Constance Binney was an American stage and film actress and dancer.

Born in New York City, Constance Binney was educated at Westover School, a private college preparatory boarding school for girls in Middlebury, Connecticut and in Paris, France. She made her Broadway theatre debut in 1917 and the following year appeared with her actress sister, Faire Binney, in the Maurice Tourneur silent film, Sporting Life based on the play by Cecil Raleigh and Seymour Hicks. In 1919, she starred opposite John Barrymore in The Test of Honor.

Although Constance Binney left the film business in 1923, her contribution to the industry was recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6301 Hollywood Blvd.

Constance Binney last performed on Broadway in 1924. She appeared on stage in London and in 1941 married the British war hero, Leonard Cheshire. However, this marriage was short-lived.

Cliffie Stone, born Clifford Gilpin Snyder, was an American country singer, musician, record producer, music publisher, and radio and TV personality who was pivotal in the development of California?s thriving country music scene after World War II during a career that lasted six decades. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1989.

Born in Stockton, California, Stone’s father was country musician Herman the Hermit. The family moved to Burbank, and early in his life, he played bass in the big bands of Freddie Slack and Anson Weeks in Southern California, as well as working at local radio stations KXLA, KFVD and KFWB. Starting in 1935, Stone appeared on the Los Angeles-based radio shows Covered Wagon Jubilee, Hollywood Barn Dance, Dinner Bell Roundup, and Lucky Stars, singing as well as performing comedy routines and acting as host and DJ in the mid-1940s. In 1939, he married his first wife, Dorothy, and they had four children.

Stone began working at Capitol Records in 1946, and became an A&R man there; among the talents he discovered were Tennessee Ernie Ford, Molly Bee, and Hank Thompson. He was instrumental in helping various young musicians get their start in television, such as guitarist Zane Ashton who would also write songs for Stone’s Central Songs publishing firm. His Hometown Jamboree premiered as a weekly TV broadcast in December 1949 over KCOP-TV in Pasadena; in 1953 it moved to KTLA-TV, where it ran until its cancellation in 1959.

Stone’s career at Capitol was successful, but he was ultimately better known for his successes in radio. He recorded six albums with a backing band which went under various names, including Cliffie Stone & His Orchestra, Cliffie Stone & His Barn Dance Band, and Cliffie Stone’s Country Hombres. His 1955 hit, “The Popcorn Song”, peaked at No. 14 on the just-launched Billboard magazine’s singles charts in 1955.

Clifton P. “Kip” Fadiman was an American intellectual, author, radio and television personality.

Fadiman grew up in Brooklyn and was a nephew of the child prodigy William James Sidis. A graduate of Columbia University, he worked for Simon & Schuster for ten years, ending as its chief editor. He spent another ten years in charge of The New Yorker’s book review section and in 1944 became a judge for the Book of the Month Club. In the 1970s, Fadiman was also senior editor of Cricket Magazine, where he wrote Cricket’s Bookshelf, a book review column for children.

His witticisms and sayings were frequently printed in newspapers and magazines. “When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before, you see more in you than there was before”, was one of the better known. Of Stendhal, Fadiman wrote, “He has no grace, little charm, less humor. is not really a good storyteller.”

Fadiman was already well known from radio where, from May 1938 until June 1948, he hosted its most popular quiz show, Information Please!. A trio of pundits — Clifton Fadiman, Franklin P. Adams, and John Kieran — conducted each session with erudite charm and good-natured wordplay. Information Please! was briefly revived for CBS-TV in 1952 as a 13-week summer replacement for the musical variety program The Fred Waring Show. During that June-September period, devoted fans of the departed radio program could finally not only hear, but also see Fadiman, Adams, and Kieran in action. With the advent of TV, Fadiman gained in popularity, quickly establishing himself as an all-purpose, highly knowledgeable guest and host. At ease in front of the TV camera and experienced from his years in radio, he frequently appeared on talk shows and hosted a number of upscale quiz programs.

Clifton Webb was an American actor, dancer and singer.

Webb was born Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck in a rural part of Marion County, Indiana, which would, in 1906, become Beech Grove, a self-governing city entirely surrounded by Indianapolis. As a result, virtually all printed sources give the larger city as his place of birth. Webb’s parents were Jacob Grant Hollenbeck, the son of a grocer from a multi-generational Indiana farming family, and Mabelle A. Parmelee, the daughter of a railroad conductor.

In 1892, Webb’s formidable mother, Mabelle, moved to New York City with her beloved “little Webb”, as she called him for the remainder of her life. She dismissed questions about her husband Jacob, a ticket clerk who, like her father, worked for the Indianapolis-St. Louis Railroad, by saying, “We never speak of him. He didn’t care for the theatre.”

Privately tutored, Webb started taking dance and acting lessons at the age of five. He made his stage debut at seven in the impressive setting of Carnegie Hall by performing with the New York Children’s Theatre in Palmer Cox’s The Brownies. This success was followed by a vaudeville tour playing The Master of Charlton Hall, succeeded by leading roles as Oliver Twist and Tom Sawyer in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In between performances, Mabelle saw to it that he studied painting with the renowned Robert Henri and voice with the equally famous Victor Maurel. By his seventeenth birthday, he was singing one of the secondary leads in the Boston-based Aborn Opera Company’s production of the comic opera Mignon.