funniest people ever

From the late 1940s through 1961, he was the highly successful host of You Bet Your Life a quiz show on radio and television. His son, Arthur Marx, is a successful writer of biographies and TV scripts. Arthur complained about his father always being "on". If he asked Groucho about something serious or personal, Groucho would reply with one-liners.

Stan Laurel was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson on the 16th of June in Ulverston, Cumbria in England, 1890. His father was a vaudeville performer and this led Arthur to being a stage performer too. He didn't get much schooling and this led to the joining of Fred Karno's Troupe where Arthur understudied the future star...

Woody Allen was born on December 1, 1935, as Allen Konigsberg, in Brooklyn, New York. At the age of 15, he started selling one-liners to gossip columns. After working a while as a stand up comedian, he was hired to write What's New Pussycat in 1965. He directed his first film a year later, What's Up, Tiger Lily? in 1966.

William H. Cosby Jr. was born on July 12th, 1937, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and for over thirty years, he has been one of the world's most respected and well-known entertainers and comedians. After tenth grade, Cosby joined the Navy and completed high school through a correspondence course. He later took up an athletics scholarship at Temple University...

The entertainment world has enjoyed a five-decade love affair with comedienne/singer Carol Burnett. A peerless sketch performer and delightful, self-effacing personality who rightfully succeeded Lucille Ball as the carrot-topped "Queen of Television Comedy," it was Burnett's traumatic childhood that set the stage for her comedy...

As a kid trying to negotiate his way through various gang territories to a floating crap game or a new pool hall where he was not yet known as a hustler, Leonard (Chico) Marx learned to fake several accents. Because he later employed an Italian accent in the Marx Brothers' act, people assumed his name was pronounced "Cheeko." Instead...

Eddie Izzard made his first stage appearance in London's West End in 1993 with his one-man comedy show Eddie Izzard: Live at the Ambassadors. The show earned Izzard a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for outstanding achievement and garnered Izzard his first British Comedy Award for top stand-up comedian. He returned to the West End the next year with his second one-man show...

Williams briefly studied political science before enrolling at Juilliard to study theatre. After he left Juilliard, he performed in night clubs where he was discovered for the role of Mork on an episode of Happy Days and the subsequent Mork & Mindy TV series. Williams' wild comic talent involves a great deal of improvisation...

Rowan Sebastian Atkinson was born on the 6th January, 1955, in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK, to Ella May and Eric Atkinson. His father owned a farm where he grew up with his two older brothers, Rupert and Rodney. He attended Newcastle University and Oxford University where he earned degrees in electrical engineering...

Born in Brooklyn, New York, to parents Kalman and Betty. Moved with family, including sister Carolyn, to suburban Massepequa, Long Island at young age. Dad, who had terrific sense of humor, was a commercial sign maker. Attended Oswego College in upstate New York but transferred to Queens College back in New York City...

Ben Stiller was born on November 30, 1965, in New York, New York to legendary comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. It's not surprising that Ben Stiller has followed in his family's footsteps. Ben's parents made no real effort to keep their son away from the Hollywood lifestyle and he grew up among the stars...

Hugh was born in Oxford, England on June 11, 1959. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge. Son of an Olympic gold medalist in the sport, he rowed for the England youth team (1977) and for Cambridge (1980). He met Emma Thompson at Cambridge in 1978 when both joined "Footlights" and was introduced to Stephen Fry by Emma in 1980...

Steve Carell is one of America's most versatile comics and has been celebrated as the funniest man on the cover of Life Magazine. He was born Steven John Carell on August 16, 1962, in Concord, Massachusetts, USA, into a family of Italian, German, and Polish descent (his grandfather had changed the surname from "Caroselli" to "Carrell")...

Born Cornelius Crane Chase, his grandmother gave him the name Chevy when he was two years old and has gone by that name ever since. Chevy Chase, who was a part of the Saturday Night Live crew, embarked on a highly successful movie career. Chase scored in the eighties with hits such as Caddyshack...

Don Knotts, the legendary television character actor, was born Jesse Donald Knotts on July 21, 1924 in Morgantown, West Virginia, to William Jesse Knotts and the former Elsie L. Moore. He was the youngest of four sons in a family that had been in America since the 17th century. His first stint as an entertainer was as a ventriloquist...

Philip Edward Hartmann was born on September 24, 1948, in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. His surname was originally "Hartmann" but he later dropped the other "n" -- the reason of which is unknown. As one of the eight children of Rupert and Doris Hartmann, Phil was a very caring and sensitive person and was described as "very sweet and kind of quiet." Although he was born in Canada...

Madeline Kahn was born Madeline Gail Wolfson on September 29, 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts. She began her acting career in high school and went on to university where she trained as an opera singer and starred in several campus productions, ultimately earning a doctorate in her chosen field. Her finest years came in Paper Moon with Ryan O'Neal...

As might be said for the late and great comedians Harvey Korman and Madeline Kahn, it seems that Mel Brooks was the only director on the planet who knew how to best utilize this funnyman's talents on film. Brooks once quipped that, whenever he hired Dom DeLuise for one of his films, he would...

Candy was one of Canada's greatest, and funniest, character actors. His well-known role as the big hearted buffoon earned him classics in Uncle Buck and Planes, Trains & Automobiles. His career has handed him some dry spells, but Candy always rebounded. Born in Toronto, Ontario, in the year 1950, Candy found his passion for drama while attending a community college...

Fred Willard radiates a unique charm that has established him as one of the industry's most gifted comic actors, first coming to prominence as ambitious but dimwitted sidekick Jerry Hubbard to Martin Mull's smarmy talk-show host Barth Gimble in the devastating satirical series Fernwood Tonight. A master of sketch comedy...

Conan O'Brien grew up in a large, Irish Catholic family in Massachusetts. At an early age, he began a love of comedy and goofing off, this carried on when he entered the prestigious Harvard University, acting out many pranks in his time, as well as become the president of the Harvard humor magazine...

Television would never be the same after David Letterman made his second attempt at a television show in 1982. But his career before becoming host of the show was quite an interesting and long one. Letterman was born in Broad Ripple, a neighborhood in Indianapolis. His childhood was relatively unremarkable...

Comedian, actor, composer and conductor, educated in New York public schools. He was a master of ceremonies in amateur shows, a carnival barker, daredevil driver and a disc jockey., and later a comedian in night clubs. By the mid-1950s he had turned to writing original music and recording a series of popular and best-selling albums with his orchestra for Capitol Records...

Dan Aykroyd attended Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada (1969), where he majored in Criminology and Sociology. He dropped out to work with Second City Stage Troupe in Toronto and started his acting career at Carleton University with Sock'n'Buskin, the campus theater/drama club. Married to Donna Dixon...

Radner was one of the great comic geniuses of the 20th century, ranked up with Lucille Ball and other comedy legends of the highest caliber. She was born on June 28, 1946, in Detroit, the younger of two children. Her parents were Herman and Henrietta Radner, and she had an older brother named Michael...

Born and raised in Paterson, New Jersey, Lou Costello dropped out of high school and headed west to break into the movies. He got a job as a carpenter at MGM and Warners. He went from there to stuntman and then to vaudeville as a comic. In 1931, while working in Brooklyn, his straight man became ill and the theater cashier...

Born Walter Matthow on October 1, 1920, to a pair of Russian-Jewish immigrants in New York City, Matthau grew up in poverty on the Lower East Side and started out selling soft drinks and playing bit parts at a Yiddish theater troupe at age 11. He was paid 50 cents for each of his occasional on-stage appearances...

A graduate of the University of Southern California, Will Ferrell became interested in performing while a student at University High School in Irvine, California, where he made his school's daily morning announcements over the public address system in disguised voices. He started as a member of the Los Angeles comedy/improvisation group The Groundlings...

Danny Kaye left school at the age of 13 to work in the so-called Borscht Belt of Jewish resorts in the Catskill Mountains. It was there he learned the basics of show biz. From there he went through a series of jobs in and out of the business. In 1939, he made his Broadway debut in "Straw Hat Revue,"...

Although he'd had small roles beforehand, Dick Van Dyke was launched to stardom in the 1960 musical "Bye-Bye Birdie", for which he won a Tony Award, and, then, later in the movie based on that play, Bye Bye Birdie. He has starred in a number of films throughout the years including Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Fitzwilly...

Graham Chapman was born on January 8, 1941 in Leicester, England while a Germain air raid was in progress. Graham's father was a chief police inspector and probably inspired the constables Graham often portrayed later in comedy sketches. Graham studied medicine in college and earned an M.D., but he practiced medicine for only a few years...

Although best known as the devious Sue Ann Nivens on the classic sitcom Mary Tyler Moore and the ditzy Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls, Betty White had been in television for a long, long time before those two shows, having had her own series, Life with Elizabeth in 1952. The widow of TV game-show host Allen Ludden...

Author, actor, comedian, composer and producer. He was educated at the New York School of Theatre, and received the Sylvania Television Award. Joining the American Society of Composers and Publishers in 1957, he composed a number of songs and themes, a number of which were used in his famed television comedy sketches including "Mr...

Charlie Chaplin, considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular "Little Tramp" character; the man with the toothbrush mustache...

Highly influential, and always controversial, African/American actor/comedian who was equally well known for his colorful language during his live comedy shows, as for his fast paced life, multiple marriages and battles with drug addiction. He has been acknowledged by many modern comic artist's as a key influence on their careers...

"I am too old to die young, and too young to grow up," he told a reporter -- a week before he died. This beloved comedian, who poked fun at himself as well as others, was born Marty Feldman, on July 8, 1933, in London, England. The son of immigrants from Kiev, Marty spent his childhood in the poverty-stricken London East End and left school at the age of 15...

Dudley Moore, the gifted comedian who had at least three distinct career phases that brought him great acclaim and success, actually started out as a musical prodigy as a child. Moore -- born in Dagenham, Essex, England to working class parents in 1935 -- won a music scholarship to Magdalen College...

Amy Poehler was first involved with sketch comedy when she joined the group My Mother's Flea Bag when she was attending Boston College. In 1993, she went to Chicago where she studied at Second City and Improv Olympics. There, she met Del Close, who later became the voice of the UCB opening scene...

Brooklyn-born Buddy Hackett was known mainly as a nightclub comic, especially in Las Vegas, where he first performed in 1952 and wound up being one of the biggest headliners in that city's history. Hackett always referred to himself as a "saloon comic" and preferred the intimacy of his stage act--where he would often bring members of the audience up on stage with him--to films and television...

Comedian, saxophonist, composer, actor and musician, he performed within the orchestras of Charlie Spivak, Shep Fields and Claude Thornhill as saxophonist. Later, as super-hip jazz musician "Cool Cees" in television skits, he played tenor saxophone, and sang with the satirical trio "The Hair Cuts" (with Carl Reiner and Howard Morris)...

It's not surprising that Ryan Stiles would feel comfortable doing a comedic turn in the role of Lewis, one of Drew Carey's ever-present friends in the new comedy, The Drew Carey Show. After all, the first job Stiles ever had was that of a stand-up comedian. Although he was a good student, Stiles admits...

One of SNL's most talented alumni, comedian Dana Carvey reigned supreme during his six-season run creating some of the show's most memorable characters, including "Church Lady", "Garth" of Wayne & Garth fame, Grumpy Old Man and bodybuilding "Hans" of Hans & Franz notoriety. So it is quite bewildering that this sharp and witty writer...