Sam Honigberg | |
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Born | Sam Honigberg December 22, 1911 Vovkovyntsi, Russian Empire |
Died | May 17, 2007 95) | (aged
Occupation | Media correspondent, publicist |
Sam Honigberg (1911-2007) was once an associate editor of Billboard Magazine and then later head of a department for Frederick Brothers Artists Corp. [1] He was also a publicist who represented acts such as George Gobel, Bob Newhart, Steve Allen and the Leave It To Beaver series. [2]
Honigberg was born in the Russian Empire. In 1926, he and his family he emigrated to the United States where they settled in Pittsburgh. He later attended the Pittsburgh University. One of his classmates was Gene Kelly. [3]
He was a longtime friend of entertainer George Gobel who had also worked for as his publicity man. [4] [5] For a period of time, the Honigbergs lived in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles. [6]
His wife Anne died at age 85 on July 1, 1999, of natural causes at Encino Hospital. [7] He died of natural causes on 17 May 2007 at age 95. [8] [9]
He started working as a Pittsburgh-based correspondent for The Billboard in the early 1930s. He spent ten years with the magazine, where he worked at both the New York City and Chicago offices. In his final year there he worked on the magazine's night club, cocktail and vaudeville departments. In 1943, he left to take up a position at Frederick Brothers Artists Corp in the act dept, replacing a role vacated by Freddy Williamson. [10] In 1950, he had Kenny Myers working for him at his Chicago office handling DJ promotion. [11] [12]
He worked as a unit publicist for RKO, Paramount and Universal. He also worked for Rogers & Cowan for a few years. [13]
George Leslie Goebel was an American humorist, actor, and comedian. He was best known as the star of his own weekly comedy variety television series, The George Gobel Show, broadcasting from 1954 to 1959 on NBC, and on CBS from 1959 to 1960,. He was also a familiar panelist on the NBC game show Hollywood Squares.
Harry Richman was an American singer, actor, dancer, comedian, pianist, songwriter, bandleader, and nightclub performer, at his most popular in the 1920s and 1930s. In his peak years, he was one of the highest‐paid performers in show business.
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Harry Steppe, March 16, 1888 – November 22, 1934 was a Russian Jewish-American actor, musical comedy performer, headliner comedian, writer, librettist, director and producer, who toured North America working in Vaudeville and Burlesque. Steppe performed at several well-known theaters on the Columbia, Mutual and Orpheum circuits. Steppe was one of Bud Abbott's first partners.
Edward Franklin Albee II was an American vaudeville impresario.
Dixie Roberts (1919-2010) was a vaudeville tap and specialty dancer, who also danced in chorus lines and performed musical comedy. A featured dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies, she was often billed as the dancer who "taps with a Southern accent", although she was born in Elmhurst, New York. She explained her moniker, saying that she was conceived in her mother's hometown of Atlanta. Roberts grew up on Long Island and also in upstate New York, where she learned to dance and became an accomplished athlete before her years of touring the U.S. as an entertainer.
Nils T. Granlund was an American show producer, entertainment industry entrepreneur and radio industry pioneer. He was a publicist for Marcus Loew who formed Loews Theatres and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Although his birth name was Nils Theodore Granlund, he later used Thor as a middle name, and after appearing on early radio was commonly referenced only by his initials, N.T.G., on the air and in print.
Billboard is an American music and entertainment magazine published weekly by the Billboard-Hollywood Reporter Media Group, a division of MRC Media & Info. The magazine provides music charts, news, video, opinion, reviews, events, and style related to the music industry. Its music charts include the Hot 100, Billboard 200, and Global 200, tracking the most popular albums and songs in different genres of music. It also hosts events, owns a publishing firm, and operates several TV shows.
Mister Kelly’s was a nightclub on Rush Street in Chicago which existed from 1953 to 1975. From around 1956 until its demise, it was a springboard to fame for many entertainers, especially jazz singers and comedians. As reported in the Chicago Tribune, "It was a supernova in the local and national nightlife firmament." Mister Kelly’s was owned and operated by brothers Oscar and George Marienthal, whose Chicago empire included the London House, an upscale jazz supper club, and the theatrically oriented Happy Medium.
Gale Robbins, May 7, 1921 – February 18, 1980) was an American actress and singer.
Theodore Roosevelt High School is a public 4–year high school in the Albany Park neighborhood on the northwest side of Chicago, United States. The school is operated by the Chicago Public Schools district. Roosevelt opened and began existence in 1922 as William G. Hibbard High School, but was moved into a new building and renamed in honor of the 26th president of the United States in 1927.
Barto and Mann: Dewey Barto and George Mann, known as the "laugh kings" of vaudeville, were a comedic dance act from the late 1920s to the early 1940s. Their acrobatic, somewhat risqué, performance played on their disparities in height; Barto was 4'11" and Mann was 6'6".
Kate Murtagh was an American actress and singer-comedian, a native of Los Angeles, California.
George David Givot was a Russian-born American comedian and actor on Broadway and in vaudeville, movies, television and radio. He was known for speaking in a comedic fake Greek dialect and was styled the "Greek Ambassador of Good Will". His best known movie role may be as the voice of Tony in the Disney film Lady and the Tramp (1955).
Leonard Harper was a producer, stager, and choreographer in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s.
The Eddie Fisher Show was an American musical comedy/variety television series starring Eddie Fisher and his then wife Debbie Reynolds. Other series regulars included George Gobel, Gisele MacKenzie and Mary Tyler Moore. The series alternated on Tuesday nights with The George Gobel Show with episodes running from October 1, 1957 – March 17, 1959 on NBC.
Leroy Robert White, better known as Lee "Lasses" White or Leroy"Lasses" White, was an American vaudeville pianist, songwriter and entertainer who became an actor of the stage, screen and radio. He became famous doing minstrel shows during the early part of the 1900s, and wrote one of the first copyrighted twelve-bar blues, "Nigger Blues". After spending some time on radio, White entered the film industry in the late 1930s. During his eleven-year career he appeared in over 70 films.
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Annamary Dickey, also known as Annamary Dickey Laue, was an American soprano and actress in operas, operettas, musicals, night clubs, and concerts who had an active performance career from the 1930s through the 1960s. She began her career as a regular performer with the Chautauqua Opera and the St. Louis Municipal Opera in the mid to late 1930s. In 1939 she won the Metropolitan Opera Auditions of the Air which earned her a contract with the Metropolitan Opera (Met). She was a soprano in mainly secondary roles at the Met from 1939 to 1944; appearing in productions of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, Massenet's Manon, Delibes' Lakmé, Charpentier's Louise, Bizet's Carmen, Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, and Smetana's The Bartered Bride. Her most significant role at the Met was as Musetta in Puccini's La bohème. A strikingly beautiful woman with a passion for fashionable clothes, she gained the moniker the "Glamour Girl of the 'Met'" and headlined a fashion campaign for Saks Fifth Avenue in 1945.
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