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Jerry Colonna (entertainer)
Gerardo Luigi Colonna (September 17, 1904 – November 21, 1986) was an American musician, actor, comedian, singer, songwriter and trombonist who played the zaniest of Bob Hope's sidekicks in Hope's popular radio shows and films of the 1940s and 1950s. He also voiced the March Hare in Walt Disney's 1951 animated feature film ''Alice in Wonderland''. Musical career Colonna started his career as a trombonist, in orchestras and dance bands in and around his native Boston; he can be heard with Joe Herlihy's Orchestra on discs recorded for Edison Records in the late 1920s. During the 1930s, Colonna played with the CBS house orchestra and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, where he developed a reputation for prankishness and tomfoolery. During his tenure at CBS, he occasionally worked under bandleader Raymond Scott, and made several recordings with Scott's famous Quintette, which typically involved Colonna mouthing nonsense syllables over Scott's band. His off-stage antics were so ...
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Boston
Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeastern United States. It has an area of and a population of 675,647 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the third-largest city in the Northeastern United States after New York City and Philadelphia. The larger Greater Boston metropolitan statistical area has a population of 4.9 million as of 2023, making it the largest metropolitan area in New England and the Metropolitan statistical area, eleventh-largest in the United States. Boston was founded on Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by English Puritans, Puritan settlers, who named the city after the market town of Boston, Lincolnshire in England. During the American Revolution and American Revolutionary War, Revolutionary War, Boston was home to several seminal events, incl ...
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Parody
A parody is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satire, satirical or irony, ironic imitation. Often its subject is an Originality, original work or some aspect of it (theme/content, author, style, etc), but a parody can also be about a real-life person (e.g. a politician), event, or movement (e.g. the French Revolution or Counterculture of the 1960s, 1960s counterculture). Literary scholar Professor Simon Dentith defines parody as "any cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another cultural production or practice". The literary theorist Linda Hutcheon said "parody ... is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text." Parody may be found in art or culture, including literature, parody music, music, Theatre, theater, television and film, animation, and Video game, gaming. The writer and critic John Gross observes in his ''Oxford Book of Parodies'', that parody seems to flourish on te ...
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Impressionist (entertainment)
An impressionist or a mimic is a performer whose act consists of imitating sounds, voices and mannerisms of celebrities and cartoon characters. The word usually refers to a professional comedian/entertainer who specializes in such performances and has developed a wide repertoire of impressions, including adding to them, often to keep pace with current events. Impressionist performances are a classic casino entertainment genre. Someone who imitates one particular person without claiming a wide range, such as a lookalike, is instead called an impersonator. In very broad contexts, "impersonator" may be substituted for "impressionist" where the distinction between the two is less important than avoiding confusion with the use of "impressionist" in painting and music. Usually the most "impressive" aspect of the performance is the vocal fidelity to the target – usually a politician or a famous person. Props may also be employed, such as glasses or hats, but these are now ...
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Dennis Day
Dennis Day (born Owen Patrick Eugene McNulty; May 21, 1916 – June 22, 1988) was an American actor, comedian and singer. He was of Irish descent. Early life Day was born and raised in the Throggs Neck Clason Point section of Bronx in New York City, the second of five children born to Irish immigrants Patrick McNulty and Mary (née Grady) McNulty. His father was a factory electric power engineer. Day graduated from the Cathedral Preparatory School and Seminary and attended Manhattan College in the Bronx, where he sang in the glee club. In 1939, Gene McNulty, as Day was then known, sang on network radio with bandleader Larry Clinton. The Clinton broadcasts were aimed at the collegiate audience, and were often broadcast from a college campus. The 23-year-old McNulty won an audience poll as a favorite vocalist. Radio Day appeared for the first time on Jack Benny's radio show on October 8, 1939, taking the place of another tenor, Kenny Baker. He remained associated with Be ...
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Jack Benny
Jack Benny (born Benjamin Kubelsky; February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974) was an American entertainer who evolved from a modest success as a violinist on the vaudeville circuit to one of the leading entertainers of the twentieth century with a highly popular comedic career in radio, television, and film. He was known for his comic timing and the ability to cause laughter with a long pause or a single expression, such as his signature exasperated summation "''Well!''" His radio and television programs, popular from 1932 until his death in 1974, were a major influence on the sitcom genre. Benny portrayed himself as a miser who obliviously played his violin badly and claimed perpetually to be 39 years of age. Early life Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky () on February 14, 1894 in Chicago, and grew up in nearby Waukegan. He was the son of Jewish immigrants Meyer Kubelsky and Naomi Emma ( Sachs). Meyer was a saloon owner and later a haberdasher who had emigrated to the United Sta ...
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United Service Organizations
The United Service Organizations Inc. (USO) is an American nonprofit-charitable corporation that provides live entertainment, such as comedians, actors and musicians, social facilities, and other programs to members of the United States Armed Forces and their families. Since 1941, it has worked in partnership with the Department of War, and later with the Department of Defense (DoD), relying heavily on private contributions and on funds, goods, and services from various corporate and individual donors. Although it is congressionally chartered, it is not a government agency. Founded during World War II, the USO sought to be the GI's "home away from home" and began a tradition of entertaining the troops and providing social facilities. Involvement in the USO was one of the many ways in which the nation had come together to support the war effort, with nearly 1.5 million people having volunteered their services in some way. The USO initially disbanded in 1947, but was revi ...
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Catchphrase
A catchphrase (alternatively spelled catch phrase) is a phrase or expression recognized by its repeated utterance. Such phrases often originate in popular culture and in the arts, and typically spread through word of mouth and a variety of mass media (such as films, internet, literature and publishing, television, and radio). Some become the de facto or literal "trademark" or "signature" of the person or character with whom they originated, and can be instrumental in the typecasting (acting), typecasting of a particular actor. Catchphrases are often humorous, can be (or become) the punch line of a joke, or a callback (comedy), callback reminder of a previous joke. Culture According to Richard Harris, a psychology professor at Kansas State University who studied why people like to cite films in social situations, using film quotes in everyday conversation is similar to telling a joke and a way to form solidarity with others. "People are doing it to feel good about themselves, to m ...
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Arthur Frank Wertheim
Arthur Frank Wertheim (December 22, 1935 – November 24, 2020) was a scholar in the United States. Early life Arthur Frank Wertheim was born in New York City on December 22, 1935, to Ruth (née Weisberg) and Albert Wertheim, a stockbroker. Wertheim attended the Webb School of California in Claremont, California. In 1957, Werthheim received a B.A. from Yale University. At New York University Werthheim received an M.A. in 1967 and a Ph.D. in 1970. Career From 1971 to 1978 Wertheim was an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Werthheim went to the University of Indonesia, Jakarta where he was a Fulbright professor of American studies for one year, 1978–79. He then was Director of Development Communications within University Relations at the University of California, Los Angeles. Personal life and death Wertheim married Carol J. Youngberg, on February 4, 1972, later, a social science teacher at Roosevelt Junior High Sch ...
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Cavalry
Historically, cavalry (from the French word ''cavalerie'', itself derived from ''cheval'' meaning "horse") are groups of soldiers or warriors who Horses in warfare, fight mounted on horseback. Until the 20th century, cavalry were the most mobile of the combat arms, operating as light cavalry in the roles of reconnaissance, Screening (tactical), screening, and skirmisher, skirmishing, or as heavy cavalry for decisive economy of force and shock attacks. An individual soldier in the cavalry is known by a number of designations depending on era and tactics, such as a cavalryman, Equestrianism, horseman, trooper (rank), trooper, cataphract, knight, Drabant Corps of Charles XII, drabant, hussar, uhlan, mamluk, cuirassier, lancer, dragoon, samurai or horse archer. The designation of ''cavalry'' was not usually given to any Military animal, military forces that used other animals or platforms for mounts, such as chariots, Camel cavalry, camels or War elephant, elephants. Infantry who m ...
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Road To Rio
''Road to Rio'' is a 1947 American musical film, musical comedy film directed by Norman Z. McLeod and starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour. Written by Edmund Beloin and Jack Rose (screenwriter), Jack Rose, the film is about two inept vaudevillians who stow away on a Brazilian-bound ocean liner. Once in Brazil, they foil a plot by a sinister hypnotist to marry off her niece to a greedy fortune hunter. ''Road to Rio'' was the fifth of the "''Road to ...''" series. Plot Musicians Scat Sweeney (Crosby) and Hot Lips Barton (Hope) are refugees from a swing quintet that has disbanded. Meanwhile Lucia is a glamorous nightclub singer. Scat and Hot Lips join her as backing musicians on clarinet and trumpet. They travel the United States trying to find work and stay away from girls. After running from state to state, each time retreating because of a girl, they stow away aboard a Rio de Janeiro, Rio-bound ship. They then get mixed up with the distraught Lucia, who first tha ...
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Garden Of The Moon (film)
''Garden of the Moon'' is a 1938 American comedy film directed by Busby Berkeley and screenplay by Jerry Wald and story by Richard Macaulay. The film stars Pat O'Brien, Margaret Lindsay, John Payne, Johnnie Davis, Melville Cooper and Isabel Jeans. The film was released by Warner Bros. on October 1, 1938. Plot When Rudy Vallee has an accident and cannot meet his engagement at the Garden of the Moon nightclub, Toni Blake, the club's press agent, convinces owner John Quinn to hire young bandleader Don Vincente. Don and his band fly out to California from New York for the engagement, but Don almost quits when he learns he is supposed to perform with a woman singer because, in the past, women singers have caused rifts among the musicians. Don's defiance enrages Quinn, who announces that he will end the engagement as soon as Vallee recovers from his accident. The band, which plays swing music, is very popular with the public. Nonetheless, Quinn forces Don to use the woman singer. Don ...
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Warner Bros
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI), commonly known as Warner Bros. (WB), is an American film studio, filmed entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios Burbank, Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California and the main namesake subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD). Founded on April 4, 1923, by four brothers, Harry Warner, Harry, Albert Warner, Albert, Sam Warner, Sam and Jack L. Warner, Jack Warner, the company established itself as a leader in the American film industry before diversifying into animation, television, and video games. It is one of the "Major film studios, Big Five" major American film studios and a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). The company is known for its film studio division, the Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, which includes Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, Castle Rock Entertainment and the Warner Bros. Television Group. Bugs Bunny, a character created for the ' ...
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