Comedian and actor Jerry Stiller first rose to fame in the '60s as half of the comedy team of Stiller Meara before enjoying a career resurgence in the '90s on television. Gerald Isaac Stiller was born in Brooklyn, New York on June 8, 1927. After completing high school, Stiller served in the military during the latter years of World War II. Once he returned home, he enrolled at Syracuse University, where he received a bachelor's degree in speech and drama in 1950. He set out to make a career as an actor, taking work where he could get it, and appeared in a 1953 Broadway production of William Shakespeare's Coriolanus, playing a small comic role alongside a young Jack Klugman and future film director Gene Saks. That same year, Stiller met a young actress named Anne Meara in an agent's office. Meara had just been through an audition that went poorly, and was clearly upset. Stiller offered to buy her a cup of coffee, since he couldn't afford a dinner date. The two hit it off, and they married in 1955.

Stiller and his bride pursued stage work, but it wasn't until they were wed that he suggested they give comedy a try. Stiller and Meara briefly relocated to Chicago, where they became part of the cast of the Compass Players, an improvisational theater troupe that would later be renamed the Second City. The two started working up comedy routines that often focused on their differences -- Meara was of Irish heritage and raised Catholic, while Stiller was a Jew with roots in Poland and Galicia -- and the ups and downs of romantic relationships as well as the funny side of modern life. The couple began playing nightclubs, and after appearing on Merv Griffin's afternoon talk show, they were spotted by Ed Sullivan. Sullivan loved their act, and booked him on his top-rated weekly variety show. Stiller Meara would appear on The Ed Sullivan Show more than 30 times between 1960 and 1971, and the exposure helped make them one of America's most successful comedy teams.

Stiller Meara released three comedy albums during their career, 1963's Presenting America's New Comedy Sensations, 1967's Ed Sullivan Presents the Last Two People in the World, and 1972's Laugh When You Like. But Laugh When You Like proved to be a swan song for Stiller Meara. The couple soon broke up the act, with both parties saying it was having a negative impact on their marriage.

While they had officially retired their act, Stiller continued to work occasionally with his wife, and they appeared in a successful series of radio spots for Blue Nun wine. During the '70s and '80s, Stiller worked steadily in film and television, making guest spots on a number of sitcoms and variety shows, and occasionally dramas (including The Carol Burnett Show, Rhoda, The Love Boat, and Hart to Hart) and appearing on the big screen in Airport 1975, The Ritz, and John Waters' original Hairspray, among many others.

In 1993, Stiller was cast as Frank Costanza, the short-tempered father of George Costanza, on the hit comedy series Seinfeld, and the role kick-started his career, especially after an especially memorable episode in which Frank shares the traditions of a holiday he invented, Festivus. The Festivus episode became so popular that Stiller even wrote the introduction to a book about the fictive holiday. He was busier than ever with film and TV work, including a supporting role in the film Zoolander, which starred and was directed by his son, Ben Stiller. After Seinfeld went off the air in 1998, Stiller considered retirement, but he accepted an offer to play Arthur Spooner, another irascible elderly man, on a new comedy series, The King of Queens. The show ended up running nine seasons, with Stiller appearing in 195 episodes. In 2001, he published a memoir, Married to Laughter: A Love Story featuring Anne Meara. Tragedy struck on May 23, 2015, when Anne Meara died at the age of 85; following her death, Stiller retired from acting. On May 11, 2020, Ben Stiller revealed on social media that his father Jerry Stiller had died at his home in Manhattan at the age of 92. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi