CBS Television · Public domain

Carl Reiner wrote alongside Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and Woody Allen in the writers' room of Your Show of Shows in the early 1950s, then created The Dick Van Dyke Show, which he also produced, wrote for, and occasionally appeared in. He and Brooks turned an improvised bit into a decades-long comedy duo, "The 2000 Year Old Man," on a string of Grammy-winning albums. As a director he became Steve Martin's regular collaborator, making The Jerk, Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, and All of Me, and he kept working — writing more than two dozen books — into his nineties.