Eddie Anderson

This gravel-voiced African-American comic player from the vaudeville stage and nightclub revues is best remembered for playing Jack Benny's worried valet and straight man, Rochester, for 28 years on Benny's radio and later TV show (1950-65). Although he entered films in the late 1920s, and appeared as Noah in "Green Pastures" (1936) and Uncle Peter in "Gone With the Wind" (1939), Anderson had his most notable film performance as the lead opposite Ethel Waters in Vincente Minnelli's all-black musical "Cabin in the Sky" (1943).