
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 8, 1993                   TAG: 9312080084
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

VERSATILE ENTERTAINER DON AMECHE DIES

Don Ameche, who was one of Hollywood's busiest and most versatile stars in the 1930s and '40s and who saw his fame triumphantly rekindled when he won an Oscar for his work in the comedy "Cocoon" in 1985, died Monday at the home of his son, Don Jr., in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 85.

The cause was prostate cancer, his son said.

Ameche finished work on his last movie, "Corrina, Corrina," with Whoopi Goldberg and Ray Liotta, in early November.

One of the most popular radio actors of the early 1930s, Ameche easily made the transition to the screen. He played the leading man or his best friend in 40 films over 14 years, won plaudits in five Broadway plays when his film career faded, and went on to carry out many assignments as an actor, singer or master of ceremonies on television.

In Hollywood, the 6-foot-tall performer with dapper good looks and a pencil-thin mustache was one of the hardest-working stars at 20th Century-Fox, playing leading roles in comedies, dramas and musicals, mostly as a debonair young man about town. He often appeared with such Fox stars as Alice Faye, Betty Grable, Tyrone Power and Loretta Young.

Ameche was indelibly linked with the title role in "The Story of Alexander Graham Bell" and, for many years after the 1939 film, many Americans referred to their telephones as "the Ameche." Later that year, he played Stephen Foster in "Swanee River."

Other films included "Ramona" (1936), "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (1938), "The Three Musketeers" (as D'Artagnan) (1939), "Midnight" (1939), "That Night in Rio" (1941) and "Wing and a Prayer" (1944).

Four decades later, at 77, he electrified movie audiences by performing a dizzying break dance in the 1985 comic fantasy "Cocoon." His portrayal of a frisky septuagenarian rejuvenated by aliens won him an Academy Award for best supporting actor and a 30-second ovation at the Oscar ceremony by thousands of his peers.

Ameche appeared as a butler on Broadway in 1929, toured briefly in vaudeville with Texas Guinan and started a radio career in Chicago in 1930. Later, on radio and television, he made hilarious appearances with Frances Langford as the Bickersons, an irrepressibly contentious couple.

In later years, he received only occasional offers to appear in films. Among them was "Trading Places" in 1983, in which he portrayed a venal multimillionaire.

"You're talking to a man with no regrets. I've always accepted things as they were. God was awfully good to me during the good days," he said in 1986.

"I cherish the old days," he said, "but I don't miss them."

by CNB