Earle Hagen
Earle Harry Hagen was an American composer who created music for movies and television. His best-known TV themes include those for Make Room for Daddy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy, That Girl and The Mod Squad. According to Hagen, The Andy Griffith Show called for “a simple tune,” so that’s what they delivered. He says it was written in about 15 minutes. Hagen did the famous whistling.
John Banner
Hogan’s Heroes (1965)
Johann Banner, was an Austrian-born American actor, best known for his role as Sergeant Schultz in the situation comedy Hogan’s Heroes (1965–1971). Schultz, constantly encountering evidence that the inmates of his stalag were planning mayhem, frequently feigned ignorance with the catchphrase, “I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!” (or, more commonly as the series went on, “I know nothing, nothing!“).
Gurt Fröbe
AKA Auric Goldfinger
Tall, portly built German born actor (and talented violinist) who notched up over 100 film appearances, predominantly in German-language productions. He will forever be remembered by Western audiences as the bombastic megalomaniac “Auric Goldfinger” trying to kill Sean Connery and irradiate the vast US gold reserves within Fort Knox in the spectacular “James Bond” film Goldfinger (1964). However, due to Fröbe’s thick German accent, his voice was actually dubbed by English actor, Michael Collins.
Louis Lindley Jr.
AKA Slim Pickens
Louis Burton Lindley Jr. Better known by his stage name Slim Pickens, was an American actor and rodeo performer. Starting in the rodeo, Pickens transitioned to acting and appeared in several dozen movies and TV shows.
For much of his career Pickens played mainly cowboy roles; he is perhaps best remembered today for his comic roles in Dr. Strangelove, Blazing Saddles and 1941, and his villainous turn in One-Eyed Jacks.
What we remember most… “What in the wide, wide world of spotrs isa goin on here?” RIP Slim.
Carl Alban Ruman
Stalag 17 (1953)
Wonderfully talented German-born actor, capable of tremendous comedic and dramatic performances, usually as some type of pompous bureaucrat or similarly arrogant individual. He served with the Imperial German Forces in World War I before coming to the United States in 1924. He regularly appeared in high-quality stage productions on Broadway.
In the Hitler Gang, (1944) and Stalag 17, (1953) he gave a superb portrayal of the two-faced POW guard Schulz.
George Frances Hayes
George Frances Hayes
George Francis “Gabby” Hayes (May 7, 1885 – February 9, 1969), was an American actor. He began as something of a leading man and a character player, but he was best known for his numerous appearances in B-Western film series as the bewhiskered, cantankerous, woman-hating, but ever-loyal and brave comic sidekick of the cowboy stars Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers.
Despite his later association with westerns, Hayes did not come from a cowboy background; he did not know how to ride a horse until he was in his forties and had to learn for film roles.
Sterling Holloway
Prof. Oscar Quinn, Prof. Twiddle
Sterling Price Holloway Jr. was an American actor, who appeared in over 100 films and 40 television shows. He did voice acting for The Walt Disney Company, including providing original voice-work for Mr. Stork in Dumbo, Kaa in The Jungle Book and the title character in Winnie the Pooh.
In the adventures of Superman, Holloway returns as eccentric scientist Uncle Oscar, who while trying to cook up a formula for flavored stamp glue ends up with a powerful explosive. Rather than write down the entire formula, Uncle Oscar teaches vital segments of the formula to his talking parakeet Schuyler.
Johnny Carson
John William Carson was an American television host, comedian, writer, and producer. He is best known as the host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Carson received six Emmy Awards, the Television Academy’s 1980 Governor’s Award, and a 1985 Peabody Award. He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987. Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1993.[
George Fenneman
George Fenneman, who earned an enduring place in television history as the good-natured, courtly foil to the tart-tongued mischief of Groucho Marx on the long-running quiz show ”You Bet Your Life,” which was heard for three years on radio before beginning an 11-year run on NBC television in 1950 followed by a long afterlife in reruns, Mr. Fenneman was announcer, on-air bookkeeper and resilient second banana.
