For 35 years the comedy team of Stiller and Meara—five-footsix Jewish actor Jerry Stiller and his five-foot-eight Irish-Catholic wife Anne Meara—have been best known for wringing laughter out of improvisational situations, appearing 36 times on The Ed Sullivan Show in the 1950s and 1960s. They have also acted on Broadway—separately and as a team—and have each starred in a number of television sitcoms and motion pictures. Jerry's role as George Costanza's short-fused father on Seinfeld in the late 1990s sent his revitalized career to a higher level, leading to further work on Broadway and in network television commercials. In recent years Stiller and Meara have also been known as the parents of talented writer-director-actor Ben Stiller and actress Amy Stiller.

Both born in New York City, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara were stage-struck in their teens. When they met in the early...