George 'Doc' Rockwell

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.