1. Don Ameche was an American actor, comedian and vaudevillian.
21 Facts About Don Ameche
1. 2.
Don Ameche won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Cocoon.
3.
Don Ameche was born as Dominic Felix Amici on May 31,1908, in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
4.
Don Ameche was the second-oldest of eight children, the others being: brothers Umberto, James, and Louis, and sisters Elizabeth, Catherine, Mary and Anna.
5.
Don Ameche 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".
6.
Don Ameche played the title character in The Story of Alexander Graham Bell which led to the use of the word "ameche" as juvenile slang for a telephone.
7.
Don Ameche was Alice Faye's leading man in Hollywood Cavalcade, then played another real-life figure, Stephen Foster, in Swanee River.
8.
Don Ameche did a third biopic, Lillian Russell with Faye, and was top billed in a war film, Four Sons.
9.
Don Ameche starred in two popular musicals, Down Argentine Way, which helped make stars of Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda, and Moon Over Miami, with Grable.
10.
Don Ameche did Heaven Can Wait, Happy Land, Wing and a Prayer, and Greenwich Village.
11.
Don Ameche had his own program, The Old Gold Don Ameche Show, on NBC Red in the early 1940s.
12.
In 1950 Don Ameche became the star of Holiday Hotel, on ABC-TV.
13.
Don Ameche appeared regularly in films until 1970, as he shifted to television and the stage.
14.
Don Ameche returned to films after thirteen years with Trading Places, where he was cast when director John Landis had someone in mind from the 1930s and 1940s who had not played many villainous roles and came upon Ameche.
15.
From 1946 to 1949, together with other Los Angeles entertainment figures including Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, Ameche owned the Los Angeles Dons of the All-America Football Conference, a rival to the National Football League.
16.
Don Ameche was instrumental in forming and leading the ownership group the year before play began and initially served as team president.
17.
Don Ameche was married to Honore Prendergast from 1932 until her death in 1986.
18.
One of their four sons, Ron Don Ameche, owned a restaurant, "Don Ameche's Pumpernickel" in Coralville, Iowa.
19.
Don Ameche was Roman Catholic and a Republican who supported the campaign of Thomas Dewey in the 1944 United States presidential election and Dwight Eisenhower during the 1952 presidential election.
20.
On December 6,1993, Don Ameche died at his son Richard Don Ameche's house in Scottsdale, Arizona, of prostate cancer at age 85.
21.
Don Ameche was cremated and his ashes are buried at Resurrection Catholic Cemetery in Asbury, Iowa.