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• 
  Boston
  Boston (pronounced /ˈbɒstən/ or locally /ˈbɔstən/ ( listen)) is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper, covering only 48.43 square miles, had a population of 617,594 according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Boston is also the anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area called Greater Boston, home to 4.5 million people and the tenth-largest metropolitan area in the country. Greater Boston as a commuting region is home to 7.6 million people, making it the fifth-largest Combined Statistical Area in the United States.
  In 1630, Puritan colonists from England founded the city on the Shawmut Peninsula. During the late 18th century, Boston was the location of several major events during the American Revolution, including the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. Several early battles of the American Revolution, such as the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Siege of Boston, occurred within the city and surrounding areas. Through land reclamation and municipal annexation, Boston has expanded beyond the peninsula. After American independence was attained Boston became a major shipping port and manufacturing center, and its rich history now helps attract many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone attracting over 20 million every year. The city was the site of several firsts, including America's first public school, Boston Latin School (1635), and the first subway system in the United States (1897).
  
  wn.com/Boston
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  Canada
  Canada ( /ˈkænədə/) is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean. Spanning over 9,900,000 km² (3,800,000 sq mi), Canada is the world's second-largest country by total area, and its common border with the United States is the longest land border in the world.
  The land that is now Canada has been inhabited for millennia by various Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French colonial expeditions explored, and later settled, along the region's Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy; the Canada Act 1982 severed the vestiges of legal dependence on Britain.
  
  wn.com/Canada
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  New England
  New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. New England is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, Canada (the Canadian Maritimes and Quebec) and the state of New York.
  In one of the earliest English settlements in North America, Pilgrims from England first settled in New England in 1620, to form Plymouth Colony. Ten years later, the Puritans settled north of Plymouth Colony in Boston, thus forming Massachusetts Bay Colony. Over the next 130 years, New England fought in four French and Indian Wars, until the British defeated the French and their native allies in North America. In the late 18th century, the New England Colonies initiated the resistance to the British Parliament's efforts to impose new taxes without the consent of the colonists. The Boston Tea Party was a protest that angered Great Britain, which responded with the "Intolerable Acts", stripping the colonies of self-government. The confrontation led to open warfare in 1775, the expulsion of the British from New England in spring 1776, and the Declaration of Independence in July 1776.
  
  wn.com/New_England
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  New York City
  New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. The city is referred to as New York City or The City of New York to distinguish it from the State of New York, of which it is a part. As a global power city, New York exerts a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment. The home of the United Nations Headquarters, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has been described as the cultural capital of the world.
  Located on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of which comprises a state county. The five boroughs—The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island—were consolidated into a single city in 1898. With a Census-estimated 2011 population of 8,244,910 distributed over a land area of just 305 square miles (790 km²), New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. The New York City Metropolitan Area's population is the United States' largest, with 18.9 million people distributed over 6,720 square miles (17,400 km²), and is also part of the most populous combined statistical area in the United States, containing 22.1 million people as of the 2010 Census.
  
  wn.com/New_York_City
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  Toronto
  Toronto (/təˈrɒntoʊ/, colloquially /ˈtrɒnoʊ/) is the largest city in Canada and the provincial capital of Ontario. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from the Mississaugas of the New Credit. The settlement was later established as the Town of York and proclaimed as the new capital of Upper Canada by its lieutenant-governor, John Graves Simcoe. In 1834, York was incorporated as a city and renamed to its present name. The city was ransacked in the Battle of York during the War of 1812 and damaged in two great fires in 1849 and in 1904. Since its incorporation, Toronto has repeatedly expanded its borders through amalgamation with surrounding municipalities, most recently in 1998.
  With over 2.6 million residents, it is the fifth most populous city in North America. Its metropolitan area has over 5.5 million residents. Toronto is at the heart of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), and is part of a densely populated region in Southern Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe, which has a population of nearly 9 million people as of 2011. The census metropolitan area (CMA) had a population of 5,583,064, and the Greater Toronto Area had a population of 6,054,191 in the 2011 Census. Its cosmopolitan and international population reflects its role as an important destination for immigrants to Canada. Toronto is one of the world's most diverse cities by percentage of non-native-born residents, with about 49% of the population born outside Canada. Toronto is also consistently rated as one of the world's most livable cities by the Economist Intelligence Unit and the Mercer Quality of Living Survey.
  
  wn.com/Toronto
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  United States
  The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
  At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.
  
  wn.com/United_States
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  Upper Manhattan
  Upper Manhattan denotes the more northerly region of the New York City Borough of Manhattan. Its southern boundary may be defined anywhere between 59th Street and 155th Street. Between these two extremes lies the most common definitions of Upper Manhattan as Manhattan above 96th Street (the southern boundary of Manhattan Valley in the west and Spanish Harlem in the east) . This definition of Upper Manhattan takes in the neighborhoods of Marble Hill, Inwood, Washington Heights (including Fort George, Sherman Creek and Hudson Heights), Harlem (including Sugar Hill and Hamilton Heights), and parts of the Upper West Side (Morningside Heights and Manhattan Valley).
  In the late 19th century, the IRT Ninth Avenue Line and other elevated railroads brought urban sprawl to the previously rustic Upper Manhattan. Until the late 20th century it was less influenced by the gentrification that had taken place in other parts of New York over the previous 30 years.
  Like other residential areas, Upper Manhattan is not a major center of tourism in New York City, although some tourist attractions, such as The Cloisters lie within it. Tourist maps similarly pay scant attention to the boroughs of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. Even many native New Yorkers tend to treat Upper Manhattan like another borough, its distance from Midtown Manhattan and comparatively lower rents leading many to exclude this northern neck from the area New Yorkers call "The City"^{[citation needed]}.
  
  wn.com/Upper_Manhattan

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  Al Jolson
  Al Jolson (May 26, 1886 – October 23, 1950) was an American singer, comedian, and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer".
  His performing style was brash and extroverted, and he popularized a large number of songs that benefited from his "shamelessly sentimental, melodramatic approach". Numerous well-known singers were influenced by his music, including Bing CrosbyJudy Garland, rock and country entertainer Jerry Lee Lewis, and Bob Dylan, who once referred to him as "somebody whose life I can feel". Broadway critic Gilbert Seldes compared him to "the Greek God Pan", claiming that Jolson represented "the concentration of our national health and gaiety."
  In the 1930s, he was America's most famous and highest paid entertainer. Between 1911 and 1928, Jolson had nine sell-out Winter Garden shows in a row, more than 80 hit records, and 16 national and international tours. Although he's best remembered today as the star in the first (full length) talking movie, The Jazz Singer in 1927, he later starred in a series of successful musical films throughout the 1930s. After a period of inactivity, his stardom returned with the 1946 Oscar-winning biographical film, The Jolson Story. Larry Parks played Jolson with the songs dubbed in with Jolson’s real voice. A sequel, Jolson Sings Again, was released in 1949, and was nominated for three Oscars. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Jolson became the first star to entertain troops overseas during World War II, and again in 1950 became the first star to perform for G.I.s in Korea, doing 42 shows in 16 days. He died just weeks after returning to the U.S., partly due to the physical exertion of performing. Defense Secretary George Marshall afterward awarded the Medal of Merit to Jolson's family.
  
  wn.com/Al_Jolson
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  Alexander Pantages
  Alexander Pantages (1867 – February 17, 1936) was a Greek American vaudeville and early motion picture producer and impresario who created a large and powerful circuit of theatres across the western United States and Canada.
  There is dispute about his year of birth, but it is likely that he was born in 1867 on the Greek island of Andros. It is suggested that he was born "Pericles" Pantages but changed it to "Alexander" when he heard about Alexander the Great. In a personal correspondence between Rodney Pantages, son of Alexander, and Arthur Dean Tarrach, Pantages biographer, this claim is denied . At the age of nine he ran away while with his father on a business trip in Cairo, Egypt. He then went to sea and spent the next two years working as a deck hand. His ties to his homeland seem mercurial; he never set foot on Greece again although he did assist his relatives financially and even brought his brother, Nicholas, to live in the United States. He used to call himself "King Greek", perhaps in emulation of Louis B. Mayer's "Super Jew".
  
  wn.com/Alexander_Pantages
• Anthony Heinsbergen
  Anthony Heinsbergen (December 13, 1894 - June 14, 1981) was an American muralist considered the foremost designer of North American movie theatre interiors.
  Born Antoon Heinsbergen in the Netherlands, he emigrated with his family to the United States in 1906 where they settled in Los Angeles. Heinsbergen began painting while still a boy; and, as a young man he worked as an apprentice painter and was one of the first students to take formal training from Mrs. Nelbert Chouinard at her Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. His area of interest in which he developed a renowned expertise was the painting of murals and in 1922 he established went into business for himself. He was successful in obtaining a few commissions out of which he earned considerable recognition that led to a number of major contracts in and around Los Angeles most notably with the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, the Beverly-Wilshire Hotel and in 1928 a municipal government contract for the new Los Angeles City Hall. During this time, his work came to the attention of theatre mogul Alexander Pantages who hired him to work on one of his buildings. The praise he received for this work opened the doors to jobs at more than twenty Pantages theatres and helped Heinsbergen become a major national contractor for theatre murals.
  
  wn.com/Anthony_Heinsbergen
• Bert Lahr
  Bert Lahr (born Irving Lahrheim; August 13, 1895 – December 4, 1967) was an American actor and comedian. Lahr is remembered today for his roles as the Cowardly Lion and Kansas farmworker Zeke in The Wizard of Oz, but was also well known for work in burlesque, vaudeville, and on Broadway.
  Lahr was born in New York City, the son of Augusta and Jacob Lahrheim. His parents were German Jewish immigrants. Lahr grew up in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. Dropping out of school at the age of 15 to join a juvenile vaudeville act, Lahr worked his way up to top billing on the Columbia Burlesque Circuit. In 1927 he debuted on Broadway in Delmar's Revels. Lahr played to packed houses, performing classic routines such as "The Song of the Woodman" (which he later reprised in the film Merry-Go-Round of 1938). Lahr had his first major success in a stage musical playing the prize fighter hero of Hold Everything! (1928–29). Several other musicals followed, notably Flying High (1930), Florenz Ziegfeld's Hot-Cha! (1932) and The Show is On (1936) in which he co-starred with Beatrice Lillie. In 1939, he co-starred with Ethel Merman in DuBarry Was a Lady.
  
  wn.com/Bert_Lahr
• Bill Irwin
  William Mills "Bill" Irwin (born April 11, 1950) is an American actor and clown noted for his contribution to the renaissance of American circus during the 1970s. He is known for his vaudeville-style stage acts, but has made a number of appearances on film and television and won a Tony Award for a dramatic role on Broadway. He is known by children as Mr. Noodle on Sesame Street's Elmo's World.
  Irwin was born in Santa Monica, California, the son of Elizabeth (née Mills), a teacher, and Horace G. Irwin, an aerospace engineer. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1973 with a degree in theater arts, and from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College the following year. In 1975, he helped found the Pickle Family Circus in San Francisco, California. He left the company in 1979, and decided to pursue stage work.
  Irwin created a run of highly regarded stage shows that incorporated elements of clowning, often in collaboration with composer Doug Skinner. These works included The Regard of Flight (1982), Largely New York (1989), Fool Moon (1993), The Harlequin Studies (2003), and Mr. Fox: A Rumination (2004). Mr. Fox is a production that Irwin has worked on for years, a biography of 19th century clown George Washington Lafayette Fox that also has autobiographical elements.
  
  wn.com/Bill_Irwin
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  Bill Robinson
  Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949) was an American tap dancer and actor of stage and film. Audiences enjoyed his understated style, which eschewed the frenetic manner of the jitterbug in favor of cool and reserve; rarely did he use his upper body, relying instead on busy, inventive feet, and an expressive face.
  A figure in both the black and white entertainment worlds of his era, he is best known today for his dancing with Shirley Temple in a series of films during the 1930s.
  Robinson was born in Richmond, Virginia to Maxwell, a machine-shop worker, and Maria Robinson, a choir singer. He was raised by his grandmother after both parents died in 1885 when he was 7 years old—his father from chronic heart disease and his mother from natural causes. Details of Robinson's early life are known only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Robinson himself. He claimed he was christened "Luther"—a name he did not like. He suggested to his younger brother Bill that they should exchange names. When Bill objected, Luther applied his fists, and the exchange was made.
  
  wn.com/Bill_Robinson
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  Bob Hope
  Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS (born Leslie Townes Hope; May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was an English-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel. Throughout his long career, he was honored for his humanitarian work. In 1996, the U.S. Congress honored Bob Hope by declaring him the "first and only honorary veteran of the U.S. armed forces." Bob Hope appeared in or hosted 199 known USO shows.
  Hope was born in Eltham, London, England, the fifth of seven sons. His English father, William Henry Hope, was a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, and his Welsh mother, Avis Townes, was a light opera singer from Barry who later worked as a cleaning woman. She married William Hope in April 1891 and the couple set up home at 12 Greenwood Street in the town, then moved to Whitehall and St George in Bristol, before eventually moving to Cleveland, Ohio in 1908. The family emigrated to the United States aboard the SS Philadelphia, and passed inspection at Ellis Island on March 30, 1908. Hope became a U.S. citizen in 1920 at the age of 17. In a 1942 legal document, Hope's legal name is given as Lester Townes Hope. His name on the Social Security Index is also listed as Lester T. Hope. His name as registered at birth was Leslie Towns [sic] Hope.
  
  wn.com/Bob_Hope
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  Buster Keaton
  Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".
  Buster Keaton (his lifelong stage name) was recognized as the seventh-greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Keaton the 21st-greatest male star of all time. Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton's "extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929, [when] he worked without interruption on a series of films that make him, arguably, the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies."
  Orson Welles stated that Keaton's The General is "the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made."
  A 2002 worldwide poll by Sight & Sound ranked Keaton's The General as the 15th best film of all time. Three other Keaton films received votes in the magazine's survey: Our Hospitality, Sherlock, Jr., and The Navigator.
  
  wn.com/Buster_Keaton
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  David Letterman
  David Michael Letterman (born April 12, 1947) is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC. Letterman recently surpassed friend and mentor Johnny Carson for having the longest late-night hosting career in the United States of America.
  Letterman is also a television and film producer. His company Worldwide Pants produces his show as well as its network follow-up The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Worldwide Pants has also produced several prime-time comedies, the most successful of which was Everybody Loves Raymond, currently in syndication.
  In 1996, David Letterman was ranked #45 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.
  Letterman was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father, Harry Joseph Letterman (April 1915 – February 1973), was a florist of British descent; his mother Dorothy Letterman (née Hofert, now Dorothy Mengering), a Presbyterian church secretary of German descent, is an occasional figure on the show, usually at holidays and birthdays.
  
  wn.com/David_Letterman
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  Eddie Cantor
  Eddie Cantor (January 31, 1892 – October 10, 1964), born Edward Israel Iskowitz, was an American "illustrated song" performer, comedian, dancer, singer, actor and songwriter. Familiar to Broadway, radio, movie and early television audiences, this "Apostle of Pep" was regarded almost as a family member by millions because his top-rated radio shows revealed intimate stories and amusing anecdotes about his wife Ida and five daughters. Some of his hits include "Makin' Whoopee," "Ida," "If You Knew Susie," "Ma! He's Makin' Eyes at Me," "Margie" and "How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree?)" He also wrote a few songs, including "Merrily We Roll Along," the Merrie Melodies Warner Bros. cartoon theme.
  His eye-rolling song-and-dance routines eventually led to his nickname, "Banjo Eyes." In 1933, the artist Frederick J. Garner caricatured Cantor with large round eyes resembling the drum-like pot of a banjo. Cantor's eyes became his trademark, often exaggerated in illustrations, and leading to his appearance on Broadway in the musical Banjo Eyes (1941).
  
  wn.com/Eddie_Cantor
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  Edgar Bergen
  Edgar John Bergen (February 16, 1903 – September 30, 1978) was an American actor and radio performer, best known as a ventriloquist.
  Bergen was born Edgar John Berggren in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Swedish immigrants Nilla Svensdotter (née Osberg) and Johan Henriksson Berggren. He grew up in Decatur, Michigan. He taught himself ventriloquism from a pamphlet when he was 11. A few years later, he commissioned Chicago woodcarver Theodore Mack to sculpt a likeness of a rascally Irish newspaperboy he knew. The head went on a dummy named Charlie McCarthy, who became Bergen's lifelong sidekick. At age 16, he went to Chicago, where he attended Lake View High School and worked at a silent movie house. He gave his first public performance at Waveland Avenue Congregational Church which was located on the northeast corner of Waveland and Janssen. He lived across the street from the church. In 1965, he gave that church a generous contribution, a thoughtful letter, and a photograph of himself which had been requested by the minister and was displayed in the church's assembly room which was dedicated to Bergen.
  
  wn.com/Edgar_Bergen
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  Edward Albee
  Edward Franklin Albee III ( /ˈɔːlbiː/ AWL-bee; born March 12, 1928) is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story (1958), The Sandbox (1959), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), and a rewrite of the book for the unsuccessful musical version of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's (1966). His works are considered well-crafted, often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albee's daring mix of theatricalism and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent the post-war American theatre in the early 1960s. Albee continues to experiment in new works, such as The Goat: or, Who Is Sylvia? (2002).
  According to Magill's Survey of American Literature (2007), Edward Albee was born somewhere in Virginia (the popular belief is that he was born in Washington, D.C.). He was adopted two weeks later and taken to Larchmont, New York in Westchester County, where he grew up. Albee's adoptive father, Reed A. Albee, the wealthy son of vaudeville magnate Edward Franklin Albee II, owned several theaters. Here the young Edward first gained familiarity with the theatre as a child. His adoptive mother, Reed's third wife, Frances tried to raise Albee to fit into their social circles.
  
  wn.com/Edward_Albee
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  Fanny Brice
  Fanny Brice (October 29, 1891 – May 29, 1951) was a popular and influential American illustrated song "model," comedian, singer, theatre and film actress, who made many stage, radio and film appearances and is known as the creator and star of the top-rated radio comedy series, The Baby Snooks Show. Thirteen years after her death, she was portrayed on the Broadway stage by Barbra Streisand in the musical Funny Girl and its 1968 film adaptation.
  Fanny Brice (occasionally spelled Fannie Brice) was the stage name of Fania Borach, born in New York City, the third child of relatively well-off saloon owners of Hungarian Jewish descent. In 1908, Brice dropped out of school to work in a burlesque revue, and two years later she began her association with Florenz Ziegfeld, headlining his Ziegfeld Follies from 1910 to 1911. She was hired again in 1921 and performed in them into the 1930s. In the 1921 Follies, she was featured singing "My Man" which became both a big hit and her signature song. She made a popular recording of it for Victor Records.
  
  wn.com/Fanny_Brice
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  Jack Benny
  Jack Benny (born Benjamin Kubelsky, February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974) was an American comedian, vaudevillian, radio, television, and film actor, and also a notable violinist. Widely recognized as one of the leading American entertainers of the 20th century, Benny played the role of the comic penny-pinching miser, insisting on remaining 39 years old on stage despite his actual age, and often playing the violin badly.
  Benny was known for his comic timing and his ability to get laughs with either a pregnant pause or a single expression, such as his signature exasperated "Well!" His radio and television programs, tremendously popular from the 1930s to the 1960s, were a foundational influence on the situation comedy genre. Dean Martin, on the celebrity roast for Johnny Carson in November 1973, introduced Benny as "the Satchel Paige of the world of comedy".
  Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky on February 14, 1894, in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in neighboring Waukegan, Illinois. He was the son of Meyer Kubelsky and Emma Sachs Kubelsky. Meyer was a Jewish saloon owner, later to become a haberdasher, who had emigrated to America from Poland. Emma had emigrated from Lithuania. Benny began studying the violin, an instrument that would become his trademark, when he was just six, with his parents' hopes that he would be a great classical violinist. He loved the violin, but hated practice. By age 14, he was playing in local dance bands as well as in his high school orchestra. Benny was a dreamer and a poor student and he was expelled from high school. He did equally badly in business school and at his father's trade. At age 17, he began playing the instrument in local vaudeville theaters for $7.50 a week. He was joined by Ned Miller, a young composer and singer, on the vaudeville circuit. They became life-long friends and Miller eventually joined the cast of The Jack Benny Program in the 1960s.
  
  wn.com/Jack_Benny
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  Jimmy Durante
  James Francis "Jimmy" Durante (February 10, 1893 – January 29, 1980) was an American singer, pianist, comedian and actor. His distinctive clipped gravelly speech, comic language butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and large nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s. His jokes about his nose included referring to it as a "Schnozzola", and the word became his nickname.
  Durante was born on the Lower East Side of New York City. He was the youngest of four children born to Bartolomeo Durante and his mail-order bride Rosa, both of whom were immigrants from Salerno, Italy. Bartolomeo was a barber, and his wife Rosa was the sister of a woman who lived in the same boarding house. Jimmy Durante served as an altar boy at Saint Malachy's Roman Catholic Church, known as the Actor's Chapel.
  Durante dropped out of school in eighth grade to become a full-time ragtime pianist. He first played with his cousin, whose name was also "Jimmy Durante." It was a family act, but he was too professional for his cousin. He continued working the city's piano bar circuit and earned the nickname "Ragtime Jimmy," before he joined one of the first recognizable jazz bands in New York, the Original New Orleans Jazz Band. Durante was the only member not from New Orleans. His routine of breaking into a song to deliver a joke, with band or orchestra chord punctuation after each line, became a Durante trademark. In 1920, the group was renamed Jimmy Durante's Jazz Band.
  
  wn.com/Jimmy_Durante
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  Judy Garland
  Judy Garland (June 10, 1922 – June 22, 1969) was an American actress, singer and vaudevillian. Renowned for her contralto voice, she attained international stardom through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage. Respected for her versatility, she received a Juvenile Academy Award and won a Golden Globe Award, as well as Grammy Awards and a Special Tony Award. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the remake of A Star is Born and for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 1961 film, Judgment at Nuremberg. At 39 years of age, she remains the youngest recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in the motion picture industry.
  After appearing in vaudeville with her two older sisters, Garland was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a teenager. There she made more than two dozen films, including nine with Mickey Rooney and the 1939 film with which she would be most identified, The Wizard of Oz. After 15 years, she was released from the studio but gained renewed success through record-breaking concert appearances, including a return to acting beginning with critically acclaimed performances.
  
  wn.com/Judy_Garland
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  Kate Smith
  Kathryn Elizabeth "Kate" Smith (May 1, 1907 – June 17, 1986) was an American singer, best known for her rendition of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America". Smith had a radio, television, and recording career spanning five decades, which reached its pinnacle in the 1940s.
  Smith was born in Greenville, Virginia. Her professional musical career began in 1930, when she was discovered by Columbia Records vice president Ted Collins, who became her longtime partner and manager. Collins put her on radio in 1931. She sang the controversial top twenty song of 1931, "That's Why Darkies Were Born". She appeared in 1932 in Hello Everybody!, with co-stars Randolph Scott and Sally Blane, and in the 1943 wartime movie This is the Army she sang "God Bless America".
  Smith began recording in 1926; in 1931, she sang "Dream a Little Dream of Me." Her biggest hits were "River, Stay 'Way From My Door" (1931), "The Woodpecker Song" (1940), "The White Cliffs of Dover" (1941), "Rose O'Day" (1941), "I Don't Want to Walk Without You" (1942), "There Goes That Song Again" (1944), "Seems Like Old Times" (1946), and "Now Is the Hour" (1947). Her theme song was "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain"; she had helped write the lyrics. Smith greeted her audience with "Hello, everybody!" and signed off with "Thanks for listenin'."
  
  wn.com/Kate_Smith
• Louis Wollbrinck
  Louis Wollbrinck (spelling variations include "Wollbrink" and "Wolbrinck") was a civil servant, entrepreneur and builder in St. Louis, Missouri during the Gilded Age.
  Wollbrinck was born in St. Louis on Friday, Feb. 22, 1867, to a German carpenter and his wife. Friederich "Fred" Wollbrinck and Johannah (Hannah) Kottmeier had both come from Herford, in Westphalia. Louis Wollbrinck left school at twelve to become an errand boy for Woodward and Tiernan printing, then pressman, and stayed 5 years. He then worked as feeder and pressman for the Great Western Show Printing Co. until he was 24. Turning to real estate and building, he was the youngest builder in St. Louis, with 65 houses going up at once. The Historic American Buildings Survey documented the North side of the 4900 block of Page Avenue in 1986, when it was still covered in the moderately sized, modestly ornamented homes Wollbrinck built for a rising merchant-class. (images have been released to the public domain).
  
  wn.com/Louis_Wollbrinck
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  Mae West
  Mae West (August 17, 1893 – November 22, 1980) was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades.
  Known for her bawdy double entendres, West made a name for herself in vaudeville and on the stage in New York before moving to Hollywood to become a comedienne, actress and writer in the motion picture industry. In consideration of her contributions to American cinema, the American Film Institute named West 15th among the greatest female stars of all time. One of the more controversial movie stars of her day, West encountered many problems, including censorship. When her cinematic career ended, she continued to perform on stage, in Las Vegas, in the United Kingdom, on radio and television, and recorded rock and roll albums. She used the alias Jane Mast early in her career.
  West was born Mary Jane West in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York, delivered at home by an aunt who was a midwife. She was the eldest surviving child of John Patrick West and Matilda "Tillie" Doelger (also known as Matilda Delker Doelger), who had emigrated with her family from Bavaria to the United States in 1886. West's parents married on January 18, 1889, in Brooklyn.
  
  wn.com/Mae_West
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  Marx Brothers
  The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act, originally from New York City, that enjoyed success in Vaudeville, Broadway, and motion pictures from the early 1900s to around 1950. Five of the Marx Brothers’ thirteen feature films were selected by the American Film Institute as among the top 100 comedy films, with two of them (Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera) in the top twelve.
  The core of the act was the three elder brothers, Chico, Harpo and Groucho; each developed a highly distinctive stage persona. The two younger brothers, Gummo and Zeppo, did not develop their stage characters to the same extent, and eventually left the act to pursue other careers. Gummo was not in any of the movies; Zeppo appeared in the first five.
  Born in New York City, the Marx Brothers were the sons of Jewish immigrants from Germany and France. Their mother, Minnie Schönberg, was from Dornum in East Frisia; and their father, Simon Marx (whose name was changed to Samuel Marx, and who was nicknamed "Frenchy") was a native of Alsace and worked as a tailor. The family lived in the then-poor Yorkville section of New York City's Upper East Side, between the Irish, German and Italian quarters.
  
  wn.com/Marx_Brothers
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  Milton Berle
  Milton Berle (born Milton Berlinger, July 12, 1908 – March 27, 2002) was an American comedian and actor. As the host of NBC's Texaco Star Theater (1948–55), he was the first major American television star and was known to millions of viewers as "Uncle Miltie" and "Mr. Television" during TV's golden age.
  Milton Berlinger was born into a Jewish family in a five-story walkup at 68 W. 118th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan. He chose Milton Berle as his professional name when he was 16. His father, Moses Berlinger (1873–1938), was a paint and varnish salesman. His mother, Sarah (Sadie) Glantz Berlinger (1877–1954), eventually became stagestruck and changed her name to Sandra Berle when Milton became famous.
  Berle entered show business at the age of five when he won an amateur talent contest. He appeared as a child actor in silent films, beginning with The Perils of Pauline, filmed in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The director told Berle that he would portray a little boy who would be thrown from a moving train. In Milton Berle: An Autobiography, he explained, "I was scared shitless, even when he went on to tell me that Pauline would save my life. Which is exactly what happened, except that at the crucial moment they threw a bundle of rags instead of me from the train. I bet there are a lot of comedians around today who are sorry about that."
  
  wn.com/Milton_Berle
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  Red Skelton
  Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton (July 18, 1913 – September 17, 1997) was an American entertainer best known for being a national radio and television comedian between 1937 and 1971. Skelton, who has stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, began his show business career in his teens as a circus clown and continued on vaudeville and Broadway and in films, radio, TV, night clubs, and casinos, all while he pursued an entirely separate career as an artist.
  Born in Vincennes, Indiana, Richard Skelton was the fourth son of Ida Mae (née Fields) and Joseph E. Skelton (1878–1913). Joseph, a grocer, died two months before his last child was born; he had once been a clown with the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus. In Skelton's lifetime there was some dispute about the year of his birth. Author Wesley Hyatt suggests that since Skelton began working at such an early age, he may have had to say he was older than he actually was in order to work.
  
  wn.com/Red_Skelton
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  Rose Marie
  Rose Marie (born August 15, 1923) is an American actress. As a child performer she had a successful singing career as Baby Rose Marie.
  A veteran of vaudeville, Rose Marie's career includes film, records, theater, night clubs, and television. Her most famous role was television comedy writer Sally Rogers on the CBS situation comedy The Dick Van Dyke Show. She later portrayed Myrna Gibbons on CBS's The Doris Day Show and was also a frequent panelist on the game show Hollywood Squares.
  Rose Marie Mazetta was born in New York City, New York, to Italian-American Frank Mazzetta and Polish-American Stella Gluszcak. At the age of three, she started performing under the name "Baby Rose Marie." At five, Rose Marie became a radio star on NBC and made a series of films.
  Rose Marie was a nightclub performer in her teenage years before becoming a radio comedian. She was billed then as "The Darling of the Airwaves." According to her autobiography, Hold the Roses, she was assisted in her career by many members of organized crime, including Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel. She performed at the opening night of the Flamingo Hotel which was built by Siegel.
  
  wn.com/Rose_Marie
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  Sid Caesar
  Isaac Sidney "Sid" Caesar (born September 8, 1922) is an Emmy award winning American comic actor and writer known for the 1950s television series Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour, and to younger generations as Coach Calhoun in Grease and Grease 2.
  Caesar was born in Yonkers, New York, the youngest son of Max Caesar and his wife Ida (née Raphael), Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire who ran a restaurant. Caesar would wait on tables and learned to mimic the accents, something he would use throughout his career. He first tried his double-talk with a group of Italians, his head barely reaching above the table. They enjoyed it so much that they sent him over to a group of Poles to repeat it in Polish, and so on with Russians, Hungarians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Lithuanians and Bulgarians. Despite his apparent fluency in many languages, Caesar can actually speak only English and Yiddish. Sid's older brother David was his comic mentor and "one-man cheering section." They created their earliest family sketches from then current movies like Test Pilot and Wings.
  
  wn.com/Sid_Caesar
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  Sportsperson
  A sportsperson (American English: Sports person), (gendered as sportsman or sportswoman) or athlete is a person trained to compete in a sport involving physical strength, speed or endurance. Sportspeople may be professional or amateur.
  Most professional sportspeople have particularly well-developed physiques obtained by extensive physical training and strict exercise accompanied by a strict dietary regimen.
  The word "athlete" is a romanization of the Greek: άθλητὴς, athlētēs, one who participates in a contest; from ἂθλος, áthlos, or ἂθλον, áthlon, a contest or feat. The term may be used as a synonym for sportspeople in general, but it also has stronger connotations of people who compete in athletic sports, as opposed to other sporting types such as horse riding and driving. In British English (as well as other variants in the Commonwealth) athlete can also have a more specific meaning of people who compete in the sport of athletics.
  An "all-around athlete" is a person who competes in multiple sports at a high level, for instance, someone who plays both basketball and baseball professionally. Examples of people who played numerous sports professionally are Jim Thorpe, Lionel Conacher, Deion Sanders (male), Danny Ainge (male) and Babe Zaharias (female). Others include Ricky Williams, Bo Jackson, and Damon Allen, each of whom was drafted both by Major League Baseball and by professional gridiron football leagues such as the NFL and the CFL. Another example is Kazushi Sakuraba, a Japanese athlete who competed in both professional wrestling and mixed martial arts and succeeded in both sports. Many Japanese martial artists compete in both wrestling and MMA due to their strong promotions and similarities.
  
  wn.com/Sportsperson
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  Tony Pastor
  Tony Pastor (May 28, 1837 – August 26, 1908) was an American impresario, variety performer and theatre owner who became one of the founding forces behind American vaudeville in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. The strongest elements of his entertainments were an almost jingoistic brand of United States patriotism and a strong commitment to attracting a mixed-gender audience, the latter being something revolutionary in the male-oriented variety halls of the mid-century.
  Antonio Pastor was born in Manhattan on the 28th of May, 1837, at his parent’s residence on the 100 block of Greenwich Street across from the old Pacific Hotel in the area that one day would be occupied by the World Trade Center. His father was a Spanish immigrant who supported his family as a barber and part-time musician.
  He embarked on a show business career at a very young age, obtaining a job singing at P.T. Barnum's Scudder's American Museum. During the next few years he worked in minstrel shows, the circus business, and as a comic singer in variety revues. He established himself as a popular songwriter during a four-year run at Robert Butler's American Music Hall, a variety theater located at 444 Broadway in what is now called Soho but was then the heart of the lower Manhattan theater district. Pastor published "songsters", books of his lyrics which were sung to popular tunes. The music had no notation, as it was assumed that the audience had a collective knowledge of popular song. The subject matter of his music may be shocking to modern audiences, but was intended to be bawdy and humorous rather than revolutionary.
  
  wn.com/Tony_Pastor
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  Will Rogers
  William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers (November 4, 1879 - August 15, 1935) was an American cowboy, vaudeville performer, humorist, social commentator and motion picture actor. He was one of the world's best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s.
  Known as Oklahoma's favorite son, Rogers was born to a prominent Cherokee Nation family in Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma). He traveled around the world three times, made 71 movies (50 silent films and 21 "talkies"), wrote more than 4,000 nationally-syndicated newspaper columns, and became a world-famous figure. By the mid-1930s, Rogers was adored by the American people. He was the leading political wit of the Progressive Era, and was the top-paid Hollywood movie star at the time. Rogers died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post, when their small airplane crashed in Alaska.
  His vaudeville rope act led to success in the Ziegfeld Follies, which in turn led to the first of his many movie contracts. His 1920s syndicated newspaper column and his radio appearances increased his visibility and popularity. Rogers crusaded for aviation expansion, and provided Americans with first-hand accounts of his world travels. His earthy anecdotes and folksy style allowed him to poke fun at gangsters, prohibition, politicians, government programs, and a host of other controversial topics in a way that was readily appreciated by a national audience, with no one offended. His aphorisms, couched in humorous terms, were widely quoted: "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat."
  
  wn.com/Will_Rogers

Vaudeville (2005)

Genres

• Animation
• Short

Taglines:

Despair, wandering and the loss of identity

Quotes:

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• timeline:
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