Don Ameche was one of the leading men of 20th Century Fox

Don Ameche (1908–1993)

Don Ameche was a busy actor at the star-starved Twentieth Century–Fox of the latter 1930s and early 1940s. An amiable leading man in light comedies and musicals, Don Ameche occasionally showed his stuff in dramas as well, most memorably in the BIOPIC The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939). The movie was so successful and the actor became so identified by the public with his role as the inventor of the telephone that a phrase of the day was “I'll call you on the Ameche.” In later years he disappeared from the big screen only to make a triumphant return in Cocoon (1985), in a role turned down by both Red Buttons and Buddy Ebsen and for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award.

Born Dominic Felix Amici in Kenosha, Wisconsin, his life's goal was to become a lawyer. While in law school, he was asked to fill in for a no-show leading player in a stock production of Excess Baggage. He took the role, abandoned law school, and eventually went on to several other acting roles before serving a long stint on radio.

MGM and Twentieth Century–Fox

He had his first screen test in 1935 at MGM, but the studio didn't think he had any future in the movies, and they passed on him. The following year, Twentieth Century–Fox retested him and DARRYL F. ZANUCK, Fox's president, immediately put the actor to work in Sins of Man (1936).

Don Ameche was handed lead roles in a number of romances, many of them triangles where he ultimately lost the girl to Fox's other male star, Tyrone Power. The studio's only major female star was Alice Faye, and Don Ameche was often teamed with her. Ultimately, the pair were the leads of many of Fox's cheery musicals of the late 1930s and early 1940s, among them: You Can't Have Everything (1937), In Old Chicago (1938), Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), Lillian Russell (1940), and That Night in Rio (1941).

Overworked and overexposed by Fox in movies far too similar, Don Ameche's popularity began to sag. Fortunately, however, Fox loaned him to other studios, for which he made several good movies that breathed new life into his ragged career. Films such as Kiss the Boys Goodbye (1941), The Magnificent Dope (1942), and ERNST LUBITSCH's Heaven Can Wait (1943) - in which he had his best role of all - briefly rekindled his star power.

Career

It didn't last very long. He was unable to survive a series of mediocre movies such as Greenwich Village (1944), Guest Wife (1945), and That's My Man (1947). By the end of the 1940s his Hollywood career appeared to be over. Don Ameche proved to be enormously resilient. He surfaced on TV in the 1950s and resumed his Broadway career, starring in such hits as the original staged musical production of Silk Stockings in 1955 (later filmed with Fred Astaire in his role) and Goldilocks in 1958. In his later years he returned to the big screen in low-budget movies such as Picture Mommy Dead (1966).

Persistence has a way of propelling nearly forgotten Hollywood actors back toward the top. Long after solid performances given in Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came (1970) and The Boatniks (1970), Don Ameche suddenly aroused a great deal of positive comment for the ease and professional aplomb he brought to his role as the right-wing, racist businessman in the EDDIE MURPHY smash Trading Places (1983). The previously mentioned Cocoon followed a few years later, and that film's success led Don Ameche to reprise his role in Cocoon II (1988) and to a much admired star performance in David Mamet's Things Change (1988). A vocal believer in health food and vitamins, Don Ameche continued to work well into his 80s, from Coming to America (1988) to Corrinna, Corrinna (1994), released after his death.

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