Don Ameche - Vaudeville and Movies

Vaudeville and Movies

Ameche had done well in college dramatics and when a lead actor for a stock company production of Excess Baggage did not turn up, a friend persuaded him to stand in for the missing actor. He 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 Guinan dropped him from the act, dismissing him as "too stiff." He made his film debut in 1935 and by the late 1930s, had established himself as a major actor in Hollywood. He appeared in such films as Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), as the title character in The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939). It led to the use of the word, "ameche," as slang for telephone in common catchphrases, as noted by Mike Kilen in the Iowa City Gazette (December 8, 1993): "The film prompted a generation to call people to the telephone with the phrase: 'You're wanted on the Ameche.'" Another highlight was co-starring with Gene Tierney in Ernest Lubitch's Heaven Can Wait in 1943, a film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He later claimed that this was his favourite film of his own. In 1940, he was voted the 21st most popular star in Hollywood.

Ameche played so many roles based on real people that on one of his radio broadcasts Fred Allen joked that "Pretty soon, Don Ameche will be playing Don Ameche." Soon afterwards, in It's in the Bag! (1945), which starred Allen, Ameche indeed played himself in a bit part.