Arnie Kogen is an American comedy writer and producer. He has written for TV, film, and is a longtime writer for Mad Magazine . Among his hundreds of Mad bylines, Kogen has written more than 100 film or television parodies.
Born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, to Jewish parents, Kogen contributed to Mad soon after college at New York University. He wrote for many of the top stand-up comics of that time including Don Adams, Morty Gunty, and Jan Murray. He moved on to writing for Candid Camera , The Les Crane Show , The Jackie Gleason Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson .
In 1965 he co-wrote the feature film Birds Do It , starring Soupy Sales.
He moved to California with his family in 1968. His many variety and sitcom credits include The Dean Martin Show , The Carol Burnett Show , The Mary Tyler Moore Show , The Rich Little Show , The Tim Conway Show , The Golden Globes (1972–1975), Donny and Marie , An Evening at the Improv , Newhart , Empty Nest , and MADtv .
Kogen has written comedy material for many entertainers including Steve and Eydie, Totie Fields, Flip Wilson, Jackie Vernon, Sammy Davis, Jr., Debbie Reynolds, Connie Stevens and Shelley Berman.
Kogen has won 3 Emmy Awards (7 nominations) and one WGA Award (3 nominations).
His son Jay Kogen, also an Emmy-winning comedy writer, was an original writer for the animated television series The Simpsons . His late daughter, Jill Arons, worked at The Bingo Bugle.
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Milton Berle was an American actor and comedian. His career as an entertainer spanned over 80 years, first in silent films and on stage as a child actor, then in radio, movies and television. As the host of NBC's Texaco Star Theatre (1948–1953), he was the first major American television star and was known to millions of viewers as "Uncle Miltie" and "Mr. Television" during the first Golden Age of Television. He was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in both radio and TV.
Lisa Valerie Kudrow is an American actress, producer, and screenwriter. She rose to international fame for her role as Phoebe Buffay in the American television sitcom Friends, which aired from 1994 to 2004. The series earned her Primetime Emmy, Screen Actors Guild, Satellite, American Comedy and TV Guide awards. Phoebe has since been named one of the greatest television characters of all time. Phoebe is considered to be Kudrow's breakout role, spawning her successful film career.
Isaac Sidney Caesar was an American comic actor, comedian and writer. With a career spanning 60 years, he was best known for two pioneering 1950s live television series: Your Show of Shows (1950–1954), which was a 90-minute weekly show watched by 60 million people, and its successor, Caesar's Hour (1954–1957), both of which influenced later generations of comedians. Your Show of Shows and its cast received seven Emmy nominations between the years 1953 and 1954 and tallied two wins. He also acted in films; he played Coach Calhoun in Grease (1978) and its sequel Grease 2 (1982) and appeared in the films It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), Silent Movie (1976), History of the World, Part I (1981), Cannonball Run II (1984), and Vegas Vacation (1997).
Jackie Mason was an American stand-up comedian and actor.
David Henry Chase is an American filmmaker. He wrote and produced the HBO drama The Sopranos which aired for six seasons between 1999 and 2007. Chase has also produced and written for such shows as The Rockford Files, I'll Fly Away, and Northern Exposure. He created the original series Almost Grown which aired for 10 episodes in 1988 and 1989. He has won seven Emmy Awards. Chase's film debut came in 2012 with Not Fade Away, followed by The Many Saints of Newark (2021), a prequel film to the TV series The Sopranos.
Anthony J. Barbieri is an American comedic writer and performer. He is known for his appearances as the Jimmy Kimmel Live! character "Jake Byrd."
Lawrence H. Siegel was an American comedy writer and satirist who wrote for television, stage, magazines, records, and books. He won three Emmys as Head Writer during four seasons of The Carol Burnett Show along with one Writers Guild award and a dozen Emmy and Writers Guild nominations for his work in television comedy on shows like Burnett and Laugh-In. He was one of Mad Magazine's top movie satire writers, and a member of the "usual gang of idiots" for almost 33 years as well as one of the earliest humor and satire writers for Playboy. He was also a WWII Veteran, and the only American comedy writer to have ever both won an Emmy and received a Purple Heart.
Matthew Hoffman Weiner is an American television writer, producer, and director best known as the creator and showrunner of the television series Mad Men, and as a writer and executive producer on The Sopranos.
Jay Kogen is an American comedy writer, producer, actor and director.
Mark Saltzman is an American script writer who has written films, plays and musicals and for TV. He worked for several years for Sesame Street. He has been given seven Emmy Awards for Best Writing for a Children's Show.
Wayne Federman is an Emmy Award winning American comedian, actor, author, writer, comedy historian, producer, and musician. He is noted for numerous stand-up comedy appearances in clubs, theaters, and on television; his book on The History of Stand-Up; and supporting comedic acting roles in The X-Files, The Larry Sanders Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Crashing, Silicon Valley, Legally Blonde, 50 First Dates, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Step Brothers. He was the head monologue writer for NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon in its first season. He won a 2022 Primetime Emmy Award for producing the HBO documentary George Carlin's American Dream.
Martin Olson is an American comedy writer, television producer, author and composer. He is known for his unusual subject matter, and is an original member of the Boston Comedy Scene. He is the father of actress Olivia Olson.
Barnet Kellman is an American television and film director, television producer and film actor.
Christopher Sheridan is an American television writer, producer, and occasional voice actor. Born in the Philippines, Sheridan grew up in New Hampshire. He attended Gilford High School, where he decided that he wanted to become a writer. After graduating from Union College, he moved back to his home, where he worked at several short-term jobs before relocating to California to start his career. His first job came in 1992 when he was hired as a writers' assistant for the Fox sitcom Shaky Ground. Following that, he was hired as an assistant on Living Single, a Fox sitcom, where he was eventually promoted to writer. He stayed with the show until its cancellation in 1998.
Kevin Thomas Shinick is an American writer, producer, director and actor, as well as a comic book creator. Shinick received an Emmy award for his work on the stop motion animated series Robot Chicken, and an Emmy nomination for his work on Mad, the animated series based on the iconic humor magazine, before serving as showrunner and supervising producer for Disney XD's Emmy nominated animated series, Marvel's Spider-Man. Shinick also played a role as the ACME Time Net Squadron Leader of the PBS series Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego?.
Mel Tolkin was a television comedy writer best known as head writer of the live sketch comedy series Your Show of Shows during the Golden Age of Television. There he presided over a staff that at times included Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and Danny Simon. The writers' room inspired the film My Favorite Year (1982), produced by Brooks, and the Broadway play Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1993), written by Neil Simon.
Christopher Kelly is an American comedian, writer, and director known for his work on Saturday Night Live, and writing and directing the autobiographical film Other People that premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. He has received five Emmy Award nominations for his work on SNL.
"Merry Christmas, Mrs. Moskowitz" is the tenth episode of Frasier's sixth season. It first aired on NBC in the United States on December 17, 1998. In the episode, Frasier, while shopping for Christmas gifts meets a stylish Jewish woman, Helen Moskowitz, who asks him to take her daughter Faye on a blind date. This leads to a deepening relationship between the two. Helen on Christmas Eve makes a stop by Frasier's apartment, unaware that he is not Jewish and so he and the family must pretend that they are to survive the visit.
Greg O'Connor is a composer and songwriter who has composed scores for over 30 television series and has written numerous featured songs for TV, films and commercials. He is a Primetime Emmy winner and a four-time Emmy nominee. He has scored projects including variety, single camera comedy, multi camera comedy, animation, one hour drama, game show, sketch comedy, award show, stand up, reality, hidden camera, documentary, commercials and virtual reality.
Rich Talarico is an American television writer and producer, best known for his work on Comedy Central's Key & Peele.