Trivia: Chevy Chase is often considered one of the most likeable comedic personalities of his generation, even though the immediate popularity he achieved following a single season on Saturday Night Live never translated into more than a couple hit movies, and none after the 1980s. The prematurely balding, intelligent, fast-talking Chase created a couple classic characters, notably Irwin M. Fletcher (aka Fletch) and Vacation's Clark Griswold, but his career is often thought of as plagued by misfires and missed opportunities, rather than touched by comic brilliance.Born on October 8, 1943, in New York City, Cornelius Crane Chase became known as "Chevy" when his grandmother nicknamed him after Chevy Chase, the wealthy Maryland community. The 6'4" future writer and actor was valedictorian of his high school class before attending Bard College, where he earned a B.A. in English. With a pre-celebrity resumé as varied as any (tennis pro, truck driver, bartender), Chase spent his twenties as a comedy writer for such outlets as the Smothers Brothers and National Lampoon, the latter of which eventually led to a lucrative franchise of Vacation movies. Chase's first stint as a performer was with the New York comedy video workshop Channel One, which evolved into the 1974 film Groove Tube. This afforded Chase the necessary exposure to be hired by Lorne Michaels for the first season of Saturday Night Live in 1975.Initially hired on as a writer, Chase soon began appearing in front of the camera as the anchor of the popular Weekend Update segment of the ensemble variety show. With the catchphrase opening "Good evening, I'm Chevy Chase and you're not," and aided by his bumbling impersonation of President Gerald Ford, the actor quickly assumed breakout status, earning Emmys for both his writing and acting. He left after a single season to pursue film opportunities, but did not really strike gold until Caddyshack (1980), in which he played a rich golf pro who oozed confidence and a dry sarcastic wit three steps ahead of anyone else. These would become Chase's trademarks.During the filming of his next project, Modern Problems (1981), Chase was nearly electrocuted when a gag involving landing lights attached to his body short-circuited. The experience sunk him into a deep depression. But he recovered his stride in 1983 with the release of National Lampoon's Vacation, the first of four in an eventual series of epic misadventures of the Griswold family (European Vacation [1985], Christmas Vacation [1989], Vegas Vacation [1997]). As daffy father Clark, Chase turned the film into a huge hit, harnessing a likable befuddlement that kept the series going even as the sequels were increasingly less well received and tiresomely slapstick.Chase's other big hit came in 1985, when he starred as the title character in Fletch, the film widely considered the actor's best and most complimentary of his sharp talent for wordplay. As an undercover newspaper reporter with a quick answer -- not to mention a goofy disguise -- for every situation, Chase created a classic comic hero with a genius for confusing his adversaries. He reprised the role in the lesser sequel Fletch Lives (1989).Chase achieved moderate success by pairing with other Saturday Night Live alums in the mixed-bag comedies Spies Like Us (1985) and Three Amigos! (1986); though these had dedicated fans, they didn't achieve the critical praise of Fletch or Vacation. Despite an all-star cast, Caddyshack II (1988) went nowhere, and by the beginning of the 1990s, Chase had slipped from his status as a reliable comedic performer. Such well-documented failures as Nothing But Trouble (1991) and Cops and Robbersons (1994) became his crosses to bear during a decade that also saw the colossal failure of his Fox comeback variety show, which was canceled two months after it premiered in 1993. Chase was also arrested for drunk driving in 1995, just one incident in a career sometimes checkered by drug and alcohol abuse. In later years, Chase has preferred family oriented films, starring in such features as Man of the House (1995) (opposite Jonathan Taylor Thomas) and the kiddie-on-holiday flick Snow Day (2000). This stance prompted Chase to turn down the comeback-worthy role that won Kevin Spacey an Oscar in American Beauty (1999); had he accepted, it might have resulted in a very different film. As Chase's work has shifted more to the supporting role variety, including Dirty Work (1998) and Orange County (2002), he has seemed more comfortable. A series of appearances in such innocuous comedies as Bad Meat, Goose on the Loose, and Doogal found Chase continuing to plateau, and in 2006 the former SNL heavyweight would take to the lab to help save the world in the children's superhero adventure Zoom. In 2009 Chase was cast as a casually racist and sexist member of the study group at the heart of NBC's sitcom Community, and that program gave him some of the best reviews he'd had in quite some time. He appeared in the 2010 comedy Hot Tub Time Machine, and in 2011's Stay Cool.

Trivia: Onscreen, versatile, multi-talented Beverly D'Angelo is best remembered for playing Ellen Griswold in the National Lampoon "vacation" series of films but she has appeared in over 50 films and also performs on television and the stage. The daughter of successful musicians, D'Angelo was educated in Europe and studied fine arts but left school at age 17 to become an artist at Hanna-Barbera Studios. For a time she was a folk singer and performed in Canadian coffee houses. She later sang rock & roll with the group Elephant. She tried acting in regional theater and during the early '70s appeared frequently on Broadway, making her debut playing Ophelia in the rock musical Rockabye Hamlet. D'Angelo made her film debut playing a bit in the Sentinel (1976). Her most highly regarded film role was that of singer Patsy Cline playing opposite Sissy Spacek's Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980). D'Angelo's excellent portrayal won considerable critical acclaim. She imprinted herself into popular culture playing Ellen Griswold in the National Lampoon films Vacation, European Vacation, Christmas Vacation, and Vegas Vacation, and would continue be a consistant presence on screen for years to come, most notably in films like American History X and on the series Entourage.

Trivia: Six-foot four-inch, beefy character actor with rubbery, homely face, Quaid's first professional show-business work was as the "straight man" half of a comedy duo with actor Trey Wilson in Houston. While a third-year college drama student he was cast by Peter Bogdanovich in a supporting role in The Last Picture Show (1971), then went on to have small roles in Bogdanovich's next two movies. He made a big impression as a naive sailor alongside Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail (1973), for which he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. By the mid '70s, he worked in films frequently, usually typecast as a dim-witted fool or redneck. In the mid '80s he was (for one season) in the regular cast of the weekly sketch-comedy series "Saturday Night Live," on which he demonstrated his considerable comedic talent and often impersonated President Ronald Reagan. More recently he has gotten straight dramatic roles, a transition marked by his off-Broadway stage debut in True West in 1983. He has also worked frequently in TV movies, portraying Lenny in Of Mice and Men (1981) and Lyndon Johnson in LBJ: The Early Days (1987); for his portrayal of Mitch in the TV version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1984) he won an Emmy. He is the brother of actor Dennis Quaid, with whom he appeared in The Long Riders (1980).

Trivia: Was a competitive gymnast during his youth and often performs his own stunts. Placed sixth in the overall competition of California finals for the U.S. Gymnastics Federation at the age of 10. Won a Young Artist Award in 1992 for his starring role of Doyle Standish in the drama Dutch (1991). Served as a producer and assistant director on the short film A Dog and His Boy (1992). With Vegas Vacation (1997), became the fourth actor to play Rusty Griswold.

Trivia: After a string of guest roles on TV and bit parts in movies, actress Marisol Nichols gained prominence as the lead in the 2001 made-for-television romantic drama The Princess and the Marine. Playing an Arab princess who falls in love with an American Marine, Nichols delivered a performance that earned her the Outstanding Actress in a Made for Television Movie or Miniseries prize at the 2002 American Latino Media Arts Awards. More supporting roles on TV followed until 2005, when Nichols landed the female lead opposite Ron Eldard on the Steven Bochco-produced cop show Blind Justice. The series proved to be short-lived, but Nichols' status as a lead performer was cemented, and in 2006 she was cast on the Kyle MacLachlan legal drama In Justice. That same year, she appeared with Martin Lawrence in the comedy sequel Big Momma's House 2. In 2007, In Justice got the axe from ABC, but not before Nichols joined the cast of Fox's hit serial 24 as Nadia Yassir, a U.S. counter-terrorism agent of Middle Eastern descent struggling with an atmosphere of deepening distrust toward Arabs in the wake of a fictional terrorist attack. For the next few years it appeared as if Nichols was focusing all of her energies toward television, with featuerd roles in The Storm, The Gates, and GCB following in quick succession, and serving well to keep ehr in the public eye.

Trivia: Aptly nicknamed "Mr. Vegas" for his constant presence in Glitter Gulch, master showman Wayne Newton swept audiences off their feet for many a decade with a slick crooning style modeled upon such influences as Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darin (one of Newton's personal mentors). Newton distinguished himself, however -- at least in the early years -- via his unusually high vocal register and his choice of material; he took such numbers as "Red Roses for a Blue Lady" and the seminal "Danke Schoen" and made them synonymous with himself. In his prime, Newton reportedly commandeered up to a million dollars per month for his live shows (to say nothing of his recordings), and bought up a healthy amount of property in Las Vegas, including the Aladdin Casino. Cinematically, Newton debuted on an absurd note, with the lead role in the critically reviled Gerd Oswald musical 80 Steps to Jonah (1969) -- playing a convict on the lam who flees from the law and ends up at a camp for blind children. That picture bombed, effectively convincing Newton to place a greater emphasis on singing than acting, but by the early '90s, he began cropping up in Hollywood films once again, this time with more respectable cameo roles in such films as The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990), Vegas Vacation (1997), and Ocean's Eleven (2001). In the fall of 2007, the ABC network tapped Newton to perform as one of the celebrity dancers on the fifth season of its competitive reality series Dancing with the Stars, opposite dancer Cheryl Burke.

Trivia: The son of an editor for the New Yorker, the diminutive comedic actor Wallace Shawn achieved immortality for his portrayal of the Sicilian Vizzini in the 1987 classic The Princess Bride. A graduate of both Harvard and Oxford University, he has taught several courses in English and struggled as a playwright in the early '70s; in 1977 he translated Machiavelli's The Mandrake. Shawn broke into films soon after, building a successful career as a supporting actor to help fund his playwriting. He debuted in two of the best films of 1979: Woody Allen's Manhattan and Bob Fosse's All That Jazz.In 1981, he co-wrote the semi-autobiographical My Dinner With André, a talky comedy starring himself and theater director André Gregory in a dinner conversation, directed by Louis Malle. The movie was acclaimed by critics and a cult favorite. After this personal project, Shawn would build a career out of playing brief but surprisingly memorable roles in a long list of movies. His performance as the leader of the misfit criminal gang in The Princess Bride proved a pivotal moment, and that same year, he supplied the heroic voice for the Masked Avenger in Woody Allen's Radio Days. Shawn would also go on to do voice acting in projects like The Goofy Movie, All Dogs Go to Heaven, and the Toy Story series. He would also continue to work with Woody Allen throughout the next decade, and picked up a new generation of fans playing debate teacher Mr. Hall in the 1995 high school classic Clueless. Shawn would also take his quirky persona to the small screen with appearances on TV shows likeMurphy Brown, The Cosby Show, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Sex and the City, as well as the ABC sitcom version of Clueless. Throughout his acting career, Shawn has managed to continue writing successful plays, and eventually adapted one of them, The Designated Mourner, for a feature film in 1997. In 2002, he played the publishing boss Mr. Gelb for the "Greta" story in Rebecca Miller's Personal Velocity: Three Portraits. Shawn would continue to appear regularly on screen in the years to come, playing recurring roles on The L Word, Gossip Girl, and Eureka,

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: Best known to audiences as the androgynous, nerdy "Pat" from Saturday Night Live, where she was a cast member from 1990 to 1994, Julia Sweeney actually began her comedy career as an accountant, of all things. Working as a numbers-cruncher for Columbia Pictures in the mid-'80s, Sweeney ignored her degree in economics to pursue comedy. In 1986, she joined the Groundlings, the famous L.A. improvisational troupe that also produced success stories like Conan O'Brien and Lisa Kudrow. It was there where she developed "Pat" and caught the attention of NBC, which found a place for her on their venerable breeding ground for comic talent, Saturday Night Live. Sweeney, like fellow cast members Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, was given the opportunity to star in a spin-off feature of her very own, called It's Pat. Released in 1994, the film was a massive failure, dumped in only select cities and roundly panned by national critics, who deemed it juvenile and unfunny. The film was reportedly rewritten by close pal Quentin Tarantino, who cast her that same year in a small role opposite Harvey Keitel in his Oscar-winning film Pulp Fiction. Tarantino then executive-produced what was arguably the most important work of Sweeney's career: God Said, Ha!, a film version of her one-woman Broadway show detailing her "cancer year," in which she and her now-deceased brother Mike battled the deadly disease. Though it was a vanishing act on Broadway, God Said, Ha! opened up a new door for Sweeney, who won raves for her brave, funny monologues and earned the respect of peers who were displeased by her previous film work. The film, unlike the work of her television contemporaries, was serious and deeply personal yet quite humorous, perfectly capturing the spirit of Sweeney's unique performance style. Sweeney has also remained active in TV, providing the voice ofMargo for the series The Goode Family.

Trivia: Having appeared on countless runways and magazine covers (including the coveted Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover for three consecutive years), Christie Brinkley is one of the elite few women in the fashion industry who have earned the title "supermodel." The mother of three held a contract for a staggering 20 years with Cover Girl Cosmetics, and continues to appear in magazine ads for mature skin. Aside from being the inspiration for several of former husband Billy Joel's songs ("Uptown Girl," "Christie Lee," and "Blonde Over Blue," among others), Brinkley is known for catching the attention of hapless family man Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) in National Lampoon's Vacation (1983), a role she later reprised in the sequel, Vegas Vacation (1997). Brinkley also appeared on the small screen, on shows like Mad About You and Ugly Betty, and had a recurring role on Parks and Recreation, playing the hot wife of hapless Jerry Gergich. She also took her talents to Broadway, playing Roxie Hart in Chicago.

Trivia: One of the first independent producers to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Jerry Weintraub, the son of a gem salesman, began his career as a talent agent for MCA in the 1950s. He was to represent such clients as Jack Paar and singer Jane Morgan who became his second wife. He formed Management III in 1965, and from a quite modest beginning (two partners, three clients, a small backing), became a leading concert promoter. With the founding of Concerts West, he was to handle such clients as Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, and the Beach Boys.Robert Altman's groundbreaking Nashville (1975) was Weintraub's first production venture. This was soon followed with the successful comedy Oh, God! starring the legendary George Burns and 9/30/55 (aka 24 Hours of the Rebel [1977]), the controversial Cruising (1980), and All Night Long (1981). In 1982, he produced Barry Levinson's Diner, which premiered a new generation of actors including Kevin Bacon, Paul Reiser, Mickey Rourke, Tim Daly, Ellen Barkin, and Steve Guttenberg. In 1984, he became involved with the first film in the Karate Kid series (1984, 1986, 1989, 1994, 2010).In 1984, Weintraub helped deliver the Olympic Gala and the ABC telecast preceding the opening of the Los Angeles Olympic Games. There are over 100 television specials, such as Sinatra: The Main Event and An Evening With John Denver, with which Weintraub has been involved. In 1986, Weintraub was named Producer of the Year by the National Association of Theater Owners, and in March 1991, President George Bush appointed Weintraub to the Board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In 1987, Weintraub produced Happy New Year and in 1992 Pure Country. He made his first acting foray as the character Sonny Capps in Sydney Pollack's The Firm released in 1993. 1994 saw the creation of The Specialist, a thriller vehicle for Sylvester Stallone and Sharon Stone, released in Spanish as El Especialista. Weintraub again appeared in a bit part as Jilly in National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation (1997) which he also produced. After establishing Jerry Weintraub Productions, he generated a film remake of the modish British TV series The Avengers (1998), a sci-fi-thriller with Kurt Russell entitled Soldier (1998), The Independent (2000), Ocean's Eleven (2001), in which Weintraub acted the part of High Roller, and Dino (2002). Weintraub has also appeared as the character of Jerry for Full Frontal (2002), and as Larry Goldberg in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002). He later returned as a producer on Ocean sequels Twelve (2004) and Thirteen (2007). In 2015, his new series The Brink premiered on HBO; three weeks later, Weintraub died of cardiac arrest, at age 77.Weintraub's many philanthropic activities included the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Music Center, and the Children's Museum. In 1988, the esteemed Scopus Award from the American Friends of the Hebrew University was given to Weintraub and his wife in gratitude for their continuous support.

Trivia: Character actor John Finnegan first appeared onscreen in the '70s.

Trivia: American comic actor Larry Hankin was first seen on a major coast-to-coast basis in 1969. He was one of the members of a young, hip comedy troupe (including David Steinberg and Lily Tomlin) on an odd 45-minute TV variety series The Music Scene. Before this program, Hankin had a small part in the 1968 film domestic comedy How Sweet it Is (1968); after Music Scene, the actor had the misfortune to appear in the legendary all star fiasco The Phynx (1970), which never did get a general release. Hankin remained a supporting player, having a few moments here and there in such films as Thumb Tripping (1972), Ratboy (1986), She's Having a Baby (1988) and Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1991). TV fans could see Larry Hankin in the occasional guest role in series like All in the Family.

Trivia: Empire State native D.B. Sweeney attended both Tulane and New York University. Though he had trouble getting sizeable roles in student productions, upon his graduation he was immediately cast in the Broadway revival of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. He went on to guest-star stints on such TV series as The Edge of Night and Spencer: For Hire before entering movies, where he scored with the critics for his portrayal of an idealistic, gung-ho Vietnam enlistee in Francis Ford Coppola's Gardens of Stone (1987). While he has accrued several noteworthy screen assignments (including the starring role of a nasty hockey player in 1992's The Cutting Edge), D.B. Sweeney is best remembered for his even-keel portrayal of the tragic Shoeless Joe Jackson in Eight Men Out (1988); if he looked like a "natural" on the ballfield, it was because Sweeney had once actually played minor league baseball with the Kenosha Twins, hanging up his spikes after a knee injury. In addition to his film roles, Sweeney continues working on television. He played Dish Boggett in the miniseries Lonesome Dove (1989) and in 1996 starred in the unfortunately short-lived Fox series Strange Luck in which he played an amnesiac freelance photographer with strange powers that resulted from his being the sole survivor of an airline disaster. Sweeney also still appears in theatrical productions. In the years to come, Sweeney would remain active on screen, appearing in films like Taken 2.

Trivia: For years, character actor Howard Platt qualified as one of the small screen's most familiar faces. Devoted viewers of 1970s television will easily remember Platt; he played Hoppy the Cop, the quintessentially weird, by-the-book white police officer who made frequent stops at Fred Sanford's junkyard on the hit NBC sitcom Sanford and Son (1972-1977). Additional recurring roles included Dr. Phil Newman on The Bob Newhart Show and Marvin the Jewelry Salesman on Alice. Platt briefly enjoyed a main starring role as airline pilot Captain Doug March on the CBS adventure drama Flying High (1978) opposite Pat Klous and Connie Sellecca; unfortunately, it was canceled in late January 1979, soon after it premiered. He remained active for the following several decades, however, and extended his work into occasional features such as The Cat from Outer Space (1978), Nixon (1995), and The Rock (1996) while establishing himself as a nearly constant presence in theater as an actor and director. In 2008, Platt starred opposite Tim Robbins and Rachel McAdams in the Iraq veteran-themed drama The Lucky Ones.