Trivia: The son of a Chicago restauranteur, American comic actor John Belushi played drums in a high school band and excelled in football. But acting was his first love, a love requited by college productions and summer stock. He and several old pals auditioned for Chicago's Second City comedy troupe, but only Belushi was selected, and he became the youngest-ever performer to appear in Second City's "main stage" productions. His improvisational style sometimes had a nasty, dangerous, "politically incorrect" edge, but such traits were prized rather than discouraged during the early '70s. Belushi's guerrilla comic techniques were reportedly inspired by the 1968 Democratic Convention riots in Chicago, and he was among the few performers who could successfully exploit violence and social upheaval as a source of humor. Belushi was hired in 1973 for the off-Broadway National Lampoon's Lemmings, and subsequently participated in future National Lampoon projects, including its syndicated "Radio Hour." In 1975, he was one of several Second City alumni cast in NBC's new satirical revue program Saturday Night Live. And though frustrated by the media's concentration on co-star Chevy Chase during the show's maiden season, Belushi fully came into his own once Chase left in 1976. Among Belushi's celebrated comic creations were the fish-out-of-water Samurai warrior; the "cheeseburger cheeseburger" short-order cook; and -- with close friend Dan Aykroyd -- the ultra-hip Blues Brothers. Belushi's first film appearance was a disappointingly small role in the Jack Nicholson Western Goin' South (1978), but he truly hit his stride with his next movie later that year. As Bluto, the beer-besotted fraternity goof in National Lampoon's Animal House, Belushi was grossly uproarious, almost single-handedly launching a nationwide collegiate craze for toga parties. The actor suddenly found himself a full-fledged movie star, but audiences were generally permitted to see only the Bluto side of him. Belushi fought for better and more varied film roles, sometimes succeeding (1982's The Blues Brothers), but often failing (1981's Continental Divide). Never an advocate of "moderation in everything," Belushi tended to emulate the Bluto character in real life with his excessive eating and drinking. His drug intake, already formidable in his Lemmings days, increased as his star ascended, terrifying even those friends who were, themselves, cocaine users. On March 5, 1982, comedian Robin Williams and writer Nelson Ryan came to visit Belushi in his temporary living quarters at West Hollywood's Chateau Marmont Hotel; they were the last of his friends to see him alive. Belushi was dead before the day was over, the victim of a cocaine and heroin overdose. With him at the time was erstwhile singer Cathy Smith, who would later be charged with involuntary manslaughter for her alleged role in administering the fatal drug jolt. The meteoric rise and fall of Belushi was the stuff of which legends are made, overshadowing his brilliant comic gifts in favor of the sordid details. Two books have been written about him: Bob Woodward's Wired, and his widow Jackie's "answer" to Woodward, Samurai Widow.

Trivia: Hands down one of the most popular broadcast journalists in America during the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, Tom Brokaw began his reporting career in 1962, at Omaha, Nebraska's KMTV, then enjoyed stints on the Late Evening News at WSB-TV in Atlanta and KNBC-TV in Los Angeles before moving to NBC News as an anchor in 1966 -- a post that witnessed him covering such events as national presidential elections and the Watergate scandal (from 1973-1976). From 1976-1981, Brokaw served as an anchor on NBC's popular morning talk program Today, but he is best known to millions for his subsequent roles as the managing editor and anchor on the NBC Nightly News. In addition, Brokaw made international headlines in 2008, when he agreed to temporarily moderate the political discussion program Meet the Press following the unanticipated death of longtime anchor Tim Russert. Alongside his on-camera activity, Brokaw also authored numerous nonfiction books, including The Greatest Generation (1998), The Greatest Generation Speaks (1999), and A Long Way from Home (2002), and created documentaries including Why Can't We Live Together? (1997) and America Remembers: 9/11 Air Traffic Controllers (2003).

Trivia: Actor Steve Guttenberg, trained at New York's High School of the Performing Arts, Julliard and the Actors Studio, was already a professional as a teenager, making his off-Broadway debut in a revival of The Lion in Winter. In 1976 he was first seen before the cameras in the made-for-TV Something for Joey. The following year, he made his big-screen bow in The Chicken Chronicles, and within three years was starring in his own weekly TV series, Billy (he was subsequently top-billed in the bizarre 1982 summer-replacement weekly No Soap, Radio. After a flurry of excellent film roles--the foredoomed Barry Kohler in Boys from Brazil (1978), football-obsessed groom-to-be Eddie in Diner (1982), etc.--Guttenberg settled into workaday parts. He seemed to have a propensity for getting involved in film series: he was seen as Michael Kellan in both 3 Men and a Baby and 3 Men and a Little Lady, Jack Bonner in the two Cocoon films, and Mahoney in the first four Police Academy entries. In 1991, Steve Guttenberg made his belated Broadway debut in Prelude to a Kiss. In the decades to follow, Guttenberg would appear in films like Home Team, Domino One, Fatal Rescue, and A Novel Romance, as well as a memorable arc on the cult hit series Veronica Mars. He would also appear on Dancing with the Stars.

Trivia: Moved to the U.S. from Britain with his family when he was 13. Failed an Associated Press job-application test before being hired by ABC in 1963. Was offered the job of State Department spokesman in 1975 by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Took a leave of absence from ABC in 1976 to stay home with his children while his wife attended law school. Speaks German, Russian and French. Fame grew during his work on ABC's Nightline, born in 1980, which grew from temporary broadcasts spurred by the Iran hostage crisis, which started in 1979. Looking back at that crisis 30 years later, Koppel said that "you don't have a lot of coverage of Iran anymore...that's tragic, but it's all part of the economics of television." Has won many journalism awards, including dozens of news Emmys, and was inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 1992. After retiring in 2005 from Nightline, after 25 years, worked for the Discovery Channel and for National Public Radio. In 2011, did anchor work for BBC World News America on such issues as the crisis in Libya.

Trivia: His late-night dog-and-pony show has featured stupid tricks from various species, introduced non-New Yorkers to Rupert Jee's Hello Deli and infamous correspondents Mujibur and Sirajul, and earned numerous awards and laughs. David Michael Letterman was born April 12, 1947, in Indianapolis, IN, to Harry, a florist, and Dorothy, a church secretary. He has two sisters, Janice and Gretchen. While attending Broad Ripple High School, he was a stock boy at Atlas Supermarket. Heading off to college, he studied radio and television at Ball State University in Muncie, IN, and graduated with a B.A. in 1969. Letterman stayed in Indiana and worked as a radio talk show host, the host of a children's program called Clover Power, a late-night movie host, news anchor, and a television weather man. In 1975, he moved to L.A. and wrote for the TV show Good Times and developed a comedy routine that debuted at Mitzi Shore's Comedy Store. Soon after, he began appearing on Mary Tyler Moore's variety show and then on NBC's Tonight Show With Johnny Carson. By 1978, he was Carson's regular guest host, which led to his hosting a daytime show, The David Letterman Show. While it only lasted three months, it did garner some critical accolades (and brought out the first Stupid Pet Tricks segment) and resulted in Letterman winning a spot for his own show following Carson's. Late Night With David Letterman first aired on February 1, 1982, and featured the first renditions of TV history fixtures like the Top Ten List and Viewer Mail. Skits called for various parts to be filled and even spawned would-be comedians out of Letterman's sidekick/musical director of 19 years, Paul Shaffer, stage manager Biff Henderson, and Larry "Bud" Melman (or Calvert DeForest, as he is now called thanks to network politics). As Carson wound down his late-night reign, Letterman was hopeful he would be asked to take over the coveted spot. However, in 1993, comedian Jay Leno was chosen to succeed Carson instead. Feeling slighted, Letterman put aside his disappointment at not fulfilling a life-long dream of carrying on in his mentor's timeslot and moved to CBS to head up his own show. In turn, his move to CBS, which opened the 12:30 slot for another late-late-night hopeful, Conan O'Brien. In preparing for his new home, NBC told Letterman he couldn't use certain bits from his show on CBS as they were "intellectual property" of NBC. Luckily, most of the rights belonged to the writers/creators of those skits, so the tradition of Stupid Pet Tricks and so on could continue. The first episode of the newly named Late Show With David Letterman aired on August 30, 1993, and ran opposite Leno, causing a ratings battle ever since. In what was named the late-night wars beginning with Leno's selection over Letterman, the situation created much discussion, speculation, and even a 1996 movie from HBO. The Late Shift, based on a non-fiction book by Bill Carter, depicted the drama behind who was to be chosen to take over for Carson. Although Letterman's audience is familiar with his driving record as it is the butt of many jokes, not much else is known about his personal life. He was married to Michele Cook from 1969 to 1977 and reportedly has a long-time girlfriend. Letterman introduced viewers to his mom via the 1994 Olympic Winter Games when she served as a correspondent and she has periodically appeared on the show ever since. For all his dry sarcasm, Letterman has occasionally shown a warmer, sensitive side. On January 14, 2000, he had quintuple bypass surgery. Along with his usual humor, upon his return to the show on February 21, he brought out the medical team that performed the surgery and gave them a teary, heartfelt thank you. This side came out again when new episodes of his show went back on the air a week after the events of September 11, 2001. Instead of starting with the typical monologue, Letterman sat at his desk and simply stated: "If you didn't believe it before, you can believe it now: New York City is absolutely the greatest city on earth." Other than television appearances, he has played himself in a few movies, including the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon and Howard Stern's Private Parts, and some of his standup comedy can be found on The Comedy Store 20th Birthday. One character performance went uncredited, but is well known to Letterman fans nonetheless. In Chris Elliot's Cabin Boy, he plays a sarcastic villager Elliot's character encounters during a port stop. Along with hosting his own show, he also hosted the 1994 Academy Awards, where he came up with his famous introduction skit "Uma, Oprah. Oprah, Uma." Most celebrities pay the price for their fame by giving up their private lives. While Letterman does well to guard his, he couldn't keep one over-adulate fan at bay. Stalker Margaret Ray claimed on several occasions to be Letterman's wife and the mother of his (fictional) son. She had broken into his Connecticut home on a few occasions and had served ten months in prison and 14 months in a mental institution in relation to these violations. In October of 1996, she committed suicide by kneeling in front of an ongoing train in Colorado. Oddly enough, Letterman went back to work for NBC in 2000 by serving as an executive producer of the network's comedy-drama Ed. He is also the co-owner and founder of the Worldwide Pants production company, which also produces CBS's hit comedy Everybody Loves Raymond. In March 2002, ABC was looking to get rid of its news program Nightline, hosted by Ted Koppel and replace it with Letterman's show. After much speculation, Letterman decided to stay at CBS, but not without voicing his own support of veteran newsman Koppel.In November 2003 Letterman became a father at the age of 56 when his girlfriend Regina Lasko gave birth to a son, Harry Joseph Letterman, named in honor of Letterman's late father. On March 21, 2009, Letterman and Lasko married in Montana.

Trivia: Of the many performers to leap into films from the springboard of the television sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live, Bill Murray has been among the most successful and unpredictable, forging an idiosyncratic career allowing him to stretch from low-brow slapstick farce to intelligent adult drama. Born in Wilmette, IL, on September 21, 1950, Murray was an incorrigible child, kicked out of both the Boy Scouts and Little League. At the age of 20, he was also arrested for attempting to smuggle close to nine pounds of marijuana through nearby O'Hare Airport. In an attempt to find direction in his life, he joined his older brother, Brian Doyle-Murray, in the cast of Chicago's Second City improvisational comedy troupe. He later relocated to New York City, joining radio's National Lampoon Hour. Both Murray siblings were also in a 1975 off-Broadway spin-off, also dubbed The National Lampoon Hour; there Murray was spotted by sportscaster Howard Cosell, who recruited him for the cast of his ABC variety program, titled Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell. On the NBC network, a program also named Saturday Night Live was creating a much bigger sensation; when, after one season, the show's breakout star Chevy Chase exited to pursue a film career, producer Lorne Michaels tapped Murray as his replacement. Murray too became a celebrity, developing a fabulously insincere and sleazy comic persona which was put to good use in his first major film, the 1979 hit Meatballs. He next starred as the famed gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson in the film biography Where the Buffalo Roam, a major disaster. However, 1980's Caddyshack was a masterpiece of slob comedy, with Murray memorable as a maniacal rangeboy hunting the gopher that is slowly destroying his golf course. The film launched him to the ranks of major stardom; the follow-up, the armed services farce Stripes, was an even bigger blockbuster, earning over 40 million dollars at the box office. Murray next appeared, unbilled, in 1982's Tootsie before starring with Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis in 1984's Ghostbusters. The supernatural comedy was one of the decade's biggest hits, earning over 130 million dollars and spawning a cartoon series, action figures, and even a chart-topping theme song (performed by Ray Parker Jr.). Murray now ranked among the world's most popular actors, and he next fulfilled a long-standing dream by starring in and co-writing an adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel The Razor's Edge. Few fans knew what to make of his abrupt turn from broad farce to literary drama, however, and as a result the film flopped. Murray spent the next several years in self-imposed exile, making only a cameo appearance in the 1986 musical comedy Little Shop of Horrors. After much deliberation, he finally selected his comeback vehicle -- 1988's Scrooged, a black comic retelling of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. While it performed moderately well, it was not the smash many predicted. Nor was 1989's Ghostbusters II, which grossed less than half of the first picture. The 1990 crime comedy Quick Change, which Murray co-directed with Howard Franklin, was also a disappointment, but 1991's What About Bob? was an unqualified hit. In 1993, Murray earned his strongest notices to date for Groundhog Day, a sublime comedy directed by longtime conspirator Ramis. Beginning with 1994's acclaimed Ed Wood, in which he appeared as a transsexual, Murray's career choices grew increasingly eccentric; in 1996 alone, he starred in the little-seen Larger Than Life as a motivational speaker, co-starred as a bowling champion in Kingpin, and appeared as himself in the family film Space Jam. In 1998, Murray took on a similarly eccentric role in Wes Anderson's Rushmore. Playing a business tycoon competing with an equally eccentric 15-year-old (Jason Schwartzman) for the affections of a first grade teacher (Olivia Williams), Murray did some of his best work in years and won the Best Supporting Actor award from the New York Film Critics Circle. The film's success helped to put the actor back in the forefront, and he drew further exposure that year from his appearance as a sleazy lawyer in the relentlessly trashy Wild Things. The following year, he could be seen in Cradle Will Rock, Tim Robbins' look at the often contentious relationship between art and politics in 1930s America.Though the mere thought of Murray as Polonius in a film adaptation of William Shakespeare's Hamlet may have elicited dumbounded looks and confused laughter early in his career, that was precisely how the versatile thespian ushered in the new millennium in director Micheal Almereyda's modern updating of the classic drama. Subsequently landing laughs as the superspy point person Bosley in the big screen adaptation of the classic 1970's television hit Charlie's Angels, Murray's interpretation of the character would be taken over by popular comic Bernie Mac in the film's 2003 sequel. After taking a brief voyage into gross-out territory with the Farrelly brother's Osmosis Jones in 2001, a re-teaming with Rushmore director Anderson resulted in a small but memorable supporting performance in the same year's The Royal Tenenbaums. In 2003 Murray essayed the role that would offer what was perhaps his most heartfelt combination of personal drama and touching comedy to date in director Sofia Coppola's acclaimed indie film Lost in Translation. Cast as a washed up American actor who strikes up a tentative friendship with the young wife of a superstar photographer while on a stay in Japan to endorse a popular brand of whiskey, Murray's low-key charm proved the perfect balance to co-star Scarlett Johansson's youthful malaise. Virtually across the board, critics were bowled over by the subtle depth of Murray's performance, leading to Best Actor honors from The New York Film Critics Circle, The Boston Society of Film Critics, The Los Angeles Film Critics Association, The San Francisco Film Critics Circle, The National Society of Film Critics, The Golden Globes, and The Independent Spirit Awards. But the one award that remained elusive to Murray was Oscar. Though nominated, the prize ultimately went to Sean Penn for Mystic River.In 2004, along with providing the voice for a CGI version of Garfield the cat, Murray once again teamed up with director Wes Anderson, starring as as a world-renowned oceanographer in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. While The Life Aquatic was met with mixed reviews, Murray's performance in the 2005 Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers netted virtually unanimous acclaim. Over the next several years, Murray would maintain his selective film career, appearing in acclaimed films like Get Low, Passion Play, and Moonrise Kingdom.