Steve Wayne (1920 – September 5, 2004) was a film and television

actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), l ...

appearing in movies and

commercials A television advertisement (also called a television commercial, TV commercial, commercial, spot, television spot, TV spot, advert, television advert, TV advert, television ad, TV ad or simply an ad) is a span of television programming produce ...

for products such as

Alka-Seltzer Alka-Seltzer is an effervescent antacid and pain reliever first marketed by the Dr. Miles Medicine Company of Elkhart, Indiana, United States. Alka-Seltzer contains three active ingredients: aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) (ASA), sodium bicarbon ...

Wheaties Wheaties is an American brand of breakfast cereal that is made by General Mills. It is well known for featuring prominent athletes on its packages and has become a cultural icon in the United States. Originally introduced as Washburn's Gold Meda ...

and Ocean Spray. Wayne was born Norman Weinberger. He had two brothers. He lived on Payson Street in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up in the same neighborhood as professional boxer Jack Portnoy. He traveled to

Hollywood, California Hollywood is a neighborhood in the Central Los Angeles, central region of Los Angeles, California. Its name has come to be a metonymy, shorthand reference for the Cinema of the United States, U.S. film industry and the people associated with i ...

with the dream of an acting career. From 1944 to 1957, Wayne appeared in 27 movies and T.V. programs. Among his most noted films were ''

Bedtime for Bonzo ''Bedtime for Bonzo'' is a 1951 American comedy film directed by Fred de Cordova and starring Ronald Reagan, Diana Lynn, and a chimpanzee named Tamba as Bonzo. Its central character, psychology professor Peter Boyd (Reagan), tries to teach hum ...

'' with Ronald Reagan, ''

The Sands of Two Jima ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in E ...

'' with John Wayne, and ''

Stalag 17 ''Stalag 17'' is a 1953 American war film which tells the story of a group of American airmen confined with 40,000 prisoners in a World War II German prisoner of war camp "somewhere on the Danube". Their compound holds 630 Sergeants represent ...

'' with

William Holden William Holden (born William Franklin Beedle Jr.; April 17, 1918 – November 12, 1981) was an American actor, and one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1950s. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the film ''Stalag 17'' (1953) ...

. In 1979 Wayne noticed that music groups were plastering fliers over "No Smoking" and "Fire Area" signs in his heavily wooded Laurel Canyon neighborhood, not far from the site of a major fire that had destroyed homes. For the next 2 decades, Wayne tore down thousands of illegal fliers all over Los Angeles County "If everybody just takes down one sign a week, we could clean up Los Angeles easily," he said. He kept at it nearly up to the day he died, stopping to rip down signs "even when coming home from his chemo appointments," said his daughter, Cathy Wayne. Wayne was married to Nancy and had one child. She died in 1999, and he died on September 5, 2004, in Los Angeles, California of cancer; he was 84 years old.

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* * 1920 births 2004 deaths Deaths from cancer in California Burials at Hollywood Forever Cemetery {{US-screen-actor-1920s-stub