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Jack Albertson Harold "Jack" Albertson (June 16, 1907 – November 25, 1981) was an American actor, comedian, dancer and singer who also performed in vaudeville. Albertson is known for his role as John Cleary in The Subject Was Roses (1968), for which he received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor; Grandpa Joe in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971); Manny Rosen in The Poseidon Adventure (1972); and Ed Brown in the television sitcom Chico and the Man (1974–78). For his contributions to the television industry, Albertson was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in...

Rose Marie is quick to tell you that she was a star before Madonna was even born. The 94-year-old was the very first celebrity to lop off her last name — and don’t you forget it. When a Hollywood agent asked her what she went by after she moved to California in the 1950s, she told him that she had always been simply Rose Marie, and she didn’t see any reason to change things up just because she was going to be on television. Born Rose Marie Mazetta in New York City in 1923, Rose Marie was already famous on...

Beginning in the fifteenth century in a valley in Normandy called the Vau de Vire, from which its name derives, vaudeville became one of the most popular forms of entertainment both in Western Europe and America. Jewish immigrants who flooded into New York from Eastern Europe encountered vaudeville and made it their own. Now two venerable institutions in New York, the Sholem Aleichem Memorial Foundation and the Congress for Yiddish Culture, are jointly sponsoring an evening of Yiddish vaudeville, "You Don't Have to Speak Yiddish to Understand the Truth." The benefit performance will take place next Wednesday evening at the...

Jean Carroll, a comedian of the 1940s and ’50s whose ready wit, impeccable timing and unorthodox blend of glamour and humor made her one of the first female stars of mainstream stand-up comedy, died at a hospital in White Plains on Jan. 1. She was 98 and lived in Hartsdale, N.Y. The death was confirmed by her daughter, Helen Tunick. Though no longer a household name, Ms. Carroll was at midcentury a regular headliner in the country’s best-known theaters and nightclubs. She appeared often on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and had her own short-lived sitcom, “The Jean Carroll Show,” also...

IN the last few years, it has seemed that perhaps America's long-buried history of blackface is being allowed to peek out of the closet. Bob Dylan named his most recent studio album "Love and Theft," after Eric Lott's landmark 1993 study of the form; and in his curious 2003 film, "Masked and Anonymous," Dylan even got Ed Harris to "black up" for a scene. Spike Lee also explored the subject in "Bamboozled," and competing biographies of Stepin Fetchit joined "Where Dead Voices Gather," Nick Tosches' meditation on the minstrel superstar Emmett Miller, on bookshelves. "Old Dan Tucker," the opening track...

The title is, of course, an ancient joke from the vaudeville circuit. It’s an appropriate way to praise, rather than attack, one particular article – and in the process to attack ten thousand others. Here is the lede from “Show Me the Risk!” by Deroy Murdock in NRO (National Review Online) on 19 October 2005: “According to The Archives of Internal Medicine, pharmaceutical companies market a drug that kills some 7,000 Americans annually. These people don’t die instantly, but instead expire after slowly suffering gastrointestinal bleeding. Oddly enough, TV-news producers are ho-hum about this deadly medicine. The Food and Drug...

Editor Daily News Sir: So now we have John Manyjohns and John Smallberries on the Democratic ticket. I hear that John YaYa is their campaign advisor. Somebody call Buckaroo Bonzai quick! ============================== Editor Los Angeles Times Sir: It seems to me that there is an unwritten rule of politics: never pick a second banana who outshines the "star". In particular, one who is better-looking, better-spoken, and smarter than the guy in the #1 slot. I think this originated in Vaudeville but am not sure. I'm pretty sure, though, that it applies equally to politics, which--come to think of it--frequently resembles...