Trivia: One of the salutary byproducts of the TV series Seinfeld is that it created a market in the '90s for sitcoms built around the comedy routines of young, hip New York comics. One of the best of these programs was Mad About You, created by and starring Manhattan-born Paul Reiser. Reiser and Seinfeld share more than a similarity of sitcoms; together with comedians Larry Miller and Mark Schiff, they comprise what has been unofficially dubbed the Four Funniest Men in the World Club, which has met for lunch each New Year's Day for the past several years. Reiser's credentials include a degree from S.U.N.Y.-Binghamton, a short stint as a health food distributor, and a 1982 film debut in Diner. Most of his film roles have been in comedies, though he was effectively cast as a greedy space traveler (who comes to a well-deserved bad end) in 1986's Aliens. Reiser has noted that his weekly series Mad About You, in which he co-starred with Helen Hunt, was based on his relationship with his wife, Paula. In 1995, Paul Reiser took a brief respite from Mad About You to star in the "single dad" comedy Bye Bye Love.As the new decade began, and Mad About You came to a close, Resier appeared in One Night at McCool's, and four years later realized a personal dream by co-starring with Peter Falk in The Thing About My Folks, a film Resier co-wrote as well. He was interviewed in The Aristocrats, and appeared as himself in Funny People. In 2011 he masterminded the very short-lived NBC sitcom The Paul Reiser Show.

Trivia: A precociously talented youngster, Helen Hunt was drawing paychecks as a television actress from the age of ten. Before she was 17, she had appeared as a regular on two series, Swiss Family Robinson (1975) and The Fitzpatricks (1977). Hunt proved she was more than just a workaday child actor with her starring performance in the fact-based 1981 TV movie The Miracle of Kathy Miller, in which she played a high school athlete who overcame severe mental and physical damage brought on by a highway accident. While she had been appearing in films as early as Rollercoaster in 1977, Hunt was never groomed as a star player, and it is possible that her resemblance to another child actress, Jodie Foster, held her back from more important roles.After taking on her first adult role in the 1982 sitcom It Takes Two, Hunt's film assignments improved, with sizable roles in Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Project X (1987), Next of Kin (1989), and The Waterdance (1991). She also gained a small measure of cult status by appearing in a brace of science fiction films, including Trancers II (1991) and Trancers III (1992). That same year, Hunt landed her longest-lasting acting assignment to date, as the co-star of the Paul Reiser-created comedy series Mad About You. During the show's seven-year run, she won both Emmy and Golden Globe awards for her portrayal of Jamie Buchman. In 1996, Hunt had her most successful film role to date in the blockbuster Twister. The following year, she topped that when she received a Best Actress Oscar for playing a caring waitress and single mother who befriends acerbic, obsessive-compulsive author Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson, who also won an Oscar for his performance) in As Good As It Gets. After Mad About You ended in 1999, Hunt appeared in films by several veteran directors, including Robert Zemeckis (Cast Away [2000]), Robert Altman (Dr. T and The Women [2000]), and Woody Allen (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion [2001]). She starred in Life x 3 on Broadway in 2003.In 2005, Hunt joined the star-studded cast of HBO's two-part miniseries Empire Falls in the role of Janine, ex-wife of Miles (Ed Harris), the story's central character. The actress made her feature directorial debut in Then She Found Me (for which Hunt also starred, produced, and wrote the screenplay), an adaptation of Elinore Lipman's best-selling novel of the same name. The story follows a Philadelphia schoolteacher (Hunt) whose long-lost birth mother (Bette Miller) reappears at just as her daughter is careening into a midlife crisis. Hunt played a supportive mother in Soul Surfer (2011), an inspirational drama based on the true tale of a surfer who returned to the sport after tragically losing an arm. In 2012 she played a sex surrogate helping a man in an iron lung lose his virginity for director Ben Lewin in The Sessions, a part that earned her rave reviews and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress.

Trivia: Supporting actress, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: Educated at Roosevelt University, bearded, booming-voiced Louis Zorich has been a working actor for nearly 50 years. Zorich made his off-Broadway debut in a revival of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, and has appeared on Broadway in Becket, Moby Dick, Hadrian VII, and Moonchildren. He also appeared as Ben in Dustin Hoffman's 1984 staging of Death of a Salesman, repeating this role in the 1985 film version. On television, Zorich has been seen as Jules Berger in Brooklyn Bridge (1991) and as Paul Reiser's father in Mad About You (which ran from 1992 to 1999), and heard in innumerable commercial voice-overs. Louis Zorich is the husband of Oscar-winning actress Olympia Dukakis.

Trivia: Character actor Len Lesser worked steadily in film and television since his film debut in Shackout on 101 (1955). Lean, dark, and bushy-browed, he was typically cast as a crook or hitman. Fans of the television sitcom Seinfeld will recognize Lesser as Uncle Leo.

Trivia: Entering films as a dialogue director in 1944, American director Frederick De Cordova quickly established himself as a man who made films quickly, inexpensively and entertainingly. A cursory glance at the list of De Cordova's films would lead one to believe he was handed all the unworkable projects in Hollywood and told to make them sparkle. In Universal's The Desert Hawk (1950), DeCordova had to direct Rock Hudson as a villain, Jackie Gleason as Aladdin and Joe Besser as Sinbad. The result was one of the better films of this singular genre. In Here Come the Nelsons (1952) DeCordova was expected to make viable movie stars of Ozzie, Harriet, David and Ricky; he did it. And in the immortal Bedtime for Bonzo (1951), DeCordova took the potentially disastrous combination of Ronald Reagan and a trained chimp and came up with a delightful, wholly credible heredity/environment comedy. As a TV director, De Cordova had some of the most capricious and contrary personalities in the business eating out of his hand. He managed to wrangle an apology from a temporarily temperamental George Burns, weathered a dark mood from Jack Benny by simply matching Benny's long silences, and survived nearly two decades with the virtually unapproachable Johnny Carson. Only when handling Ida Lupino and Howard Duff in the '50s TV series Mr. Adams and Eve was De Cordova unable to maintain a peaceful set; even here, however, the end result suggested that all was sunshine through the shooting schedule. In 1988, De Cordova wrote his autobiography, a masterpiece of diplomacy titled Johnny Came Lately. In the 1990s Fred De Cordova continues to be very active as a TV director.

Trivia: Veteran nightclub comedian Shecky Greene is more of a storyteller than a dispenser of one-liners, and this fact might be the secret behind his durability. Greene started out in his home turf of Chicago in 1947; within six years, he was headlining in Las Vegas and making the first of thousands of TV appearances. Not entirely comfortable playing anyone other than "himself," he has nonetheless essayed character parts in such films as Tony Rome (1968), The Love Machine (1970), History of the World Part One (1981), and Splash (1984, as Mr. Buyrite). He also played wisecracking Private Braddock on the first (1962-63) season of the TV war drama Combat. Shecky Greene has been the recipient of many honors and industry awards for his stand-up work.

Trivia: The raspy-voiced actress who endeared herself to television viewers as the wife of Abe Vigoda's character in the popular sitcom Barney Miller (as well as the short-lived spin-off Fish), Florence Stanley found most of her success on the small screen. A Chicago native and graduate of Northwestern University, Stanley moved to New York City shortly after finishing college and kicked off an acting career on Broadway. Stanley followed roles in Fiddler on the Roof and The Glass Menagerie with stints at both the Manhattan Theater Club and the New York Shakespeare Festival. In June 1950, she made her television debut in an episode of the popular drama series Studio One; years later, she loaned her already distinct voice to the '60s series Dark Shadows (as the sobbing Josette). Although subsequent appearances in The Day of the Dolphin (1973) and The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1974) found her feature career blossoming, her role in Barney Miller gave Stanley the most exposure she had received to date. She took a ten-year hiatus from the screen after Fish, triumphantly returning to TV in Night Court and Mr. Belvedere in 1987. Stanley returned to feature work the same year with a small role in the Shelley Long/Bette Midler comedy Outrageous Fortune. The comeback provided her career with something of a second wind, and the 1990s found the veteran actress increasingly busy with roles in such high-profile features as Trapped in Paradise (1994), A Goofy Movie (1995), and Bulworth (1998). Stanley never entirely abandoned the small screen, and the late '90s and early 2000s found her alternating between TV roles in Malcolm in the Middle and NYPD Blue, with feature work in Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), its small-screen spin-off, and Down With Love (2003). Behind the scenes, the longtime actress was also a member of the League of Professional Theater Women as well as the motion picture and television academies. Stanley died of complications from a stroke October 3, 2003, in Los Angeles. She was 79.

Trivia: The son of a Yonkers restaurant owner, Sid Caesar first discovered he could get laughs by imitating the colorful dialects of his multinational classmates. But Caesar actually wanted to be a musician and to that end studied diligently at Juilliard. He paid for his education by working in various Catskills resorts as a saxophone player, dancer, and comedian. While serving in WWII, Caesar was engaged to perform in a touring musical revue staged by Coast Guard personnel called Tars and Spars. When the show was transformed into a motion picture by Columbia Pictures, Caesar went along for the ride, performing his classic war film monologue intact before the cameras. This led to a brief Columbia contract, which came to an end with Caesar's three-minute cameo appearance in The Guilt of Janet Ames (1947). While appearing in the Broadway revue Make Mine Manhattan in 1949, he was hired to co-star with Imogene Coca in a weekly TV variety series, The Admiral Broadway Revue. This in turn led to Your Show of Shows, one of the true landmarks of television's Golden Age. For five inspired seasons, Caesar and his cohorts Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris kept America laughing with an unending stream of brilliant monologues, movie parodies, and various sundry other sketches. Throughout the '50s and early '60s Caesar continued to star on TV in several Show of Shows spinoffs, and in 1963 returned to Broadway in the musical comedy Little Me, playing no fewer than eight roles within the play's two-hour running time. During this period he also returned to films, first as a member of the all-star ensemble in It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), then as star of The Busy Body (1967) and The Spirit is Willing (1968). Unfortunately, the pressures of show business, combined with an overabundance of personal problems, led to a dangerous dependency upon alcohol and prescription drugs. So far gone was Caesar during the 1960s and 1970s that, according to his 1982 autobiography Where Have I Been?, there were times that he'd wander on-stage or before the cameras with no idea where he was or what he was saying. He hit rock bottom in 1978, suffering a total nervous breakdown while appearing in a Toronto dinner theater production of The Last of the Red Hot Lovers. Slowly and painfully, Caesar overcame his addictions and a multitude of psychological difficulties and made a near-complete recovery. Modern audiences, to whom Your Show of Shows is but a dim and distant memory, remember Sid Caesar best for his supporting appearances in such films as Silent Movie (1976) (directed by Caesar's onetime gag writer Mel Brooks), Fire Sale (1978), Grease (1982), and National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation (1997). Caesar died in 2014 at age 91.

Trivia: The son of a Rumanian rabbi, Canadian actor/comedian David Steinberg was considered the quiet member of his large family -- until he developed a gift for lying. Steinberg's prevarications did not endear him to his father, who said "I kiss the train that takes you away" when Steinberg left Winnipeg to study theology in Israel. All plans for a rabbinical career ended when Steinberg happened to catch Lenny Bruce's act, whereupon he decided to become a comedian. Paul Sills of Chicago's Second City troupe hired Steinberg after seeing the young comic in a University of California production of Candide, but Steinberg didn't really fit in with the communal spirit of Second City and chose to strike out as a solo actor. He appeared in Broadway productions as Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights and Little Murders, both failures. Finally he attained a new agent who guided Steinberg through the Playboy-club circuit in the late '60s. Steinberg confused many club patrons by avoiding standard mother-in-law jokes in favor of conceptual comedy - humor based on observations of everyday life. One of his routines centered around a sanctimonious minister's sermon, and on the strength of this Steinberg was hired for guest spots on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. After his appearance on October 27, 1968, Steinberg was deluged with angry mail complaining about his "blasphemous" performance; the Smothers refused to cave in to pressure and used Steinberg on other programs, including their final taping in April 1969, which remained untelecast after the brothers were fired by CBS. Adverse publicity or no, Steinberg was hired to emcee a 45-minute ABC-TV variety program, The Music Scene, in 1969, where his comic gifts were stifled and he was expected to merely point fingers as the singing groups were introduced. In 1972, when censorial pressure had subsided somewhat at CBS thanks to the advent of All in the Family, Steinberg was hired by the network for a summer replacement series, The David Steinberg Show. The program played to so-so ratings, but did give Steinberg a brief spurt of popularity wherein fans could be heard repeating his catchphrases "Boogie boogie boogie" and "Get OFF me." Steinberg's fame crested in the mid '70s, after which he faded from television. In the early '80s Steinberg turned to film directing with such movies as Paternity (1980) and Going Berserk (1982), and in 1985 he gave TV another try with a series of syndicated interview specials.

Trivia: Raised outside of Chicago as the sixth of nine children, including older brother James, a founding member of the band Chicago. Left college in his junior year after seeing David Mamet's play, The American Buffalo, which inspired Pankow to enroll in the two-year training program at Chicago's St. Nicholas Theatre. Performed on Broadway (in his first stint) in Serious Money, The Iceman Cometh and as Mozart in Amadeus. Appeared in a numerous films of the late 1980s-early '90s, including To Live and Die in L.A., Talk Radio and Mortal Thoughts. Most recognized for his role as Ira Buchman, cousin of Paul Reiser's character, on the '90s NBC sitcom Mad About You. Returned to Broadway in the 2000s, performing in Twelve Angry Men, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Cymbeline. Took over the role of Merc Lapidus (from Thomas Haden Church) in 2011 on the Showtime/BBC show Episodes.

Trivia: A native of rural Humboldt, IA, character actor Christian Clemenson left his home state when a scholarship that he netted as part of his paperboy route afforded him the opportunity to attend the prestigious Phillips Academy preparatory school in Andover, MA. That experience imparted Clemenson with a deep-seated love of theatrics, and he spent his Iowan summers during college acting in local stage productions. The upstart subsequently attended Harvard as an undergraduate and Yale Drama School as a grad student, then moved to Los Angeles in the mid-'80s, where he accepted a long series of bit parts and supporting roles in A-list features, typically cast as nebbishy professional types. Early films in which Clemenson appeared included Heartburn (1986), Legal Eagles (1986), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and Broadcast News (1987).Beginning in the late '90s, Clemenson began placing a stronger emphasis on television work, with guest roles in series including Ally McBeal, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The West Wing, and NYPD Blue. He received critical kudos for his portrayal of ill-fated executive Thomas E. Burnett Jr., a victim of the September 11th terrorist attacks, in Paul Greengrass' feature United 93 (2006), then joined William Shatner, Candice Bergen, and James Spader of David E. Kelley's offbeat seriocomedy Boston Legal in a recurring capacity during the show's second season; on the program, Clemenson played Jerry "Hands" Espenson, a troubled lawyer plagued by Asperger's Syndrome. He went on to win Best Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2006 for that role, and continued to appear on the show, later attaining regular status and staying with the series until it folded in 2009. Clemenson would continue to appear regularly on screen as the years went on, appearing on shows like CSI: Miami and Harry's Law.

Trivia: A natural-born actress who received her primary training in the foyer of her parents' home, Leila Kenzle has since moved on to brighten the lights of Broadway and bask in the warm glow of television and film. Born in Patchogue (Long Island), NY, and raised by an electrical supplies salesman and an antique dealer in nearby Rutherford, NJ, Kenzle was the one of three daughters who often entertained houseguests with her energetic antics. After deciding to expand her talents beyond the realm of home dinner theater, Kenzle earned her B.F.A. in theater from the Mason Gross School of the Arts Conservatory at Rutgers. As with many others in her field, the burgeoning talent found the demanding life of an actress too much to bear and promptly withdrew from the stage, finding work as a hotel phone operator. Encouraged by a sympathetic casting director to follow her dreams and go in for an audition, Kenzle landed her first off-Broadway role and has since never looked back. Following a breakthrough role in the off-Broadway hit Tony 'n Tina's Wedding, the newly confident actress soon relocated to Los Angeles and quickly landed roles in no less than five television pilots. Her television career on a role, Kenzle appeared in such popular series as The Golden Girls, thirtysomething, and Mad About You. Her exposure growing, it wasn't long before Kenzle was making the leap to films with roles in Other People's Money (1991) and Dogmatic (1996). The new millennium found Kenzle landing roles in such popular features as White Oleander and the Rob Schneider comedy The Hot Chick (both 2002). Married to acting coach Neil Monaco in April of 1994, Kenzle often dedicated her time off-camera to work with the Children's International Institute and working with multiple sclerosis charities. With the release of the award-winning short film Bigger Fish, the established actress branched out to receive her first producer's credit.

Trivia: Started her professional acting career in 1974.At the start of her career, learned to type to work in offices while also auditioning in New York.In 2008, was awarded the School of Theatre Distinguished Alumni Award by the Boston University College of Fine Arts.Has played a teacher in multiple projects, including Lean on Me (1989), If Looks Could Kill (1991), Curb Your Enthusiasm and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.In 2016, was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female for her work in the film H. (2014).

Trivia: Character actor Richard Kind has done most of his work on television and on stage, but he also occasionally appears in feature films. Fans of the NBC sitcom Mad About You will recognize him for playing Fran's ex-husband Mark. Kind grew up in Bucks County, PA (he was born in Trenton, NJ), and has had a lifelong interest in acting. But despite his interest, he enrolled at Northwestern University as a pre-law major. He had planned on attending law school immediately after graduation, but instead heeded a family friend's advice and decided to pursue drama for a while. Kind moved to New York, but despite occasional work in commercials and showcases, got no breaks. He did much better in Chicago, where he found employment and gained valuable experience working first with the comedic actors at the Practical Theatre Company and then with those at Second City. Eventually, he moved to L.A. to perform with that city's division of the illustrious satirical theater. Since his arrival in Southern California, Kind has been a regular and a guest star on various series. He made his feature film debut in Vice Versa (1988). He would go on to appear in many feature films, from the Station Agent to Argo. He would also star on several TV series, like Spin City and Luck.

Trivia: Trained for an acting career from childhood, Judy Geeson was a busy juvenile player on television before making her screen debut at 18 in To Sir, With Love. She spent the early stages of her film career playing "jail bait" teenagers, then moved on to more conservative leading-lady assignments. In 1979, Geeson was a regular on the BBC serial Danger UXB, which aired in America on PBS' Masterpiece Theatre. More recently, she has specialized in elegant, landed-gentry roles. Once married to actor Kristoffer Tabori, Judy Geeson is also the sister of actress Sally Geeson, best known for her work on the TV series Star Maidens and Bless This House.

Trivia: Lisa Kudrow first made her name playing Phoebe, the ditzy, New Age member of the titular close-knit pals on NBC's highly successful sitcom Friends. Since then, she has bridged the gap between television and film with undeniable success, winning particular acclaim for her role as an uptight school teacher in Don Roos' The Opposite of Sex (1998).Born in Encino, California on July 30, 1963, Kudrow earned a degree in biology from Vassar College before beginning her acting career. After college, she joined the Los Angeles improvisational group, The Groundlings, at the urging of family friend Jon Lovitz. Improv paved the way for more work, and Kudrow was soon appearing in bit roles in a number of films. Her first real break didn't come until 1993, when she began appearing on the TV sitcom Mad About You as Ursula, the waitress from hell. Real fame came in 1994, when the actress was cast as Phoebe on Friends; the enormous success of the show gave her both wide recognition and a steady day job. Kudrow's first leading role on the big screen was as one of the titular heroines (alongside Mira Sorvino) of the 1997 comedy Romy and Michele's High School Reunion; unfortunately, her character was little more than a film version of Phoebe. Fortunately, Kudrow got to widen her range a little further that same year with a starring role in the independent drama Clockwatchers, portraying a struggling actress alongside the likes of Toni Collette and Parker Posey. The following year, Kudrow won raves and critical respect for her turn in The Opposite of Sex, a scathing black comedy in which she gave a comic and poignant performance as an embittered woman coping with the death of her brother, the presence of her best friend's malicious little sister (Christina Ricci), and the romantic attentions of Lyle Lovett. The acclaim she received for her portrayal was complemented the same year with an Emmy Award for her work on Friends. In 1999, Kudrow shared the screen with Robert DeNiro in the comedy Analyze This, and later that year she starred with Diane Keaton and Meg Ryan as three sisters dealing with the imminent death of their irritating father (Walter Matthau) in the comedy Hanging Up, directed by Keaton and written by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron.As the new millenium unfolded, Kudrow would prove to be a strong force on screen, appearing in a number of acclaimed films, like Wonderland, Happy Endings, The Other Woman, Easy A, and in the comedy series Web Therapy.

Trivia: Rubber-faced comic actor and vocal artist extraordinaire Hank Azaria initially plied his trade on the stand-up circuit, then subsequently landed stage appearances and tackled bit parts on television. Azaria scored his breakthrough in 1989 when he began providing a multitude of voices for the Fox network's groundbreaking animated series The Simpsons, an assignment that imparted the performer with an enviable degree of cult stardom. In 1991, Azaria nabbed a major role in the Fox live-action sitcom Herman's Head, which ran until 1994 and gave audiences a glimpse of the man responsible for the vocal intonations of some of the most famous characters to ever corrupt an animator's storyboard.A native of Queens, NY, where he was born into a family of Sephardic Jews on April 25, 1964, Azaria commenced film roles in the late 1980s, coincident with his Simpsons stardom. Work on that program (which, after graduating from a series of crude sketches on The Tracey Ullmann Show to its own animated sitcom, quickly shot up to qualify as the Fox network's most popular enterprise) easily outstripped Azaria's screen work in popularity and visibility for many years. Recurring parts included Indian convenience store owner Apu, quack doctor Nick Riviera, dim-witted bartender Moe, and the idiotic, pig-nosed Springfield Chief of Police, Clancy Wiggum. Though his Simpsons work continued unabated over the years, beginning in the mid-1990s Azaria branched out somewhat, placing a heavier emphasis on live-action portrayals. Even in that venue, however, his work tonally mirrored his animated contributions; he specialized in adroitly handling goofy, over-the-top character parts, often with an ethnic bent. The performer attained visibility and memorability, for example, as the klutzy and scantily-dressed gay houseboy Agador in The Birdcage (1995), Hector, a goofy Hispanic paramour with a permanent effeminate lisp, in Joe Roth's underrated showbiz comedy America's Sweethearts (2001), and Claude, a Gallic beach bum with no qualms about taking off with other men's wives, in John Hamburg's gross-out romantic comedy Along Came Polly (2004).Azaria has also departed from the boundaries of screen comedy from time to time, doing memorable work across genre lines in such films as Great Expectations (1998) (which cast him as Gwyneth Paltrow's lackluster fiancé), Mystery Men (1999) (as the superhero Blue Raja), and Tim Robbins' Cradle Will Rock (1999), a historical drama about art and politics in 1930s New York that cast Azaria as leftist playwright Marc Blitzstein. In 2005, Azaria presided as one of the many off-color monologuists in Penn Jillette's stand-up comedy showcase film The Aristocrats; the performer subsequently provided at least seventeen voices (including his usual series roles) for The Simpsons Movie (2007) and voiced both Abbie Hoffmann and Allen Ginsberg in the animated sequences of Brett Morgen's offbeat documentary Chicago 10 (2007).He appeared in the pre-historic comedy Year One, and provided several voices in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. He played an ethically challenged doctor in Love and Other Drugs, and portrayed Gargamel, the bad guy in the big-screen hit The Smurfs. He was in family film Hop, and lent his prodigious vocal talents to Happy Feet Two. In 2012 he acted in the biopic Lovelace.In July 1999, Azaria married actress Helen Hunt, with whom he co-starred in several episodes of the sitcom Mad About You. The two divorced within eighteen months.

Trivia: Heavyset comedian Jeff Garlin started doing standup comedy at his Florida college before he returned to his hometown of Chicago, IL, and joined the cast of Second City. In 1992, he made his film debut in the Dolly Parton comedy Straight Talk, followed by small roles in other features and made-for-TV movies. In 1997, he starred in his own HBO half-hour comedy special and guest starred on Everybody Loves Raymond a couple times before playing the reoccurring role of Marvin on NBC's Mad About You. After bit parts in the comedies Senseless and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Garlin made the successful switch back to television. This time he tried directing and producing in addition to playing Larry David's manager, Jeff Greene, on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, which would become his most recognizable role. He then hosted the short-lived variety show Late Friday and joined the cast of What About Joan for its second and final season. He made a brief return to film for Steven Soderbergh's Full Frontal and then gained co-star status with Eddie Murphy for Daddy Day Care in 2003. In 2006 he wrote, directed, and starred in the sweet indie comedy I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, and two years later joined the Pixar family providing the voice of the ship captain in the highly-successful Wall-E. As he continued working on Curb, he found working on animated films to his liking and lent his voice to Cars 2, Toy Story 3 and ParaNorman.

Trivia: American entertainer Carol Burnett and her sister were both raised by their loving grandmother. It has long been a matter of public record that Burnett credits her grandmother for encouraging her to utilize her comic and musical talents to the fullest. Working her way through UCLA, she majored in English and Theater arts, gradually developing the poise and self-confidence to tackle an entertainment career. After nightclub work, Burnett was spotlighted on the variety programs of Steve Allen, Ed Sullivan, and Jack Paar, bringing down the house on Paar's program with the specialty ballad "I Made a Fool of Myself over John Foster Dulles." In 1956, Burnett co-starred with Buddy Hackett in the live TV sitcom Stanley, which unfortunately was scheduled opposite the indestructible Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. A near-star several times over, Burnett finally grabbed the brass ring with her bravura performance in the 1959 off-Broadway musical Once Upon a Mattress, which led to a three-season stint as a regular on The Garry Moore Show. An Emmy award resulted from her contribution to Moore, and another Emmy followed for a 1962 joint appearance with Julie Andrews at Carnegie Hall. Some of her comedy of the era was the self-deprecating sort allotted to women who weren't raving beauties, but she transcended the cruelty of the jokes with an inner beauty that one would have to be blind to miss. As a slapstick comedienne Burnett was unrivalled, even by the sainted Lucille Ball, and on occasion she was allowed to drop the comic mask and deliver a heart-rending ballad. In 1962, CBS signed Burnett to a long term contract under the supervision of her then-husband, producer Joe Hamilton. After an uncomfortable few months in 1964 in which the producers of the Broadway production Fade Out Fade In sued Burnett for abandoning the play to appear in a weekly variety series The Entertainers, her post-Garry Moore career moved along unevenly. She was advised to sign for another series but avoided the option of situation comedy (she once insisted that she didn't want to be trapped playing someone named Agnes every week). In 1967, virtually out of desperation for a workable idea, The Carol Burnett Show premiered on CBS. Burnett patterned the program after Garry Moore's opening monologue, brief sketches with continuing characters, parodies, musical bits, and a closing all-star musical comedy production number. With such first-rate supporting talent as Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, Lyle Waggoner and Tim Conway, The Carol Burnett Show was a ratings-grabber until its final telecast in 1978. Carol Burnett's life and career since then has been distinguished by as many valleys as peaks. Her film career never truly got off the ground, despite excellent performances in such pictures as Pete 'N' Tillie (1972) and A Wedding (1978). Nevertheless, Carol Burnett has more than earned her place in the pantheon of television giants.Burnett would remain active in the coming decades, starring in everything from the classic musical Annie to the sitcom Mama's Family, not to mention making inumerable appearances on shows like Touched By an Angel, Mad About You, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and Glee.

Trivia: A veteran character actor of stage and screen, George O. Petrie will be recognized by fans of the NBC sitcom Mad About You as Paul Reiser's film editor. A native of New Haven, CT, and a 1934 graduate from U.S.C., Petrie's interest in acting led him to New York where he landed a role in the Broadway production of Cafe Crown. While serving in the military during WWII, Petrie appeared in the Broadway production of The Army Play by Play, a five-part anthology comprised of vignettes penned by soldiers from as many camps. The show ran for six months and played a command performance before President Roosevelt. Upon transferring to the Air Corps, Petrie was cast in Moss Hart's inspirational Winged Victory. Following its four-month run, Petrie went on to appear in George Cukor's film version. Petrie became a radio performer after his discharge and starred in several dramas, including The Amazing Mr. Malone. He turned to television acting in the '50s and began starring in live soap operas such as As the World Turns and Edge of Night as well as playing a semi-regular part on Jackie Gleason's The Honeymooners. Petrie would remain associated with Gleason on various projects through 1969. Petrie's filmography includes Hud (1963), Something in Common (1986), and Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987). Petrie died of lymphoma in his Brentwood, CA, home at the age 85.