Morton Lyon "Mort" Sahl (born May 11, 1927) is a Canadian-born American comedian and actor. He occasionally wrote jokes for speeches delivered by President John F. Kennedy. He was the first comedian to record a live album and the first to perform on college campuses. He was on the cover of Time magazine in 1960 where they called him "the patriarch of a new school of comedians".

He was born on May 11, 1927 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada to Harry Sahl. His father was a court reporter who met his wife when she responded to an advertisement he took out in a poetry magazine. The family moved to Los Angeles, California and Mort joined the ROTC unit at Belmont High School. He was also on the staff of the school's newspaper, the Belmont Sentinel. Actor Richard Crenna was one of his classmates.

After high school, in 1945, Sahl enlisted in the United States Air Force and was stationed in Alaska. In 1950, he graduated from University of Southern California with majors in traffic engineering and city management. In a speech given at Claremont McKenna's Athenaeum in 2008, Sahl claimed to have attended West Point. He then began performing stand up comedy at Enrico Banducci's hungry i nightclub in San Francisco.

Leonard Alfred Schneider (October 13, 1925 – August 3, 1966), better known by the stage name Lenny Bruce, was a Jewish-American comedian, social critic and satirist. His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial was followed by a posthumous pardon, the first in New York state history. His open, free-style, dangerous and critical form of comedy which brought in politics and religion and sex in a heady mix, combined with his devil may care attitude, his epic consumption of drugs, sex and alcohol, his messy, desperate life in which he conned money in order to keep his wife from having to work as a stripper, makes him a compelling figure. He paved the way for future outspoken comedians, and he paved the way for freedom of speech. His trial for obscenity for saying the word "cocksucker", in which – after being forced into bankruptcy – he was eventually found not guilty is seen as landmark trial for freedom of speech.

Lenny Bruce was born Leonard Alfred Schneider in Mineola, New York, grew up in nearby Bellmore, and attended Wellington C. Mepham High School. His parents divorced when he was five years old, and Lenny moved in with various relatives over the next decade. His mother, Sally Marr (née Sadie Kitchenberg), was a stage performer who had an enormous influence on Bruce's career. After spending time working on a farm, Bruce joined the United States Navy at the age of 17 in 1942, and saw active duty in Europe. In May 1945 he reported to his ship's medical officer that he was experiencing homosexual urges. This led to his Dishonorable Discharge in July 1945. However, he had not admitted to or been found guilty of any breach of naval regulations and successfully applied to have his discharge changed to "Under Honorable Conditions ... by reason of unsuitability for the naval service".

The Smothers Brothers are Thomas ("Tom" - born February 2, 1937) and Richard ("Dick" - born November 20, 1939), American singers, musicians, comedians and folk heroes. The brothers' trademark act was performing folk songs (Tommy on acoustic guitar, Dick on string bass), which usually led to arguments between the siblings. Tommy's signature line was, "Mom always liked you best!" Tommy (the elder of the two) acted "slow", and Dick, the straight man, acted "superior".

In the 1960s, the brothers frequently appeared on television variety shows and issued several popular record albums of their stage performances. Their own television variety show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, became one of the most controversial American TV programs of the Vietnam War era. Despite popular success, the brothers' penchant for material that was critical of the political mainstream and sympathetic to the emerging counterculture led to their firing by the CBS network in 1969. One show was left unaired.

The brothers continued to work, both independently and as a team, on stage and television, and in films during subsequent decades.

Keith Theodore Olbermann ( /ˈoʊlbərmən/; born January 27, 1959) is an American political commentator and writer. Most recently, he was the chief news officer of the Current TV network and the host of the Current TV weeknight political commentary program, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, until March 30, 2012, a program he hosted with the same title and a similar format on MSNBC from March 2003 to January 2011.

During his time at MSNBC, Olbermann established a niche in cable news commentary, gaining note for his pointed criticism of mainly right-leaning politicians and public figures such as Fox News Channel commentator Bill O'Reilly,President George W. Bush and 2008 Republican presidential nominee, John McCain. Though he has been described as a "liberal", he has resisted being labelled politically, stating "I'm not a liberal. I'm an American".

Olbermann spent the first twenty years of his career in sports journalism. He was a sports correspondent for CNN and for local TV and radio stations in the 1980s, winning the Best Sportscaster award from the California Associated Press three times. He co-hosted ESPN's SportsCenter from 1992 to 1997. From 1998 to 2001, he was a producer and anchor for Fox Sports Net and a host of Major League Baseball on Fox.

Tony Randall (February 26, 1920 – May 17, 2004) was an American actor, comic, producer and director.

Randall was born Arthur Leonard Rosenberg to a Jewish family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of Julia (née Finston) and Mogscha Rosenberg, an art and antiques dealer. He attended Tulsa Central High School.

Randall attended Northwestern University for a year before traveling to New York City to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. He studied under Sanford Meisner and choreographer Martha Graham around 1935. As Anthony Randall, he worked onstage opposite stars Jane Cowl in George Bernard Shaw's Candida and Ethel Barrymore in Emlyn Williams's The Corn Is Green. Randall then served for four years with the United States Army Signal Corps in World War II, refusing an entertainment assignment with Special Services. Then he worked at the Olney Theatre in Montgomery County, Maryland before heading back to New York City. Prior to his appearance in "Candida", Randall worked as an announcer at radio station WTAG, Worcester MA.