Carey Wilson was an American writer, voice actor and producer. Wilson’s screenplays include Ben-Hur, Mutiny on the Bounty, and The Great Heart. His credits as producer include Green Dolphin Street. He is also as one of the thirty-six Hollywood pioneers who founded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927.
He collaborated with Jean Harlow on her novel Today is Tonight.
Carl Laemmle, born in Laupheim, Württemberg, Germany, was a pioneer in American film making and a founder of one of the original major Hollywood movie studios – Universal. Laemmle produced or was otherwise involved in over four hundred films.
Regarded as one of the most important of the early film pioneers, Laemmle was born on the Radstrasse just outside the former Jewish quarter of Laupheim, Germany. He emigrated to the United States in 1884, working in Chicago as a bookkeeper or office manager for 20 years. He began buying nickelodeons, eventually expanding into a film distribution service, the Laemmle Film Service.
On June 8, 1912, in New York, Carl Laemmle of IMP, Pat Powers of Powers Picture Company, Mark Dintenfass of Champion Films, and Bill Swanson of American Éclair, all signed a contract to merge their studios. The four formed a famous name in Hollywood production history, the Universal Motion Picture Manufacturing Company. They formed it in 1914 with the purchase of of land in the San Fernando Valley.
Universal maintained two east coast offices:
Carl Reiner is an American actor, film director, producer, writer and comedian. He has won nine Emmy Awards and one Grammy Award during this career. He has the distinction of being the only person to appear on all five incarnations of The Tonight Show. He is well known for his work in the remake of Ocean’s Eleven, and its two sequels, Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen.
Reiner was born in the Bronx, New York, the son of Bessie from Hungary and Romanian-born Irving Reiner, who was a watchmaker. His parents were Jewish. They immigrated to the United States in the 19th century. When he was sixteen, his older brother Charlie read in the New York Daily News about a free dramatic workshop being put on by the Works Progress Administration and told him about it. He had been working as a machinist fixing sewing machines. He credits Charlie with changing his career plans. Reiner was educated at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and served in the United States Army during World War II.
Reiner performed in several Broadway musicals, including Inside U.S.A., and Alive and Kicking, and had the lead role in Call Me Mister. In 1950, he was cast by producer Max Leibman in Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, appearing on air in skits while also working alongside writers such as Mel Brooks and Neil Simon. He also worked on Caesar’s Hour with Brooks, Simon, Larry Gelbart, Mel Tolkin, Mike Stewart, Aaron Ruben, Sheldon Keller and Gary Belkin.
In 1959, Reiner developed a television pilot, Head of the Family, based on his experience on the Caesar shows. However, the network didn’t like Reiner in the lead role. In 1961, the recast and retitled show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, became a hit. In addition to usually writing the show, Reiner occasionally appeared as temperamental show host “Alan Brady,” who ruthlessly browbeats his brother-in-law. The show ran from 1961 to 1966. In 1966, he co-starred in the Norman Jewison film The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.
Carl Milton Smith was an American country music singer. Known as “Mister Country,” Smith was the husband of June Carter and Goldie Hill, the drinking companion of Johnny Cash, and the father of Carlene Carter. He was one of country’s most successful male artists during the 1950s, with 30 Top 10 Billboard hits, including 21 in a row. Smith’s success continued well into the 1970s, when he had a charting single every year except one. He is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
A native of Maynardville, Tennessee, Carl Smith aspired to a musical career after hearing the Grand Ole Opry on the radio. He mowed neighbors’ lawns to pay for guitar lessons as a teenager. At age 15, he started performing in a band called Kitty Dibble and Her Dude Ranch Ranglers. By age 17, he had learned to play the string bass and spent his summer vacation working at WROL-AM in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he performed on Cas Walker’s radio show.
After graduating from high school, he served in the U.S. Navy from 1944–47. He returned to WROL and played string bass for country singers Molly O’Day and Skeets Williamson, and began his singing career. A colleague at the station sent an acetate disc recording of Smith to WSM-AM and the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, and WSM soon signed him. In 1950, Smith was signed to a recording contract with Columbia Records by producer Don Law.
In 1951, his song “Let’s Live a Little” was a big hit, reaching No. 2 on country chart. During 1951 he had up three other hits, including “If the Teardrops Were Pennies” and his first No. 1 hit, “Let Old Mother Nature Have Her Way”. The songs made Smith a well-known name in country music. His band, the Tunesmiths, featured steel guitarist Johnny Silbert, who added an element of Western swing.
Stuart Hamblen was American radio's first singing cowboy in 1926, and later became a Christian songwriter, temperance supporter and recurring candidate for political office.
Hamblen was born to the family of an itinerant Methodist preacher on 20 October 1908, in Kelleyville, Texas, USA. He married to Suzy Daniels and fathered two children with her. Hamblen's father was Dr. J. H. Hamblen, a minister in the Methodist Church in Texas, who in 1946 founded the Evangelical Methodist Church denomination in Abilene, Texas.
From 1931-52, Hamblen had a series of highly popular radio programs on the West Coast of the United States. He composed music and acted in motion pictures with such other stars as Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and John Wayne. He was the first artist signed by Decca Records in 1934.
He was also a racehorse owner for a portion of his career, until 1949 when he underwent a religious conversion at a Billy Graham crusade in Los Angeles. He soon gave up his secular radio and film career to enter Christian broadcasting with his radio show, The Cowboy Church of the Air, which ran until his passing in 1989.
Buddy Ebsen was an American character actor and dancer. A performer for seven decades, he had starring roles as Jed Clampett in the 1960s television series, The Beverly Hillbillies and as the title character in the 1970s detective series Barnaby Jones.
He was born Christian Rudolph Ebsen, Jr. in Belleville, Illinois. His father, Christian Rudolph Ebsen, Sr., was Danish and his mother, Frances, was Latvian. He was reared in Belleville until the age of ten, when his family moved to Palm Beach County, Florida. After a brief stay, Ebsen and his family, in 1920, relocated to Orlando, Florida. Ebsen and his sisters learned to dance at the dance studio his father operated in Orlando.
He graduated from Orlando High School in 1926. Initially interested in a medical career, Ebsen attended the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, from 1926 to 1927, and then Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, from 1927 to 1928. Family financial problems caused by the collapse of the Florida land boom forced him to leave college at the age of twenty.
Ebsen left Orlando in the summer of 1928 to try his luck as a dancer. When he arrived in New York, he had $26.75 in his pocket, equal to $ today. He and his sister Vilma Ebsen formed an act and performed in supper clubs and in vaudeville — they were known as “The Baby Astaires”. On Broadway they appeared as members of the chorus in Whoopee, Flying Colors and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1934. A rave review from Walter Winchell, who saw them perform in Atlantic City, led to a booking at the Palace Theatre, the pinnacle of the vaudeville world.
Buddy Hackett was an American comedian and actor. In his later life, he and his wife set up the Singita Animal Sanctuary in the San Fernando Valley, California.
Hackett was born Leonard Hacker in Brooklyn, New York, New York, the son of a Jewish upholsterer. He grew up on 54th and 14th Ave in Borough Park, Brooklyn, across from Public School 103. He graduated from New Utrecht High School in 1942. While still a student, he began performing in nightclubs in the Catskills Borscht Belt resorts. He appeared first at the Golden Hotel in Hurleyville, New York, and he claimed did not get one single laugh.
Hackett enlisted in the United States Army during World War II and served in an anti-aircraft battery.
Hackett's first job after the war was at the Pink Elephant, a Brooklyn club. It was here that he changed his name from Leonard Hacker to Buddy Hackett. He made appearances in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and continued to perform in the Catskills. He acted on Broadway, in Lunatics and Lovers, where Max Liebman saw him and put him in two television specials. A television series, Stanley, was developed for him and produced by Liebman, which helped start co-star Carol Burnett's career. In the late 1940s, Jules White, a friend of Hackett's, asked him if he would like to replace Curly Howard in The Three Stooges, after Curly suffered a stroke, but he turned down the role, according to Hackett, as stated in the The Love Bug Audio Commentary.
Bugs Bunny is an American fictional character who starred in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated films produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, which became Warner Bros. Cartoons in 1944. In 2002, he was named by TV Guide as the best cartoon character of all time. Bugs starred in 163 shorts in the Golden Age of American animation, and made cameos in three others along with a few appearances in non-animated films.
According to Bugs Bunny: 50 Years and Only One Grey Hare, he was born in 1940 in Brooklyn, New York, created by Tex Avery and Robert McKimson, among many others. According to Mel Blanc, the character's original voice actor, Bugs Bunny has a Flatbush accent, an equal blend of the Bronx and Brooklyn dialects. His catchphrase is a casual "Eh.what's up, doc?", usually said while chewing a carrot. His other popular phrases include "Of course you realize, this means war", "Ain't I a stinker?" and "I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque."
Bugs Bunny is the main character of the Looney Tunes series, and as such, is used as a mascot, both of the Looney Tunes series, and sometimes of Warner Brothers in general.
An unnamed rabbit bearing some of the personality, if not physical characteristics of Bugs, first appeared in the cartoon short Porky's Hare Hunt, released on April 30, 1938. Co-directed by Ben Hardaway and an uncredited Cal Dalton, this short had a theme almost identical to that of the 1937 cartoon, Porky's Duck Hunt, which had introduced Daffy Duck. Porky Pig was again cast as a hunter tracking another silly prey who seemed less interested in escape than in driving his pursuer insane; this short replaced the black duck with a small white rabbit. The rabbit introduces himself with the odd expression "Jiggers, fellers", and Mel Blanc gave the rabbit nearly the voice and laugh that he would later use for Woody Woodpecker. This cartoon also features the famous Groucho Marx line that Bugs would use many times: "Of course you know, this means war!" The rabbit developed a following from the audience viewing this cartoon which inspired the Schlesinger staff to further develop the character.
Oliver Burgess Meredith, known professionally as Burgess Meredith, was an American actor. He was best-known for portraying Rocky Balboa’s trainer Mickey Goldmill in the Rocky films and the Penguin in the television series Batman. He also earned a new generation of fans, portraying the father of Jack Lemmon’s character in the 1993 film Grumpy Old Men, and the sequel, 1995’s Grumpier Old Men, which was his final film role.
Meredith was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Ida Beth and Canadian-born William George Meredith, M.D. He graduated from Hoosac School in 1926 and then attended Amherst College as a member of the Class of 1931.
Burgess Meredith was involved in theatre, film, and television, both as an actor and a director. He was adept playing both dramatic and comedic roles, and with his rugged looks and gravelly voice, he could convincingly play either an everyman hero or a sinister villain.
Meredith served in the United States Army Air Forces in World War II, reaching the rank of captain. He was discharged in 1944 to work on the movie The Story of G.I. Joe, in which he starred as the popular war correspondent Ernie Pyle.
Burton Stephen “Burt” Lancaster was an American film actor, noted for his athletic physique, distinctive smile and, later, his willingness to play roles that went against his initial “tough guy” image. Initially dismissed as “Mr Muscles and Teeth”, in the late 1950s Lancaster abandoned his “all-American” image and gradually came to be regarded as one of the best actors of his generation.
Lancaster was nominated four times for Academy Awards and won once, for his work in Elmer Gantry in 1960. He also won a Golden Globe for that performance, and BAFTA Awards for The Birdman of Alcatraz and Atlantic City. His production company, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, was the most successful and innovative star-driven independent production company in 1950s Hollywood, making movies such as Marty, Trapeze , and Sweet Smell of Success. Lancaster also ventured in directing, with two films: The Kentuckian and The Midnight Man. Lancaster was born in New York City, at his parents’ home at 209 East 106th Street, between Second and Third Avenues?today the site of Benjamin Franklin Plaza. Lancaster was the son of Elizabeth and James Henry Lancaster, who was a postman. Both of his parents were Protestants of working-class Irish origin, with Lancaster’s grandparents having been immigrants to the U.S. from Belfast and descendants of English immigrants to Ireland. Lancaster’s family believed themselves to be related to Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts; their surname originates from 11th century French immigrants to England with the surname “de Lancastre”. Lancaster grew up in East Harlem and spent much of his time on the streets, where he developed great interest and skill in gymnastics while attending the DeWitt Clinton High School. Before he graduated from DeWitt Clinton, where he was a basketball star, his mother was dead of a cerebral hemorrhage. Lancaster was accepted into New York University with an athletics scholarship, but would drop out to focus on his first career choice.