George Jessel
George Jessel was an American illustrated song “model,” actor, singer, songwriter, and Academy Award-winning movie producer. He was famous in his lifetime as a multitalented comedic entertainer, achieving a level of recognition that transcended his limited roles in movies. He was widely known by his nickname, the “Toastmaster General of the United States” for his frequent role as the master of ceremonies at political and entertainment gatherings.
Jessel was born in the Bronx. By age 10, he was appearing in vaudeville and on Broadway to support his family after his father’s death. His mother, who worked as a ticket seller at the Imperial Theater, helped him form The Imperial Trio, a harmony group of ushers to entertain patrons of the theater, with Walter Winchell and Jack Wiener, using the stage names Leonard, Lawrence and McKinley, in their early teens. At age 11, he was a partner of Eddie Cantor in a kid sketch and performed with him on stage until he outgrew the role at age 16. He later partnered with Lou Edwards and then began a solo performer.
His most famous comedy skit was called “Hello Mama” or “Phone Call from Mama”, which portrayed a one-sided telephone conversation. In 1919 he produced his own solo show, “George Jessel’s Troubles” and appeared in his first motion picture, the silent movie The Other Man’s Wife. He co-wrote the lyrics for a hit tune, “Oh How I Laugh When I Think How I Cried About You”, and performed in several successful comedy stage shows in the early 1920s. In 1921 he recorded a hit single, “The Toastmaster”. He sometimes appeared in blackface in his vaudeville shows.
In 1925 he emerged as one of the most popular leading men on Broadway with the starring role in the stage production of The Jazz Singer. The success of the show prompted Warner Bros. to adapt the show as the first “talkie” and to cast Jessel in the lead role. When the studio refused his salary demands, however, he turned down the movie role, which was eventually played by Al Jolson. According to Jessel during an interview around 1980, Warners still owed Jessel money for earlier roles and lacked enough funds to produce this movie with a leading star. Jolson, the biographical inspiration for the movie, became the movie’s main financial backer.
George Kennedy
George Harris Kennedy, Jr. is an American actor who has appeared in over 200 film and television productions. He is perhaps most familiar as the convict Dragline in Cool Hand Luke, airline troubleshooter Joe Patroni in the Airport series of disaster movies from the 1970s and as Captain Ed Hocken in the Naked Gun series of comedy films.
Kennedy was born in New York City into a show business family. His father, George Harris Kennedy, a musician and orchestra leader, died when Kennedy was four years old. He was raised by his mother, Helen A., a ballet dancer. He made his stage debut at the age of two, later becoming a radio performer. Kennedy put aside show business during World War II and spent sixteen years in the United States Army, seeing combat and working in the Armed Forces radio. He was involved with the opening of the first Army Information Office, which provided technical assistance to films and TV shows. After retiring from the military, Kennedy found his way back to the entertainment industry.
Kennedy became a technical advisor for the television series Sergeant Bilko, where his acting career began with a few one-line parts. After a very brief appearance in the 1960 blockbuster Spartacus, his film career began in 1961 in The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come. He then appeared in several prominent Hollywood movies, including Charade opposite Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau, and James Coburn; 1964’s Hush. Hush, Sweet Charlotte, opposite Bette Davis, and in such popular 1965 films as the crash-survivor drama The Flight of the Phoenix with James Stewart and the war story In Harm’s Way with John Wayne.
He made numerous television appearances on shows like The Andy Griffith Show, Perry Mason, Bonanza, McHale’s Navy and Gunsmoke. He portrayed the character “Blodgett” in a 1966 episode “Return to Lawrence” of the ABC western series The Legend of Jesse James, starring Christopher Jones in the title role.
George Lopez
George Lopez is an American comedian, actor, and talk show host. He is mostly known for starring in his self-produced ABC sitcom George Lopez. His stand-up comedy examines race and ethnic relations, including his own Mexican American culture. He is currently the host of the late-night talk show Lopez Tonight on TBS.
Lopez, a Mexican-American, was born in Mission Hills, California. He was deserted by his father at birth, but was raised by his maternal grandmother, Benita Gutierrez, a factory worker, and step-grandfather Refugio Gutierrez, a construction worker. In 1993, Lopez married Ann Serrano. The couple has one child together, Mayan Lopez. A DNA test read by Mariah Carey on Lopez Tonight revealed Lopez to be of 55% European, 32% Native American, 9% East Asian, and 4% African descent.
Lopez has a genetic condition that caused his kidneys to deteriorate. His doctors had told him in April 2004 that he was going to require an organ transplant but he postponed the operation until after finishing the 4th season of George Lopez so as not to hurt the 170 people who worked on his show. In 2005, his wife Ann donated one of her kidneys to Lopez. The transplant was successful; Lopez lost 45
George M. Cohan
George Michael Cohan, known professionally as George M. Cohan, was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer, and producer.
Cohan started his career as a child performing with his parents and sister in vaudeville as “The Four Cohans.” He quickly started writing songs and sketches and went on to write some 500 songs in his lifetime. He wrote, produced, and starred in many musicals on Broadway. Cohan was one of the founders of ASCAP. His many popular songs include “Over There”, “Give My Regards to Broadway,” and “The Yankee Doodle Boy.” Beginning with Little Johnny Jones in 1904, Cohan wrote and starred in over three dozen Broadway shows, continuing to perform until 1940. He also appeared in films, including The Phantom President in 1932.
Known in the decade before World War I as “the man who owned Broadway,” he is considered the father of American musical comedy. His life and music were depicted in the Academy Award-winning film Yankee Doodle Dandy and the 1968 musical George M!. A statue of Cohan is in Times Square in New York City.
Cohan was born in 1878 in Providence, Rhode Island, to Irish Catholic parents. A baptismal certificate indicated that he was born on July 3, but Cohan and his family always insisted that George had been “born on the Fourth of July!” George’s parents were traveling vaudeville performers, and he joined them on stage while still an infant, first as a prop, learning to dance and sing soon after he could walk and talk.
George Marshall
George E. Marshall was a prolific American actor, screenwriter, producer, film and television director, active through the first six decades of movie history.
Relatively few of Marshall’s films are well-known today, with Destry Rides Again, The Sheepman, and How the West Was Won being the biggest exceptions. Marshall co-directed How the West Was Won with John Ford and Henry Hathaway, handling the railroad segment, which featured a celebrated buffalo stampede sequence. While Marshall worked on almost all kinds of films imaginable, he started his career in the early silent period doing mostly Westerns, a genre he never completely abandoned. Later in his career, he was particularly sought after for comedies. He did around half a dozen films each with Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis, and also worked with W.C. Fields, Jackie Gleason, Will Rogers and Laurel and Hardy.
George Meeker
George Meeker was an American character movie and Broadway actor who became more of a legend off-camera than on. Meeker made several movies such as Crime Inc., and Thief in the Dark and played an uncredited part in All Through the Night .
George Melachrino
George Melachrino was a musician, movie composer, and musical director who was English born of Greek and Italian descent. He was an accomplished player of the violin, viola, oboe, clarinet and saxophone.
George Melachrino was born in London, England. As a young boy, he had a love of music. At the age of five, he began composing and by the age of fourteen he enrolled in the Trinity College of Music. In 1927, he began his career by singing and playing at the Savoy Hill Studios in London. For the next twelve years, he played in many different bands and orchestras. In the 1930s, Melachrino started working for bands led by Ambrose singing & playing saxophone with Carroll Gibbons at the Savoy Hotel London, and Bert Firman, and started playing on radio for the BBC. By 1939, he started his own band and secured a contract at the “Café de Paris”. He joined the Army a year later, and received training at the “Corps of Military Police” where he became a P.T. Instructor. Melachrino also gained experience as a military musician, at the “Army Broadcasting Department”, as Musical Director for the recording of entertainment for overseas forces, leading the British Band of the American Expeditionary Forces and the Orchestra Khaki. After the war, in 1945, he formed the “George Melachrino Orchestra”, an orchestra that became synonymous with sweet and melodious music.
Melachrino frequently performed on BBC and American Armed Forces Radio. He vied with Mantovani in trying to dominate the post World War II easy listening audiences.
George Montgomery
George Montgomery was an American painter, sculptor, furniture craftsman, and stuntman who is best known as an actor in western style film and television.
Born George Montgomery Letz to Ukrainian immigrant parents in Brady, Montana, the youngest of fifteen children. He was raised on a large ranch where as a part of daily life he learned to ride horses and work cattle. Letz studied at the University of Montana but because he was more interested in a career in film, he left after a year to go to Hollywood. At Republic Pictures, his cowboy skills got him stunt work and a small acting part at the age of 18 in a 1935 film, The Singing Vagabond.
He followed this with bit parts and additional stunt work as George Letz in mostly low-budget films. He was frequently cast in western films starring their number one box office draw, the singing cowboy, Gene Autry. Elevated to more important secondary roles, in 1938 he appeared as one of the six men suspected of being the titular hero in The Lone Ranger. He remained with Republic Pictures until 1940 when he signed with 20th Century Fox, which billed him as George Montgomery.
At Fox, Montgomery appeared in more westerns including The Cisco Kid and the Lady with Cesar Romero. In 1942, he played opposite Gene Tierney in China Girl, jazz musician Glenn Miller in Orchestra Wives, and Ginger Rogers in Roxie Hart. The following year, Montgomery starred with Betty Grable in the Walter Lang-directed film, Coney Island.
George Murphy
George Lloyd Murphy was an American dancer, actor, and politician.
He was born in New Haven, Connecticut of Irish Catholic extraction, and attended Yale University. He worked as a tool maker for the Ford Motor Company, as a miner, a real estate agent, and a night club dancer.
In movies, Murphy was famous as a song-and-dance man, appearing in many big-budget musicals such as Broadway Melody of 1938, Broadway Melody of 1940 and For Me and My Gal. He made his movie debut shortly after talking pictures had replaced silent movies in 1930, and his career continued until he retired as an actor in 1952, at the age of 50.
In 1951, he was awarded an honorary Academy Award. He was never nominated for an Oscar in any competitive category.