Trivia: Before he turned to performing, Zero Mostel intended to be a painter, but by his late 20s he had begun appearing in nightclubs and on radio. A few Hollywood films followed: Du Barry Was A Lady (1943), Panic in the Streets (1950), and The Enforcer (1951), among other early '50s films. Unfortunately, his career was amputated when he became a victim of Hollywood's McCarthy-era blacklisting, and he would not work again until the end of the decade. His talent was rewarded when he won three Tony Awards for his Broadway appearances in Rhinoceros, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which he repeated for the screen in 1966, and Fiddler on the Roof. He followed Forum with one of the classic comedy performances of all time, producer Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks' The Producers (1968). Almost all of Mostel's performances are worth watching, but especially The Angel Levine (1970), The Hot Rock (1972), and his poignant, heart-rending performance as a blacklisted TV comic in The Front (1976). Mostel's final appearance was in the Academy Award-winning documentary Best Boy (1979). His son is actor Josh Mostel.

Trivia: With his wild curly hair, large expressive blue eyes, slight lisp, and nervous mannerism, Gene Wilder seemed on the surface the epitome of the mild-mannered bookkeeper type, but a close look reveals a volatile energy lying beneath the milquetoast, a mad spark in the eye, and a tendency to explode into discombobulated manic hilarity, usually as a result of being unable to handle the chaos that surrounded his characters. In fact one might have labeled Wilder the consummate reactor rather than a traditional thespian. During the 1970s, Wilder starred in some of the decade's most popular comedies. Wilder was at his best when he was collaborating with Mel Brooks. Such films as The Producers, Young Frankenstein, and Blazing Saddles became modern American classics. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Wilder was born Jerome "Jerry" Silberman in Milwaukee, WI. His father manufactured miniature beer and whiskey bottles. Wilder began studying drama and working in summer stock while studying at the University of Iowa. Following graduation, he furthered his dramatic studies at England's Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Wilder was an exceptional fencer and while there won the school's fencing championship. Upon his return to the U.S., Wilder supported himself by teaching fencing. At other times, he also drove a limo and sold toys. After gaining experience off-Broadway in the early '60s, Wilder joined the Actors Studio. This led to several successful Broadway appearances. Wilder made his feature film debut playing a small but memorable role as a timid undertaker who is kidnapped by the protagonists of Arthur Penn's violent Bonnie and Clyde (1967). The following year he worked with Mel Brooks for the first time, co-starring opposite Zero Mostel in the screamingly funny Producers (1968). His role as the neurotic accountant Leo Bloom, who is seduced into a mad scheme by a once powerful Broadway producer into a crazy money-making scheme. Wilder's performance earned him an Oscar nomination. In his next film, Start the Revolution Without Me (1970), Wilder demonstrated his fencing prowess while playing one of two pairs of twins separated at birth during the years of the French Revolution. He demonstrated a more dramatic side in the underrated romantic comedy/drama Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (aka Fun Loving) (1970). The following year, Wilder starred in what many fondly remember as one of his best roles, that of the mad chocolatier Willy Wonka in the darkly comic musical Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Despite these and other efforts, Wilder did not become a major star until Young Frankenstein (1974), a loving and uproarious send-up of Universal horror movies for which he and Brooks wrote the script. Following the tremendous success of Brooks' Blazing Saddles (1974), Wilder struck out on his own, making his solo screenwriting and directorial debut with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975) which co-starred fellow Brooks alumni Madeline Kahn and Marty Feldman. Like his subsequent directorial efforts the humor was fitful and the direction uneven. He did however have a minor hit as the director and star of The Woman in Red (1984). As an actor, Wilder fared better with the smash hit Silver Streak (1976). As much of a romantic action-adventure as it was a comedy, it would be the first of several successful pairings with comedian Richard Pryor. Their second movie together, Stir Crazy (1980), was also a hit while their third and fourth pairings in See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) and Another You (1990) were much weaker. While appearing in Hanky Panky, Wilder met and married comedienne Gilda Radner. When she passed away in 1989 from cancer, Wilder was reputedly devastated. He stopped making and appearing in films after 1991; he did, however, try his hand at situation comedy in the short-lived Something Wilder (1994-1995). In the 90s he wrote and starred in a couple of made for TV murder mysteries and in 2008 he was the subject of an affectionate documentary produced for TCM. Wilder died in August 2016 from complications of Alzheimer's disease.

Trivia: Over-the-top comic actor Kenneth Mars made an unbearably funny screen debut as the ex-Nazi playwright responsible for the smash miss "Springtime for Hitler" in Mel Brooks' The Producers (1968). He was just as exaggerated, though not quite as amusing, as the one-armed police inspector in Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974). Mars seemingly never held anything back, a trait that was prized by his admirers but caused discomfort among his detractors: reviewing the actor's performance in Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up Doc? (1972), Jay Cocks noted, "As a pompous middle-European intellectual, Kenneth Mars mugs and drools in a manner that Jerry Lewis might find excessive." Still, Mars nearly always delivered the laughs -- especially on TV, where he was a regular on such programs as He and She and The Carol Burnett Show. Another of his screen appearances was as a remonstrative rabbi in Woody Allen's Radio Days (1986). Kenneth Mars has also provided voices for dozens of TV cartoon shows, where he sometimes fell prey to the indignity of having his name spelled Len Mars in the credits.

Trivia: Like Sheckey Greene and Guy Marks, Dick Shawn was a nightclub comedian whose talents were highly prized by the members of his profession, but who took quite some time building up a fan following with "civilian" audiences. Beginning his film career with a peripheral role in 1956's The Opposite Sex, Shawn signed a contract with 20th Century Fox in 1960. He starred in an Arabian Nights satire, The Wizard of Baghdad (1960), which may have been too "inside" for fans of that genre. After co-starring with Ernie Kovacs in Wake Me When It's Over (1961), Shawn was generally seen in secondary, plot-motivating comic roles in such films as It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) and What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966). He was hysterically funny in Mel Brooks' The Producers (1967), playing an erratic hippie actor named L.S.D. who was cast in the musical play "Springtime for Hitler" as a singing Fuehrer. Outside of The Producers, Shawn was seen to best advantage in his bizarre, stream-of-consciousness nightclub routines. So quirky and unpredictable were his live performances that, when Dick Shawn died of a heart attack while performing before a college crowd in San Diego, many members of the audience assumed his collapse was part of the act.

Trivia: Christopher Hewett spent much of his four-decade acting career toiling in roles into which he could melt -- it was only when he found a part, near the end of his career, into which he could inject a large part of himself, that he became a star. Born in England in 1922, he was the son of a former actress, and at age seven made his stage debut, in Ireland, in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. He attended Wimbledon College and served in the Royal Air Force from 1938 until 1940. Hewett became an actor after his discharge, joining the Oxford Repertory Company, where he spent the next few years learning his craft in repertory work, eventually playing over 100 roles. In 1951, at the age of 29, he made his first screen appearance in Pool of London, and he was seen as a police detective later that same year in the classic Ealing comedy The Lavender Hill Mob. Hewett left England in 1954 and moved to New York, where he made his Broadway debut in the original cast of My Fair Lady two years later. He was primarily associated with New York theater for the next 20 years, apart from a notable screen appearance in Mel Brooks' The Producers, portraying Roger DeVries, the flamboyantly gay (and transvestite) director chosen by Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel) to direct his production of "Springtime for Hitler." Hewett dominated most of the scenes in which he appeared with his flamboyant, brilliantly comic performance, and his scenes included the side-splittingly funny audition of the various Hitlers, and the scene introducing Dick Shawn's character, L.S.D. The movie was a modest success on its original release, but has since become a major cult hit and something of a pop-culture phenomenon, partly owing to the immense success of Brooks' theatrical adaptation of the same story. Hewett was delightfully looney and very visible in the role, but it was such an outre screen credit, and the movie itself such a cult item in its first decade or so in release, that it led to little else in film or television for years after. Brooks subsequently used Hewett in The Elephant Man, and he started getting occasional television work, in series such as the original E.R. (1984), and as a regular on Fantasy Island (1983-1984) for one season. Hewett, by then in his sixties and somewhat overweight, had developed a persona that could be comical or villainous, yet always seemingly jovial. In 1985, he won the title role in the series Mr. Belvedere, loosely based on the film Sitting Pretty. As prissy, fastidious housekeeper/valet Lynn Belvedere, taking care of the family that had hired him, Hewett endeared himself to millions of viewers for four seasons, and was regularly covered in the television gossip columns, his ballooning weight at times eliciting public expressions of concern from his fellow cast members. He also worked in one-off appearances on Murder, She Wrote and other series. When the series finished its run in 1990, he had achieved television stardom and name recognition far beyond anything he had known -- modern viewers were often startled to realize, on seeing The Producers, that it was Hewett playing the director of the seemingly ill-starred play. He continued to make occasional television and movie appearances for the next decade. Hewett died from complications of diabetes at the age of 79.

Trivia: Even in her nineties, British actress Estelle Winwood retained the wide-eyed naïveté of her ingénue days. An actress from the age of five, Winwood was trained at the Liverpool Repertory company. As an adult, she specialized in the plays of such leading theatrical lights of the early 20th century as Shaw and Galworthy. In 1918, she starred in Broadway's very first Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Why Marry?, and a few years later scored a personal triumph in The Circle. In films from 1933, Winwood was often cast as eccentric, birdlike old ladies, some few of which were capable of homicide. She is fondly remembered for such characterizations as Leslie Caron's fairy godmother in The Glass Slipper (1953) and the pass-the-hat lady in The Misfits (1961). Closing out her film career with the 1976 detective spoof Murder By Death, Estelle Winwood continued appearing on television until she passed the century mark; she died in her sleep at the age of 101.

Trivia: Habitues of the late-night Jack Paar Program first became aware of the offbeat comic talents of Renee Taylor during her semi-regular appearances in the years 1959 through 1962. In films, Taylor has usually been seen in such small but distinctive roles as whispering dress extra in Jerry Lewis' The Errand Boy and Eva Braun (yes, Eva Braun) in Mel Brooks' The Producers. In 1965, she married actor/writer Joseph Bologna, becoming his partner both professionally and in life. In 1969, Taylor and Bologna wrote and starred in the Broadway comedy Lovers and Other Strangers; the play was transferred to the screen in 1970, minus the authors' on-screen presence but with all their comic insights and witticisms intact. Taylor and Bologna went on to create the 1973 TV series Calucci's Department, co-direct such films as 1989's It Had to Be You, and co-star in such projects as the 1976 TV-movie remake of Woman of the Year. In 1972, they shared an Emmy Award for their scriptwork on the 1972 television special Acts of Love-And Other Comedies. On her own, Renee Taylor has been a TV-series regular on 1977's Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (as Annabelle) and 1993's Daddy Dearest (as Helen Mitchell, the mother of Richard Lewis and estranged wife of Don Rickles).

Trivia: Actor Frank Campanella's physical form almost single-handedly defined his Hollywood typecasting. A 6' 5" barrel-chested Italian with a great, hulking presence and memorably stark facial features, Campanella excelled as a character player, almost invariably appearing as toughs and heavies. Born to a piano builder father who played in the orchestras of Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante, and Al Jolson, Campanella studied music exhaustively as a young man, and trained as a concert pianist, but discovered a rivaling passion for drama and entered Manhattan College as an acting major. Campanella's career as an actor began somewhat uncharacteristically, on a light and jovial note, by playing Mook the Moon Man during the first season of the Dumont network's infamous and much-loved kiddie show Captain Video and his Video Rangers (1949-1954). One- and two-episode stints on many American television programs followed for Campanella, most on themes of crime and law enforcement, including Inside Detective (1952), The Man Behind the Badge (1954), Danger (1954), and episodes of the anthology series Playwrights '56 (1956), Studio One (1956), and Suspicion (1957) that called for gritty, thuggish, urban types. During the 1960s, Campanella sought out the same kinds roles in feature films -- a path he pursued for several decades. Turns included John Frankenheimer's 1966 Seconds (as the Man in the Station); Mel Brooks' 1968 The Producers (as a bartender); 1970's The Movie Murderer (as an arson lieutenant); the Steve Carver-directed, Roger Corman-produced gangster film Capone (1975, as Big Jim Colosimo); Ed Forsyth's 1976 Chesty Anderson -- U.S. Navy (as the Baron); Conway in Warren Beatty's 1978 Heaven Can Wait; and Judge Neal A. Lake in Michael Winner's 1982 Death Wish 2. Campanella teamed with director Garry Marshall seven times: as Col. Cal Eastland in The Flamingo Kid (1984), Remo in Nothing in Common (1986), Captain Karl in Overboard (1987), Frank the Doorman in Beaches (1988), Pops in Pretty Woman (1990), a retired customer in Frankie and Johnny (1991), and a Wheelchair Walker in Exit to Eden (1994). Campanella re-teamed with Warren Beatty for the first time since 1978 as Judge Harper in Dick Tracy (1990) and again as the Elevator Operator in Love Affair (1994). Additional series in which Campanella appeared during the 1970s and '80s included Maude, Hardcastle & McCormick, Quincy, M.E., The Love Boat, Barnaby Jones, The Rockford Files, The Fall Guy, St. Elsewhere, and many others. In middle age, Campanella parlayed his early musical training into two career choices that blended music and drama: a part on a commercial that required him to play the piano and a job as co-host of a musical program on KCSN Radio called "Offbeat Notes on Music." He also appeared on Broadway in such musicals as Guys and Dolls and Nobody Loves an Albatross. After many years of inactivity, Frank Campanella ultimately died at his home in the San Fernando Valley, of unspecified causes. He was 87. Survivors included his brother, actor Joseph Campanella, his sister-in-law, and 13 nephews and nieces.

Trivia: It took the television series Seinfeld and his portrayal of Morty Seinfeld to turn Barney Martin into a pop-culture star, complete with talk-show engagements and personal appearances -- but Martin was a working actor for 40 years before that, in films and television, on Broadway, and in regional theater. Born in New York City in the early '20s, he was the son of the police official in charge of the jail facility known as the Tombs. He served in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, with 42 missions to his credit as a navigator; he joined the police force after the war and won commendations for bravery. Martin had always shown a flair for comedy, and while a member of the police force, he was often asked to add jokes to the speeches of various deputy commissioners. In the early '50s, he began moving into professional entertainment circles, selling his jokes and also writing for Name That Tune, and then was hired as a writer on The Steve Allen Show -- it was while working on that end of the business, and with some encouragement from a new friend, Mel Brooks, that Martin became convinced that he could be as funny as most of the professional comics he was seeing in front of the cameras and on-stage. By the end of the 1950s, he was working as a stand-in for Jackie Gleason. With his hefty frame tipping the scales at well over 200 pounds even in those days, and his slightly befuddled look, he was nearly a dead-ringer for Gleason in one profile, and he ended up working on camera in various sketches. Martin's other early television performances included regular work as a "ringer" on Candid Camera, and work on The Ed Sullivan Show and The Perry Como Show, as well as straight acting performances on such dramatic shows as The Naked City, where his New York accent and mannerisms made Martin a natural. He also turned in an excruciatingly funny performance as Fats Borderman, a hapless professional hood, in the Car 54, Where Are You? episode "Toody Undercover." Martin made his first big-screen appearance in the 1956 Alfred Hitchcock thriller The Wrong Man, as a member of the jury -- he also showed up in uncredited appearances in such movies as Butterfield 8, Requiem for a Heavyweight, and Love With the Proper Stranger. In 1968, he got his first two credited screen appearances, in Mel Brooks' The Producers, portraying Goring in "Springtime for Hitler," and playing Hank in Ralph Nelson's Charly. Most of Martin's acting, however, was on-stage, including Broadway productions of South Pacific, All American, Street Scene, How Now, Dow Jones, and Chicago; in the latter's '70s production, he originated the role of Amos Hart. He also appeared in regional theater productions of Last of the Red Hot Lovers and The Fantasticks. Martin also made occasional appearances on television, most notably on The Odd Couple, starring Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, in such episodes as "The Jury Story" and "The Subway Story." His friendship with Randall also carried over to his being cast as a regular when the latter got his own series, The Tony Randall Show, in 1976. Martin might have gone on for the rest of his career as a character actor well known to those in his profession, doing occasional big-screen performances in features such as Stanley Donen's Movie, Movie and Steve Gordon's Arthur, but for the Seinfeld television series. After inheriting the role of Morty Seinfeld from another actor, Martin became a regular on the series, usually working in tandem with Liz Sheridan playing Morty's wife, also playing opposite Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Michael Richards, and Jerry Stiller, and always holding his own in eliciting laughs. Perhaps Martin's best single episode was the one in which his character is defeated in the election as chairman of the condominium board -- the script was filled with little digs aimed at Oliver Stone's movie Nixon, and Martin was able to bring just enough Nixon-like gravitas to his portrayal to make the whole show work.

Trivia: Actor/entertainer Tucker Smith appeared in a few films from the early '60s through the early '80s. He also performed in nightclubs and worked on the stage both in the U.S. and abroad.

Trivia: A wild-haired character comedian from Poland, Shimen Ruskin popped up in scores of Hollywood films and television shows from 1938-1975. Having begun his screen career playing bits and performing odd jobs in Yiddish-language films made in New York, Ruskin turned to acting full-time in the 1940s, usually playing excitable types such as headwaiters, bartenders, store keepers, haberdashery salesmen, and the like. Late in life, he appeared as Meyer, the waiter on the short-lived television series The Corner Bar (1972-1973) and played Mordcha in the screen version of Fiddler on the Roof (1971).

Trivia: Farce, satire, and parody come together with Vaudeville roots and manic energy to create the Mel Brooks style of comedy. Born Melvin Kaminsky to a Russian Jewish family in Brooklyn, NY, the writer/producer/director/actor was one of very few people to win an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony award. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he worked as a standup comic at resorts in the Catskills and started writing comedy. Along with Woody Allen, Neil Simon, and others, he wrote for Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, which later became Caesar's Hour. Teaming up with fellow staff writer Carl Reiner, he developed the award-winning "2000 Year Old Man" comedy skit, which led to several recordings, television appearances, and a 1998 Grammy. He and writer Buck Henry also created the spy-parody TV series Get Smart (1965-1970) starring Don Adams. During this time, he produced theater, married actress Anne Bancroft, and made his first film: an Oscar-winning animated short parody of modern art called The Critic. He then put together a screenplay based upon his experiences working with Broadway executives that led to his feature-length debut The Producers. He cast stage legend Zero Mostel in the lead role and got B-movie producer Joseph Levine to put up the funds, but the movie didn't get distributed until Peter Sellers saw it and encouraged its release. Brooks ended up winning an Oscar for Best Screenplay and, in 2000, adapted the film into a highly successful Broadway musical. By 1970, after the release of his next film The Twelve Chairs, Hollywood thought his work was "too Jewish." In 1974, Brooks made the marketable move toward parodies with the Western spoof Blazing Saddles, winning him a Writer's Guild award and introducing his stock actors Harvey Korman and Madeline Kahn. Finding his niche, he would continue to make parodies throughout his career by spoofing horror (Young Frankenstein), silent movies (Silent Movie), Hitchcock (High Anxiety), historical epics (History of the World -- Part I), and science fiction (Spaceballs). Working simultaneously as writer, director, and lead actor, Brooks started to generate negative press about his excessive style. In 1983, appearing opposite Bancroft, he concentrated on just acting for the remake of the Ernst Lubitch classic To Be or Not to Be. He continued working with his production company Brooksfilms during the '80s as an executive producer on projects as varied as The Fly, The Elephant Man, Solarbabies, and 84 Charing Cross Road (starring Bancroft). His brief stray into non-parody films in 1991 (Life Stinks) was universally dismissed, so he returned to form with Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Dracula: Dead and Loving It. Other than the occasional cameo or random appearance as voice talent, Brooks spent the late '90s winning awards and playing Uncle Phil on the NBC series Mad About You. In 2001, the Broadway musical version of The Producers (starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick) led to a successful national tour and broke a new record by winning one Grammy and 12 Tony awards. The stage version would lead to a new big screen adaptation in 2005, creating a whole new generation of fans. Over the coming years, Brooks would lend his voice to Spaceballs: The Animated Series and Jakers! The Adventures of Piggley Winks.