Famous and notable actors, entertainers, singers of Mamaroneck and Larchmont
Dozens of famous actors and entertainers have come from Mamaroneck and Larchmont or lived here after making it big. On this page, we take a look at some notable names with links here.
Matt and Kevin Dillon, Michael O'Keefe, Emily Wickersham (NCIS), Elizabeth Berridge (Amadeus), and Claire Trevor (Key Largo), and Jill Novick (Beverly Hills 90210) all went to Mamaroneck High School and on to Hollywood. X-Factor runner-up Carly Rose Sonenclar was a Rye Neck student. Comedian Joan Rivers moved here in her teens, and her quips made Larchmont a household name.
Johnny Carson, Jonathan Winters, Ethel Barrymore, Match Game host Gene Rayburn, and silent movie stars Lillian and Dorothy Gish are among the other celebrities who have lived here.
Read about these and more and their local connections below the box.
More Mamaroneck and Larchmont notables: Read the other parts of the series
This is one of a series of pages on notable residents of Mamaroneck and Larchmont.
Here are the other parts. Tap the links to go to those pages:
Directors and writers: Ang Lee, D.W. Griffith, Robert Ripley ('Believe It or Not'), Edward Albee ('Virginia Woolf'), Gail Sheehy ('Passages') and more.
List: 22 from Mamaroneck High School who became famous
Artists including Norman Rockwell.
Community-builders including the man behind Mamaroneck’s ‘Friendly Village” motto.
List: Local trail blazers - people who achieved local firsts for their gender, race, or ethnicity
At a glance: 50 celebrities from Mamaroneck and Larchmont, past and present.
Plus
Street names: The notable people behind Mamaroneck’s street names
1: Actors with Mamaroneck-Larchmont links: Matt and Kevin Dillon, Michael O’Keefe, 8 more.
Matt Dillon: actor discovered in Hommocks School hallway
Actor Matt Dillon (born in 1964) grew up in Mamaroneck and is known for his many film roles and for the story of how he was discovered.
Dillon has appeared in more than 70 movies and TV shows, including 2023's Asteroid City. He has also directed.
Watch a trailer below for Dillon’s recent movie, Haunted Heart, in which he plays Max, an enigmatic restaurant manager with secrets.
Dillon told the story of his being discovered in a 1980 interview published in The Daily Times of Mamaroneck. He was a 16-year-old sophomore at Mamaroneck High School at the time.
"Dillon said he was hanging out in a Hommocks hallway 'cuting classes' a few years ago when he was approached by Linda Fairmont, a casting director. She asked him to audition for a part in the film Over the Edge. Auditions were run by Vic Ramos, casting director for the film and now Dillon's manager...By the last audition he had secured one of the leading roles."
(Hommocks connection: Dillon studied musical theater with Eleanor Zorski, who headed the drama program at Hommocks Middle School, according to a 1987 Daily Times story. )
Vic Ramos spoke with film critic Roger Ebert in 1983 about the discovery of Dillon:
"I cast Over the Edge," Ramos said.
Ebert: I said I remembered the movie, a 1979 buried treasure about alienated kids in the suburbs of Denver. It was Matt Dillon's first movie, and he was very good in it - noticeably good.
"Yeah," Ramos said. "That was his first role. They wanted kids who looked like real kids, and I discovered him in Westchester County."
What was he, a child actor?"
"An actor? He was a kid!"
Dillon next appeared in the 1980 successes Little Darlings and My Bodyguard, teen audiences took to him, and his career was on. He dropped out of Mamaroneck High School in junior year.
In 2002, he wrote, directed and starred in City of Ghosts. The film also featured Gerard Depardieu, Stellan Skarsgard and James Caan, Watch the trailer below.
Sources:
Interview with Matt Dillon, then 16, The Daily Times of Mamaroneck, Nov. 13, 1980
Dillon studied with Hommocks Middle School drama program head, The Daily Times of Mamaroneck, May 3, 1987.
Roger Ebert interview with Matt Dillon and Vic Ramos, published April 24, 1983.
Matt Dillon's films and TV appearances, IMDB.com
Kevin Dillon: actor played Johnny Drama in Entourage
Kevin Dillon (born in 1965) grew up in Mamaroneck, graduated from Mamaroneck High School, then forged a steady career as an actor.
His signature role is Johnny 'Drama' Chase in HBO's comedy Entourage from 2004 to 2011 and in the 2015 movie. Kevin has also appeared in Platoon in 1986, The Doors in 1991 and Poseidon in 2006, among four dozen other roles, according to IMDB.com. He has earned nominations for Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards.
He is the brother of actor Matt Dillon.
In 1988 when he was 22, Kevin was asked if Matt paved the way for him in acting.
"Basically. I won't deny it. But it wasn't easy for me...," he told The Daily Times of Mamaroneck in an interview. "It helped open the door a little bit. But I also had to prove myself....But I had to do it a little bit more than the next guy, because I had a brother to follow. They're all waiting to see and to compare us. I was Matt Dillon's kid brother for a long time. I still am to a lot of people."
Asked how he got street smart growing up in Mamaroneck, he noted he was born in New Rochelle but added, "Mamaroneck is a pretty tough town....A lot of my buddies are from the Bronx, so I can pick up that slang and use it if I want. Somehow in Mamaroneck you can pick up a New York accent."
In Platoon, Kevin Dillon plays a beer can-eating crazy who motorcycles and water-skis most of the time. How did he learn to eat beer cans?
"That's a trick I learned from a buddy of mine in Mamaroneck. He used to bite a can and take a little piece out without getting cut. You don't hurt your teeth at all. I thought it would be great for the part....I showed Oliver Stone (the director). I said, 'Oliver, check it out.' And he said, 'That's great. I want you to put it in the movie just like that.'"
Sources:
Interview with The Daily Times, July 24, 1988.
Michael O'Keefe: Oscar-nominated actor
Michael O'Keefe (born in 1955), is an actor who has appeared in more than 100 TV and movie roles during a 50-plus year career. He was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1980 for his performance as Ben Meechum in The Great Santini.
In the scene below, he plays his father, Bull, played by Robert Duvall. And Bull reacts abusively after Ben wins their basketball game.
O’Keefe also played Danny Noonan in Caddyshack, Darryl Palmer in The Slugger's Wife, and Fred in 35 episodes of TV's Rosanne from 1993-95. More recent roles include Eric Scott in a 2023 episode of Billions, according to IMBD.com.
He graduated from Mamaroneck High School and in 1974 from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
In addition to acting, he has written song lyrics for various artists, including two for his then-wife, Bonnie Raitt. "Longing in Their Hearts" was the title song on Raitt's album that won the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album in 1994. O'Keefe also wrote lyrics for "One Part to Be My Lover," on the Luck of the Draw album, nominated for Album of the Year in 1991.
Sources:
Emily Wickersham: actress played Ellie Bishop on NCIS
Emily Wickersham (born in 1984), a 2002 Mamaroneck High School graduate, studied art in college, did some modeling after, then moved into acting. She played Special Agent Ellie Bishop on the TV series NCIS from 2013 to 2021. NCIS describes her character as a “mysterious mixture of analytic brilliance, fierce determination and idealism who specializes in international threat assessment and global preparation.”
Watch: Emily Wickersham profiled shortly after joining the NCIS cast. See the clip below. By the way NCIS is still shown, streaming on Paramount+ and other services.
(NCIS)
Earlier, she played Rhiannon Flammer in four episodes of The Sopranos in 2006-07, and appeared in the 2012 film Gone, among other roles, according to IMDB.com.
Wickersham recalled growing up in Mamaroneck in a 2016 CBS interview cited on Nickiswift.com: "I grew up as a total tomboy. My childhood consisted of lots of tennis. As a kid, I fantasized about becoming a professional tennis player while at lots of Long Island Sound beach clubs and riding my bike."
It helped on NCIS, she told CBS. "It's a real boys' club at NCIS, which works for me, because, being a tomboy when I was younger, I've always loved hanging out with the guys. I love women, too, but I've always had a ton of guy friends who I'm drawn to, because there's such a laid-back vibe going on with them."
Watch: In this scene from NCIS below, Nic Torres and Ellie are caught in an abandoned sheriff's building and look for a way to escape.
(NCIS)
Sources:
Mamaroneck High School class of 2002, The Journal News, July 16, 2002.
Jill Novick: actress on Beverly Hills, 90210, Sisters
Jill Novick (born in 1966), graduated from Mamaroneck High School in1984 and appeared in more than a dozen TV series and movies during the 1990s and into the early 2000s.
She played Teenage Teddy Reed in 80 episodes of Sisters in 1991-96, then Tracy Gaylian on 23 episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210 in 1996-97, according to IMDB.com.
Other roles included Claire in a 1990 episode of Thirtysomething and Liberty in the 1999 comedy/romance My Girlfriend's Boyfriend.
Watch: Trailer from My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend. Jill Novick (dark hair) as Liberty is at right. Watch the trailer below.
Since her acting career, she has been a theater arts and English teacher. Among her educational roles, in 2012-13 she was creative director of theater for Culver City (Calif.) High School's Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, similar to Mamaroneck High School's Performing Arts Curriculum Experience (PACE).
As of 2024, she is the stagecraft teacher and creative director of theatre at Cibola High School in Albuqueque, New Mexico.
Sources:
Jill Novick profile, IMDB.com.
Mamaroneck High School class of 1984, The Daily Times, June 12, 1984
Elizabeth Berridge: stage and screen actress, producer graduated from Mamaroneck High School
Elizabeth Berridge (born in 1962) is a stage and screen actress and producer who played Mozart’s wife in the film Amadeus (1984), Annie Oakley in Hidalgo (2004) and appeared in The Funhouse (2001), among two dozen other film and TV roles. On television, she played Officer Eve Eggers on 84 episodes of The John Larroquette Show, from 1993-96, according to IMDB.com. She has also had an extensive career in theater, including appearances on Broadway.
When Berridge was 12, she enrolled in the acting class of Molly McDonald, an actress and acting teacher from Larchmont. In a 1986 interview with The Reporter Dispatch, McDonald said she found the young Elizabeth “dedicated,” “fiery and smart,” recommended her to an agent, who recommended her to another agent, which led to her first professional acting job.
Berridge’s Mamaroneck High School classmates included future stars Matt and Kevin Dillon.
Berridge got the role in Amadeus when the original actress, Meg Tilley, broke her ankle in a soccer game a week before filming was to start. That role in a big movie made a name for Berridge and opened up theater roles for her, as she focused on the stage for the following decade.
Watch below: Elizabeth Berridge talks about an early school role in Mamaroneck and Amadeus in The Joan Quinn Profiles interview (at this link the interview starts at time stamp 15:25):
In theater, Berridge was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play in 1986 for Wrestlers and Cruise Control. In the comedy Cruise Control, two couples “drink beer and Jack Daniels, not spritzers, and have few aspirations that cannot be satisfied at the local shopping mall.” Berridge plays a video store assistant manager. The Times says Berridge’s “funny characterization never devolve into caricatures” and adds, “Miss Berridge finds a native, sarcastic wit in her offhand lines, even as she brings tender conviction to Suze's conflict between her desire to escape her provincial rut and her genuine affection for the boy she'll leave behind.”
The same year, Berridge got another rave review from the New York Times for her performance in Pilgrims, one of three one-act plays by Stephen Metcalfe about families who lost sons in the Vietnam War:
“Elizabeth Berridge as the shy Jilly is wonderful. Her surprising confidence in her own emotions when she becomes attracted to Roy is exactly right; we can see her growing up. And at the climax of the play, when she is reciting a Shakespeare speech for Dee and hesitates, looking at his son's picture, we believe she fears to say the next line because it predicts death - until she turns and lets Dee know that she has intuited his devastating secret. It is a fine moment for her, and for us.”
In 2024, according to IMDB.com, Berridge was an executive producer of the film If That Mockingbird Don’t Sing, being shown at film festivals. In 2023, she was an executive producer on the short drama Two Wrongs. In 2022, she starred in the short film The Vanishing Point.
Sources:
“Stage: ‘Cruise Control,’ Comedy by Kevin Wade,” The New York Times, Nov. 27, 1985.
“Stage: One-act Plays About Vietnam,” The New York Times, March 18, 1986.
Elizabeth Berridge profile and credits, IMDB.com:
Elizabeth Berridge nominated for 1986 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play, Internet Broadway Database.
“Behind the stars the acting coach takes the stage,” The Reporter Dispatch of White Plains, June 11, 1986.
Claire Trevor: Oscar-winning actress from Larchmont
Claire Trevor (c. 1910-2000), a sultry-voiced actress who won an Academy Award in 1948 for her performance in Key Largo, grew up in Larchmont and graduated from Mamaroneck High School in 1928.
She was born Claire Wemlinger and had lots of family locally, several aunts and uncles as well as cousins in Larchmont and Mamaroneck. According to The Associated Press, her father was a Fifth Avenue clothier but lost his business during the Depression, so she went to work to help out.
“The only thing I knew how to do was act,” she recalled. She had appeared in school plays, won Mamaroneck High School’s public speaking contest in 1928, and studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She made her Broadway debut in 1932. Then, she went on to films as a contract player in B movies, typically shot in 18 days, becoming known as “The Queen of the B’s,” the AP reported in her obituary.
“You had to do a lot of work that you didn’t want to do; that’s true – a lot of crummy pictures,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1995 about the old Hollywood movie studio system, “But they knew how to build a star, and they knew what to do with you. They also taught you everything.”
Those B movie roles paid off. In 1937, Trevor received a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance in the melodrama Dead End as a good girl who grows up to be a prostitute. In 1954, she earned another Supporting Actress Academy Award nomination for The High and the Mighty, about an airplane in trouble.
In Key Largo, she played Gaye Dawn, a broken down, boozy torch singer, mistress of a sadistic gangster. She took home the 1948 Oscar for Supporting Actress.
Watch a scene from Key Largo, below: Also in the scene: Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall, and Humphrey Bogart.
In other film roles, she played a frontier prositute in the 1939 classic Stagecoach with John Wayne. She played Babe Ruth’s wife in the 1948 Babe Ruth Story.
She appeared on TV dramas in the 1950s and won an Emmy Award in 1956 for a performance in Dodsworth on Producers Showcase on NBC.
In 1982, she played Sally Field’s poker-playing mother in Kiss Me Goodbye, her last feature film role, though in 1987 she appeared in a TV movie, Breaking Home Ties, as a teacher who helps a high school boy.
Sources:
“Claire Trevor, Former M.H.S. Girl, Makes Mark in Motion Picture World,” The Daily Times of Mamaroneck, July 6, 1935.
Claire Trevor to appear in “The Babe Ruth Story,” The Daily Times, July 13, 1948.
“Actress Claire Trevor dies: Sultry-voiced movie star won Academy Award for performance in ‘Key Largo,’” The Associated Press and featured in The Journal News, April 9, 2000.
Larchmont Claims to Fame: Claire Trevor, The Journal News, May 21, 2002.
Sal Mineo: slain actor
Sal Mineo (1939-76), who appeared in many movies including as a psychotic juvenile delinquent in James Dean's 1956 Rebel Without a Cause, lived in Mamaroneck for some of his teens. He spent his early years in the Bronx and New Rochelle, but in 1956 the family moved to Mamaroneck when he bought his parents a $200,000 Tudor-style mansion on Edgewater Point. By then, Sal was receiving 4,000 fan letters a week, and his mother, Josephine, coordinated the responses.
The family later moved to Lawn Terrace Gardens in the 1960s and then to a two-family house on West Street in Mamaroneck. His brother Michael and mother owned the Mamaroneck Nutrition Center, a health food store on Mamaroneck Avenue.
On Feb. 12, 1976, Sal Mineo was stabbed to death in a random robbery near his West Hollywood, California, apartment as he returned from a play rehearsal. His funeral at Most Holy Trinity Church in Mamaroneck drew about 250 mourners. In 1979, a man with a long criminal record was sentenced to at least 50 years in prison for the killing and for 10 robberies.
Sources:
The New York Times
The Standard-Star of New Rochelle
Ethel Barrymore: actress from famous theatrical family
Ethel Barrymore (1879-1959), a longtime Mamaroneck resident, was born into a theatrical family – her father, matinee idol Maurice Barrymore, and mother, Georgiana Drew from generations of theater elite, were noted actors as were her brothers Lionel and John Barrymore.
Actress Ethel Barrymore in 1901 when she was about 22 years old (Library of Congress Collection)
Ethel Barrymore starred first on the stage – debuting in New York at 14 as Julia in The Rivals. According to The New York Times, “Among her notable roles were in the plays The Corn is Green, The Constant Wife, School for Scandal, and The Kingdom of God.” She became an idol, the Times wrote, “young girls of Miss Barrymore’s earlier days solemnly adopted what they called the ‘Ethel Barrymore voice,’ ‘Ethel Barrymore walk’ and a dozen other mannerisms of the star.” There was also the Ethel Barrymore droop.
Barrymore later added film roles as well. She won an Oscar for Actress in a Supporting Role in 1944 as Ma Mott in None but the Lonely Heart, with Cary Grant, and earned three other suppporting role nominations in the 1940s, for The Spiral Staircase, The Paradine Case, and Pinky. Her last movie was Young at Heart in 1956 with Frank Sinatra and Doris Day. Her last role was on television, in a Playhouse 90 performance in 1956.
Watch: The trailer for 1944’s None But the Lonely Heart, below:
She married Russell Colt in 1909; they divorced in 1923. They had three children. Ethel Barrymore was the great-aunt of actress Drew Barrymore.
Ethel Barrymore lived in Mamaroneck from about 1910 until she died in 1959. Her home was on Taylors Lane, but her former estate was developed in the late 1950s and its street called Barrymore Lane.
On Broadway, she is remembered through the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. 47th Street. In 1928, theatre powerhouses Lee and JJ Shubert built it for her and commissioned a play for her, The Kingdom of God, for its premiere. (Lee Shubert had a home in Mamaroneck in Shore Acres). The theater is still in operation.
Sources:
“Ethel Barrymore Is Dead at 79; One of Stage’s ‘Royal Family,’ The New York Times, June 19, 1959.
Planners tentatively approve 19-lot development of former Barrymore estate, The Daily Times of Mamaroneck, April 16, 1957.
Ethel Barrymore profile, credits, IMDB.com.
Lillian and Dorothy Gish: stars in D.W. Griffith’s films
The Gish sisters, Lillian (1893-1993) and Dorothy (1898-1968), starred in many of the silent films D.W. Griffith shot at his studio in Mamaroneck between 1919 and 1924. They and their mother, Mary, lived in Orienta near Bleeker and Walton avenues while the sisters worked at the studio.
Dorothy and Lillian Gish with D.W. Griffith, 1922 (National PHoto Company Collection, Library of Congress)
Lillian recalls their residence in her autobiography: “About that time Mother leased an old house that Stanford White had designed, in Mamaroneck. Every room had a fireplace. There was a spacious porch and an acre of beautiful landcaping. We loved it. We who had used trolleys for so long now had three cars in the garage – a big Cadillac, Dorothy’s sports roadster, and a small Ford for the staff.”
Lillian Gish actually ended up directing her sister in the Mamaroneck studio’s first film, Remodeling Her Husband, a silent film about a wife with a flirtatious husband. Griffith was heading to Florida for two films and wanted to take a director with him. “You know as much as I do about making pictures,” she recalled him telling her. Griffith also asked her to supervise the completion of the studio. Lillian agreed. “I had always believed that Dorothy’s gaiety and humor had never been completely captured on film. Perhaps I could do it after all, I thought.” The picture was “the second biggest money maker of all Dorothy’s films for Paramount,” Lillian wrote.
Source:
The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me by Lillian Gish with Ann Pinchot, 1969, Prentice-Hall Inc.
2. Mamaroneck and Larchmont famous entertainers, comedians, personalities
Joan Rivers: brassy comedian put Larchmont on the map
Joan Rivers (1933-2014) turned small-town jokes about Larchmont into comedy gold and became the first woman to host a late-night broadcast talk show.
“I’m from Larchmont,” she said in one of her quips. “It’s a very small town. The car wash is a Saint Bernard.”
Joan Rivers didn’t actually grow up in Larchmont. Rivers was 19 when her family moved from Brooklyn to Westchester. Even then she didn’t actually live in Larchmont. Her family – she was Joan Molinsky then; her parents were Dr. Meyer and Beatrice Molinsky – lived on Oxford Road in Mamaroneck Town. It has a Larchmont mailing address, and Rivers embraced Larchmont for the jokes.
“I was the last girl in Larchmont to get married,” one of them went. “My mother had a sign up saying, ‘Last girl before Thruway.’”
“I grew up half in Larchmont and half in Brooklyn, which I’ve always said,” she told The Journal News in 1984. “And then you simplify it and you make it funny and say, ‘I’m from a little town called Larchmont.’”
Rivers was “one of the first and one of the few – women comics who made Americans laugh on stage, in comedy clubs, on TV variety and talk shows – starting in the late 1950s,” according to USA Today. “She turned her own insecurities, about her looks and abilities, into comic fodder.”
Appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson as a guest and fill-in host made her a star. She became the show’s first “permanent guest host” in 1983. But Carson felt betrayed when in October 1986 The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers debuted as the first offering of the new Fox network – opposite Carson. Rivers made TV history as the first woman to host a late-night broadcast TV talk show. However, Rivers’ show failed to draw a big enough audience and she was fired after eight months. Carson never spoke to her again. It wasn’t until 2014 that she appeared again on The Tonight Show, then hosted by Jimmy Fallon.
She did make it as a talk show host, with The Joan Rivers Show, a syndicated daytime talk show that ran from 1989 to 1993, and won an Emmy in 1990 for best talk show host. She also headlined in Las Vegas and acted on Broadway.
“Anytime people ask me where I’m from, I say Larchmont,” Joan Rivers told The Journal News in 2014. “When I grew up in Larchmont in the ‘50s and ‘60s, it was still very rural.”
Asked what she would do if she hadn’t made it in comedy, Rivers quipped, “I probably would have been a very frustrated, unhappy dentist’s wife in Larchmont.”
Sources:
“’Joanie’ put Larchmont on the map,” Gannett Westchester Newspapers, Aug. 5, 1988.
Joan Rivers on Larchmont, The Journal News, Dec. 31, 2014
“For Rivers, victory from late night loss,” The Journal News, Sept. 7, 2014
“Joan Rivers Dies at 81,” The New York Times Sept. 4, 2014.
“Joan Rivers 1933-2014: TV to stand-up, she was good at leaving a mark,” USA Today, Sept. 5, 2014.
Jonathan Winters: comedian, actor
Comedian and actor Jonathan Winters (1925-2013) lived on Taylors Lane in Mamaroneck from the late 1950s until 1964 and even performed at a Rye Neck High student event.
"His wacky onstage humor and macabre offstage antics," Time magazine reported in a 1958 profile, "have inspired the story that he is as strange as any of the characters he invents—one step away from the funny farm. For further evidence, his friends point to his house in Mamaroneck, N.Y., where in his black secret den he keeps a lonely chair which he considers his throne. 'I sit in it and pretend,' says he. 'I pretend I'm king.'"
A Facebook poster reported that her mother used to drive Johnny Carson and sometimes Winters to the train station for their commute to the city and occasionally pick them up when they returned.
Wayne Powers, an actor and jazz vocalist who grew up in Mamaroneck, recounts hanging out with Jonathan Winters' son and Winters himself, who was a neighbor. "We usd to go bowling in Larchmont. And he would always break into characters and run down the alley, and people would gather around and watch him. It was crazy," Powers recalls in a 1989 article in The Daily Item of Port Chester.
They stayed in touch. According to IMDB.com, "Jonathan was a fan of Wayne's jazz band, "Hoi Polloi," frequently attending performances and even writing the liner notes for their 1993 CD, 'Plain Old Me.'"
Winters' Rye Neck performance happened March 18, 1960, at the "Freshman Frolic" before 200 students and teachers.
"Mr. Winters' monologue," The Daily Times of Mamaroneck reported, "included the imaginary creation of a monster 10 feet high who was taught to wear sneakers and play basketball."
Winters also made the local news in spring 1962 when pictured bike riding during a trip to Bermuda and displaying a flying fish he had caught. Then, in November 1964 his former home, "Winterest," was broken into. A caretaker had been living there until new owners moved in.
Sources:
Time magazine profile, Oct. 13, 1958
Wayne Powers interview, The Daily Item of Port Chester , Sept. 24, 1989.
Winters a Wayne Powers fan, IMDB: (https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0694637/trivia/):
Winters entertains at Rye Neck 'Frolic,' The Daily Times of Mamaroneck, March 21, 1960
Winters bikes, fishes in Bermuda, The Daily Times of Mamaroneck, April 26 and May 1, 1962.
Break-in at Winters' former home, The Daily Times, Nov. 23, 1964
Gene Rayburn: Match Game host
Gene Rayburn (1917-99), host of TV's The Match Game from 1962-69 and 1973-82, lived in the 700s on The Parkway in Shore Acres from 1953 into the early 1960s.
Before The Match Game, Rayburn was the announcer on The Tonight Show with Steve Allen for three years starting in 1953. At the same time, he hosted a morning show on NBC radio. During the 1950s, he also hosted the game shows The Sky's The Limit, Musical Chairs, Make the Connection, Tic Tac Dough, Play Your Hunch and in 1960 Dough Re Mi.
He also performed on Broadway, as Albert Peterson in Bye Bye Birdie in 1960 and 1961. He hosted NBC Radio's Monitor on weekends from 1961-73.
Watch below: What will the $500 “Gene” match be? Gene Rayburn in a clip from Match Game '75:
Locally, Rayburn made the local headlines when he bought his home on the Parkway in 1952 when he was injured in a car accident involving a taxi near the Mamaroneck train station in December 1959. He was also mentioned in the Mamaroneck Daily Times when he hosted events for several local organizations, including a Girl Scouts daddy-daughter dinner in 1954, Daniel Warren Elementary School PTA informal dance in 1954 - his daughter was a Warren student - a local Democratic pre-election rally in 1955, and the Mamaroneck Artists Guild Beaux Arts Ball in 1957.
In 1956, he made headlines when he helped address envelopes for an Adoption Service of Westchester mailing. In 1958, his wife, Helen, was reported as chairing the service's benefits committee. “She was extremely passionate about the Westchester Adoption Agency, for which she eventually became head of fundraising,” according The Matchless Gene Rayburn. “Lynne (their daughter) remembers, ‘Her big coup for fundraising was organizing a theater night. She would pick out a show on Broadway and treat a bunch of potential donors to an evening of theater, and then ideally they would enjoy themselves so much that they’d make a big donation. She chose a show that was just opening on Broadway that no one knew anything about….Well the show ended up being My Fair Lady. And that theater night went really well for her.’”
Mamaroneck Daily Times headlines about Gene Rayburn in Mamaorneck.
In Mamaroneck, Gene Rayburn enjoyed “relaxing at his home and devoting his spare time to putting around in the garage and to gardening; he surrounded the driveway on both sides with corn,” according to a biography, The Matchless Gene Rayburn.
Sources:
The Matchless Gene Rayburn, Adam Nedeff, Bear Mountain Media, 2015.
Gene Rayburn profile, IMDB.com.
Articles about Gene Rayburn, The Daily Times of Mamaroneck.
Johnny Carson lived in Mamaroneck before becoming Tonight Show host
Before his iconic run on The Tonight Show, Johnny Carson (1925-2005) hosted a game show called Who Do You Trust? from 1957 until 1962 and rented a house in Mamaroneck for a time. He and his family moved from California for the New York City-based show. Johnny, his first wife, Jody, and their three sons lived on South Barry Avenue near Oakhurst Road in Shore Acres, according to a former neighbor who posted on Facebook. This was likely in 1957 and early 1958 or so because by later in 1958 the family had moved to "a palatial brick house on three-and--half acres in Harrison," according to Laurence Leamer's biography of Carson.
Johnny Carson, 1965 (New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, Library of Congress)
Locally, Johnny served as master of ceremonies for a Police Benevolent Association benefit show in May 1958 that drew a capacity crowd to the Mamaroneck Playhouse. The performers included the Hines Brothers dance team, and Paul Winchell of Larchmont and his dummy assistant, Jerry Mahoney, according to an account by The Daily Times of Mamaroneck.
Johnny and Jody separated in 1959 and Johnny took an apartment in Manhattan, but Jody and the children remained in Harrison. According to Leamer's biography, "On Saturdays Johnny drove out to Harrison in his Porsche to spend the day with his sons." Several local Facebook posters remembered seeing him around the area, including at Cook's, bowling, etc. He also took the boys out out on his 22-foot inboard sea skiff, Deductible. Johnny hosted the Tonight Show starting Oct. 1, 1962.
In 1964, the boys were sent to boarding school, and Jody moved out of the area sometime after she and Johnny were divorced in 1963.
Sources:
King of the Night: The Life of Johnny Carson by Laurence Leamer, 1989, William Morrow and Company
The Daily Times of Mamaroneck
Paul Winchell: voice of Pooh’s Tigger and others, ventriloquist, inventor
Paul Winchell (1922-2005) lived in Mamaroneck Town (Larchmont mailing address) in the 1950s as he gained fame as a ventriloquist in the early years of television with puppets he created, Jerry Mahoney and dimwitted sidekick Knucklehead Smiff.
Winchell went on to voice many cartoon characters including Tigger in Winnie the Pooh, Gargamel in The Smurfs, the Siamese cat in Disney’s Aristocats, and Dick Dastardly in Wacky Races.
Multi-talented, he built an early artificial heart in 1963 and donated it to the University of Utah for research, according to the New York Times. “Mr. Winchell also claimed credit for a wide variety of other inventions, including a flameless cigarette lighter, battery-heated gloves and an invisible garter belt,” the Times reported in Winchell’s obituary.
Winchell and his first wife, Dorothy, lived on Althea Lane from 1953 to 1960, when they divorced. She kept the house but sold it in 1962, according to Westchester County property records.
In 1974, Winchell along with Sterling Holloway and Sebastian Cabot won the Grammy Award for Best Recording for Children for “Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too.”
Sources:
“Paul Winchell, 82, TV Host and Film Voice of Pooh’s Tigger, Dies,” The New York Times, June 27, 2005.
Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving, Mo Rocca and Jonathan Greenberg. Simon & Schuster, 2019.
Grammy Awards winners list, 1974, including Paul Winchell,
Westchester County land records, Westchester County Clerk.
Carol Reed: TV’s first female weather reporter
Carol Reed (d. 1970) was said to be the first television femaile weather reporter in the United States. She appeared on WCBS-TV Channel 2 from 1952-64 and was known for her signoff “Have a Happy.” Born in Johnson City, N.Y., she lived in the 400s on North Barry Avenue in Mamaroneck from at least 1956 until her death on June 4, 1970, at age 44.
Locally, she served as master of ceremonies at the Talent and Variety Show of the Sound Shore Men’s Club at the Mamaroneck Playhouse in 1966.
She attributed her clear diction to her mother’s difficulty hearing. “From the time I could talk, I had to enunciate each word carefully so mother could understand me,” she told The Daily Times of Mamaroneck in a 1960 interview. “So, if you think my diction is clear, that’s probably why.”
Reed had a varied broadcasting career. In addition to reporting the weather, she conducted interviews on “The Carol Reed Show” syndicated radio program and “The Talk of New York” on WCBS radio.
So, when she attended a Mamaroneck Village Zoning Board of Appeals meeting in July 1964, board Chairman Conrad Henne acknowledged her presence graciously. Then this happened:
“We’ll now have the weather report,” said Mr. Henne at the conclusion of the meeting.
“I’m leaving,” said Carol Reed. “It’s been very pleasant here, gentlemen.” The municipal building’s meeting room is air conditioned.
Sources:
The Daily Times of Mamaroneck and the New York Times
Dan Daniel: radio DJ, WMCA ‘Good Guy,’ lived in Larchmont
For many Baby Boomers, DJ “Dandy” Dan Daniel (1934-2016) served up quips and the Top 40 rock hits of their youth as one of the WMCA radio Good Guys in the 1960s.
“The existence of the Good Guys coincided with a group philosophy,” Daniel told The Reporter Dispatch of White Plains in 1987. “We were like the Beatles: We all dressed alike. If you were a newspaper and wanted to interview any one of us, all of us would have shown up. And we would have overwhelmed you. We would have sung and danced.”
The Good Guys were friends but also competitors, said Daniel, a Texan who lived in Larchmont after coming to New York. “Not only did I want to beat everyone who was on in the afternoon drive period, but I wanted to have the highest ratings on our radio station. And every one of the other guys did, too.” WMCA’s main competitor in Top 40 music in those days was WABC-AM, with Cousin Brucie, Bruce Morrow.
After music fans tuned to FM stations to hear more than Top 40 rock songs, WMCA switched to talk in 1970 and the Good Guys were history. Daniel later DJ’d for WHN, WYNY-FM, and finally oldies station WCBS-FM.
Asked once what he would like to have done if he had not been a DJ, he told The Reporter: “A stage actor, because I love the proximity to the people.”
On WMCA, his sign-off phrase was, “I love you all, especially you, size 9,” a reference to his wife, Rosemary. They had three children.
Sources:
“His Radio Days: Dan Daniel,” The Reporter Dispatch of White Plains, Nov. 1, 1987.
“Former ‘good guy’ returns,” The Daily Argus of Mount Vernon, March 1, 1976.
“Question of the month,” The Reporter Dispatch, March 23, 1980.
“Dan Daniel,” AM Radio D.J. and One of the Good Guys, Dies at 81,” The New York Times, June 23, 2016.
Dan Daniel obituary notice, The Journal News, June 25, 2016.
3. Mamaroneck and Larchmont notable singers
Carly Rose Sonenclar: X-Factor runner-up
Carly Rose Sonenclar: Singer-songwriter. In 2012, while a Rye Neck student at age 13 finished as the runner-up in The X-Factor TV singing competition thanks to her powerful vocals. Her coach on the show: Britney Spears. Carly Rose’s success was no fluke. When she was 7, she had played Cosette in Les Miserables on Broadway.
After The X-Factor, she performed and recorded some songs but then returned to high school and went on to study music at the University of Southern California. In 2019, she released a debut single, “Birds & Bees,” which she wrote, followed the next year by an EP, “TwentyOne.” In fall 2024 she released the song “The Night When You Told Me Your Name.” She now lives in Los Angeles.
Listen to Carly Rose sing some of her recently released song “The Night When You Told Me Your Name.” (Hear the whole song here)
More:
Los Angeles Times feature, July 2, 2019: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-carly-rose-sonenclar-birds-and-bees-x-factor-20190702-story.html
Carly Rose Sonnenclar’s performances, YouTube channel
Ezio Pinza: Opera, Broadway star detained during WWII
Ezio Pinza (1892-1957), renowned Metropolitan opera bass and a Broadway star in South Pacific, was detained during World War II when he was living in Mamaroneck.
Pinza and his wife, Doris, bought a house on Taylors Lane in 1941, the year after they married. Doris was the former Doris Leak of Larchmont, a member of the Met's ballet company. The summer before their marriage, Ezio took a room at the Larchmont Shore Club to spend time with Doris and her family. It was Ezio's second marriage.
In his autobiography, Pinza describes the Taylors Lane house as "an old, reconverted grinding mill on the Sound." He added, "I had a little workshop for carpentry and a plot to grow vegetables. After Pearl Harbor, I practically became a professional farmer, cultvating a victory garden and raising chickens." He also had a motorboat and belonged to the Larchmont Horseshoe Harbor Club.
Pinza had been born in Rome and raised in Ravenna, Italy. So, with the United States at war with Italy during World War II, Pinza was automatically classified as an enemy alien although he was just four months short of eligibility for American citizenship.
On March 12, 1942, two FBI agents arrived at Taylors Lane. In his autobiography, Pinza recounts what happened next:
"At eleven o'clock in the morning, two well-dressed young men entered my house through the back door without ringing the bell....I was at my desk in the living room writing out some checks.....
'Are you Ezio Pinza?' one of them asked sharply.
'Yes, I am. What can I do for you?'
'In the name of the President of the United States, you are under arrest!'
Pinza suspected that a jealous fellow Met singer had put questions in the minds of the authorities about Pinza's loyalties - that he was supposedly a friend of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, among other accusations.
"I had never met Mussolini and never tried to," Pinza said.
Pinza was held for nearly three months in a detention center on Ellis Island before he was released after a second hearing at which Met colleagues testified.
The Pinzas lived in Mamaroneck until about 1947, when they moved to California for a planned movie role. That did not pan out, so they returned East and settled in Rye when Pinza joined the original Broadway cast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, which opened in April 1949 and made him an even bigger star.
Watch below: South Pacific original Broadway cast members Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza sing “Some Enchanted Evening” on a 1954 TV salute to composers Rodgers and Hammerstein:
Sources:
Ezio Pinza: An Autobiography, Ezio Pinza with Robert Magidoff, 1958, Rinehart & Company, Inc.
Transcript: Doris Pinza discusses Ezio Pinza's 1942 detention at a Congressional hearing, Oct. 26, 1999.
Various articles, The Daily Times of Mamaroneck
Tom Nelson: founder, guitarist, songwriter of folk band Heathcote Hill
Tom Nelson (1956-2021) of Mamaroneck, an advertising executive who in retirement started the Mamaroneck band Heathcote Hill, a six-member group that linked “the tonal solidity of rock with the friendly demeanor and melodically light nature of folk and roots,” according to American Songwriter.
Started in 2016, Heathcote Hill released five records and got radio play on over 500 radio stations around the world, including prominently on New York’s WFUV.
“Our songs are about actual people we know and what’s bugging them about a world that isn’t as predictable as it used to be,” Nelson told The Lee County Courier of Tupelo, Mississippi, in 2020. And our heroes are the people we admire who do something because they love it.”
Nelson talked about the origins of one song, “The Stories We Are Told,” in a 2020 interview with the publication American Songwriter: “I was remembering how my Mom and Dad used to read to us as kids and I wanted to write about why something so innocent is so important.” Here are some of the lyrics:
Oh, I guess you never really know
These are the stories we are told
And as you go, what will you carry down this road?
Just the stories we are told.
Listen to Heathcote Hill perform“The Stories We Are Told,” with Tom Nelson on lead guitar:
In advertising, Nelson started out as a copywriter, rose to run the Toronto office of the agency Ammirati & Purvis, then in 1999 co-founded the boutique advertising form Gardner Nelson + Partners Inc. and was its creative director. The agency developed a reputation for “sharp, smart, stylish, and particularly effective creative work,” for clients including Thomson Reuters, Cablevision, Legg Mason and others, according to his obituary notice. “The hallmarks of his work in advertising – powerful concepts, brilliant lyrics, wry humor, and a precision eye for execution, fit, and finish – would blossom as well in his music.”
Raised in Royal Oak, Michigan, he moved to moved to Larchmont in 1988 with his wife, Lisa, they raised their three children there, then they moved to Mamaroneck in 2017.
Sources:
“Heathcote Hill Rocks a Folky Family Vibe on ‘The Stories We Are Told,’” American Songwriter, July 23, 2020: https://americansongwriter.com/the-stories-we-are-told-heathcote-hill-song-interview/.
“Singer, songwriter combo propels Heathcote Hill,” The Lee County Courier, Tupelo, Mississippi, Aug. 10, 2020. https://www.leecountycourier.net/about_people/singer-songwriter-combo-propels-heathcote-hill/article_fe87ed48-db12-11ea-9b35-2ff2450c1ae9.html
Thomas David Nelson obituary notice, John J. Fox Funeral Home, Larchmont, 2021: https://jjffh.com/tribute/details/849/Thomas-Nelson/obituary.html
Share your tips, info on more Notables
The Mamaroneck-Larchmont Notables project is ongoing. Share suggestions for others to include by emailing the Mamaroneck Historical Society at MamaroneckHistory@gmail.com.
More Mamaroneck and Larchmont notables: Read the other parts of the series
This is one of a series of pages on notable residents of Mamaroneck and Larchmont.
Here are the other parts. Tap the links to go to those pages:
Directors and writers: Ang Lee, D.W. Griffith, Robert Ripley ('Believe It or Not'), Edward Albee ('Virginia Woolf'), Gail Sheehy ('Passages') and more.
List: 22 from Mamaroneck High School who became famous
Artists including Norman Rockwell.
Community-builders including the man behind Mamaroneck’s ‘Friendly Village” motto.
List: Local trail blazers - people who achieved local firsts for their gender, race, or ethnicity
At a glance: 50 celebrities from Mamaroneck and Larchmont, past and present.
Plus
Street names: The notable people behind Mamaroneck’s street names