Horton was born in 1886 and died 84 years later on September 29, 1970. He had a long entertainment career beginning on the Vaudeville stage in 1906 then on Broadway, motion pictures, radio and television.

Even though he is perhaps best remembered for his narration of Fracture Fairy Tales, he is also considered a master of the supporting role, appearing in many films of the 1930′s. His film career began in silent pictures with his last role in the film Cold Turkey, released after his death. He also appeared as Medicine Man Roaring Chicken in the 60′s TV series F-Troop.

Horton developed his own variation of the double-take for his supporting roles. He would smile and nod in agreement when encountering a possible embarrassing situation and once he realized what was happening his face turned into a sober, trouble mask.

Edward Everett Hale, author of The Man Without a Country was Horton’s grandfather and he was named after him. Horton used his full name as his stage name through the encouragement of his father, who said there may be others using the name Edward Horton, but no one else else would be using Edward Everett Horton.

After his death the city of Los Angeles named a street in the district where he lived Edward Everett Horton Lane in his honor.

They first began to work together in 1935 at the Eltinge burlesque theater on 42nd Street in New York. Abbott had been working in burlesque for years, usually as the straight man. Costello had tried to become a film actor, but after his failure there, began work on burlesque circuit. In 1936 they formally made the partnership. Their act was built by refining sketches from vaudeville and burlesque with Abbott as the devious straight man and Costello as his stumbling, comprehension-challenged partner.

In the late 1930’s they worked on radio as regulars for 2 years on the Kate Smith Hour. It was there that Costello began using a high-pitched childish voice since it had been difficult for those listening to tell them apart.

In 1940 they appeared in their first movie, One Night in the Tropics, in a supporting capacity. They were the hit of the film and Universal signed them to a long-term contract. The duo made over 30 films between 1940 and 1956 and in many ways saved Universal Studios. Between 1942 and 1952 they were a top 10 box office attraction. Also in the 1940’s they appeared on their own radio program. The Abbott and Costello Show mixed comedy with musical interludes.

In 1951 they moved into television, first as frequent hosts of The Colgate Comedy Hour, a live hour of vaudeville. This gave new sparkle to their old routines. Then in 1952 they began a film a half hour comedy casting the duo as unemployed wastrels, similar to their radio program.

By the mid 50’s their popularity was waning, due in part to them glutting the market with the same routines. Universal dropped them in 1955 and after making one last independent film (Dance with me Henry) Abbott retired. In 1956 they were charged by the IRS for back taxes, which forced them to sell most of their assets.

Before the American’s joined in World War II he was a newsman in Germany working for CBS and Edward R. Marrow. He had the chance to interview many Nazis, including the Chief, Adolf Hitler. He was one of the last American reporters in Germany before they threw him out of the country, leaving for Switzerland on December 6, 1941. Last Train from Berlin: An Eye-Witness Account of Germany at War published in 1942 was his account of his observation on Germany in the year before he left.

In 1944, having not to be able to leave Switzerland and delivering reports from there, he was able to join the Allied forces as the crossed the Rhine River into Berlin. For CBS he reported on the surrender of Germany in 1945. He followed the Nuremberg Trials and was witness to the execution of many Nazi leaders.

By the end of the 1950s he had mover to the Washington DC area reporting on news from the nations capital. When John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon had the first ever televised presidential debates, he was the moderator.

Smith was in his own way a political activist. When doing a documentary on the battle between civil rights forces and the police of Birmingham, Alabama, he concluded the show with a line from Edmund Burke, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” CBS Chief William S. Paley did not support him when he was asked to remove the line from the show and quit the network.

From CBS, which was the top news network on television in 1962, he moved to ABC, which was a distant third. By the end of the decade he had become one of the two evening news anchors, first with Frank Reynolds and then with Harry Reasoner remaining on the news desk, where he was one of the first to call for Nixon to resign, until 1976. He moved into retirement in 1979. Smith lived a long retirement dieing on February 15, 2002.

James Francis Durante was born on February 10, 1893 in Brooklyn, New York. Durante had one unique feature. That being a huge nose. During his career he made jokes about it calling it a “Schnozzola”.

Durante began his show business career as a Ragtime piano player. When appearing in Coney Island around 1911 he was billed as “Ragtime Jimmy”. He would adopt the new New Orleans Jazz style and worked as a performer and promoter of Jazz into the 1920s.

In the late 1920s he would turn to the Vaudeville Theater as part of the comic team Clayton, Jackson and Durante. He and the team became quite popular in New York. So popular that he was asked to do the play Jumbo. This role was the one that pushed him into stardom.

From here he would expand into movies, radio and when the new medium was expanding, Television. He became one of the most popular performers of his generation. He would die on January 29, 1980

Jimmy Durante is associated with two phrases. Those are: “Inka Dinka Doo” and “Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.” “Inka Dinka Doo” was the 1934 novelty he recorded and it became his theme song.

“Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.” was the line that he closed his radio and later his television program. For a while he kept the reason for it a secret until he finally told that it referred to his first wife, Jeanne Olsen, whom he married on June 19, 1921 and who died on Valentine’s Day in 1943. Calabash was a small town near Chicago that they had stayed in while on a tour. A town which she fell in love.

Richard Norton Tulfield was born on December 11, 1926.

While many will recognize the voice, he rarely appeared in front of the camera. He spent his career as an announcer beginning in the 1950s, through the 60s working on most of the TV series of Irwin Allen and into the 80s voicing narrations in cartoon series such as Thundarr the Barbarian and Spider-man.

He spoke the first words in three of Allen’s series along with Lost In Space, where he also served as the narrator he opened the first episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea with “This is the Seaview, the most extraordinary submarine in all the seven seas” and The Time Tunnel, “Two American scientists are lost…”

In the 1998 movie based on the series he once again voiced the Robot.

Bob May, who died on January 18, 2009 was the man inside the Robot in the TV Series.

It was first announced on the cover of the San Francisco Oracle first Issue as “A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In.”

Timothy Leary, one of the featured speakers, made his first appearance in San Francisco at the rally where he cried out the phrase”Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out”. Others to speak were Poets Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Lew Welch, and Lenore Kandel.

Music was also featured from Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. These bands have come to be best known as the psychedelic sounds of San Francisco of the late 1960′s.

Allen Cohen one of the organizers characterized the event as a necessary meeting-of-the-minds. At the time there was two philosphically opposed factions of the late 1966 San Francisco-based counter culture. On one side were the Berkeley radicals, who were tending toward increased militancy towards the policies of the Vietnam war, and then there was the Haight-Ashbury hippies, who leaned towards peaceful protest and ongoing joyful celebration through peace and love.

After this everything seemed to want to be IN and helped to give the name to the popular comedy Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in.