Don Ameche

Don Ameche (/əˈmiːtʃi/; born Dominic Felix Amici; May 31, 1908 – December 6, 1993) was an American actor, comedian and vaudevillian. After playing in college shows, repertory theatre, and vaudeville, he became a major radio star in the early 1930s, which led to the offer of a movie contract from 20th Century Fox in 1935.

In the 1950s, he worked on Broadway and in television and was the host of NBC's International Showtime from 1961 to 1965. Returning to film work in his later years, Ameche enjoyed a fruitful revival of his career, beginning with his role as a villain in Trading Places (1983). He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Cocoon (1985) and the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for his performance in Things Change (1988).

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

Ameche had done well in college dramatics at the University of Wisconsin, and when a lead actor for a stock company production of Excess Baggage did not turn up, a friend persuaded him to stand in for the missing actor. He enjoyed the experience and got a juvenile lead in Jerry For Short in New York, followed by a tour in vaudeville with Texas Guinan until she dropped him from the act, dismissing him as "too stiff".

Ameche then moved to Chicago, where "he began a radio career in 1930 on Empire Builders, a program broadcast from the Merchandise Mart. By 1932, Ameche had become the leading man on two other Chicago-based programs: the dramatic anthology First Nighter, and Betty and Bob, the latter considered by many to be the forerunner of the soap-opera genre."

Brought to Hollywood by 20th-Century Fox producer Darryl Zanuck, Ameche played mostly romantic leads paired with many of the top female stars of the era. In 1939, he played a lead character in comedy film Midnight (1939). He also played the title character in The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939) which led to the use of the word "ameche" as juvenile slang for a telephone. As noted by Mike Kilen in the Iowa City Gazette (December 8, 1993), "The film prompted a generation to call people to the telephone with the phrase: 'You're wanted on the Ameche.'" Such an identity between Ameche and the telephone was forged, that in the 1940 film Go West, Groucho Marx proclaims, "Telephone? This is 1870, Don Ameche hasn't invented the telephone yet."

Ameche was Alice Faye's leading man in Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), then played another real-life figure, Stephen Foster, in Swanee River (1939). He did a third biopic, Lillian Russell (1940) with Faye, and was top billed in a war film, Four Sons (1940). He also starred in two popular musicals, Down Argentine Way (1940), which helped make stars of Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda, and Moon Over Miami (1941), also with Grable. In 1940, he was voted the 21st-most-popular star in Hollywood.

Ameche did Heaven Can Wait (1943), Happy Land (1943), Wing and a Prayer (1944), and Greenwich Village (1944). In 1944, he reportedly earned $247,677 for 1943 ($4,495,498 in 2024 dollars), making him the second highest earner at 20th Century Fox after Spyros Skouras ^{[citation needed]}.