The National Comedy Center – the United States’ museum and national archive dedicated to the art form of comedy – announced jointly with Ben Stiller that it is now the home to the career archive of legendary comedy duo Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara.
Donated by Ben Stiller and the Stiller family, the archive spans more than five decades of creative collaboration, documenting the evolution and impact of one of America’s most enduring comedic partnerships.
The archive’s donation to the National Comedy Center coincides with the release of Nothing Is Lost – Ben Stiller’s deeply personal new documentary about his parents’ lives and legacy, which debuts October 24 on Apple TV+. Throughout the film, materials from the archive are featured, offering audiences a rare look at the couple’s creative process and working relationship.
“Knowing my parents’ body of work is preserved at the National Comedy Center means a great deal, because the material they left behind was not just a gift for my family, but for anyone who wants to understand comedy as a creative process,” said Ben Stiller. “They would have been very proud to know that the National Comedy Center is bringing their archive to life in a way that can inspire and educate future generations.”
As a real-life married couple – he Jewish and she raised Irish Catholic – Stiller and Meara drew on the details of their own lives to create sketches that felt relatable and authentic. Their recurring characters, Hershey Horowitz and Mary Elizabeth Doyle, reflected the friction of worlds colliding – a widely felt experience in post-war America – and, with warmth and intelligence, helped to popularize a more personal and authentic style of comedy that continues to resonate today.
“Stiller & Meara broke ground by mining their own lives for moments rooted in honesty and affection,” stated Journey Gunderson, Executive Director of the National Comedy Center. “Their work was more than funny; it mainstreamed conversations about cultural difference, interfaith dating, gender equity, and the loosening of traditional relationship roles in a way that was quietly revolutionary.”
The Stiller & Meara archive joins the National Comedy Center’s unprecedented collection of artifacts, documents, and recordings representing comedy’s heritage, including George Carlin’s handwritten joke file, records of Lenny Bruce’s obscenity trials and hand-annotated manuscripts, Joan Rivers’ card catalog of nearly 70,000 jokes, and production records from landmark series like I Love Lucy, Saturday Night Live, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, In Living Color, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and more. In 2021, the Center’s archive department was named in honor of comedy legend Carl Reiner, whose own career archive joined the collections.
