Don Ameche

At 85 years old, Don Ameche has this physical status:

Don Ameche (born Dominic Felix Amici; May 31, 1908 to December 6, 1993) was an American actor and comedian.

He began working in college shows, stock, and vaudeville, and by the 1930s, he became a major radio star, which led to the production of a film by twentieth Century Fox in 1935.

He was a well-known actor in comedies, dramas, and musicals. He was a handsome, debonair leading man in 40 films over the next 14 years.

He appeared on Broadway and on television in the 1950s and 1960s and was the host of NBC's International Showtime from 1961 to 1965.

Ameche continued his film work in his later years, starting with his role as a villain in Trading Places (1983) and winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Cocoon (1985).

Early life

Don Ameche was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on May 31, 1908. Felice Amici, his father, was a bartender from Montemonaco, Ascoli Piceno, Marche, Italy. Barbara Etta Hertel, his mother, was of Scottish, Irish, and German descent. Ameche was the second-oldest of eight children; he had three brothers, Umberto (Bert), James (Jim Ameche), and Louis, as well as four sisters Elizabeth, Catherine, Mary, and Anna. Ameche attended Marquette University, Loras College, and Madison, Wisconsin, where his cousin Alan Ameche played football and won the Heisman Trophy in 1954.

Personal life

Ameche, along with other Los Angeles entertainment celebrities, including Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, was a co-owner of the Los Angeles Dons, the National Football League's opponent to the National Football League from 1946 to 1949. He was instrumental in the formation and leadership of the company the year before play began, and he served as team president before starting.

Ameche was married to Honore Prendergast from 1932 to her death in 1986. They had six children. Ron Ameche, the owner of "Ameche's Pumpernickel," owned a restaurant in Coralville, Iowa. He had two children, Connie and Bonnie. Jim Ameche, Ameche's younger brother, who was also a well-known actor, died in 1983 at the age of 67.

Ameche was a Roman Catholic. In the 1944 Democratic presidential election, he endorsed Thomas Dewey's campaign in the United States presidential election and Dwight Eisenhower during the 1952 presidential election.

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Career

Ameche had done well in college dramas at the University of Wisconsin, and if a lead actor for Excess Baggage did not turn up, a friend encouraged him to stand in for the missing actor. He loved the opportunity and gained a youth lead in Jerry For Short in New York, followed by a tour in Texas Guinan before he dropped him from the show, dismissing him as "too stiff."

Ameche then moved to Chicago, where "he began a radio career in 1930 on Empire Builders," a program broadcast by the Merchandise Mart. Ameche had become the leading man on two other Chicago-based programs, First Nighter and Betty and Bob, who are considered by many to be the soap-opera genre's forerunners.

Ameche was brought to Hollywood by 20th-Century Fox producer Darryl Zanuck, and teamed with many of the best female actors of the time. Ameche starred in The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939), 1939. "You're looking for a phone," Mike Kilen in the Iowa City Gazette wrote on Dec. 8, 1993, "The film inspired a generation to call people to the phone with the phrase "ameche." In the 1940 film Go West, Groucho Marx says, "telephone?" is the same as Ameche and the telephone, with the same name. This is 1870, Don Ameche hasn't invented the telephone yet."

In Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), Ameche was Alice Faye's leading man, before appearing in Swanee River (1939). He performed a third biopic, Lillian Russell (1940) with Faye, and was top billed in a war film, Four Sons (1940), and Down Argentine Way (1940), which helped make Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda's role actors. He was voted the 21st most popular celebrity in Hollywood in 1940.

Ameche was born in 1943, Wing and a Prayer (1944), and Greenwich Village (1944). After Spyros Skouras, he reportedly earned $247,677 for 1943, making him the second highest earner at 20th Century Fox.

Ameche, a pioneering married couple in the Philip Rapp radio comedy series about a violent married couple, achieved strong success in the late 1940s, following his appearances as announcer and sketch artist on The Chase and Sanborn Hour. In 1946, it premiered on NBC and then to CBS the following year. In the early 1940s, he had his own show, The Old Gold Don Ameche Show, on NBC Red.

On ABC-TV, Ameche made a name for herself in 1950.

He received high praise for his book Things Change (1988), written by David Mamet and Shel Silverstein; the New York Times said he displayed "the sort of humant humor that has won actors awards for other than sentimental reasons."

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