George 'Doc' Rockwell(1889-1978)
- Actor
Born to a staid family (New England father, Canadian mother), Rockwell
surpised his family by entering show business. He was primarily a
vaudeville comic and was most famous for a comedy routine in which he
portrayed a doctor with a stethoscope holding a five-foot banana stalk.
He was billed as "Doc Rockwell - Quack, Quack, Quack!" His out-going,
fast-talking style was ideal for telling jokes and performing magic. He
married Claire Schade, the daughter in an act called The Four Schades,
in Bloomington, Illinois, in 1915. After two sons and a daughter were
born, the marriage ended in divorce. Doc's retreat was in Boothbay
Harbor, Maine, USA, although he really lived on the road most of his
life. At the height of his career in the early 1930s he commanded a
salary of $3,500 a week in New York where he appeared at the Radio City
Music Hall and the Ziegfeld Theater.