Ameche, Don (1908–1993)

US actor. He was the conventionally handsome leading man of many Hollywood films from the mid-1930s to the mid-1940s, such as the musical drama Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), the Ernst Lubitsch classic Heaven Can Wait (1943), and Douglas Sirk's film noir Sleep, My Love (1948). With his role as an aging millionaire in the comedy Trading Places (1983), he re-emerged as a substantial character actor.

Ameche was born in Wisconsin. He started acting while at university, appeared with repertory companies and on the radio, and made his first film 1935. Over the next ten years he appeared in a large number of movies, often in the guise of a playboy in comedies like Josette (1938) and musicals like Down Argentine Way (1940). Other films from this period are The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939), Lillian Russell (1940), and The Feminine Touch (1941). After World War II, his film appearances became sporadic, but he was active in the theatre, appearing in 1975 in a touring production of the musical Good News with Alice Faye (1915–98), with whom he had co-starred in several earlier films. His screen comeback in Trading Places led to supporting roles in several further films, such as Cocoon (1985), and the leading part in Things Change (1988), in which he played the role of an ageing shoeshine man with a finely blended mixture of pathos and wry humour.