Trivia: Liz Sheridan is an actress mostly associated with comedic roles, and best known for her portrayal of Helen Seinfeld, the mother of Jerry Seinfeld, on the series Seinfeld. Born in Westchester County and raised on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, she graduated from Mamaroneck High School. Sheridan started out in entertainment as a dancer, and was also a pianist and singer. During the early '50s, she crossed personal paths with James Dean; the two became very close, and this period in her life was recounted in Sheridan's book Dizzy and Jimmy: My Life With James Dean (2000). She lived in the Caribbean from 1953 until the mid-'60s, when she returned to New York to embark on an acting career, principally on-stage. Sheridan made a small number of television appearances, on programs such as Kojak, but her real TV career didn't begin until the 1980s, when she started getting guest roles shows such as Gimme a Break, St. Elsewhere, The A-Team, Hill Street Blues, and Scarecrow & Mrs. King, as well as in various made-for-television movies and miniseries, interspersed with the occasional feature film such as Star 80 (1983) and Legal Eagles (1986). She was probably most visible during this period in the role of Selma the housekeeper in the pilot episode of Moonlighting (1985). In 1986, Sheridan became a regular on the series Alf, which ran for four seasons, portraying Mrs. Ochmonek. At the end of that run, she auditioned for and won the role of Helen Seinfeld on Seinfeld. As Jerry Seinfeld's well-meaning but slightly high-strung mother, always trying to mediate between the generations in her family, she revealed a delightful range of comedic skills, working alongside such diverse talents as Jerry Seinfeld, Michael Richards, Barney Martin, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, Jason Alexander, et al. In the years since the cancellation of the series, she has continued to work regularly in television and feature films, primarily portraying matronly and grandmother-type roles.

Trivia: Perhaps it was a combination of a strong commitment to his values, inner strength, and a keen sense of humor, but Brandon Tartikoff had the rare gift of being able to successfully elevate a failing television network from the bottom to number one for five years running and still remain one of Hollywood's most likeable characters to both industry insiders and the public. He has been called a wunderkind for becoming at age 31 the youngest person to run a television network. After a decade at NBC, he went on to become the president of Paramount Pictures and then the chairman of New World Entertainment, a company that creates television projects for syndication, cable, and the Internet. Though a busy executive and a man who had been fighting recurring bouts of Hodgkin's disease since age 23, Tartikoff found time to be with his wife, Lilly, and their daughters, Calla and Elizabeth. A native New Yorker, Tartikoff started out at a television station in New Haven, CT, following boarding school and an education at Yale. He next moved to Chicago to work for ABC affiliate WLS where he made the station successful by devising creative promotional packages and producing and writing a comedy variety series. While there, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease and underwent chemotherapy. Despite a 50-pound weight loss and the ensuing pain of radiation treatments, Tartikoff did not miss work and his cancer eventually went into remission. The young whiz got his first real break when Fred Silverman, the head of the ABC network, hired him as the manger of dramatic development at ABC in 1976. Under Silverman's tutelage, Tartikoff was quickly promoted to program executive of current dramatic programming. In 1977, the young executive was hired by NBC as their director of comedy programs. When Silverman became the network's newest president, he made Tartikoff his head of West Coast programming. In 1980, Silverman named the 31-year-old President of Programming. During their first years at the new network, Tartikoff and Silverman had trouble settling in. Offering such silly dramas and comedies as Manimal and the abysmal The Adventures of Sheriff Lobo did nothing to promote NBC to audiences. Matters changed, however, when Silverman was replaced by former MTM producer Grant Tinker. By the end of the decade, Tinker and Tartikoff had turned the ailing NBC into a 500 million dollar profit-making entertainment machine. One of the unusual measures taken by Tartikoff during the rebuilding period was to ignore the early low Nielsen ratings of the critically acclaimed Family Ties, Cheers, and St. Elsewhere. Whereas other overly ratings-conscious executives may have ruthlessly canceled the poorly rated shows, Tartikoff was convinced they were indeed high-quality, well-written programs and so allowed audiences time to discover them. The ploy worked and all three became top rated series through the 1980s. As the decade progressed, Tartikoff and Tinker still had a few misfires such as The Bay City Blues and Jennifer Slept Here, but they were also responsible for such groundbreaking hits as Miami Vice, Hill Street Blues, and L.A. Law. As chief of entertainment, Tartikoff had a knack for discovering untried talent, and when he truly believed in a project and the people behind it, nothing could stop him from giving them the chance he thought they deserved. While NBC had its share of "lowest common denominator shows," Tartikoff saw that many of the programs were directed especially towards educated, middle to upper-middle class viewers, a trend that continued through the '90s. In the early '80s, Tartikoff's cancer returned and more chemo followed until the disease again went into remission. He never told his higher ups about his illness, nor did he let it slow him down. Other notable shows for which Tartikoff was responsible include Seinfeld, The Cosby Show, Hunter, The A-Team, The Golden Girls, and Highway to Heaven. During these years, the amiable Tartikoff became a semi-celebrity, appearing on talk shows and sometimes even making cameo appearances on shows such as Saved By the Bell. He has even hosted NBC's Saturday Night Live.By 1990, Tartikoff was the highest paid network executive in the industry and when Tinker left that year, he was promoted to president of NBC Entertainment and president of NBC Productions. But by then, NBC's profits and popularity had begun to level off. After nearly a decade at NBC, Tartikoff left NBC to become the head of New World Entertainment and Paramount Pictures. He also ran his own production company, H. Beale -- named after Peter Finch's character in Network, a feature film Tartikoff liked so much that in the mid-to-late '90s, he narrated a showing of it on one of Ted Turner's cable channels, peppering the story with anecdotes from his own network experiences. While at Paramount, Tartikoff was instructed to cut costs and so focused on releasing more modest but successful productions such as The Addams Family (1991), Wayne's World (1992), Patriot Games (1992), and Indecent Proposal (1993). On the downside, he also approved the release of Beverly Hills Cop 3 and the ambitious bomb 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992). A car accident earlier that year resulted in his daughter Callas suffering a serious head trauma. He himself had broken ribs during the wreck and missed a couple months of work. In October 1992, Tartikoff resigned from Paramount stating that he needed to be near Calla to facilitate her recovery. He returned to work, this time for America Online to supervise the company's development of entertainment industry-oriented online programs. He was quite busy with his new business, but the cancer again returned.On August 27, 1997, 48-year-old Brandon Tartikoff lost his fight with the disease. His funeral was attended by many whose careers he had boosted, including directors Rob Reiner and Danny De Vito, NBC executives past and present Fred Silverman, Grant Tinker, and Robert Wright, and actors Jerry Seinfeld and Ted Danson. In keeping with Tartikoff's style, the sadness of the occasion was lifted with jokes and humorous anecdotes.

Trivia: Anne Meara started out and ended up a distinguished dramatic actress--and in between, scored high marks as a comedienne, playwright and screenwriter. Launching her career in summer stock in 1950, Meara won an Obie Award for her intensely dramatic performance in the 1955 off-Broadway production Maedchen in Uniform; during this period, she was also a semi-regular on the NBC TV daytime soaper The Greatest Gift. Auditioning for an opera in 1954, she met another struggling actor, Jerry Stiller; they were married the following year. Forming the comedy team of Stiller & Meara, The team skyrocketed to stardom via their many appearances on such 1960s variety series as The Ed Sullivan Show and The Steve Allen Show. One of their richest sources of material was the difference in their ethnic backgrounds, especially in their famous "Hershey Horowitz/Mary Elizabeth Doyle" routines (an Irish Catholic, Meara converted to Judaism upon her marriage to Stiller). They also appeared together on Broadway, in the supporting cast of the 1971 sitcom The Paul Lynde Show, and in an obscure 1975 syndicated TV comedy "filler" series Take Five With Stiller and Meara. On her own, Meara has provided comic and noncomic support to several films, including Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), The Out-of-Towners (1970) and Fame (1980). She starred in the 1975 TV lawyer series Kate McShane, and co-starred as tavern owner Mae on The Corner Bar (1973), divorced airline stewardess Sally Gallagher on the 1976-77 season of Rhoda, acid-tongued cook Veronica Rooney on Archie Bunker's Place (1979-83), and mother-in-law Dorothy Halligan on Alf (1987). In 1983, Meara won the Writers Guild "outstanding achievement" award for her script for the made-for-TV feature Another Woman, and ten years later was nominated for a Tony Award for her portrayal of Marthy in the Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie. Anne Meara is the mother of comic actor Ben Stiller and worked with her son in his directorial feature debut, Reality Bites (1994), Zoolander (2001) and Night at the Museum (2006). She recurred on Sex and the City, playing Miranda's mother-in-law, Mary, and later reprised the role in the feature film. Meara died in 2015, at age 85.

Trivia: From the late '60s through the mid-'70s, first on I Dream of Jeannie and later on The Bob Newhart Show, Bill Daily was one of the most visible comic acting talents in television, despite the fact that he'd always intended on a career in music. Born in Des Moines, IA, in 1928, he was raised by his mother with help from several aunts and uncles after the death of his father and he gravitated toward music as a teenager. Following a stint in the army in the late '40s, Daily became a professional musician, playing upright bass with different groups in the Midwest, and he eventually added little bits of stand-up comedy to his repertory in the course of performing. He hooked up with an NBC station in Chicago, first working behind the camera as a writer and musician and then doing comedy on the air. Eventually, he became a regular guest as a comedian on The Mike Douglas Show, which originated from Chicago. From there, he was discovered by Steve Allen who brought him onto his show as a comedian and sidekick. Daily subsequently credited his musical side with providing him with the sense of timing to become a successful comedian. During the early and mid-'60s, Daily moved into acting roles on programs like Bewitched -- on which he debuted in a straight dramatic role, in a Christmas episode in which he was highly effective -- and was given a small role in the pilot of I Dream of Jeannie. That part, of Major Roger Healy, turned into the co-starring role after the program's first season. Following five successful seasons on that program, he moved to The Bob Newhart Show as Howard Borden, providing comedic support similar to the part he'd played on I Dream Of Jeannie, as Newhart's befuddled, constantly jet-lagged next door neighbor. Daily has only ever appeared in two feature films, both of them comedies -- the made-for-television In Name Only in 1969, as a carefree bachelor (clearly modeled after one aspect of his character on I Dream of Jeannie) and in Disney's release of The Barefoot Executive in 1971. Since the first Bob Newhart series left the air, his television appearances have been infrequent and always in supporting, guest starring roles, although he did appear on Nick-at-Nite helping to promote The Bob Newhart Show when it aired on the channel. He has since reportedly become a theatrical actor and director in the Albuquerque, NM, area.

Trivia: Leading lady of television and films, Judy Landers made her feature-film debut in The Yum-Yum Girls (1976) and appeared in her first television show, Happy Days (in 1974), as a guest star. Landers spent the bulk of her career in low-budget films. TV series in which she was a regular include Vega$ (1978) and B.J. and the Bear (1981). She and her sister, Audrey Landers, have appeared together in two films, The Tennessee Stallion (1978) and Ghost Writer (1989).

Trivia: Best known as a radio and television personality and host of several popular Weekly Top 40 radio programs, Casey Kasem (born Kemal Kasem, he was of Lebanese descent) occasionally appeared in feature films as a supporting actor. In addition, he was also a well-known voice actor whose most famous cartoon characterization was that of Shaggy from the Scooby Doo series. Kasem died at age 82 in June 2014.

Trivia: Born August 22nd, 1965, the diminutive blond comic David Spade has found success as a professional smart ass. Born in Birmingham, MI, but raised in Scottsdale, AZ, Spade first made a name for himself as a standup comedian. He spent most of the '80s performing in clubs, theaters, and college campuses. He joined the cast of Lorne Michael's long-running television show Saturday Night Live in 1990 as a writer and a performer. On the show, he soon gained popularity for such recurring sketches such as "The Hollywood Minute" in which Spade would sarcastically shred some of Tinseltown's biggest stars with his nasty comments. Spade also proved an able impersonator of celebrities ranging from Jeff Foxworthy to Tom Petty. Spade has appeared on many television talk shows and guest starred on several series. He began his film career in the late '80s playing a small role in Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol. In the '90s, he began playing major supporting roles in such films as Coneheads (1993) and P.C.U. (1994). He and former SNL alumni Chris Farley shared top billing in two popular comedies, Tommy Boy (1995) and Black Sheep (1996). Spade starred opposite Joe Pesci and Dyan Cannon in Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997). In 1997, Spade returned to series television in the sitcom Just Shoot Me. While 2001's Joe Dirt wasn't much of a box office success, it did earn a certain cult status, inspire animated television series, and bring about a surge of ironically-sported mullet hairstyles in the early 2000s. While 2001's Joe Dirt wasn't much of a box office success, it did bring about a resurgence of popularity for the mullet. Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star (2003) featured Spade in the titular role of a one-time child star who tries to make a comeback as an adult. Spade continued to play comedic roles throughout the mid-2000s (The Benchwarners, Grandma's Boy), and once again found small-screen success with a role on the sitcoms 8 Simple Rules, and The Rules of Engagement, in which Spade plays the part of a single man surrounded by friends in various stages of couplehood.