Jackie “Moms” Mabley, born Loretta Mary Aiken (March 19, 1894 – May 23, 1975) was an American standup comedian and a pioneer of the so-called “Chitlin’ Circuit” of African-American vaudeville.

Comedian popular on TV variety shows in the 1960s, known for her stage persona as a frumpy, world-wise older woman who was always looking for a younger man, she was a regular at the Apollo Theater for 30 years
Her exact date of birth is subject to considerable debate

Whitman Blount Mayo (November 15, 1930 – May 22, 2001) was an American actor best known for his character Grady Wilson on the 1970s television sitcom Sanford and Son.

In the late 1960s, while working for the New Lafayette Theater, Norman Lear offered Mayo a part as Grady Wilson on Sanford and Son. His portrayal of Grady Wilson caught on and he lasted through the entire duration of the show. He opened a travel agency in Inglewood, California. Mayo would later star in the unsuccessful spin-off, Grady, in which his character moved in with his daughter and her husband in Beverly Hills. After the cancellation of Grady after only ten episodes in 1976, Mayo and the Grady character returned to Sanford and Son, where they remained for the duration of the series’ run until its cancellation by NBC in 1977. Mayo also reprised the role in the unsuccessful 1977 NBC-TV spinoff series Sanford Arms opposite actor Theodore Wilson, as well as for two episodes of Sanford, another NBC-TV Sanford and Son spinoff, this time opposite Redd Foxx and actor Dennis Burkley, in 1981.

Mayo’s character name, Grady Wilson, was the real name of the actor who played Lamont Sanford (Grady Demond Wilson).

Also in the late 1970s, Mayo appeared on the Los Angeles children’s television program That’s Cat, offering sage advice in a sweet manner to the main character, Alice.

In 1996, Late Night with Conan O’Brien spent several weeks trying to “find Grady,” and have Mayo appear on the show. The show aired a mock episode of Unsolved Mysteries.^[1] On February 8, 1996, Mayo finally appeared on Late Night, to much fanfare. ^[2][3][4]

Mayo also played a role in The Cape as Sweets, the owner of Moonshot Bar and Grill.

Although best known for his television work, Mayo made several film appearances, including The Main Event with Barbra Streisand, D.C. Cab, Boyz n the Hood and Waterproof with Burt Reynolds. Mayo also appeared as Reverend Banyon on the BET TV Movie Boycott in 2001 and in an episode of Martin. He also taught drama at Clark Atlanta University and hosted Liars and Legends on Turner South.

Mayo died of a heart attack, at Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital. He had resided in Atlanta’s Historic Collier Heights community, since 1994 and was survived by his children and by his third wife, Gail Mayo.

His son, Rahn Mayo, is currently a member of the Georgia House of Representatives^[5] representing House District 91. He is also survived by his daughters Tanya Mayo, Suni Mayo Simpson, and daughter Pangi Raysor and son Jon-Jo Raysor of Brooklyn, New York.^[6]

Judge Reinhold (born May 21, 1957) is an American actor, known for co-starring in movies such as Beverly Hills Cop, Ruthless People, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and The Santa Clause trilogy.

Reinhold has appeared in more than 60 films. His first appearance on screen was in the Wonder Woman episode “Amazon Hot Wax” (1979), in which he played Jeff Gordon, a singer who gets caught up in an extortion ring in the music business.^{[citation needed]} Reinhold’s first major film role was as high school senior Brad Hamilton in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) along with then-unknown actors Sean Penn, Phoebe Cates, Forest Whitaker, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Nicolas Cage. He appeared in an uncredited role in Pat Benatar’s music video for “Shadows of the Night.” He later played Detective Billy Rosewood, the junior police detective sent to trail Eddie Murphy, in Beverly Hills Cop (1984), and in 1986, starred in Ruthless People.

Reinhold starred in the Canadian hard rock band Harem Scarem‘s 1992 music video “Honestly” as the male love interest.

In 1994, Reinhold appeared in Beverly Hills Cop III and The Santa Clause. He has reprised the role of Dr. Neil Miller for the Santa Clause sequels as well. Reinhold appeared as himself on two episodes of the third season of Arrested Development, headlining a fictional court TV show called Mock Trial with J. Reinhold.^{[citation needed]}

Reinhold was nominated for an Emmy for a role on Seinfeld in which he played the infamous “close talker” who developed an obsession with Jerry’s parents. He has also been seen in Steven Spielberg‘s epic miniseries Into the West. And replaced Charles Grodin in two direct-to-video movies in the Beethoven film series.

Reinhold was featured in the 2008 political satire Swing Vote.

Reinhold’s nickname “Judge” has been the subject of comedy in both Clerks: The Animated Series and Arrested Development, both times with him playing himself appointed as a judge in a court of law. Additionally, the 2009 film Fanboys features Billy Dee Williams playing a judge named Reinhold.^[4]

Reinhold is credited as the whistler on the Martini Ranch song “Reach.”^[citation

Howard “Howie” Morris (September 4, 1919 – May 21, 2005) was an American comic actor and director who was best known for his roles in The Andy Griffith Show as Ernest T. Bass and George, the TV set repairman.

Morris was first heard in animated cartoons in the early 1960s. He and Allan Melvin teamed up for a 50-episode King Features Syndicate series, Beetle Bailey, for which he and Melvin also wrote a number of episodes. He also provided the voices for Gene Deitch‘s Academy Award-winning Munro, about a four-year-old boy who was drafted into the Army.

Beginning in 1962, Morris played a variety of voices in many Hanna-Barbera series including The Jetsons as “Jet Screamer” who sang the “Eep opp ork ah ah!” song,^[4] (said to be Morris’ first work for Hanna-Barbera) and The Flintstones. He was the original voice of Atom Ant and provided the voice of Mr. Peebles in the Magilla Gorilla series, teaming up again with Allan Melvin who performed the voice for Magilla. In another series Morris was heard as the voice of Breezly Bruin which was similar in tone with the Bill Scott vocalization of Bullwinkle. Morris had a disagreement with Joseph Barbera prior to production of the 1966-1967 season of Magilla Gorilla and Atom Ant and all of his voices were recast, mostly using Don Messick. Years later the two men reconciled and Morris was back doing those voices and others.

Morris also voiced the characters Professor Icenstein and Luigi La Bounci in the animated series Galaxy High. Morris provided the original vocalizations for the Hamburglar (“Robble, robble, robble”) in McDonald’s 1971 ad campaign, which Morris also directed. He is also remembered by Filmation and Archie Show fans as the voice of Jughead Jones throughout the life of the franchise. Morris also played Wade Duck in the U.S. Acres segment of Garfield and Friends. He played Flem in the Cartoon Network series Cow & Chicken. Morris supplied the voice of the koala in TV commercials for Qantas from 1967 through 1992 (saying the tagline, “I hate Qantas”).^[5]

Mel Brooks occasionally cast Morris in his films. For example, he played Brooks’ mentor psychiatrist Dr. Lilloman in the 1977 comedy High Anxiety, the emperor’s court spokesman (“Here, wash this!”) in History of the World, Part I, and played a bum named Sailor living in the streets in 1991′s Life Stinks. In 1984, he played Dr. Zidell in Splash, a film directed by Ron Howard (the two had first worked together on The Andy Griffith Show). He did a brilliant turn with his old friend and trouping partner Sid Caesar as nervous Jewish tailors in the 1998 movie of Ray Bradbury‘s The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit.

In 1986, he reprised his famous role as Ernest T. Bass in the high-rated TV movie Return to Mayberry. Morris also directed some episodes on Hogan’s Heroes.

In 1994, Morris voiced Zinn-a-Zu the Bird, Garfield the Third Fish, the Sneetches and Mr. Fox in Storybook Weaver, and later in 2004, remade as Storybook Weaver Deluxe.

Near his death, he played Flem on Cow and Chicken.

Mr. T^[1] (born Laurence Tureaud; May 21, 1952) is an American actor known for his roles as B. A. Baracus in the 1980s television series The A-Team, as boxer Clubber Lang in the 1982 film Rocky III, and for his appearances as a professional wrestler. Mr. T is known for his trademark African Mandinka warrior hairstyle,^[2] his gold jewelry, and his tough-guy image. In 2006 he starred in the reality show I Pity the Fool, shown on TV Land, the title of which comes from the catchphrase of his Lang character.

Gilda Susan Radner (June 28, 1946 – May 20, 1989) was an American comedienne and actress, best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, for which she won an Emmy Award in 1978.

Radner battled bulimia during her time on the show. She once told a reporter that she had thrown up in every toilet in Rockefeller Center.^[8] She had a relationship with SNL castmate Bill Murray, with whom she had also worked at the National Lampoon, that ended badly. Few details of their relationship or its end were made public at the time. When Radner wrote It’s Always Something, this is the only reference she made to Murray in the entire book: “All the guys [in the National Lampoon group of writers and performers] liked to have me around because I would laugh at them till I peed in my pants and tears rolled out of my eyes. We worked together for a couple of years creating The National Lampoon Show, writing The National Lampoon Radio Hour, and even working on stuff for the magazine. Bill Murray joined the show and Richard Belzer …”^[10]

In 1979, incoming NBC President Fred Silverman offered Radner her own prime time variety show, which she ultimately turned down.^[9] That year, she was one of the hosts of the Music for UNICEF Concert at the United Nations General Assembly.

Alan Zweibel, who co-created the Roseanne Roseannadanna character and co-wrote all of Roseanne’s dialogue, recalled that Radner, one of three original SNL cast members who stayed away from cocaine, chastised him for using it.^[11]

Radner had mixed emotions about the fans and strangers who recognized her in public. She sometimes became “angry when she was approached, but upset when she wasn’t.”^[8]

In the fall of 1988, after biopsies and a saline wash of her abdomen showed no signs of cancer, Radner was put on a maintenance chemotherapy treatment to prolong her remission, but later that same year, she learned that her cancer had returned after a routine blood test showed her levels of the tumor marker CA-125 had increased.^[15] She was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on May 17, 1989 for a CAT scan. Despite being fearful that she would never wake up, she was given a sedative but passed into a coma during the scan. She did not regain consciousness and died three days later from ovarian cancer at 6:20 am on May 20, 1989; Wilder was at her side.^[6][16]

Gene Wilder had this to say about her death:

She went in for the scan – but the people there could not keep her on the gurney. She was raving like a crazed woman – she knew they would give her morphine and was afraid she’d never regain consciousness. She kept getting off the cart as they were wheeling her out. Finally three people were holding her gently and saying, “Come on Gilda. We’re just going to go down and come back up.” She kept saying, “Get me out, get me out!” She’d look at me and beg me, “Help me out of here. I’ve got to get out of here.” And I’d tell her, “You’re okay honey. I know. I know.” They sedated her, and when she came back, she remained unconscious for three days. I stayed at her side late into the night, sometimes sleeping over. Finally a doctor told me to go home and get some sleep. At 4 am on Saturday, I heard a pounding on my door. It was an old friend, a surgeon, who told me, “Come on. It’s time to go.” When I got there, a night nurse, whom I still want to thank, had washed Gilda and taken out all the tubes. She put a pretty yellow barrette in her hair. She looked like an angel. So peaceful. She was still alive, and as she lay there, I kissed her. But then her breathing became irregular, and there were long gasps and little gasps. Two hours after I arrived, Gilda was gone. While she was conscious, I never said goodbye.

Her funeral was held in Connecticut on May 24, 1989. In lieu of flowers, her family requested that donations be sent to The Wellness Community. Her gravestone reads: “Gilda Radner Wilder – Comedienne – Ballerina 1946-1989″. She was interred at Long Ridge Union Cemetery in Stamford, Connecticut.^[17]

By coincidence, the news of her death broke on early Saturday afternoon (Eastern Daylight Time), while Steve Martin was rehearsing as the guest host for that night’s season finale of Saturday Night Live. Saturday Night Live personnel—including Lorne Michaels, Phil Hartman, and Mike Myers (who had, in his own words, “fallen in love” with Radner after playing her son in a BC Hydro commercial on Canadian television and considered her the reason he wanted to be on SNL)^[18]—had not known she was so close to death. They scrapped Martin’s planned opening monologue and instead, Martin, in tears, introduced a video clip of a 1978 sketch in which he and Radner parodied Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse in a well-known dance routine from The Band Wagon.

David William “Dave” Thomas (born May 20, 1949) is a Canadian comedian and actor. He was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, but moved to Durham, North Carolina where his father, John E. Thomas, attended Duke University and earned a PhD in Philosophy. Thomas attended George Watts and Moorehead elementary schools. The family moved back to Dundas, Ontario in 1961 where he attended Dundas District high school and later, graduated with an honours Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.^[1] Thomas was granted an honorary doctorate from McMaster University November 20, 2009.^[2]

Charles Dawson “Daws” Butler (November 16, 1916—May 18, 1988) was a voice actor originally from Toledo, Ohio. He worked mostly for theHanna-Barbera animation production company and originated the voices of many familiar animated cartoon characters, including Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss, and Huckleberry Hound.

Daws Butler was born on November 16, 1916 in Toledo, Ohio, the only child of Ruth Butler and Charles Allen Butler. The family later moved from Ohio to Oak Park, Chicago, where Butler got interested in impersonating people.^[1]

In 1934, the future voice master started as an impressionist, entering multiple amateur contests and winning most of them. He had entered them, not with the intention of showing his talent but as a personal challenge to overcome his shyness, with success. Nonetheless, Butler won professional engagements at vaudeville theaters. Later he teamed up with fellow performers, Jack Lavin and Willard Ovitz to form the comedy trio The Three Short Waves. The team played in theaters, radio and nightclubs, generating positive reviews from regional critics and audiences. They dissolved when in 1941, Daws Butler joined the U.S. Navy as America entered World War Two. Some time after, he met his wife Myrtis during a wartime function atNorth Carolina.

His first voice work for an animated character came in 1948 in the animated short Short Snorts on Sports, which was produced by Screen Gems. That same year at MGM, Tex Avery hired Butler to provide the voice of a British wolf on Little Rural Riding Hood and also narrate several of his cartoons. Throughout the decade, he had roles in many Avery-directed cartoons; The Fox in Out-Foxed, The Narrator in The Cuckoo Clock, The Cobbler in The Peachy Cobbler, Mr. Theeves in Droopy’s “Double Trouble”, Mysto the Magician in Magical Maestro, John the Cab and John the B-29 Bomber in One Cab’s Family and Little Johnny Jet and Maxie in The Legend of Rockabye Point.

Starting with The Three Little Pups, Butler provided the voice for a nameless wolf that spoke in a Southern accent and whistled all the time. This character also appeared in Sheep Wrecked, Billy Boy and many more cartoons. While at MGM, Avery wanted Butler to try to do the voice of Droopy, at a time when Bill Thompson had been unavailable due to radio engagements. Instead Butler then told Avery about Don Messick, another voice actor and Butler’s lifelong friend, who could imitate Thompson. Thus Messick voiced Droopy on several shorts.^[2]

In 1949, Butler landed a role in a televised puppet show created by former Warner Bros. cartoon director Bob Clampett called Time for Beany. Butler was teamed up with Stan Freberg, and together they did all the voices of the puppets. Butler voiced Beany Boy and Captain Huffenpuff. Freberg voiced Cecil and Dishonest John. An entire stable of recurring characters were seen. The show’s writers were Charles Shows and Lloyd Turner, whose dependably funny dialog was still always at the mercy of Butler’s and Freberg’s ad libs. Time for Beany ran from 1949 to 1954 and won several Emmy Awards. It was the basis for the cartoon Beany and Cecil.

In Mr. Magoo, the UPA theatrical animated short series for Columbia Pictures, Butler voiced the part of Magoo’s nephew Waldo (also voiced by Jerry Hausner at various times).

Butler briefly turned his attention to TV commercials, although he quickly moved to providing the voice to many nameless Walter Lantz characters for theatrical shorts later seen on the Woody Woodpecker program. His notable character was the penguin “Chilly Willy” and his sidekick, the southern-speaking dog Smedley (the same voice used for Tex Avery’s laid-back wolf character).

Also in the 1950s, Stan Freberg asked Butler to help him write comedy skits for his Capitol Records albums. Their first collaboration, “St. George and the Dragon-Net” (based on Dragnet), was the first comedy record to sell over one million copies. Freberg was more of a satirist who did song parodies, but the bulk of his “talking” routines were co-written by, and co-starred, Daws Butler. Butler also teamed up again with Freberg and cartoon actress June Foray in a CBS radio series, The Stan Freberg Show, which ran from July to October 1957 as a summer replacement for Jack Benny’s program. Freberg’s box-set, Tip of the Freberg (Rhino Entertainment, 1999) chronicles every aspect of Freberg’s career except the cartoon voice-over work, and it showcases his career with Daws Butler.

In 1957, when MGM closed down their animation division, producers William Hanna and Joseph Barbera quickly formed their own company, and Daws Butler and Don Messick were on-hand to provide voices. The first, The Ruff & Reddy Show where Butler voiced Reddy, set the formula for the rest of the series of cartoons that the two would helm until the mid-1960s.

Bill Macy (born Wolf Marvin Garber; May 18, 1922) is an American television, film and stage actor, born in Revere, Massachusetts, to Mollie (née Friedopfer) and Michael Garber, a manufacturer.^[1]

Macy is best-known for playing Walter Findlay, the long-suffering husband of the title character on the 1970s television sitcom Maude. He was also an original cast member of the long-running theatrical revue Oh! Calcutta! He has made more than 70 appearances on film and television, including a memorable role as the co-inventor of the ‘Opti-grab’ in the 1979 Steve Martin comedy The Jerk, and as the head television writer in My Favorite Year (1982).

He appeared occasionally on Seinfeld as one of the residents of the Florida retirement community in which Jerry Seinfeld‘s parents lived. He also appeared on the short-lived sitcom Back to You.^[2] He made a guest appearance as a patient on Chicago Hope and an aging gambler on the series Las Vegas. In 2006 he made an appearance on My Name is Earl in the second season episode, “Van Hickey“, as an elderly patient in a nursing home who claims he “once tongue-kissed a Jamaican woman”.

Elizabeth Victoria Montgomery (April 15, 1933 – May 18, 1995)^[1] was an American film and television actress whose career spanned five decades.

The daughter of Robert Montgomery, she began her career in the 1950s with a role on her father’s television series Robert Montgomery Presents. In the 1960s, she rose to fame as Samantha Stephens on the ABC sitcom Bewitched. Her work on the series earned her five Primetime Emmy Awardnominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations. After Bewitched ended its run in 1972, Montgomery continued her career with roles in numerous television films. In 1974, she portrayed Ellen Harrod in A Case of Rape and Lizzie Borden in the 1975 television film The Legend of Lizzie Borden. Both roles earned her additional Emmy Award nominations.

Montgomery was married four times, most notably to actor Gig Young and producer/director William Asher with whom she had three children. Her fourth and final marriage was to actor Robert Foxworth, with whom she lived for twenty years before marrying in 1993. Montgomery died of colorectal cancer in May 1995, eight weeks after being diagnosed with the disease.