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| Also Known As: | Eddie Anderson, Edmund L Anderson, Rochester, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson | Died: | February 28, 1977 |
| Born: | September 18, 1905 | Cause of Death: | congestive heart failure |
| Birth Place: | Oakland, California, USA | Profession: | actor, chorus boy |
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This gravel-voiced African-American comic player from the vaudeville stage and nightclub revues is best remembered as Jack Benny's worried valet and straight man, 'Rochester' for 28 years on Benny's radio and later TV show (1950-65). Although he entered films in the late 1920s usually playing stereotyped servants, and appeared as Noah in "Green Pastures" (1936) and Uncle Peter in "Gone With the Wind" (1939), the rolling-eyed Anderson had his most notable film performance as the lead opposite Ethel Waters in Vincente Minnelli's all-black musical "Cabin in the Sky" (1943).
This gravel-voiced African-American comic player from the vaudeville stage and nightclub revues is best remembered as Jack Benny's worried valet and straight man, 'Rochester' for 28 years on Benny's radio and later TV show (1950-65). Although he entered films in the late 1920s usually playing stereotyped servants, and appeared as Noah in "Green Pastures" (1936) and Uncle Peter in "Gone With the Wind" (1939), the rolling-eyed Anderson had his most notable film performance as the lead opposite Ethel Waters in Vincente Minnelli's all-black musical "Cabin in the Sky" (1943).
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CAST: (feature film)
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Notes
"From his first radio appearance on East Sunday in 1937 to the last of the television "specials" that followed the formal demise of Benny's television series in 1964, the surest laugh in show business was the one that renewed itself every time Mr. Anderson summoned a full measure of skepticism to his throat and punctured the ultimate poseur's latest pretension with a rasping, "What's that, boss?" --Robert McG. Thomas Jr. (From The New York Times Obituary, March 1, 1977)
"To most listeners, however, lost in 'reality' that characterized big-time radio, Rochester was not a character on a show, but an actual employee of an actual person, who after all, was playing himself.
"Mr. Benny added to the illusion by omitting Mr. Anderson's name from the cast, so that audiences would not think of him as an actor." --Robert Mc.G. Thomas Jr. (From The New York Times obituary, March 1, 1977)
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