Charles Winninger(1884-1969)

On TV, one of his most beloved appearances was as a nostalgic guest star on a 1954 episode of Lucy ed io (1951) in which he played an old vaudevillian partner of Fred Mertz's (William Frawley). In the show the two, who once billed themselves as "Mertz & Kurtz," sing a couple of cute ditties: "Oh By Jingo" and "I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl Who Married Dear Old Dad." Later, Winninger joined the entire "Lucy" cast for a musical revue at Ricky's Tropicana Club, where numbers included "On the Boardwalk to Atlantic City," "By the Beautiful Sea" and "I Found a Peach on the Beach." Both Frawley and Winninger were vaudevillians in real life.