Norman Kerry was an American actor whose career spanned over twenty-five years in the motion picture industry beginning in the silent era at the end of World War I.

Born Arnold Kaiser in Rochester, New York of German parentage, he changed his decidedly German name to ‘Norman Kerry’ at the onset of World War I.

Around 1916 he befriended Rudolph Valentino, then an exhibition dancer of some renown, in New York City. He is said to have introduced Valentino to dancer Bonnie Glass who became Valentino’s partner; Valentino in turn encouraged Kerry to try making a name for himself in film. Kerry made his first film appearance in the 1916 Allan Dwan directed comedy Manhattan Madness, starring Douglas Fairbanks. He would rise to leading actor status the following year in the Marshall Neilan directed A Little Princess, playing opposite actress Mary Pickford. In 1918, Kerry followed his success with A Little Princess in the William Desmond Taylor directed Up the Road with Sallie, opposite Constance Talmadge.

Kerry’s career flourished during the silent film era of the late 1910s and throughout the 1920s and he quickly became a matinee idol who was extremely popular with female fans. With his slicked back hair and thin, waxed moustache, he was often cast in the role of the heroic dashing swashbuckler or the exotic, seductive lothario. By 1923, Kerry was a very well respected leading man and box-office draw. That year he starred in two much talked about films: the enormous box-office hit The Hunchback of Notre Dame, opposite Lon Chaney and Patsy Ruth Miller and the controversial Merry-Go-Round opposite newcomer Mary Philbin. Kerry was cast in Merry-Go-Round by the famous Austrian director Erich von Stroheim to play von Stroheim’s alter-ego ‘Count Franz Maximilian Von Hohenegg’, but studio executive Irving Thalberg fired von Stroheim during filming and had to be replaced by director Rupert Julian. Although controversial at the time, the film is now considered a classic.

Norman Milton Lear is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude. As a political activist, he founded the civil liberties advocacy organization People For the American Way in 1981 and has supported First Amendment rights and liberal causes.

Lear was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Jeanette and Herman Lear, who worked in sales. He grew up in a Jewish home and had a Bar Mitzvah. Lear went to high school in Hartford, Connecticut and subsequently attended Emerson College in Boston, but dropped out in 1942 to join the United States Army Air Forces. During World War II, he served in the Mediterranean Theater as a radio operator/gunner on Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers with the 772nd Bombardment Squadron, 463rd Bombardment Group of the Fifteenth Air Force. He flew 52 combat missions, for which he was awarded the Air Medal with four Oak Leaf Clusters. Lear was discharged from the Army in 1945. He and his fellow World War II crew members are featured in the book "Crew Umbriago" by Daniel P.Carroll, and also in another book: 772nd Bomb Squadron: The Men, The Memories by Turner Publishing Company.

In 1954, Lear was enlisted as a writer hoping to salvage the new Celeste Holm CBS sitcom, Honestly, Celeste!, but the program was canceled after eight episodes. In 1959, Lear created his first television series starring Henry Fonda, a half-hour western for Revue Studios called The Deputy. Starting out as a comedy writer, then a film director, Lear tried to sell a concept for a sitcom about a blue-collar American family to ABC. They rejected the show after two pilots were filmed. After a third pilot was shot, CBS picked up the show, known as All in the Family. It premiered January 12, 1971 to disappointing ratings, but it took home several Emmy Awards that year, including Outstanding Comedy Series. The show did very well in summer reruns, and it flourished in the 1971-1972 season, becoming the top-rated show on TV for the next five years. After falling from the #1 spot, All in the Family still remained in the top ten, well after it transitioned into Archie Bunker's Place. The show was based on the British sitcom Til Death Us Do Part, about an irascible working-class Tory and his Socialist son-in-law.

Lear's second big TV hit was also based on a British sitcom, Steptoe and Son, about a west London junk dealer and his son. Lear changed the setting to the Watts section of Los Angeles and the characters to African-Americans, and the NBC show Sanford and Son was an instant hit. Numerous hit shows followed thereafter, including Maude, The Jeffersons, and One Day at a Time.

Nichelle Nichols is an American actress, singer and voice artist. She sang with Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton before turning to acting. Her most famous role is that of communications officer Lieutenant Uhura aboard the USS Enterprise in the popular television series, as well as the succeeding motion pictures, where her character was eventually promoted in Starfleet to the rank of commander. In 2006, she added executive producer to her résumé.

Nichols was born in Robbins, Illinois, near Chicago, the daughter of Lishia and Samuel Earl Nichols, a factory worker who was both the town mayor of Robbins and its chief magistrate. Later, the family moved into an elegant apartment in Chicago.

She studied in Chicago as well as New York and Los Angeles. While still in Chicago, she performed at the “Blue Angel”, and in New York, Nichols appeared at that city’s “Blue Angel” and Playboy Club as a dancer and singer. She also appeared in the role of Carmen for a Chicago stock company production of Carmen Jones and performed in a New York production of Porgy and Bess. Between acting and singing engagements, Nichols did occasional modeling work.

In January 1967, Nichols also was featured on the cover of Ebony magazine.