "Goodbye For Now". He also wrote five songs for the 1990 movie Dick Tracy, including "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)", which won the Academy Award for Best Song.

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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.

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Steve Tesich
Stojan Steve Tesich (Serbian: Стојан Стив Тешић, Stojan Stiv Tešić; September 29, 1942 – July 1, 1996) was a Serbian-American screenwriter, playwright and novelist. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1979 for the movie Breaking Away.
Steve Tesich was born as Stojan Tešić (Serbian: Стојан Тешић, pronounced Tesh-ich) in Užice, Yugoslavia (now Serbia) on September 29, 1942, but immigrated to the USA in 1957 with his family when he was 14 years old. His father died in 1962.
His family settled in East Chicago, Indiana. Tesich graduated from Indiana University in 1965 with a BA in Russian, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity. He went on to do graduate work at Columbia University, receiving an MA in Russian Literature in 1967. He also wrote his first plays while at Columbia University. After graduation, he worked as a Department of Welfare caseworker in Brooklyn, New York in 1968.
He had been an alternate rider in 1962 for the Phi Kappa Psi team in the Little 500 bicycle race. His teammate was Dave Blase, who rode 139 of 200 laps and was the victory rider crossing the finish line for his team. They subsequently developed a friendship. Dave Blase was the model for the main character in Tesich's award-winning screenplay Breaking Away in 1979.

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Steven Sater
Steven Sater is an American poet, playwright, lyricist, television writer, and screenwriter.
Born in Evansville, Indiana, Sater attended Washington University in St. Louis as an undergraduate. Due to an apartment fire Sater was forced to jump from his balcony and damaged his spine, as well as several other limbs. The months spent recovering from his injuries and burns inspired Sater to teach himself Ancient Greek and seriously pursue the arts, and he went on to study English literature at Princeton University. [1]
After completing his graduate program, Sater took a position with a New York literary agent, but continued to write plays on the side. It was during this time that he joined the Soka Gakkai, a lay Buddhist organization. His membership has proved important to his life beyond spirituality, as it brought Sater together with both his future wife, and his future creative partner, Duncan Sheik.[2]
Soon after meeting, Sater collaborated with Sheik on his play Umbrage, with Sheik providing the music for Sater's lyrics. To produce Sheik's third studio album Phantom Moon, Sater gave Sheik lyrics and Sheik set them musically, cooperatively producing the album. They returned to stage to produce Nero at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, California, with book and lyrics by Sater and music by Sheik. The project remains in active development, most recently workshopped with New York Stage and Film at the Powerhouse Theater at Vassar College in July 2008, starring Idina Menzel, Lea Michele, and Michael Arden, under the direction of Daniel Kramer.[3]

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Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as archetypes of modern Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. In later years, his films began addressing such issues as the Holocaust, slavery, war and terrorism. He is considered one of the most popular and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He is also one of the co-founders of DreamWorks movie studio.
Spielberg won the Academy Award for Best Director for Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Three of Spielberg's films—Jaws (1975), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Jurassic Park (1993)—achieved box office records, each becoming the highest-grossing film made at the time. To date, the unadjusted gross of all Spielberg-directed films exceeds $8.5 billion worldwide. Forbes puts Spielberg's wealth at $3.0 billion.

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Suzanne Farrell
Suzanne Farrell (born August 16, 1945) is an eminent 20th century ballerina (often referred to as the greatest American lyric ballerina) and the founder of the Suzanne Farrell Ballet at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
She was born as Roberta Sue Ficker in Cincinnati, and received her early training at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. In 1960 she was selected to study at George Balanchine's School of American Ballet with a Ford Foundation scholarship; she started there in 1960, and joined the New York City Ballet (NYCB) in 1961.
Initially part of the corps de ballet at NYCB, Farrell soon moved on to dancing featured roles. The first ballet choreographed for her was Passage, now Arcade, by John Taras in 1963. Balanchine first paired her with Jacques d' Amboise to choreograph his Meditation, which debuted in Winter 1963. One of her most notable roles was Dulcinea in Balanchine's Don Quixote, which premiered in May 1965. Balanchine performed in the of Don Quixote on opening night. She re-scaled many ballets and expanded them to a new level of technique. In 1965 she was promoted to principal dancer. Her first role in her new title was Agon with Arthur Mitchell at the Paris Opera. George Balanchine quickly fell in love with his "alabaster princess", and created many roles for her. Farrell described learning choreography from Balanchine as a collaborative process, saying, "When Mr. B was working on a ballet, something would just spill out of his body; he could rarely duplicate it, so I tried to see precisely what he wanted the first time." In 1965 he created Don Quixote, thought to be a valentine to his newest "muse." In 1968 he cast her as the lead in the "Diamonds" section of his three-act plotless ballet "Jewels".

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Teri Garr
Terry Ann "Teri" Garr (born December 11, 1947) is an American film , theatre and television actress and dancer best known for her roles in Young Frankenstein, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Tootsie, Mr. Mom. After Hours, One From the Heart and Friends.
Garr was born in Lakewood, Ohio in 1947. Her father, Eddie Garr (born Edward Leo Gonnoud), was a vaudeville performer, comedian and actor whose career peaked when he briefly took over the lead role in the Broadway drama Tobacco Road. Her mother, Phyllis Lind (née Emma Schmotzer), was a dancer, a Rockette, wardrobe mistress, and model. Her father was of Irish descent and her maternal grandparents were Austrian immigrants.
Early in her career, she was credited, variously, as Terri Garr, Terry Garr, Teri Hope, or Terry Carr. Garr's movie debut was as an extra in 1963's A Swingin' Affair. At the end of her senior year, Garr auditioned for the cast of the Los Angeles Road Company production of West Side Story, where she met one of the most important people in her early career, David Winters, who became her friend, her dance teacher, and her mentor and cast her in many of his early movies and projects.

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Tim Conway
Thomas Daniel "Tim" Conway (born December 15, 1933) is an Emmy award-winning American comedian and actor, who has worked in sitcoms, sketch comedy, and film. Conway is best known for his role in the popular 1960s WWII sitcom McHale's Navy as the inept Ensign Charles Parker, second in command to Lt. Commander Quinton McHale (Ernest Borgnine), and for co-starring alongside Carol Burnett on The Carol Burnett Show.
Conway was born in Willoughby, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, to an Irish father and Romanian mother, and grew up in nearby Chagrin Falls. He attended Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, majoring in speech and radio, and was a member of the Phi Delta Theta Fraternity. After graduating, he joined the Army, and thereafter took a job at a Cleveland radio station, at first answering mail and later as a writer in the promotional department. Conway changed his first name to "Tim" to avoid confusion with actor Tom Conway.
Conway moved back to Cleveland to work with Ernie Anderson on KYW-TV, an NBC affiliate, in 1958 and 1959 and later, from 1960 to 1962, on WJW TV, (then the CBS affiliate) on the weekday morning film (under the Ernie's Place banner) where he also wrote material for the comedic skits shown in between film intermissions. Conway recorded a comedy album with Anderson.

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Tim Matheson
Tim Matheson (born Timothy Lewis Matthieson; December 31, 1947) is an American actor, director and producer. He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of the smooth-talking Eric 'Otter' Stratton in the 1978 comedy National Lampoon's Animal House and the bitter Vice President John Hoynes in the NBC Drama, The West Wing and has had a variety of other well-known roles, including providing the voice of the lead character in the cartoon TV program Jonny Quest.
At the age of 13, Matheson appeared as Roddy Miller in Robert Young's CBS nostalgia comedy series Window on Main Street during the 1961-1962 television season. In 1964, he provided the voice of the lead character in the cartoon program Jonny Quest. He was also the voice of Jace in the original animated series of Space Ghost. In addition, he played the role of the oldest son, Mike Beardsley, in the film Yours, Mine and Ours, which also starred Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda.
In 1969, he joined the cast of NBC's The Virginian western series in the eighth season, as Jim Horn. He had a guest role in the 14th episode of the second season of Night Gallery, in the story "Logoda’s Heads". In the final season of the television western Bonanza in 1972-1973, Matheson played Griff King, a parolee who tries to reform his life as a worker at the Ponderosa Ranch under Ben Cartwright's watch. He portrayed a young motorcycle cop, Phil Sweet, in the 1973 film Magnum Force. Matheson also appeared earlier in the ABC television comedy series My Three Sons and Leave It to Beaver. In 1975, he guest starred in CBS's short-lived family drama, Three for the Road.

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Tina Turner
Tina Turner (born Anna Mae Bullock; November 26, 1939) is an American singer and actress whose career has spanned more than 50 years. She has won numerous awards. Turner started out her music career with husband Ike Turner as a member of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue. Success followed with a string of hits including "River Deep, Mountain High" and the 1971 hit "Proud Mary". With the publication of her autobiography I, Tina (1986), Turner revealed severe instances of spousal abuse against her by Ike Turner prior to their 1976 split and subsequent 1978 divorce. After virtually disappearing from the music scene for several years following her divorce from Ike Turner, she rebuilt her career, launching a string of hits beginning in 1983 with the single "Let's Stay Together" and the 1984 release of her fifth solo album Private Dancer.
Her musical career led to film roles, beginning with a prominent role as The Acid Queen in the 1975 film Tommy, and an appearance in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. She starred opposite Mel Gibson as Aunty Entity in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome for which she received the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture, and her version of the film's theme, "We Don't Need Another Hero", was a hit single. She appeared in the 1993 film Last Action Hero.

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Tony Bennett
Anthony Dominick Benedetto, better known as Tony Bennett (born August 3, 1926), is an American singer of popular music, standards, show tunes, and jazz. Bennett is also a serious and accomplished painter, having created works — under the name Benedetto — that are on permanent public display in several institutions. He is the founder of Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in New York City.
Raised in New York City, Bennett began singing at an early age. He fought in the final stages of World War II as an infantryman with the U.S. Army in the European Theatre. Afterwards, he developed his singing technique, signed with Columbia Records, and had his first number one popular song with "Because of You" in 1951. Several top hits such as "Rags to Riches" followed in the early 1950s. Bennett then further refined his approach to encompass jazz singing. He reached an artistic peak in the late 1950s with albums such as The Beat of My Heart and Basie Swings, Bennett Sings. In 1962, Bennett recorded his signature song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco". His career and his personal life then suffered an extended downturn during the height of the rock music era.

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Trey Parker
Trey Parker (born Randolph Severn Parker III; October 19, 1969) is an American actor, voice artist, animator, screenwriter, director, producer and musician, best known for being the co-creator of South Park along with his creative partner and best friend Matt Stone.
Parker started his film career in 1992, making a holiday short titled Jesus vs. Frosty. His first success came from Cannibal! The Musical. From there he made another short titled Jesus vs. Santa, which led him and college friend Stone to create South Park, which began airing on television in 1997. He has won four Emmy Awards for his role in South Park, winning for both "Outstanding Programming More Than One Hour" and "Outstanding Programming Less Than One Hour".
He co-wrote and co-directed the 2011 multi-Tony Award winning musical The Book of Mormon.

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Twyla Tharp
Twyla Tharp (born July 1, 1941) is an American dancer and choreographer, who lives and works in New York City.
Tharp was born in 1941 on a farm in Portland, Indiana, and was named after Twila Thornburg, the "Pig Princess" of the 89th Annual Muncie Fair in Indiana.
When Tharp was a young child she spent a few months each year living with her Quaker grandparents on their farm in Indiana. In 1950 Tharp's family—younger sister Twanette, twin brothers Stanley and Stanford, mother Lecile and father William—moved to Rialto, California. Her parents opened a drive-in movie theater, where Tharp worked from the time she was 8 years old. The drive-in was on the corner of Acacia and Foothill, the major east–west artery in Rialto and the path of Route 66. She attended Pacific High School in San Bernardino and studied at the Vera Lynn School of Dance. Tharp, a "devoted bookworm," admits that this schedule left little time for a social life. Tharp attended Pomona College in California but later transferred to Barnard College in New York City, where she graduated with a degree in Art History in 1963. It was in New York that she studied with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham. In 1963 Tharp joined the Paul Taylor Dance Company.

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Uma Thurman
Uma Karuna Thurman (born April 29, 1970) is an American actress and model. She has performed in leading roles in a variety of films, ranging from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action movies. She received an Academy Award nomination for the Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction (1994) and she won a Golden Globe Award for her performance in Hysterical Blindness (2002).
Thurman was born in Boston to Nena von Schlebrügge and Robert Thurman, and grew up mostly in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she went to Amherst Regional Middle School, and then moved to Woodstock, New York. Her father gave his children a Buddhist upbringing, and she is named after an Dbuma Chenpo (in Tibetan, the "db" is silent; from Mahamadhyamaka in Sanskrit, meaning "Great Middle Way"). Regarding religion, she now calls herself agnostic. She has three brothers, Ganden (b. 1968), Dechen (b. 1973), and Mipam (b. 1978), and a half-sister named Taya (b. 1960), from her father's previous marriage. She and her siblings spent time in Almora, Uttarakhand, India, during childhood, and the Dalai Lama sometimes visited their home. She is described as having been an awkward and introverted girl who was teased for her tall frame, angular bone structure, enormous feet and unusual name (sometimes using the name “Uma Karen” instead of her birth name). When she was 10 years old, a friend's mother suggested a nose job. As a child, she suffered bouts of body dysmorphic disorder, which she discussed in an interview with Talk magazine in 2001. She attended Amherst Public Schools. In the 8th grade she discovered her love for acting. Talent scouts noticed her performance as Abigail in a production of The Crucible, and offered her the chance to act professionally. Thurman attended Northfield Mount Hermon School, an elite preparatory school in Massachusetts, before dropping out to pursue a career in acting.

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Van Cliburn
Harvey Lavan "Van" Cliburn, Jr. (born July 12, 1934), is an American pianist who achieved worldwide recognition in 1958 at the age of twenty-three, when he won the first quadrennial International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow, at the height of the Cold War.
Van Cliburn was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, and began taking piano lessons at the age of three from his mother, the former Rildia Bee O'Bryan, who herself had been instructed by Arthur Friedheim, a pupil of Franz Liszt. At six years old, Cliburn moved with his family to Kilgore, Texas, and at twelve he won a statewide piano competition which enabled him to debut with the Houston Symphony Orchestra. He entered the Juilliard School at the age of seventeen, and studied under Rosina Lhévinne, who trained him in the tradition of the great Russian romantics. At twenty, Cliburn won the Leventritt Award, and made his Carnegie Hall debut.
It was his recognition in Moscow that propelled Cliburn to international fame. The first International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958 was an event designed to demonstrate Soviet cultural superiority during the Cold War, on the heels of their technological victory with the Sputnik launch in October 1957. Cliburn's performance at the competition finale of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 earned him a standing ovation lasting eight minutes. When it was time to announce a winner, the judges were obliged to ask permission of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to give first prize to an American. "Is he the best?" Khrushchev asked. "Then give him the prize!" Cliburn returned home to a ticker-tape parade in New York City, the only time the honor has been accorded a classical musician. His cover story in Time proclaimed him "The Texan Who Conquered Russia."

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Waldo Salt
Waldo Miller Salt (October 18, 1914 – March 7, 1987) was an American screenwriter who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses during the era of McCarthyism.
Salt was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Winifred (née Porter) and William Haslem Salt, an artist and business executive. He graduated from Stanford University at age eighteen.^{[citation needed]} The first of his nineteen films he wrote or in which he participated in the writing, was released in 1937 with the title The Bride Wore Red. He joined the American Communist Party in 1938, and was a civilian consultant to the U.S. Office of War Information during World War II.^{[citation needed]}
Salt's career in Hollywood was interrupted when he was blacklisted after refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951. Like many other blacklisted writers, while he was unable to work in Hollywood Salt wrote pseudonymously for the British television series The Adventures of Robin Hood. After the collapse of the blacklist, Salt won Academy Awards for Midnight Cowboy and Coming Home, and a nomination for his work on Serpico.

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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.

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Wikipedia Persondata
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Will Ferrell

John William "Will" Ferrell (/ˈfɛrəl/; born July 16, 1967) is an American comedian, impressionist, actor, and writer. Ferrell first established himself in the mid 1990s as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, and has subsequently starred in the comedy films Old School, Elf, Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Stranger than Fiction, Blades of Glory, Semi-Pro, and The Other Guys. He is considered a member of the "Frat Pack", a generation of leading Hollywood comic actors who emerged in the late 1990s and the 2000s, including Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Steve Carell, Vince Vaughn, and brothers Owen and Luke Wilson.
Ferrell was born in Irvine, California, the son of Betty Kay (née Overman), a teacher who taught at Old Mill School elementary school and Santa Ana College, and Roy Lee Ferrell, Jr., a musician with The Righteous Brothers. His parents were both natives of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, and moved to California in 1964; Ferrell has Irish ancestry. Ferrell has a younger brother, Patrick. When he was 8, his parents divorced. Ferrell said of the divorce, "I was the type of kid who would say, 'Hey Look at the bright side! We'll have two Christmases.'" The divorce was amicable and both parents were committed to their children. The biggest problem was Lee's line of work. As a person in show business, his paychecks were never steady and he was gone from home months at a time. Growing up in the environment made Ferrell not want to go into show business, but get a steady job.

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William Goldman
William Goldman (born August 12, 1931) is an American novelist, playwright, and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.
Goldman grew up in a Jewish family in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, the son of Marion (née Weil) and Maurice Clarence Goldman, who worked in business. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College in 1952 and a Master of Arts degree from Columbia University in 1956. Goldman lives in a penthouse apartment in New York City. His brother, James Goldman, who died in 1998, was a playwright and screenwriter.
According to his memoir, Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983), Goldman began writing when he took a creative-writing course in college. His grades in the class were "horrible". An editor of Oberlin's literary magazine, he would submit short stories to the magazine anonymously; he recalls that the other editors, upon reading his submissions, remarked "We can't possibly publish this shit." He did not originally intend to become a screenwriter. His main interests were poetry, short stories, and novels. In 1956 he completed an MA thesis at Columbia University on the comedy of manners in America.

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William Inge
William Motter Inge (

/ˈɪndʒ/;May 3, 1913 – June 10, 1973) was an American playwright and novelist, whose works typically feature solitary protagonists encumbered with strained sexual relations. In the early 1950s, he had a string of memorable Broadway productions, and one of these, Picnic, earned him a Pulitzer Prize. With his portraits of small-town life and settings rooted in the American heartland, Inge became known as the "Playwright of the Midwest".
Born in Independence, Kansas, Inge attended Independence Community College and graduated from the University of Kansas in 1935 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Speech and Drama. While at the University of Kansas, Inge was a member of the Nu Chapter of Sigma Nu. Offered a scholarship to work on a Master of Arts degree, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to attend the George Peabody College for Teachers, but later dropped out.
Back in Kansas, he worked as a laborer on the state highway and a Wichita news announcer. In 1937–38 he taught English and drama at Cherokee County Community High School in Columbus, Kansas. After returning and completing his Master's at Peabody in 1938, he taught at Stephens College, in Columbia, Missouri, from 1938 to 1943.

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Winnie Holzman
Winnie Holzman (born 1954; New York City) is an American dramatist, screenwriter and poet. She created the ABC television series My So-Called Life, which earned her an Emmy Award nomination for writing in 1995. She also wrote for thirtysomething and Once and Again.
Holzman studied English and Creative Writing at Princeton University and graduated with a Masters in Musical Theatre Writing from New York University in 1984. Her teachers at NYU included Stephen Sondheim, Hal Prince, Arthur Laurents, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, and Leonard Bernstein.
Holzman made her Broadway debut in 2003 when she wrote the book for the Stephen Schwartz musical Wicked, based on the novel of the same name by Gregory Maguire. She won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical.
Holzman has had a number of acting spots, primarily cameo roles on her own TV shows and a role as a therapist on Curb Your Enthusiasm. She also had a small role in the film Jerry Maguire. She wrote and performed several personal essays at the Un-Cabaret spoken word shows in Los Angeles and is featured on their CD Play the Word (Vol. 1).

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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."

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Zero Mostel
Samuel Joel “Zero” Mostel (February 28, 1915 – September 8, 1977) was an American actor of stage and screen, best known for his portrayal of comic characters such as Tevye on stage in Fiddler on the Roof, Pseudolus on stage and on screen in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Max Bialystock in the original film version of The Producers. He was blacklisted during the 1950s, and his testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities was well-publicized. He was a Tony Award and Obie Award winner.
Mostel was born to Israel Mostel, an Eastern European Jew, and Cina "Celia" Druchs, also from a Jewish family, who was born in Poland and raised in Vienna. The two immigrated to the United States (separately: Israel in 1898 and Cina in 1908), where they met and married. Israel already had four children from his first wife; he had four more children with Cina. Samuel, later known as Zero, was Israel's seventh child.
It is said that Samuel Mostel got his nickname "Zero" since his parents were not kind with words and always told him that he would only ever amount to "Gournisht," which is Yiddish for "zero" or "nothing." The rest is history.

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Zubin Mehta
Zubin Mehta (ज़ुबिन मेहता); pronounced [ˈzuːbɪn ˈmeːɦt̪aː] (born 29 April 1936) is an Indian conductor of western classical music. He is the Music Director for Life of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
Zubin Mehta was born into a Parsi family in Bombay, British India, the son of Mehli and Tehmina Mehta. His father Mehli Mehta was a violinist and founding conductor of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. Mehta is an alumnus of St. Mary's School, Mumbai, and St. Xavier's College, Mumbai. Mehta initially intended to study medicine, but eventually became a music student in Vienna at the age of 18, under Hans Swarowsky. Also at the same academy along with Mehta were conductor Claudio Abbado and conductor–pianist Daniel Barenboim.
Mehta's first marriage was to Canadian soprano Carmen Lasky in 1958. They have a son, Mervon and a daughter, Zarina. In 1964, they divorced. Two years after the divorce, Carmen married Zubin's brother, Zarin Mehta, now the Executive Director of the New York Philharmonic. In July 1969, Mehta married Nancy Kovack, a former American film and television actress. Mehta is a permanent resident of the United States, but retains his Indian citizenship.

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Mel Brooks
Brooks in April 2010
Birth name	Melvin Kaminsky
Born	(1926-06-28) June 28, 1926 (age 85) Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Medium	Film Television Musical theatre
Nationality	American
Years active	1949–present
Genres	Farce, parody
Subject(s)	Comedy
Influences	George M. Cohan Jack Benny Bob Hope Harry Ritz Fred Astaire Gene Kelly
Influenced	Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Andy Samberg
Spouse	Florence Baum (1953-62, divorced), 3 children Anne Bancroft (1964-2005, her death), 1 child (Max Brooks)
Notable works and roles	The Producers Blazing Saddles Young Frankenstein, History of the World, Part 1

Academy Awards
Best Original Screenplay 1968 The Producers
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program 1967 The Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howard Morris Special Outstanding Guest Actor - Comedy Series 1997, 1998, 1999 Mad About You
Tony Awards
Best Musical 2001 The Producers Best Book of a Musical 2001 The Producers Best Original Score 2001 The Producers
Laurence Olivier Awards
Best New Musical 2005 The Producers
Grammy Awards
Best Spoken Comedy Album 1999 2000 Year Old Man Best Long Form Music Video 2002 Recording 'The Producers': A Musical Romp with Mel Brooks Best Musical Show Album 2002 The Producers
Saturn Award
Saturn Award for Best Direction 1975 Young Frankenstein Mel Brooks has won an Oscar, three Emmys, three grammys, three tonys, and has received four Golden Globe nominations.

Film	All Critics	Top Critics	Audience
The Producers	93%^[26]	90%^[26]	82%^[26]
The Twelve Chairs	92%^[27]	N/A^[27]	62%^[27]
Blazing Saddles	89%^[28]	80%^[28]	89%^[28]
Young Frankenstein	94%^[29]	N/A^[29]	91%^[29]
Silent Movie	89%^[30]	N/A^[30]	65%^[30]
High Anxiety	74%^[31]	N/A^[31]	66%^[31]
History of the World, Part I	62%^[32]	N/A^[32]	80%^[32]
Spaceballs	54%^[33]	33%^[33]	80%^[33]
Life Stinks	20%^[34]	N/A^[34]	44%^[34]
Robin Hood: Men in Tights	48%^[35]	N/A^[35]	79%^[35]
Dracula: Dead and Loving It	09%^[36]	20%^[36]	52%^[36]
Average	66%	56%	72%

Persondata
Name	Brooks, Mel
Alternative names	Kaminsky, Melvin
Short description	American director, writer, actor, and producer
Date of birth	June 28, 1926
Place of birth	Brooklyn, New York, United States
Date of death
Place of death

	The Producers	Twelve Chairs	Blazing Saddles	Young Frankenstein	Silent Movie	High Anxiety	History of the World, Part I	Spaceballs	Life Stinks	Robin Hood: Men in Tights	Dracula: Dead and Loving It
Carol Arthur			N		N					N	N
Anne Bancroft			N		N						N
Mark Blankfield										N	N
Mel Brooks		N	N		N	N	N	N	N	N	N
Sid Caesar					N		N
Charlie Callas					N	N	N				N
Ron Carey					N	N	N
Megan Cavanagh										N	N
Ron Clark					N	N			N
Dom DeLuise		N	N		N		N	N		N
Liam Dunn			N	N	N
Marty Feldman				N	N
Sandy Helberg						N	N	N
John Hurt							N	N
Madeline Kahn			N	N		N	N
Harvey Korman			N			N	N				N
Cloris Leachman				N		N	N
Barry Levinson					N	N	N
Rudy De Luca					N	N	N	N	N	N	N
Kenneth Mars	N			N
John Morris	N	N	N	N	N	N	N	N	N
Howard Morris						N	N		N
Dick Van Patten						N		N		N
Robert Ridgely			N			N			N	N
Andréas Voutsinas	N	N					N
Albert Whitlock						N	N
Gene Wilder	N		N	N
Amy Yasbeck										N	N

Brooks, Mel Filmography

Brooks, Mel Filmography

Famous quotes by Mel Brooks:

"If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets."

"If you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy and colorful and lively."

"If presidents can't do it to their wives, they do it to their country"

"As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes."

"Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him."

"Humor is just another defense against the universe."

"I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit."

"Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said"

"Hope for the best, expect the worst./ Life is a play. We're unrehearsed."

Make changes yourself !

Contents

[edit] Early career and Your Show of Shows

[edit] The 2000 Year Old Man and Get Smart

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