Jimmy Kimmel, David Letterman & More to Honor Bill Murray at 19th Annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

A lineup of leading performers, including Dan Aykroyd, Aziz Ansari, Roy Blount Jr., Bill Hader, Jimmy Kimmel, David Letterman, Brian Doyle Murray, Paul Shaffer, Sigourney Weaver, and others will salute Bill Murray at the 19th Annual KENNEDY Center MARK TWAIN PRIZE FOR AMERICAN HUMOR on Sunday, October 23, 2016 at 8 p.m. The program will pay tribute to the humor and accomplishments of Bill Murray, and will be taped by WETA Washington, D.C. The program will air on PBS stations as Bill Murray: The KENNEDY Center Mark Twain Prize nationwide October 28 at 9 p.m. (check local listings). Artists are subject to change.

The KENNEDY Center Mark Twain Prize, sponsored by Capital One®, focuses on the achievements of American comedic artists. The proceeds from the evening's event are used to support the KENNEDY Center's programs, performances, and outreach. As the recipient of the 2016 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, Bill Murray will receive a copy of an 1884 bronze portrait bust of Mark Twain sculpted by Karl Gerhardt (1853-1940). The bust and images of it are courtesy of the Mark Twain House and Museum in Hartford, Connecticut.

As a social commentator, satirist, and creator of characters, Samuel Clemens-the distinguished 19th-century novelist and essayist also known as Mark Twain-was a fearless observer of society who startled many while delighting and informing many more with his UNCOMPROMISING perspective of social injustice and personal folly. He revealed the great truth of humor when he said, "against THE ASSAULT of laughter nothing can stand."

Along with the John F. KENNEDY Center for the Performing Arts, the creators and executive producers of THE MARK TWAIN PRIZE are Bob Kaminsky, Peter Kaminsky, Mark Krantz, and Cappy McGarr. The WETA Washington, D.C. executive producer for Bill Murray: The KENNEDY Center Mark Twain Prize is Dalton Delan. The co-chairs for the event are Patti and Rusty Rueff of Burlingame, California and CJ and George Nichols of Potomac, Maryland. Mr. Nichols serves as Senior Vice President of Governmental Affairs for New York Life Insurance Company and chairs THE MARK TWAIN PRIZE on the company's behalf.

The KENNEDY Center Celebration of American Humor was instituted as an annual event in October 1998. Recipients of the KENNEDY Center Mark Twain Prize have been Richard Pryor (1998), Jonathan Winters (1999), Carl Reiner (2000), Whoopi Goldberg (2001), Bob Newhart (2002), Lily Tomlin (2003), Lorne Michaels (2004), Steve Martin (2005), Neil Simon (2006), Billy Crystal (2007), George Carlin (2008), Bill Cosby (2009), Tina Fey (2010), Will Ferrell (2011), Ellen DeGeneres (2012), Carol Burnett (2013), Jay Leno (2014), and Eddie Murphy (2015).

ABOUT BILL MURRAY Actor and comedian Bill Murray was born William J. Murray on September 21, 1950, in Wilmette, Illinois. In an attempt to find direction in his life, he joined his older brother, Brian Doyle-Murray, in the cast of Chicago's Second City improvisational comedy troupe. Murray eventually relocated to New York City, where he took his comedic talents to radio's National Lampoon Hour (1973-74) alongside Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, and John Belushi. In 1975, he was in an Off-Broadway spin-off of the comedy radio show when Howard Cosell recruited him for a show called SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE with Howard Cosell (1975-1976). A year later, producer Lorne Michaels tapped Murray to replace Chevy Chase on a much bigger sensation, NBC's SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE (SNL).

Ironically insincere and yet somehow soft-hearted, Murray is the best-known star to emerge from the cast of Saturday Night Live. On SNL from 1977-1980, he created the cheesy lounge crooner, Nick, and other lovably smarmy characters. It didn't take long for him to move from the small screen to the big screen, and his first major film role was in the 1979 box office hit Meatballs. He then starred in two of the top-grossing comedies of the 1980s: playing a woolly headed groundskeeper in Caddyshack (1980) and a slick-talking investigator in Ghostbusters (1984, with fellow SNL alumnus Dan Aykroyd). Murray's comedy hits in the 1990s included Groundhog Day (1993) and the Amish bowling story Kingpin (1996). He also took more serious roles, playing a mobster in Mad Dog and GLORY (1993, with Robert DeNiro) and an eccentric businessman in Wes Anderson's Rushmore (1998), for which he won Best Supporting Actor from both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. He was nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Actor for his seriocomic role as a jet-lagged movie star in Tokyo in Sofia Coppola's film Lost in Translation (2003).

More recently, Murray earned rave reviews for his portrayal of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park on Hudson (2012) and he also reunited with Anderson for a role in Moonrise Kingdom that same year. Murray was also in Anderson's next film, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), with Jude Law and Ralph Fiennes, as well as The Monuments Men (2014). He was nominated for a lead actor Golden Globe® for his role in the comedy St. Vincent (2014), co-starring Melissa McCarthy and Naomi Watts. That same year he starred as Jack Kennison in the acclaimed HBO miniseries Olive Kitteridge, for which he earned his second Emmy Award®. In 2015, Murray was seen in the comedy Rock the Kasbah portraying a music manager who starts to handle the career of an Afghani teen. He recently voiced the character of Baloo in the Disney animated film The Jungle Book (2016), and will have a cameo role in Danny McBride's new HBO comedy, Vice Principals. Murray is an avid golfer and a particular fan favorite at the annual AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

About Comedy at the KENNEDY Center Capital One® is the presenting sponsor of this year's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, as part of the bank's five-year, $5 million gift to fund Comedy at the KENNEDY Center, a signature program at the Center focused on elevating comedy as an art form and uniting the local community together through laughter.

Image courtesy of kennedy-center.org