Ball caught Burnett in Once Upon a Mattress in 1959, came to her dressing room, and told her to call if she ever needed anything. Years later, CBS offered Burnett an hour-long special if she could land a major guest star. She called. Ball said yes, Carol + 2 aired in March 1966, and in 1967 The Carol Burnett Show premiered, after Burnett invoked a contract option CBS could not refuse. Ball, about 22 years her senior, kept calling her "kid," and kept sending flowers.

Monroe studied Fitzgerald's records and called her a favorite. By Fitzgerald's own account, Monroe personally called the owner of the Mocambo, the Sunset Strip nightclub, and pushed for a booking. Fitzgerald played there in March 1955 and told Ms. magazine in 1972, "I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt." The popular retelling runs ahead of the record, though. The Mocambo had already booked Black performers, including Eartha Kitt and Dorothy Dandridge. Fitzgerald remembered Monroe at a front table every night, but West Hollywood historians place Monroe in New York during the run. The smaller story still stands: one star used her clout for another, and the singer said it mattered.

Born nine days apart, they met at Harlem's American Negro Theatre in the 1940s, when Poitier was trading janitorial work for acting classes and Belafonte was a stagehand. They shared theater tickets, each watching half a show and describing it to the other. When Belafonte couldn't go on in a student production, his understudy did. That was Poitier, and a Broadway director who saw him offered a role in Lysistrata. In 1964 the two carried $70,000 to Freedom Summer volunteers in Mississippi, chased and shot at by Klansmen. After Poitier died in 2022, Belafonte said they had "laughed, cried and made as much mischief as we could."

They started at Juilliard in 1973 as roommates. Reeve said they "clicked right away because we were exact opposites," and Williams remembered Reeve sharing his food when money was short. In 1995, after an accident left Reeve paralyzed from the neck down, a man in scrubs came into his hospital room, introduced himself in a Russian accent as a proctologist, and said an exam was due. It was Williams. Reeve laughed for the first time since the accident, and later told Barbara Walters, "I knew then: if I could laugh, I could live." One popular add-on needs a correction: Williams denied reports that he paid Reeve's medical bills, though he did say, "We bought Chris a van and a generator."

On June 17, 1967, Liberty Records ran a talent ad in New Musical Express. Reg Dwight, 20, the future Elton John, answered from Pinner. Bernie Taupin, 17, answered from Lincolnshire. Ray Williams, the 19-year-old behind the ad, noticed Taupin's lyrics and connected the two. The partnership that followed usually worked apart, words first and music after, sometimes on different continents. At his 1994 Rock Hall induction, Elton asked Taupin to join him onstage, and in 2024 they shared the Gershwin Prize, 57 years after an ad that signed neither of them.

They met on Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows and built the 2000 Year Old Man together, Reiner asking the questions and Brooks answering as the ancient survivor. For years they met nightly at Reiner's home for dinner and television. Reiner died on June 29, 2020, the day after Brooks turned 94, and Brooks was with him that night. Then, as Rob Reiner told CBS Sunday Morning, Brooks kept going: he "would go over to the house, and sit there, have dinner and watch television" for a whole year. In a later documentary, Rob put it at "months." Their chairs and TV tables went on display at the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York. Brooks turned 100 on June 28, 2026.