Melvin James Brooks is an American actor, comedian, filmmaker, songwriter, and playwright. With a career spanning over seven decades, he is known as a writer and director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodies. A recipient of numerous accolades, he is one of 18 entertainers to win the EGOT, which includes an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Academy Award, and a Tony Award. He received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2009, a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2010, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2013, a British Film Institute Fellowship in 2015, a National Medal of Arts in 2016, a BAFTA Fellowship in 2017, and the Honorary Academy Award in 2023.
George Robert Newhart is an American comedian and actor. He is known for his deadpan and stammering delivery style. Beginning as a stand-up comedian, he transitioned his career to acting in television. He has received numerous accolades, including three Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award. He was honored with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2002.
Joseph Roger Brown, MBE is an English musician. As a rock and roll singer and guitarist, he has performed for more than six decades. He was a stage and television performer in the late 1950s and has primarily been a recording star since the early 1960s. He has made six films, presented specialist radio series for BBC Radio 2, appeared on the West End stage alongside Dame Anna Neagle and has written an autobiography. In recent years he has again concentrated on recording and performing music, playing two tours of around 100 shows every year and releasing an album almost every year.
Carol Creighton Burnett is an American comedian, actress, and singer. Her groundbreaking comedy-variety show The Carol Burnett Show, which originally aired on CBS, was one of the first to be hosted by a woman. She has performed on stage, television and film in varying genres including dramatic and comedic roles. She has received numerous accolades including six Primetime Emmy Awards, a Tony Award, a Grammy Award, and seven Golden Globe Awards. Burnett was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2013 and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2015.
Edwin Jack Fisher was an American singer and actor. He was one of the most popular artists during the 1950s, selling millions of records and hosting his own TV show, The Eddie Fisher Show. Actress Elizabeth Taylor was best friends with Fisher's first wife, actress Debbie Reynolds. After Taylor's third husband, Mike Todd, was killed in a plane crash, Fisher divorced Reynolds and he and Taylor married that same year. The scandalous affair that Fisher and Taylor had been having while each was already married was widely reported and brought unfavorable publicity to both Fisher and Taylor. Approximately five years later, he and Taylor divorced and he later married Connie Stevens. Fisher is the father of Carrie Fisher and Todd Fisher, whose mother is Reynolds, and the father of Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher, whose mother is Stevens.
Jessurun James Oppenheimer was an American radio and television writer, producer, and director. He was the producer and head writer of the CBS sitcom I Love Lucy.
Howard Andrew Williams was an American singer. He recorded 43 albums in his career, of which 15 have been gold certified and three platinum certified. He was also nominated for six Grammy Awards. He hosted The Andy Williams Show, a television variety show, from 1962 to 1971, along with numerous TV specials. The Andy Williams Show won three Emmy Awards. He sold more than 45 million records worldwide, including more than 10 million certified units in the United States.
Gale Gordon was an American character actor who was Lucille Ball's longtime television foil, particularly as cantankerously combustible, tightfisted bank executive Theodore J. Mooney, on Ball's second television sitcom The Lucy Show. Gordon also appeared in I Love Lucy and had starring roles in Ball's successful third series Here's Lucy and her short-lived fourth and final series Life with Lucy.
Cadence Records was an American record company based in New York City whose labels had a picture of a metronome. It was founded by Archie Bleyer, who had been the musical director and orchestra leader for Arthur Godfrey in 1952. Cadence also launched a short-lived jazz subsidiary, Candid Records.
Archibald Martin Bleyer was an American song arranger, bandleader, and record company executive.
Milton Supman, known professionally as Soupy Sales, was an American comedian, actor, radio-television personality, and jazz aficionado. He was best known for his local and network children's television series, Lunch with Soupy Sales (1953–1966), a series of comedy sketches frequently ending with Sales receiving a pie in the face, which became his trademark. From 1968 to 1975, he was a regular panelist on the syndicated revival of What's My Line? and appeared on several other TV game shows. During the 1980s, he hosted his own show on WNBC in New York City.
Richard Caruthers Little is a Canadian-American comedian, impressionist and voice actor. Sometimes known as the "Man of a Thousand Voices", Little has recorded nine comedy albums and made numerous television appearances, including three HBO specials.
Albert Watson Newton was an Australian media personality. He was a Logie Hall of Fame inductee, quadruple Gold Logie award-winning entertainer, and radio, theatre, and television personality and presenter.
Abbott Vaughn Meader was an American comedian, impersonator, musician, and film actor.
David Cross is an American stand-up comedian, actor, director, and writer known for his stand-up performances, the HBO sketch comedy series Mr. Show (1995–1998), and his role as Tobias Fünke in the Fox/Netflix sitcom Arrested Development.
Arlene Leanore Golonka was an American actress. She is perhaps best known for playing Millie Hutchins on the television comedy The Andy Griffith Show and Millie Swanson on Mayberry R.F.D., and often portrayed bubbly, eccentric blondes in supporting character roles on stage, film, and television.
Nathan Hiken was an American radio and television writer, producer, and songwriter who rose to prominence in the 1950s.
The First Family is a 1962 comedy album featuring comedian and impressionist Vaughn Meader. The album, written and produced by Bob Booker and Earle Doud, was recorded on October 22, 1962, is a good-natured parody of then-President John F. Kennedy, both as Commander-in-Chief and as a member of the prominent Kennedy family. Issued by Cadence Records, The First Family became the largest and fastest selling record in the history of the record industry, selling at more than one million copies per week for the first six and one-half weeks in distribution and remained at #1 on the Billboard 200 for 12 weeks. By January 1963, sales reached more than seven million copies. Cadence president Archie Bleyer credited the album's success to heavy radio airplay. The album was first played by Stan Z. Burns on WINS radio, a friend of Booker, and it instantly became a hit all over New York City. By the time the sequel album, The First Family Volume Two, was released, The First Family had sold 71⁄2 million copies — unprecedented for any album at the time, especially a comedy album.
You Don't Have to be Jewish is a 1965 comedy album written by Bob Booker and George Foster, the team behind the 1962 comedy album The First Family.
"Welcome to the LBJ Ranch!" is a political satire comedy album by Earle Doud and Alen Robin, released in November 1965 on Capitol Records. The vinyl album uses out-of-context recordings of political figures apparently responding to interview questions fabricated by the comedians. Television comedy writers Earle Doud and Alen Robin conduct some of the "interviews"; other interviewers are news announcers John Cameron Swayze and Westbrook Van Voorhis, with WPIX anchorman John St. Leger, all of whom were recorded speaking questions written by Doud and Robin. Audio tape was edited to bring together the comedy questions and the recordings of political people, with laugh track sound effects added by Bob Prescott.
