Trivia: Whether saucily sashaying across the stage in a wig, high heels, and dress proclaiming, "What you see is what you get!" or piously exclaiming, "The Devil made me do it," Flip Wilson was one of America's funniest comics of the late '60s and early '70s. With a top-rated comedy/variety show, he was also one of the first black television superstars. Born Clerow Wilson, he was one of 24 children. Because his family was extremely poor, Wilson spent much of his youth in foster homes and reform schools until, at age 16, he lied about his age and joined the Air Force. Claiming that he was always "flipped out," Wilson's barracks mates gave him his famous nickname. Discharged in 1954, Wilson started working as a bellhop in San Francisco's Manor Plaza Hotel. At the Plaza's nightclub, Wilson found extra work playing a drunken patron in between regularly scheduled acts. His inebriated character proved popular and Wilson began performing it in clubs throughout California. At first Wilson would simply ad-lib on-stage, but in time, he added written material and his act became more sophisticated. As a standup comedian, Wilson started out working small blacks-only clubs and gradually worked his way up to such major theaters as the Apollo and the Regal. In 1965, Redd Foxx plugged Wilson's act to Johnny Carson, saying he considered the young comic the funniest one around. Carson booked Wilson and soon he was appearing frequently on other shows, including Ed Sullivan. Wilson also recorded several best-selling comedy albums. He launched The Flip Wilson Show in 1970 and for its first two years the show was number two in the Nielsen ratings. The show ran through 1974. That year Wilson made his screen debut in Sidney Poitier's Uptown Saturday Night. Wilson appeared in two more films and gave up his acting career, though he did reappear for a season in the short-lived People Are Funny and the domestic sitcom Charlie & Co. (1984-1985).

Trivia: Few American comedians have had so aggressive a "stage mother" as did Milton Berle. Berle's mother Sarah dragged her son to New Jersey's Edison movie studios in 1914 to do extra work, then finessed the lad into supporting roles, including the part of a newsboy in the first-ever feature-length comedy, Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), which starred Charlie Chaplin. Under Sarah's powerhouse tutelage, Berle moved into vaudeville, making his debut at the prestigious Palace Theatre in 1921. Berle continued as a vaudeville headliner, with occasional stopovers on Broadway and in Hollywood, into the World War II years. His lengthy starring stint in the 1943 edition of Broadway's Ziegfeld Follies established Berle as a brash, broad, wisecracking comedian par excellence, whose carefully publicized propensity for "lifting" other comedians' material earned him the nickname "the Thief of Bad Gags." After only moderate success on radio and in films, Berle made a spectacular television debut as star of NBC's Texaco Star Theatre in 1948, which was the single most popular comedy/variety series of TV's earliest years and earned the comedian one of the industry's first Emmy Awards. So valuable was Berle to NBC that the network signed him to a 30-year "lifetime contract" in 1951, which paid him 100,000 dollars annually whether he performed or not (Berle managed to outlive the contract). Though his TV stardom waned in the late '50s, Berle was still very much in demand as an emcee, lecturer, author, TV guest star, motion picture character actor, and nightclub comedian -- still using essentially the same material and delivery which made him a star over 60 years ago. Berle died March 27, 2002 of colon cancer, he was 93.