Copyright: Frank Bibler, September 1997


Index
TV GUIDE   09/12/96

What makes a TV star immortal? It's a question we pondered as we set about selecting and ranking (from number 50 to number one) television's greatest stars. In the half-century that television has been with us, countless thousands of performers have been beamed into our living rooms. Most of them have faded into obscurity. Others we remember fondly -- if something triggers a memory of them. And then there are those extraordinary few -- stars who spring to mind again and again, always with astonishing  clarity and admiration.

All of these elite performers are important innovators. But what really makes them stand head and shoulders above the TV throng is personality. Television is a uniquely intimate medium. It burns through charisma and cleverness to reveal a person's essential nature. That's the X-factor that makes some performers such enduring favorites.

In TV Guide's pantheon of television's 50 Greatest Stars, you will find enormous talent, beauty, and charm. But you will find something else: a quality of character that makes these people truly great.

From 50 to 46  From 45 to 41  From 40 to 36

From 35 to 31  From 30 to 26  From 25 to 21

From 20 to 16  From 15 to 11  From 10 to 06

From 05 to 02

And the winner is....


From 50 to 46

50 Ed Sullivan

Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent," Fred Allen once quipped, and certainly no TV star has ever been less prepossessing than this unlikely master of ceremonies. Sullivan's puckered syntax was an impressionist's delight, and his body language was so tense and herky-jerky he made Richard Nixon seem like Nureyev. Nevertheless, his variety hour was the only place on TV where you could see dramatic scenes and musical excerpts from currently running Broadway shows; ballet and opera stars; Bo Diddley; Topo Gigio; and Wayne and Shuster -- often on the same show. In 1956, Ed booked Elvis Presley (and tried unsuccessfully to tame Presley's raw carnality by photographing him from the waist up). In 1964 the Beatles made their U.S. TV debut "right here on ahr stage." Where else? Sullivan was a consummate showman with an unerring instinct about popular tastes. His legacy is just this: For 23 seasons -- Sunday nights on CBS from 1948 until 1971 -- this former newspaper gossip columnist was, for all intents and purposes, nothing less than America's minister of culture.

49 Ricky Nelson

Ricky was TV's first real teenager, but he wasn't the troublemaking sort. Rebellion was definitely out -- the close-knit and loving Nelsons on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet made the Waltons look like the Bundys. But rock 'n' roll was most decidedly in. For parents in rock shock and puberty panic, Ricky (soon to be just Rick) was a palatable alternative: a safe Elvis. From the moment he sang Fats Domino's "I'm Walking" in an episode in 1957, Nelson became a chart-topping teen idol -- the numbers he sang on the show sold millions of records and can legitimately be called TV's first music videos. He strummed the electric chords that reverberated into MTV and broke the ground on which Beverly Hills, 90210 was built. TV's first teen is the grandfather of them all.

48 Bart Simpson

He's a puny, smart-alecky, disrespectful fourth-grader with bad hair and an even worse attitude: a mocker, a prankster, a working-class kid whose chances of graduating from Harvard Medical School are about the same as his chances of becoming Miss America. Ever since the debut of the dysfunctional family sitcom The Simpsons in 1989, social scientists have been moaning about what a bad role model he is for America's preteens. To them we say (as Bart would), "Hey, man. Don't have a cow." This little guy isn't evil -- he's refreshingly iconoclastic, a Bowery Boy for the '90s who knows humbug when he sees it and isn't afraid to tell you so. And, of course, he isn't even real: He's a cartoon character. But he is going to go down in broadcasting history. Almost single-handedly, he sustained the fledgling Fox network, winning it audience acceptance as well as critical applause. First seen on The Tracey Ullman Show, he also helped revive an entire art form -- animation, which had been largely unseen in prime time since The Flintstones. Hey, who says this jaundiced juvenile is an underachiever? He's Bart Simpson. Who the hell are you?

47 Howard Cosell

Inexorably intelligent, preternaturally polysyllabic, irredeemably irritating, Cosell was the maestro of the microphone, an unathletic man who was unbeatable at one sport: running on at the mouth. Born Howard William Cohen, Cosell was a lawyer by training, a reporter by inclination, and a gadfly by instinct. In the previously sanitized profession of sportscasting, he was an anomaly: brash, opinionated, so eager, in his famous words, to "tell it like it is" that he unhesitatingly savaged his colleagues and tackled such taboo subjects as drug use among athletes and racism in sports. But he was also rigorously principled. At the height of Cosell's career, he announced he would no longer cover his metier, boxing, because the sport had become too corrupt and brutal. Cosell's words may have poured out in a torrent, but he stood behind every one.

46 Julia Child

The ingredients for a great French meal? Voilà: half a pound of butter (OK, a pound of butter), a cup of cream, and a generous portion of Julia Child. Think back 30-some years, when Cuisinarts weren't as common as can openers, when what many called dinner was more cordon blah than cordon bleu. With The French Chef, which ran for 14 years on PBS, the deliciously down-to-earth Child, she of the high-pitched piping voice so scathingly parodied by Dan Aykroyd on Saturday Night Live, made the world safe for soufflés (to say nothing of béarnaise and hollandaise). Food played no part in her Southern California upbringing ("My mother could cook some kind of a cheese dish and make baking-powder biscuits, but that's about it," she has said). But after Pearl Harbor, Julia signed on with the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA, and married Paul Child, an OSS staffer. When he was posted in Paris after the war, Julia enrolled at the Cordon Bleu, where she more than measured up. At 84, she has, thank goodness, not yet seen fit to beat it, in the past few years launching two PBS series: In Julia's Kitchen with Master Chefs and Baking with Julia. Clearly, she's always known the way to our hearts -- right through our stomachs.


From 45 to 41

45 David Letterman

There's something about David Letterman and gaps. There's the one between his two front teeth. And the generation gap, which he bridges with astonishing ease: College kids think he's cool, even though at 49 he may be older than their parents. But the most important gap is the one he's put between himself and other TV hosts with his irreverent showmanship. He wanted to be Carson's heir, but he's more the direct descendant of Steve Allen and Ernie Kovacs. His loopy mix of comedy bits, on-location shoots, and wacky stunts (dressing in Velcro and leaping at a Velcro wall, wearing an Alka-Seltzer suit and being lowered into a tank of water, dreaming up gizmos like the MonkeyCam) earned him an armful of Emmys (and 55 nominations for his shows) and moved the talk show closer to being an art form. It also made it sillier. And more watched and more important than ever before. Between Letterman and the stuff of TV legends, there's hardly a gap at all.

44 Raymond Burr

Raymond Burr was 40 years old and best known for his creepy supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window" by the time he became a TV star. But oh, what a star he became. Burr fleshed out Perry Mason, writer Erle Stanley Gardner's upright lawyer who had been a staple of novels, movies, and radio since the 1930s, imbuing him with the qualities we wish all litigators had: integrity, diligence, perseverance. They were qualities that Burr himself also seemed to possess. During the show's nine-year run he lived in a bungalow on the studio lot, rising many days at 3:30 A.M. to memorize his courtroom monologue. You can't think of Burr without hearing the series' doleful theme music in your head or seeing him in your mind's eye, extracting the often painful truth from a reluctant witness. In the crowded pantheon of prime-time lawyers, Burr's Mason is the only barrister we would put on permanent retainer.

43 Lawrence Welk

An' a one, an' a two…" Necessity is often the mother of success. Lawrence Welk developed his dance band's trademark light, breezy, staccato style because the local musicians he often hired as sidemen in the 1930s simply weren't accomplished enough to sustain the long notes. By 1955, Lawrence Welk and his orchestra had parlayed their "Champagne Music" into a hit show on local TV in Los Angeles. On July 2 of that year, Welk and the boys launched a weekly series that would run on ABC for 16 years. People made fun of the bandleader's German accent, his schmaltzy music, his bubble machine, and even his Champagne Lady. No matter. This former North Dakota farm boy had found a formula that clicked. And the band played on -- after ABC canceled the show in 1971, Welk himself syndicated new episodes for 11 more years. The reruns still air today, on PBS of all places. As the maestro himself would have put it, "Wunnerful, wunnerful."

42 Phil Donahue

In the beginning, there was Phillip John Donahue, the patriarch of the audience-participation, single-topic talk show, the inquisitive, exuberant fellow who begat Oprah and Jenny and Maury and Ricki. Donahue, whose show began in 1967, dealt routinely with issues that had previously been swept under the rug: marital rape, incest, sexual dysfunction, all the while running up and down studio aisles hollering, "Caller, are you there?" It was on his show, winner of 20 Emmy awards, that we saw two men exchange wedding vows and Nelson Mandela reflect on his years in prison. Ultimately, Donahue became a victim of his own creation. There were younger, hipper hosts taking on raunchier subjects. But they all acknowledge their debt to the titan of talk. "There isn't anyone on television," noted Sally Jessy Raphaël, "who isn't doing Phil Donahue."

41 Alan Alda

Hawkeye represented the one quality that held the whole family together, the quality of fundamental decency," wrote Alistair Cooke for TV Guide in 1983, just before the final episode of the 11th and final season of M*A*S*H became the most-watched show in TV history. "Played less well, by an actor less high-strung, less deeply forlorn, the whole series could have expired in its infancy." High-strung and forlorn was "Hawkeye" Pierce; the fundamental decency was all Alan Alda's. The only person ever to win Emmys as performer, writer, and director, he took home a total of five, as well as 28 nominations, seven People's Choice awards, two Writer's Guild of America awards, three Director's Guild awards, and six Golden Globes. But the image of him -- gangly in greens and bathrobe, the cackling laugh, the Groucho delivery of one-liners that punctured pretense while deadening the pain of war -- is his real legacy. Alda once told a med-school graduating class: "The head bone is connected to the heart bone -- and don't let them come apart." As the head and heart of the 4077th, he never did.


From 40 to 36

40 Patty Duke

Meet Cathy, who's lived most everywhere/From Zanzibar to Berkeley Square/But Patty's only seen the sights/A girl can see from Brooklyn Heights/Oh, what a crazy pair!" Anyone old enough to have reached a TV's "on" button in the mid '60s knew all the words to the theme song of The Patty Duke Show. The comedy's petite but hugely talented star played both roles: refined Cathy, with the delicate Scottish burr, and rock-'n'-roll Patty, whose native tongue was slang. Of course, this wasn't exactly Duke's debut. At age 12, she had vaulted to fame on Broadway as Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker"; at 16 she'd won an Oscar for the movie adaptation. Duke went on to appear in 39 TV-movies -- including playing teacher Anne Sullivan to Melissa Gilbert's Keller in the 1979 TV remake of the movie that had put her name in lights -- and four miniseries in the last 20 years. In every project, she displayed a fierce commitment to her craft. Performers who find fame as children rarely hold on to their success as teenagers. Still fewer manage to continue on as grown-up stars. Duke has done it all.

39 Michael J. Fox

In 1982, it barely made a ripple when a young Canadian named Michael J. Fox signed on to play an obnoxious young political conservative named Alex P. Keaton in a generation-gap comedy called Family Ties. He wasn't even the star, just one of the kids in an ensemble cast. Now, hop in the DeLorean and go back to the future: Five years later, Fox had won three Emmys, the show was being written around his quicksilver ability to fashion uproarious moments from nothing but a stammer or a nervous swipe of a hand through his hair, and he was starring in some of the biggest box-office movies of the decade. Leap ahead again, and he's back at it, carrying the ABC hit Spin City on those shrugging shoulders. Timing is everything -- especially classic, polished timing, and Fox has better timing than just about anyone else. Past, present, or future.

38 Carroll O'Connor

Like a turnip with a stogie stuffed in it -- that was Archie Bunker's face. Like a squawking radio stuck between stations -- that was his voice. And the blue-collar New Yorker was so politically incorrect he was practically his own party. In 1971, Bunker may have been a stretch for the cultured, liberal Carroll O'Connor, but given the role of his life, he gave TV the performance of its life. He made us love a bigot, and held a mirror up to the Archie Bunker in all of us. And then, in 1988, he made a screeching 180-degree turn, and became the rational, racially tolerant Southern cop Bill Gillespie in In the Heat of the Night. Again the show dealt with social issues and again O'Connor triumphed. In a medium often accused of lacking a conscience, O'Connor has always reminded us that, despite our differences, we're all in the same family.

37 Susan Lucci

OK, so she hasn't won an Emmy…16 times. But look at it this way: Consider the achievement of having been nominated over and over, of being so sublime at what she does -- playing Erica Kane Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler Montgomery Montgomery Chandler Marick Marick on ABC's All My Children -- that her name has almost automatically made the list of the best in her business for more than two decades. Don't feel too bad for Susan Lucci: She's got loads of other awards, devoted fans, and a line of beauty products that keeps home-shopping operators working overtime. But what Lucci has the most of, something rarer than talent or statuettes, is glamour. She is the queen of daytime TV, and her crown is more than secure -- it's permanently attached. Who remembers who won last year's Emmy, anyway?

36 David Janssen

Even after the success of the 1993 Harrison Ford big-screen remake, one thing remains clear: David Janssen is, was, and always will be The Fugitive. Seldom have an actor and a character merged in the public mind so completely. It wasn't Janssen's first series -- in Richard Diamond, Private Detective, he helped define the tough TV gumshoe -- and it wouldn't be his last. But something magical happened to Janssen when he debuted in 1963 as the falsely accused Dr. Richard Kimble: He became him, and we believed it. We ached for him as he searched, alone and afraid, for the murderous one-armed man. Women wanted to hug him and everybody wanted to help him hide from the relentless Lieutenant Gerard [Barry Morse]. Now, 16 years after the actor's death at age 49, nearly three decades since his character proved his innocence, Janssen/Kimble remains one of the most cherished of TV personas.


From 35 to 31

35 Fred Rogers

For almost 30 years now, Fred Rogers -- that's Mister Rogers to you -- has entered his house and performed the same ritual: shedding the garments of the outside world, covered, as they are, with the soot of worry, fear, and other harsh realities. In their place, he puts on a well-worn cardigan and those comfy sneakers…and we slip into them, too. The soothing star of PBS's Mister Rogers' Neighborhood makes us, young and old alike, feel safe, cared for, and valued, while he teaches us about what's good, and gives us support in handling all the bad that takes place beyond his door. Nothing fancy, no hyperkinetic cartoons, no pressure on us to achieve amazing feats. His simple home might not be a wacky playhouse, and the puppets might sound remarkably like him, but wherever Mister Rogers is, so is sanctuary.

34 Barbara Walters

Here's how to know when you're really famous: Barbara Walters wants to interview you. For two decades on ABC's Barbara Walters Specials she has been sitting down with the very biggest names and getting them to open up like they never have before. (One such extraordinary moment came in 1980, when Richard Pryor confessed to her that he had been freebasing cocaine on the night he was horribly burned.) But that's only the glitzier half of Walters' résumé. She spent 15 years with NBC's Today before becoming the first woman to co-anchor a nightly network newscast when, in 1976, she jumped networks to join Harry Reasoner on ABC's evening news. Since 1984, she has been co-anchor (with Hugh Downs) of ABC's 20/20 -- contributing hard-hitting interviews with newsmakers from Colin Powell to members of O.J. Simpson's defense team. Simply put, no one has ever combined the entertainment and public-affairs aspects of TV as successfully as Walters. Seems like the only VIP Barbara Walters hasn't interviewed is… Barbara Walters.

33 Telly Savalas

In the '70s, a decade known for hard-bitten, cynical loners, NYPD Lt. Theo Kojak went them all one better. He was hard-bitten, cynical, and bald. Telly Savalas, however, did have hair. Lots of wavy, brown hair. It's just that audiences never saw it, because he began shaving his head in 1965, when director George Stevens suggested a clean pate would add to Savalas's impact as Pontius Pilate in "The Greatest Story Ever Told." The New York-born son of Greek immigrants went on to more than 30 film roles, playing mostly heavies. "I'm always thought of as tough and sinister, and I've been unable to get away from a police badge or killer's knife," he said of his career. It was, of course, a gold shield that made him a household name. In 1973, he created the nattily dressed Kojak in the classic TV-movie The Marcus-Nelson Murders. That fall, Savalas's streetwise alter ego began an unforgettable five-year run on CBS that would earn him an Emmy and bequeath to TV history two indelible trademarks: Kojak's ever-present lollipops and his catchphrase, "Who loves ya, baby?"

32 Rocky and Bullwinkle

The top-secret orders from cold-war villain Fearless Leader to master spies Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale were always the same: "Get Moose and Squirrel." But they never did, and neither did a sizable chunk of the cartoon's intended audience -- from 1959 to 1973, Rocky and Bullwinkle were the hippest, punniest pen-and-ink creatures on TV. It's no coincidence that Rocky was a flying squirrel, because much of the duo's material went over people's heads -- to the glee of the show's subversive creator, Jay Ward. On weekdays, Saturday mornings, and, for one season, in a nighttime slot, manic Rocket J. Squirrel (voice by June Foray) and slow-witted Bullwinkle J. Moose (Bill Scott) saved the world and defended the honor of good ol' Wossamotta U. -- and paved the way for future cutting-edge comedies like The Simpsons. The humor was so silly, the satire so zippy, we didn't mind the rough, flat animation. Each week they pulled a rabbit out of the hat -- and despite what Bullwinkle said, it was always the right hat.

31 Phil Silvers

People who think of the 1950s as a bland era of cheerful conformity and automatic respect for authority have obviously never seen The Phil Silvers Show. Running for just four seasons on CBS, the show served up one of the greatest rebels of them all -- that con man in khaki, Master Sergeant Ernie Bilko. As played with fast-talking relish and impeccable timing by Silvers, a onetime vaudeville and burlesque comic, Bilko was a schemer, a swindler, and an absolute laugh riot. Aided and abetted by an extraordinary troupe of second bananas, Bilko ran roughshod over peacetime Fort Baxter, Kansas, with one scam after another, constantly frustrating anyone in command, especially poor Colonel Hall (Paul Ford). In the real Army, a guy like Bilko would have spent 1955 to 1959 in the stockade. The fictional Bilko and his happy platoon spent those years garnering nine major Emmys while creating a master (sergeant) of anarchy who's been often copied, but never equaled.


From 30 to 26

30 Jerry Seinfeld

He wasn't the first stand-up comic to bring his act to television, but this acute 42-year-old Brooklyn-born observer has been far and away the most successful and influential. "I guess I came out of the 'me decade,'" Jerry Seinfeld has said of his 1980s comedy roots, "so I did me." His format-bending sitcom -- it's known as the "show about nothing" -- slipped almost unannounced into the NBC schedule in 1990 and began a slow climb up the Nielsen ranks. By the 1992-93 season -- which included the notorious "Master of His Domain" episode, a hilarious, double-entendre-laced half-hour -- Seinfeld had vaulted into the top 10. The show's quirky take on big-city life, with all its anxieties and inconveniences, perfectly showcased its star's charming, low-key exasperation. In June 1996, Time anointed Seinfeld one of the 25 Most Influential Americans. Not bad for a guy who modestly describes his comedy as "reality with a twist of lemon."

29 Sid Caesar

Your Show of Shows was a TV milestone: It proved the new medium could present 90 minutes of live entertainment every Saturday night, crammed with quality humor that could parody foreign movies and operas as easily as popular culture. Its manic epicenter was Sid Caesar, a master of double-talk, dialects, ad-libbing, and pantomime. Whether alone or with his most frequent skit partner, Imogene Coca, he could take a basic gag and stretch it to the point of absurdity. Yet, as fellow cast-member Carl Reiner pointed out, "The basis of Sid's humor came from an internal source: pain." Indeed, TV's most transcendent comic was also its most tortured. Caesar suffered through a 20-year addiction to liquor and pills. "I know of no other comedian who could have done nearly 10 years of live TV," Caesar's writer Mel Brooks once said. "Nobody's talent was ever more used up than Sid's over a period of years. TV ground him into sausages -- one sausage a week." Sadly, little of the comic's best work has been preserved. But anyone who saw him in his radiant prime knows that Sid remains the master. Hail, Caesar!

28 Roseanne

Growing up Jewish and working- class in Mormon Utah fueled her outsider's perspective. "I was just a weird woman from the day I was born," she once explained. But from her hardscrabble life, the former Roseanne Barr crafted a persona not previously seen in stand-up comedy: the angry, caustic housewife who didn't take any guff from the men in her life (most of whom were jerks, anyway). She successfully transformed that persona into a hit sitcom that captured the resentments, frustrations, and even the occasional joys of being a less-than-perfect blue-collar wife and mother in a glamour-obsessed world. For the most part, she managed to maintain that vision, even as her success propelled her into the financial stratosphere she ridiculed, and her off-camera antics became front-page fodder. Years from now, when the turmoil and scandals are forgotten, the incomparable Roseanne reruns will remain her true legacy.

27 Don Knotts

He was thin as half a rail, all bulgy eyes, puffy lips, and Adam's apple. He exhibited tics and lurches and arm-flailings that registered on the Richter scale. Let's face it: Knotts was a nervous wreck. At least, that was his comic signature -- first as Mr. Morrison, the twitchy bundle of bones caught in the headlights of Steve Allen's classic man-on-the-street comedy sketches; years later as landlord to Jack, Janet, and Chrissy on Three's Company. But best of all was his turn as the Chicken Little of Mayberry: Barney Fife, The Andy Griffith Show's hypervigilant, overofficious deputy who was allowed to pack a service revolver but had to keep his bullet in his pocket. Knotts' flawless timing as Griffith's comic foil and his ability to take an annoying character and make him endearing was a monumental achievement that won him five Emmys in as many nominations -- and set the tone for generations of manic TV sidekicks to come.

26 Farrah Fawcett

Hers was the smile that blinded. Hers was the face that reduced men to gawking fools, the bod that launched millions of swimsuit posters, the cascading hairdo that inspired countless ghastly imitations.  But most of all, hers was the jiggle. She came seemingly out of nowhere, with the unlikely name of Farrah Fawcett-Majors, and starred as the blond third of a girl gang of detectives -- Charlie's Angels, in every episode putting her life and virtue on the line, but never, ever putting on a bra. In the blink of a kohl-rimmed eye, she sparked a merchandising mania that included T-shirts, lunch boxes, dolls, and a signature line of shampoo, among other Farrah-phernalia. Twenty years later, no female TV star has even come close to creating the sensation Fawcett did in her single season on Charlie's Angels. Eventually she would triumph in gritty TV-movies such as Murder in Texas, and The Burning Bed, proving -- to our amazement and delight -- that there was ample substance beneath that seductive facade.


From 25 to 21

25 Bob Hope

It is impossible to imagine television without him. If Milton Berle was television's Columbus, Bob Hope was its Lewis & Clark. Berle put the fledgling medium on the map; Hope charted the territory, going just about everywhere a person could go (although, ironically, he never starred in a sitcom). In the process, he staked his rightful claim as America's Comedian. His NBC specials -- he's made nearly 300 of them -- titillated as well as entertained Middle America. He decorated his specials with beautiful young women, but for every leering remark he lobbed, he received a snappy comeback. ("The peacock," he once said about the NBC symbol, "was hatched from an egg I laid.") His hosting turns at the Academy Awards set the standard. His televised visits to entertain U.S. troops in war zones showed him to be our most patriotic and passionate funnyman. And when he would stride onto The Tonight Show set unannounced -- ski-jump nose in the air, loose arms swinging as the band struck up his theme song -- it was quite evident: Royalty had arrived. Thanks for the memories.

24 Robert Young

In the early 1950s, movie star Robert Young had the lead role in a radio serial called Father Knows Best. "I feel myself being drawn to television," he said, "like a man in a canoe heading toward Niagara Falls." He took the plunge in 1954, and his radio show went with him. Father Knows Best ran for nine years, during which Young made his mark as America's quintessential '50s dad. At the height of the comedy's popularity, Young simply walked away; he was tired and wanted to do something else. In 1969 (at age 62), he found that something else, and ended a self-imposed five-year hiatus to star as Marcus Welby, M.D., the kind of caring general practitioner we all wish we had. That year, he won the Emmy for best actor in a drama series, a nice counterpoint to the two he won during his sitcom years -- and a double-genre feat that only one other person in TV history (Carroll O'Connor) has been able to duplicate. If that's going over Niagara Falls in a canoe, no one's ever done it with more aplomb.

23 Miss Piggy

This shocking-pink hybrid of Alexis Carrington and Scarlett O'Hara burst onto The Muppet Show in 1976 as spokespig for the moi generation, and she hasn't stopped bursting ever since. With Muppeteer extraordinaire Frank Oz at her right hand, Miss Piggy has shown two decades of TV and movie audiences that she is caring and heartfelt and if you disagree she will make time in her busy schedule to trounce you into the dirt. One of Jim Henson's finest, fullest, funniest creations, Miss Piggy strikes a chord in all of us because she's so much like what we try to hide about ourselves: Bluster covers insecurity, sweetness covers envy, star behavior covers career frustration, and yards of material cover mid-swine bulge. "I always knew," she once told TV Guide in an exclusive interview, "that I was destined for le top." From barnyard to penthouse, you've come a long way, bacon…er, baby.

22 Edward R. Murrow

In an eerily darkened TV control room, he would sit and look directly at us and talk directly to us, and we knew he was the most intensely honest creature we would ever meet in this medium. He interviewed movie stars and pop-culture icons on Person to Person. In 1954 he took on Senator Joseph McCarthy and brought him to his knees on See It Now. His 1960 "Harvest of Shame," about the plight of migrant workers, is the most influential documentary in TV history. Even 31 years after his death, he is a major presence: When we watch Nightline, we are watching Murrow; when we watch 60 Minutes or Frontline, we are watching Murrow. He is TV news's model, benchmark, and ultimate goal -- the first that remains to this day the best.

21 Peter Falk

Columbo's creators first offered the part of the dumpy detective to Bing Crosby. But der Bingle prided himself on his nattiness and wanted no part of a production that would cast him as a slob. So Falk, who'd previously played a D.A. on the short-lived '60s series The Trials of O'Brien, got called in on the case. He had no problem with his character's sartorial malfeasance. In fact, he took it upon himself to hand-select Columbo's wardrobe. While most TV detectives of the era were suave and articulate, Falk's Columbo always looked and sounded like he'd just gotten out of bed. But beneath that rumpled exterior, there existed a crisp mind, as the bad guys would discover each week. The cagey cop with the lopsided squint was a bit of a mystery -- we never learned his first name, never saw his oft-mentioned wife -- but Falk imbued him with an innocent and irrepressible charm. His performance? Call it a tour de (police) force.


From 20 to 16

20 James Arness

He looked and acted the way a frontier marshal should: tall (6'6"), lean, and taciturn. (Off-screen, the press-averse Arness was just as stingy with his words.) But Gunsmoke, the longest-running drama (635 episodes) in TV history, was no cookie-cutter Western. Arness added unparalleled depth and authenticity to one of pop culture's most common characters. Dillon never fired unless he was shot at, and he often agonized over the brutality he was embroiled in. For two decades, we watched Arness grow craggier and more weathered, even if the year in Dodge City always remained 1873. By the end of the show's run, in 1975, Arness had molded Dillon into a kind of composite of the screen's greatest lawmen: a bit of Wyatt Earp, a touch of the Duke, a dollop of Shane. "A lot of actors can't hardly wait to get out and do some other characters, like they don't like the one they're doing," he once said. "I never had any feeling of that whatsoever. To me, it was a joy playing the role all the way from beginning to end."

19 Tom Selleck

He is prime time's most magnetic leading man, the Clark Gable of the small screen. Women melt at Selleck's rugged good looks. But men like him, too. Why isn't he threatening?Perhaps it's his easy athleticism or the ready sparkle in his eye that indicates he doesn't take himself too seriously. Either way, from 1980 to 1988, Selleck had the cushiest job in television. As former Navy Intelligence officer turned sometime sleuth Thomas Magnum, he got to tool around Oahu in a fiery-red Ferrari. But Selleck delivered the show's fluffy private-eye and romantic plots with flair. And Magnum, P.I. supplied us with something that had been missing on TV: a hero who was also a Vietnam veteran. In guest roles, Selleck shone just as brightly -- as the annoyingly perfect rival detective Lance White on The Rockford Files or as Monica's charming suitor on Friends. Whether he's the star or a supporting actor, Tom is always terrific.

18 Richard Chamberlain

Ben Casey vs. Dr. Kildare? It was an either O.R. proposition. Actually, it really wasn't much of a contest. Chamberlain, as the ravishingly handsome, shamelessly sincere intern (later resident) James Kildare, got three times as much fan mail as his neurosurgeon rival. It really came down to bedside manner. While Vince Edwards' Ben Casey was surly, Chamberlain's Kildare was kind and caring. In fact, Dr. Kildare so thoroughly typecast Chamberlain that he had trouble finding work when the series ended in 1966. But in the late '70s and early '80s, he resuscitated his career. By playing a rugged frontiersman in Centennial, a 17th-century sailor turned samurai in Shogun, and a lovelorn priest in The Thorn Birds, the erstwhile doc carved out a new niche as the dashing king of the miniseries.

17 Bob Newhart

Of all the shows that have been on the air, how many are true classics and how many performers have based their reputations on having been involved in just one of them? Well, Bob Newhart has starred in two, The Bob Newhart Show and Newhart: back-to-back gems that tickled America for a total of 14 seasons. In fact, Newhart has been the star of his own series in each of the last four decades, an unmatched achievement in TV. He's done it by seeming like both the dullest and hippest guy in the room, no matter whether it was a psychologist's office or a New England inn. This unassuming, practically nondescript former accountant first took TV by storm in 1961 as a polite, stammering stand-up comic pretending to have frustrating phone conversations with annoying dullards. With perfect timing, a lovable mix of befuddlement and crankiness, and a talent for choosing brilliant costars, Newhart is this generation's George Burns: the funny straightman, the straight funnyman -- the calm eye of a comic hurricane.

16 Dinah Shore

Another gracious Dinah Shore Show comes to an end, and the hostess rears back like a baseball pitcher going into his motion, turns, and throws the audience a great big -- Mmmmmm-wah! -- kiss. "I don't know how to be afraid of that old red eye," Shore once said of the TV camera. "It's one person to me.… I'm comfortable with it." Comfortable? That's an understatement. From 1951, when she debuted on NBC with a 15-minute music show, until 1963, when the hour-long Dinah Shore Chevy Show left the air, this Tennessee-born songbird was the sovereign female performer on TV. Between 1954 and 1958, she won an Emmy every year, charming audiences with her natural effervescence, and making "See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet" a national catchphrase. The silken-voiced Shore returned to TV in 1970 to star in a series of daytime talk shows that would last until 1980. Her direct, unpretentious interviewing style gave Shore a second career in TV -- and a new generation of fans eager to catch her kisses.


From 15 to 11

15 Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite was making $37.50 a week as a United Press reporter when CBS's Edward R. Murrow came calling with an offer of $120 in 1945. Cronkite didn't bite, but when the Korean War broke out in 1950, CBS renewed its courtship, and wooed itself a legend. A new term, anchor, was coined to describe Cronkite's role during the 1952 conventions. It fit him like a glove, perhaps because, as humorist Art Buchwald later observed, Cronkite had the only honest face in TV. His appearance was donnish, his voice gravelly, his diction oddly syncopated. As anchors began to seem machine-stamped, he stayed determinedly out of sync. That was fine with America. If we had to hear bad news -- and in his 46-year tenure at CBS, Cronkite has had to deliver plenty -- Uncle Walter was who we wanted to hear it from. And that's the way it was.

14 Milton Berle

TV's first star dished out a raucous brand of humor that may seem a bit primitive today, but in 1948, America caught Tuesday-night fever for Berle's unruly antics on Texaco Star Theater. Restaurants closed, bars darkened, one Brooklyn laundromat installed sets and advertised, "Watch Berle while your clothes whirl." Primarily a nightclub and radio comic, Berle was the perfect pioneer for the infant medium. By filling the seven-inch screen with nonstop nonsense -- he'd blacken his teeth, wear women's dresses, insult the audience, and burst on-stage in the middle of a guest's act -- Berle became a serious star. His exuberant burlesque soon yielded to more sophisticated humor and homey sitcoms; by 1960, he'd be hosting Jackpot Bowling. Yet he has never left the tube, popping up in such unlikely venues as the MTV Video Music Awards and Beverly Hills, 90210. "Waiting for me to retire," he said, "is like leaving the porch light on for Jimmy Hoffa."

13 George Burns and Gracie Allen

They were already huge audience favorites when they transferred their radio act to TV in 1950. After all, George and Gracie had been honing their on-stage personae for nearly 30 years: the bemused, detached husband and his scatterbrained wife. But now audiences could see George's raised eyebrow and contemplative cigar-puffing, Gracie's eyes shining with childlike enthusiasm as she wreaked havoc with logic. Despite Allen's initial hesitancy about leaving radio, she and Burns made a smooth transition, understanding fully how to exploit the new medium's intimacy. Taking a cue from Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," Burns broke down the fourth wall between performer and audience, making observations on the action on-screen or spying on Allen or the neighbors. In playing characters based on themselves, they proved to be outstanding role models for the stand-up stars of their grandchildren's generation, like Garry Shandling and Jerry Seinfeld. George and Gracie may have said goodnight, but not good-bye.

12 Andy Griffith

For a lot of folks, the '60s were a volatile, confusing time. But for eight years, there was a weekly respite from all the turmoil -- that Shangri-la with grits, that cornpone Camelot called Mayberry. What made this oasis so comforting was the reassuring presence of Griffith. As Andy Taylor -- the wavy-haired, guitar-toting sherriff with the endearingly broad, lippy grin and the wisdom of Solomon -- Griffith played (and seemed to be, in real life) a solid, sensitive, stand-up guy we could trust and admire. As the sole reasonable person in a bubbling mash of Gomers and Goobers and Barneys and Floyds, he could have played it just for laughs, but he played it for heart…and smarts. Later, we trusted and admired him again as savvy defense attorney Ben Matlock. (He's what might have become of Andy Taylor if he hadn't gone fishing so often with Opie, but instead had followed the dirt path not taken.) "I would like to continue to give people some small thing to make them laugh," he once said, "and to say some small truth." Attention to those little details is what makes Andy Griffith so big.

11 Lassie

How could you resist that face? How could you not love a creature of such unchanging, wistful, windblown beauty who also: 1) had the ability to communicate whole sentences and abstract concepts to fairly dense humans simply by barking at them; 2) could tussle with a grizzly, run through overgrown forests, and swim across flood-swollen streams and still look great in the closeup; 3) saw to it that the mine-shaft-prone Timmy somehow survived to adulthood; and 4) was mom to her spunky litter -- no mean feat, considering that all eight Lassies through the years were male? Lassie went through a passle of "masters" and homes during her two decades on the air, from 1954 to 1974. That's 140 in dog years and an eternity for a TV series. In all that time, she never once let us down.


From 10 to 06

10 Dick Van Dyke

With his current show, Diagnosis Murder, Van Dyke has been a series star in each of the last five decades. Of course, there's a reason for that longevity. The lanky, likable actor from Danville, Illinois, combines inspired timing, a physical agility unmatched since Donald O'Connor, and enough warmth of personality to power a sauna. Those irresistible hallmarks were best displayed in the actor's shining achievement, The Dick Van Dyke Show, which ran on CBS from 1961 to 1966. Let's leave the valediction to Van Dyke's TV soulmate, Mary Tyler Moore: "Despite his lack of ego and paranoia, the usual requirements for cultivating genius, the seemingly uncomplicated all-around good guy that is Dick Van Dyke is also a genius."

9 Bill Cosby

He has the résumé of 10 men. In 1965, he became the first African-American to costar in a prime-time dramatic series -- winning three Emmys in as many seasons as the smarter half of the I Spy espionage team. At the same time, he was the most successful stand-up comic of his generation; during the '60s, he had as many as six comedy albums on the charts at the same time. His recollections of his rough-and-tumble childhood in Philadelphia spawned a seminal cartoon series, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Among his many other gifts, Cosby always had an intuitive understanding of children -- what they think, what they feel, what they need. That in turn made him an incredibly popular commercial pitchman for products like pudding. But he was just warming up. He reached the pinnacle of his career with The Cosby Show, which premiered in 1984. Wise, witty, warm, and dignified, this unassuming comedy about a well-off black family in Brooklyn was credited with restoring the fortunes of NBC and with reviving the sitcom as a TV genre. Time to rest on his laurels? Not for the Cos. He's had three series since; currently he stars as a downsized airline worker on Cosby. It's an incredible body of work, even for 10 men.

8 Michael Landon

People aren't just surprised that I write scripts," Landon once commented during his Bonanza years. "They're surprised I can even write my name." That's because viewers believed he really was Little Joe: happy-go-lucky, easy to laugh, a few ounces light on the brain scale -- a nice, hunky boy next door with that amazing head of hair. But Landon was something else: a driven perfectionist, the product of a lonely and painful childhood who saw television as the ideal way to exorcise his private demons while reaching the hearts of his audience with small, personal stories -- Little House on the Prairie, Highway to Heaven -- stories about loving families, guardian angels, and victorious underdogs. These were all the things he dreamed about, believed in, and hoped for -- and so did those who watched his shows and loved him. And when he died young, after a public battle with cancer that almost made us believe he'd beat it -- just like in one of the scripts we were no longer surprised he wrote (and produced and directed and acted in) -- we felt a blow, as though we'd lost a member of the family. And in a way we had -- he'd spent more good times with us in our living room than many relatives, and he'd helped shape America's image of what a loving family can be.

7 Carol Burnett

That girl can do anything!" Lucille Ball once marveled about the world's most celebrated ear-tugger. And who's to quarrel with Lucy? Burnett could dance, sing, and perform melodrama, but, most of all, she could make us laugh, which she did for 11 years on her supernal variety show. With that amazingly elastic face, she could play virtually any type of character, but she preferred visual and character humor to wisecracking. Her creations -- the shrill Eunice Higgins battling with her husband and mother; wacko silent-film star Nora Desmond rattling around her decaying mansion -- earned our sympathy and made us chuckle at the same time. She managed to appeal to both heartland farmers and big-city sophisticates. "I'm not a striking beauty, which works in my favor," she once said. "I'm not really slick, either. I still have that tinge of being amateurish. I get embarrassed and can't take a bow that doesn't look like I'm kicking dirt." From where we sat, awkward never looked so regal.

6 Oprah Winfrey

If imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, Winfrey is the most admired woman in television (as well as the best-paid). The last few years of daytime have been a seemingly never-ending parade of Jennys, Jerrys, and Rickis, all trying to do what Oprah does. And all coming up more or less short. From the beginning, we connected with this effervescent survivor from Kosciusko, Mississippi. When Oprah told us about her history as a victim of abuse, our hearts went out to her. When her weight rose and fell, we all watched our diets a little closer. She has brought us a makeover with Cindy Crawford and an interview with Lee Harvey Oswald's widow, Marina, with the same enthusiasm and candor. "Spontaneous, intelligent, subjective…a homey personality that invites confidences." That was how TV Guide's own Don Merrill saw her back in 1987. But what makes Oprah so special shines through in her irrefutable sincerity, her inexhaustible compassion, and her spiritual second sight. She simply has the biggest heart that television has ever seen.


From 05 to 02

5 Mary Tyler Moore

By the time The Mary Tyler Moore Show debuted on CBS in 1970, its star had already been a big hit on TV (as Dick Van Dyke's wife, the lissome Laura Petrie). In the opening episode, Lou Grant told her, "You know what? You've got spunk.…I hate spunk." No one else did, though. At least not Mary's infectious brand of it. For seven years, this 30-ish career woman who came to a Minneapolis TV station looking for a new start in life did indeed "turn the world on with her smile," and in the process altered the American lifestyle -- suddenly 24 million people were building their Saturday nights around watching TV. Since The Mary Tyler Moore Show left the air in 1977, Moore has gone on to well-deserved success in feature films ("Ordinary People," "Flirting with Disaster"). We always knew she'd make it after all.

4 James Garner

Garner is, hands down, TV's all-time most affable star: easy to take, easy to like, easy on the eyes. Let's face it, he just makes everything he does look so darned easy. That's his genius: He doesn't seem to be acting when he's acting, which, of course, is acting at its highest level. That's why he outlasted most of his contemporaries, who merely traded on their hunkiness. Garner was able to jump comfortably between small- and big-screen projects, and he's had the range to play everything from a corporate shark in TV's Barbarians at the Gate, to Doris Day's dopey husband, to a guilt-ridden and responsibility-shackled brother in Promise, to a gender-bent suitor in "Victor/Victoria." And that's why he gets an Emmy nominations every time he gets in front of the camera (13 in all). This tall, craggy natural, who still retains his native Oklahoma twang, can do farce and drama, romance and adventure -- even his commercials become instant classics. We like him, we really like him, in just about everything, but what we can't get enough of, and want to keep seeing more of, are the two roles he made us love him in: the wry cowboy con man with a heart of gold and a yellow streak in Maverick; and the Firebird-driving modern knight of The Rockford Files. Even after 40 years of nearly constant company, we still like having the guy around.

3 Jackie Gleason

Orson Welles dubbed him "The Great One," and it was hard to deny the truth of that assessment. Gleason filled our TV screens like no other star before or since -- in pounds and power, in sweat-soaked, top-of-the-lungs emotions and in the sheer force and raw intensity of his complex personality. He was the ultimate showman, hosting a three-ring variety hour that included a full orchestra and the leggy, synchronized June Taylor dancers -- and then in that same hour acting in a skit that absolutely broke your heart. And Ralph Kramden -- his crowning, undying achievement -- was everything rolled into one: an explosive guy you wouldn't want sitting next to you in a bus (let alone driving it), but someone you wanted to hug for all his great hopes and dashed dreams. Gleason knew that even though they called them "situation" comedies, it was character that made audiences tune in. And his one-man repertoire -- Kramden, Reggie Van Gleason III, Joe the Bartender, the Poor Soul -- was filled with memorable, Chaplin-esque characters. The Great One? Seems right to us.

2 Johnny Carson

He was television's Prince Charming. For three decades -- spanning eight presidential administrations -- he kept America up past its bedtime with his graceful balancing act: skillfully juxtaposing his Midwestern gosh-golliness with a New York/Hollywood clubbiness; hosting a show that veered between the spontaneous and the scripted; knowing when to be the straightman and when to be funny. Carson packaged his combination of comic influences -- his idol Jack Benny's sense of timing; Oliver Hardy's mastery of the drawn-out reaction; Fred Allen's feel for sketch comedy; Groucho Marx's talent at delivering a well-placed double entendre -- in the persona of the slightly naughty neighborhood kid who had the ability to chat up anyone, from Liz Taylor to a septuagenarian sardine-packer from Bangor, Maine. He presided over the Oscar ceremonies five times, with an easy poise that has been jealously emulated by every host since. It's only after he left the air that we realize how monumental Carson's achievement was: For 30 years, he threw the world's greatest party, night after night. There's no denying it: Johnny really was magic.


And the winner is...

1 Lucille Ball

For 24 seasons, through 179 I Love Lucys, 156 Lucy Shows, 144 Here's Lucys, numerous specials, and, what the heck, even the handful of Life with Lucys, Ball was remarkably consistent. "I never changed," she once said. "People could tune in to see what they expected to see." What we always got was a flamboyant redheaded firecracker with a fabulously expressive face and a genius for physical humor who'd do anything -- anything -- for a laugh. She'd stomp on grapes barefoot, set her putty nose on fire, imitate Harpo Marx -- all the while projecting a childlike, never childish, innocence that endeared her to viewers. But she wasn't just influential as a performer. Lucy owned and ran (after buying out her former husband Desi Arnaz) a powerful Hollywood studio. (Both the original Star Trek and Mission: Impossible were developed by Desilu on her watch.) Of course, audiences loved this high-school dropout and one-time Goldwyn Girl best as Ricky Ricardo's perpetually thwarted wife in TV's first hit sitcom, a show that debuted October 15, 1951, and continues to air somewhere in the world every day. Without a doubt, we'll be loving Lucy forever.