Crazy Knights

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Billy Gilbert (September 12, 1894 – September 23, 1971) was an American comedian and actor known for his comic sneeze routines. He appeared in over 200 feature films, short subjects and television shows starting in 1929. He is not to be confused with silent film actor Billy Gilbert (a.k.a. Little Billy Gilbert, born William V. Campbell, 1891–1961).

Samuel (born Shmuel) Horwitz (March 11, 1895 – November 22, 1955), known professionally as Shemp Howard, was an American actor and comedian. He is best known today for his role as the third stooge in the Three Stooges, a role he first portrayed at the beginning of the act in the early 1920s (1923–1932) while the act was still associated with Ted Healy and known as "Ted Healy and his Stooges", and again from 1946 until his death in 1955. Between his times with the Stooges, Shemp had a successful film career as a solo comedian. He was born in Manhattan, New York and raised in Brooklyn, the third-born of five Horwitz brothers, sons of Lithuanian Jewish parents. Moses - professionally known as Moe Howard - and Jerome - professionally known as Curly Howard - were his younger brothers. Throughout his career Shemp seldom stuck to the script and would liven up scenes with ad-libbed incidental dialogue or wisecracks. This became a trademark of his performances. His most notable characteristic as a Stooge was a high-pitched "bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee!" sound, a sort of soft screech done by inhaling. It became his signature sound. He used his somewhat homely appearance for comic effect, often mugging grotesquely or allowing his hair to fall in disarray. Shemp was married to the former Gertrude Frank, whom he wed in September 1925. The couple had one child, Morton (1926–1972). On November 22, 1955, while returning home in a taxicab following attending a boxing match with friends, Shemp, age 60, died of a sudden massive heart attack. The Three Stooges have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Max Everitt Rosenbloom (November 1, 1907 – March 6, 1976) was an American boxer, actor, and television personality. Born in Leonard Bridge, Connecticut, Rosenbloom was nicknamed "Slapsie Maxie" by a journalist due to his open-gloved style of boxing. In 1930, he won the New York light heavyweight title. In 1932, he won the World Light Heavyweight Championship. He held and defended the title until November 1934, when he lost it to Bob Olin. As a professional boxer, Rosenbloom relied on hitting and moving to score points. He was very difficult to hit cleanly with a power punch and his fights often went the full number of required rounds. In his boxing career, he received thousands of punches to the head, which eventually led to the deterioration of his motor functions. In 1937, he accepted a role in a Hollywood film. He became a character actor, portraying comical "big guys" in movies that included Each Dawn I Die, and Maxie retired from boxing permanently in 1939. Slapsy Maxie's, the first comedy club, opened in San Francisco and Los Angeles. He continued acting on radio, television, and in a number of films, usually playing comedy roles as a big, clumsy, punch-drunk—but lovable—character. He appeared in a number of episodes (playing himself) of The Fred Allen Show—including a skit with Marlene Dietrich. Rosenbloom played an important part in television's first 90-minute drama, Requiem for a Heavyweight, written by Rod Serling, and starring Jack Palance as a boxer at the end of his career. Rosenbloom played an ex-boxer, whose life revolved around retelling old boxing stories night after night to other ex-boxers in a down-and-out bar. It is the fate that looms for Mountain McClintock, Palance's character, if he cannot adjust to a new life outside the ring. Slapsy Maxie's, his nightclub, is prominently featured in a 2013 crime film, Gangster Squad, which is set in 1949. The club, which actually operated in 1939 at 7165 Beverly Blvd and from 1943 to 1947, was located at 5665 Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles.

Tim Ryan was an American performer who is probably best known today as a film actor. Ryan and his wife, Irene who later played Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies, were a show business team that performed on Broadway, film and radio. They made some short films for Educational Pictures in the mid-1930s based on their vaudeville act. They were married from 1922 to 1942. Even after their divorce in 1942, the couple occasionally worked together. In the 1940s, Ryan found opportunities at Monogram Pictures where he acted in films as well as wrote screenplays. In films of the 1940s and the early 1950s, Ryan appeared on screen playing numerous roles as cops, newspaper editors and detectives.

A stage actress, Urecal made her screen debut in 1934. For the remainder of her career and two hundred plus movies, she played cleaning women, landladies, shopkeepers and the like. She was known as a Marjorie Main type actress and later went on to a career in television playing in such shows as "Tugboat Annie" and "Peter Gunn." Minerva claimed her name was an amalgam of her hometown, Eureka, California.

John Rummel Hamilton was an American actor, who played in many movies and television programs. He is probably best remembered for his role as the blustery newspaper editor Perry White for the 1950s television program “Adventures of Superman.”

Dan White (March 25, 1908 - July 7, 1980) was born to George & Orpha White about one mile from the Suwannee River in Falmouth, Florida. Falmouth was a small sleepy town then, as it is still today. He was one of 12 siblings who were moved to Lakeland sometime around WW I. Lakeland is where Dan was introduced into show business in 1922 at the age of 14. He ran away from home when the show moved on and traveled thousands of miles throughout the South in tent, minstrel, vaudeville and theater shows. Dan performed on stage with his brother Willard for nine years with a stock company in Tampa's old Rialto Theater. Frances Langford worked with him during this time and it was Dan who told her to go to Hollywood. During this period he met Matilda "Tilda" Mae Spivey on the stage, and married her on February 25, 1933. Tilda had a two-year-old child from a previous marriage by the name of Arthur "Art" Grant Gifford. Times were tough, so Dan had to get out of show business for a while to make some real money. In 1934 he found work with the Conservation Corps in Homestead, Florida, but show business was always in his heart. Dan knew he had what it took to "make it" in Hollywood, so he decided to make the move to California in 1935. They packed all their possessions into their Ford and started the long, arduous trek across the country. This was during the Great Depression, and money was very tight. They had to stop frequently in various cities across the country to make extra money to continue their journey. Dan was a very good auto mechanic and never had a problem finding this type of work wherever he went. This skill paid off once during the filming of To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). During the "mob" scene, one of the cars they were to drive away in would not start. Dan opened the hood, stepped onto the front bumper, and had the car running in no time flat.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Isaac Stanford Jolley (October 24, 1900 – December 7, 1978) was an American character actor of film and television, primarily in western roles as cowboys, law-enforcement officers, or villains. Recognized by his slight build, narrow face, and pencil-thin moustache, Jolley appeared some five hundred times on the large or small screen. Isaac Stanford Jolley was born in a circus trailer in Elizabeth, New Jersey, while the circus owned by his father had a three-day stop there.[2] Jolley toured as a child with his father's traveling circus and worked in vaudeville. He was a student of the Edward Clark Academy Theater. Television roles From 1950 to 1953, Jolley first appeared on television with six castings in different role in the series, The Lone Ranger with Clayton Moore. He appeared twice in 1953 in the syndicated western series, The Range Rider. He made two appearances as Parker in Tales of the Texas Rangers, with series stars Willard Parker and Harry Lauter. Jolley guest starred as the henchman Walt, along with Clayton Moore and Darryl Hickman in the 1954 episode "Annie Gets Her Man" of the syndicated Western, Annie Oakley. He appeared as Sheriff Bascom in the 1954 episode "Black Bart" of Stories of the Century. Jolley soon appeared multiple times on a wide range of other western series, including, The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (three times), The Cisco Kid (ten), Tales of the Texas Rangers (twice), Sergeant Preston of the Yukon (twice), The Roy Rogers Show (three), The Gene Autry Show (four), Sky King (four), Death Valley Days (five), 26 Men (five appearances, again with Tristram Coffin, the series star), Wanted Dead or Alive (two), Bronco (twice), Tales of Wells Fargo (twice), The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (six), Maverick (six), Lawman (six), Cheyenne (seven), Rawhide (five), Wagon Train (ten), The Virginian (two), Daniel Boone (two), Laredo (two), The Big Valley (three), Bonanza (eight), and Gunsmoke (nine). In 1960, he guest starred as the Indian named Singing Arrow in the series finale, "The Search," of the syndicated western, Pony Express, with Grant Sullivan. In 1962, he was cast as The Stranger in the episode "Quarantine" of the NBC western series, The Tall Man, starring Barry Sullivan, and Clu Gulager. In 1965, Jolley appeared as Enos Scoggins in "The Greatest Coward on Earth" of the Chuck Connors series, Branded. He had also appeared with Connors on ABC's The Rifleman in one of the last episodes of the series in 1963 in the role of Joe Fogner in "Hostages to Fortune" (1963). He appeared four times in 1956 in archival footage on the children's western The Gabby Hayes Show. In 1966, Jolley appeared on the show F Troop as Colonel Ferguson in the episode "Survival of the Fittest". Jolley's last Western roles were in 1976: as (1) a farmer in ABC's The Macahans, the pilot of James Arness's second western series, How the West Was Won, and (2) as a drunkard in the short-lived Tim Matheson and Kurt Russell series The Quest. CLR