Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-American magician and escapologist, stunt performer, actor and film producer. He was also a skeptic who set out to expose frauds purporting to be supernatural phenomena.

Harry Houdini was born as Erik Ivan Weisz in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, on March 24, 1874. From 1907 on, however, Houdini would claim in interviews to have been born in Appleton, Wisconsin, on April 6, 1874.

His parents were Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weisz and his wife, Cecelia. Houdini was one of seven children: Herman M. ; Nathan J. ; Gottfried William ; Theodore "Theo" ; Leopold D. ; and Gladys Carrie

Weisz came to the United States on July 3, 1878, sailing on the SS Fresia with his mother and his four brothers. The family changed the spelling of their Hungarian surname into Weiss and the spelling of their son's name into Ehrich. Friends called him "Ehrie" or "Harry".

Harry L. Langdon was an American comedian who appeared in vaudeville, silent films, and talkies. He was briefly partnered with Oliver Hardy.

Born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, he began working in vaudeville then joined Vitagraph Movie Studios. He eventually went over to Keystone Studios where he became a major star. At the height of his film career he was considered one of the four best comics of the silent film era. His screen character was that of a wide-eyed, childlike man with an innocent's understanding of the world and the people in it. He was a first-class pantomimist.

Most of Langdon's 1920s work was produced at the famous Mack Sennett studio. His screen character was so unique, and his antics so different from the broad Sennett slapstick, that he soon had a following. Success led him into feature films, directed by Arthur Ripley and Frank Capra. When Langdon had such good directors guiding him, he produced work that rivaled Charlie Chaplin's, Harold Lloyd's, and Buster Keaton's. His best films were The Strong Man, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp and Long Pants. After his initial success, Langdon took creative control of his films and career, but his appeal faded soon afterward. His last starring silent feature was made in 1928. Capra later claimed that Langdon's decline stemmed from the fact that, unlike the other great silent comics, he never fully understood what made his own film character successful. However, Langdon's biographer William Schelly among others have expressed skepticism about this claim, arguing that Langdon had established his character in vaudeville long before he entered movies, added by the fact that he wrote most of his own material during his stage years. The truth most likely lies somewhere between these two points, but history shows that Langdon's greatest success was while being directed by Capra, and once he took hold of his own destiny, his original film comedy persona dropped sharply in popularity with audiences. This is likely not due to Langdon's material, which he had always written himself, but with his inexperience with the many fine points of directing, at which Capra excelled, but at which Langdon was a novice.

Harry Langdon's babyish character didn't adapt well to sound films; as producer Hal Roach remarked, "he was not so funny articulate." But Langdon was a big enough name to command leads in short subjects for Educational Pictures and Columbia Pictures. In 1938 he adopted a Caspar Milquetoast-type, henpecked-husband character that served him well, he also contributed to comedy scripts as a writer, notably for Laurel and Hardy. Langdon continued to work steadily in low-budget features and shorts, always playing mild-mannered goofs, into the 1940s. As a point of interest, when Hal Roach was in a contract dispute with Stan Laurel, one-half of the great Laurel and Hardy comedic pair, the studio paired Langdon with Oliver Hardy in a 1939 film titled Zenobia.

Harry Morris Warner was an American studio executive, one of the founders of Warner Bros., and a major contributor to the development of the film industry. Along with his three brothers Warner played a crucial role in the film business and played a key role in establishing Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc, serving as the company president until 1956.

Warner was born Hirsch Moses “Wonsal” or “Wonskolaser” to a family of Polish Jews from the village of Krasnosielc. The village was a short distance from Warsaw in the part of Poland that had been subjugated to the Russian Empire following the 18th-century partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was the son of Benjamin Wonsal, a shoemaker born in Krasnosielc, and Pearl Leah Eichelbaum. His given name was Moses but he was called Hirsch in the United States. In October, 1889, he came to Baltimore, Maryland with his mother and siblings on the steamship Hermann from Bremen, Germany. Their father had preceded them, immigrating to Baltimore in 1883 or 1885 in order to pursue his trade in shoes and shoe repair. It was at that time that he changed the family name to Warner which was used thereafter. As in many Jewish immigrant families, some of the children gradually acquired anglicized versions of their Yiddish-sounding names. Hirsch became Harry, and his middle name Morris was likely a version of Moses.

In Baltimore, the money Benjamin Warner earned in the shoe repair business was not enough to provide for his growing household. He and Pearl had another daughter, Fannie, not long after they arrived. Benjamin moved the family to Canada, inspired by a friend’s advice that he could make an excellent living bartering tin wares with trappers in exchange for furs. Sons Jacob and David Warner were born in London, Ontario. After two arduous years in Canada, the Warners returned to Baltimore. Two more children, Sadie and Milton, were added to the household there. In 1896, the family relocated to Youngstown, Ohio, following the lead of Harry, who had established a shoe repair shop in the heart of the emerging industrial town. Benjamin worked with Harry in the shoe repair shop until he secured a loan to open a meat counter and grocery store in the city’s downtown area.

In 1899, Harry opened a bicycle shop in Youngstown with his brother, Abraham.

Harrison Ford is an American film actor and producer. Ford is best known for his performances as Han Solo in the original Star Wars trilogy and as the title character of the Indiana Jones film series. He is also known for his roles as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner, John Book in Witness and Jack Ryan in Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger. His four-decade career also includes roles in several other Hollywood blockbusters, including Presumed Innocent, The Fugitive, Air Force One, and What Lies Beneath. At one point, four of the top five box-office hits of all time included one of his roles. Five of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry.

In 1997, Ford was ranked # 1 in Empire‘s “The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time” list. As of July 2008, the United States domestic box office grosses of Ford’s films total almost $3.4 billion, with worldwide grosses surpassing $6 billion, making Ford the third highest grossing U.S. domestic box-office star. Ford is the husband of actress Calista Flockhart.

Ford was born on July 13, 1942, at Chicago’s Swedish Covenant Hospital to Dorothy, a homemaker and former radio actress, and Christopher Ford, an advertising executive and a former actor. A younger brother, Terence, was born in 1945. Harrison Ford’s paternal grandparents, Florence Veronica Niehaus and John Fitzgerald Ford, were of German and Irish Catholic descent, respectively. His maternal grandparents, Anna Lifschutz and Harry Nidelman, were Jewish immigrants from Minsk, Belarus. When asked in which religion he was raised, Ford jokingly responded, “Democrat”. He has also said that he feels “Irish as a person, but I feel Jewish as an actor”.

Ford was active in the Boy Scouts of America, and achieved its second-highest rank, Life Scout. He worked at a scout camp, Napowan Adventure Base, as a counselor for the Reptile Study merit badge. Because of this, he and Eagle Scout director Steven Spielberg later decided that the character of young Indiana Jones would be depicted as a Life Scout in the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. They also jokingly reversed Ford’s knowledge of reptiles into Jones’s fear of snakes.

Harrison Ford was an American stage and film actor. He was a leading Broadway theatre performer and a star of the silent film era.

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Ford began his acting career on the stage. He made his Broadway debut in 1904 in Richard Harding Davis’s Ranson’s Folly. He went on to appear in productions of William C. deMille’s Strongheart; Glorious Betsy by Rida Johnson Young ; Bayard Veiller’s The Fight ; Edgar Wallace’s The Switchboard; Edward Locke’s The Bubble; and Edgar Selwyn’s Rolling Stones.

Ford turned to film beginning in 1915 and moved to Hollywood. He became a leading man opposite early stars such as Constance Talmadge, Norma Talmadge, Marie Prevost, Marion Davies, Marguerite De La Motte and Clara Bow. Ford’s film career ended with the advent of talkies. His final film, and only talkie, Love in High Gear, was released in 1932. He returned to acting in the theatre, and also directed productions at the Little Theater of the Verdugos in Glendale, California. During World War II, he toured with the United Service Organizations. Ford married New York stage actress Beatrice Prentice on March 29, 1909.