Trivia: Comedian Vicki Lawrence got her big break in show business with a prominent role on the 70's sketch comedy series The Carol Burnette Show. The California native was particularly popular for her recurring character of "Mama," which earned her a successful spin-off, the sitcom Mama's Family, which ran from 1986 to 1990. She would go on to also enjoy runs on shows like Hannah Montana, and also had a career as a successful singer, reaching number one in 1973 with the song "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia".

Trivia: Jack Gilford grew up in a tough section of Brooklyn, where his Rumanian-born mother Sophie supported her family by working as a bootlegger. In 1934, Gilford won an amateur-night contest, launching a career that would span 5 1/2 decades. He often performed in reknowed bohemian New York nightclubs during the 1940s such as Cafe Society, where he was the comedy MC and fronted such acts as long-time friend Zero Mostel, Billie Holiday, and jazz pianist Hazel Scott. His comedy act was highlighted by a rubbery face used for celebrity impressions, not to mention such intangibles as imitating "pea soup coming to a boil" (he could still do that one into his 70s). Gilford toured the nightclub/vaudeville circuit in the company of Milton Berle, Ina Ray Hutton, Jimmy Durante and Elsie Janis, and in 1940 he made his Broadway debut in Meet the People. Four years later, he was featured in his first film, Columbia's Hey Rookie. Gilford's booming career came to an abrupt halt in the early 1950s, when he and his actress wife Madeline Lee were blacklisted for allegedly harboring "leftist" views. While Lee all but disappeared from show business, Gilford was able to make a slow comeback as a character actor in such Broadway plays as The Diary of Anne Frank, Romanoff and Juliet and The Beauty Part. He was best known to TV viewers in the 1960s for his delightful appearances in a series of Cracker Jack commercials. He also guest-starred in sitcoms during that time, including stints on Car 54, Where Are You? and Get Smart.Gilford returned to films in the 1960s, offering side-splitting characterizations in A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum (1966, repeating his Broadway role as Hysterium), Enter Laughing (1967) and They Might Be Giants (1971). In 1973, he received best supporting actor Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for his portrayal of Jack Lemmon's frantic business partner in Save the Tiger. During this second phase of his Hollywood career, Gilford occasionally returned to Broadway in productions ranging from Cabaret to The Sunshine Boys. He also appeared regularly in several TV series, including All in the Family, The David Frost Revue, Friends and Lovers, Apple Pie, Taxi, The Duck Factory, and The Golden Girls. Among his last film roles was melancholy senior citizen Bernie Lefkowitz in the two Cocoon films. In 1976, Jack and Madeline Gifford joined forces with their longtime friends Zero and Kate Mostel to pen their joint autobiography, 170 Years in Show Business. Gilford's son Joe Gilford is a screenwriter.

Trivia: When she began working with Sid Caesar in 1949, American actress Imogene Coca agreed to have her "official" birth date readjusted to 1920, so that she'd seem more a contemporary of Caesar. In truth, she was born in 1908, and was performing professionally while Caesar was still in knee pants. Feeling that she was not attractive by 1930s standards (though certainly so by the standards of the present), Coca realized early that she'd never be taken seriously as an actress or dancer; accordingly, she went the "Fanny Brice" route by lampooning the Classic Arts. Coca first caught the fancy of the public in Leonard Silleman's New Faces of 1937 (co-starring with then-husband Robert Burton), in which she performed ballet parodies and heavy-drama lampoons. Also in 1937, Coca made her film debut in the 2-reel comedy Dime a Dance; the supporting cast included fellow up-and-comers Danny Kaye, June Allyson and Barry Sullivan. During this period, Coca starred in experimental television broadcasts, recreating her best New Faces sketches. She met producer Max Liebman while starring in the resort-hotel Tamiment revues of the 1940s. It was Liebman's inspiration to team Coca with another Tamiment alumnus Sid Caesar on the 1949 TV weekly The Admiral Revue. This project led to the immortal Your Show of Shows (1950-54), wherein Caesar and Coca shared the spotlight with Carl Reiner and Howard Morris. In 1954, Caesar and Coca parted company. Caesar was able to sustain his success as a solo for awhile, but 1954's The Imogene Coca Show failed to do the actress justice and lasted only a year. Most of Coca's subsequent projects were likewise beneath her talents and doomed to failure. She starred with second husband King Donovan in the 1959 Broadway flop The Girls in 509, was a featured player in the 1963 comedy film Under the Yum Yum Tree, and headlined two weekly TV series, Grindl (1963) and It's About Time (1967). A 1967 TV reunion with Sid Caesar, and the 1973 theatrical release of Ten From Your Show of Shows, thrust Coca back into prominence, allowing her to thrive on the touring-show and tent-musical circuit. In the last two decades, her career has encompassed such highs as the Broadway musical On the 20th Century (as a dotty religious fanatic) and such lows as TV's Return of the Beverly Hillbillies (1982), in which she played Granny's mother. Imogene Coca's most memorable movie appearance of recent years has been as the troublesome Aunt Edna in National Lampoon's Vacation (1983), whose death en route to California provides the film its most tastelessly hilarious sight gag.