Daytime’s dancing queen (not to mention CoverGirl model and now American Idol judge) strikes a chord with her gentle observational humor. "Sometimes, when I’m trying to get dressed, I find myself just staring at my clothes for an hour," she writes in her book The Funny Thing Is. . . . "It is so hard to decide what to wear. And it got me thinking: That’s why prison wouldn’t be so bad."

It’s hard today to appreciate how groundbreaking That Girl was when it debuted in 1966. This sitcom was the first to showcase an attractive, single working woman living on her own, and even though Thomas’s Ann Marie met her boyfriend Donald (Ted Bessell) in the very first episode, they never progressed beyond an engagement-because getting married wasn’t the point. The series succeeded for five seasons largely on Thomas’s charm and ability to make living in late-‘60s New York (where even a struggling actress could apparently have a cute apartment and a kicky wardrobe) look dreamy. (Note to Mad Men‘s Peggy Olsen: Your new role model awaits.)

Silverman’s mockery of social taboos ("I don’t care if you think I’m a racist," she has joked, "I just want you to think I’m thin") has won her a devoted following. In 2008 she appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live to surprise the host (her boyfriend at the time) with a music video called "I’m F—-ing Matt Damon." The song, about a secret affair between her and Damon, became a YouTube sensation and won a Creative Arts Emmy. Silverman now has her own show on Comedy Central and just published a memoir, The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee.

We loved her as Rob Petrie’s suburban wife Laura, but this seven-time Emmy winner really came into her own as Mary Richards on Mary Tyler Moore-the news producer with spunk, an unforgettable group of friends and a seemingly endless supply of beaux. For a generation of viewers, she made Saturday an appointment-TV night.

Radner was the first and arguably the most talented comic actress to gain fame on Saturday Night Live. Others had more success after the show, or have been greater forces as writers/producers, but none have had Radner’s ability to be inventive, hilarious and heartbreaking, sometimes all within the same sketch. "You feel completely in control when you hear a wave of laughter coming back at you that you have caused," she wrote in her autobiography, It’s Always Something.

The candy-factory fiasco, the grape-stomping adventure, filming the Vitameatavegamin commercial-the physical comedy in these and so many other I Love Lucy episodes put Ball on par with greats like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

It was Cattrall who really put the sex in Sex and the City. But beyond being the series’ I’ll-do-anything babe, she brought a sly humor to the proceedings that felt-dare we say it?-very grownup.

When this petite, Emmy-winning redhead is around, no celebrity is safe. Perhaps that’s why the D-List star claims to have been banned at one time or another from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Late Show With David Letterman, Live with Regis and Kelly, The Ellen DeGeneres Show and The View.

Four words: "One ringy-dingy! Two ring-dingies!" On Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, Tomlin performed indelible comic monologues as the snorting telephone operator Ernestine and bratty, chatty five-year-old Edith Ann, among other characters. She later mesmerized Broadway audiences in two one-woman shows.

Early in her standup career she billed herself as a "domestic goddess." When her sitcom Roseanne debuted in 1988, the world got to see what a tongue-in-cheek concept this really was. Her realistic portrayal of a hassled, blue-collar working wife and mother was smart, caustic and hugely popular. Even when the show tackled heavy subjects such as teenage pregnancy and domestic violence, she made us laugh in recognition.