Matt Groening Born: Creator of The Simpsons

Matt Groening drew "Life in Hell" in an alternative newspaper for years before James L. Brooks asked him to develop a cartoon for The Tracey Ullman Show in 1987. Born on February 15, 1954, in Portland, Oregon, Groening moved to Los Angeles after college and worked a series of odd jobs while self-publishing his comic strip, which featured rabbits and fez-wearing characters navigating existential despair. The strip ran in the LA Reader and eventually syndicated to over 250 newspapers. When Brooks approached him about creating animated shorts for the Ullman show, Groening was initially supposed to adapt "Life in Hell." Sitting in the waiting room before the meeting, he realized that licensing the characters would mean giving up ownership. He sketched a new family on the spot and named them after his own: Homer, Marge, Lisa, and Maggie. Bart was an anagram of "brat." The pitch took fifteen minutes. The Simpsons debuted as short interstitial segments on the Ullman show in 1987 and spun off into its own half-hour series in 1989. It became the longest-running American primetime scripted television series in history. The show's writing staff, assembled by showrunner Al Jean and others, included graduates of Harvard's National Lampoon who combined highbrow literary and mathematical references with lowbrow physical comedy. The show's cultural influence is difficult to overstate. It popularized catchphrases, influenced political discourse, and was credited by linguists with introducing new words into the English language. Groening created Futurama while The Simpsons was still running, negotiating with a different network to avoid contractual conflicts. He produced both shows simultaneously for years.