Bill Dana

Despite a successful career under his own name, the true legacy of actor/comedian Bill Dana remains Jose Jiminez, a character introduced on The Steve Allen Show which went on to become one of the most beloved comic creations of the era. Born William Szathmary in Quincy, Massachusetts on October 5, 1924, Dana began his career as a writer after a severe back injury temporarily derailed his performing aspirations. After creating gags for the likes of George Gobel and Don Adams throughout the first half of the 1950s, in 1956 he joined the staff of The Steve Allen Show, where his backstage impression of a Latin-American character named Jose Jiminez so impressed host Allen that Dana was invited to appear as Jose on the program's 1959 Christmas special. The sketch proved immediately popular with audiences, and soon Dana graduated from the writing staff to the role of featured performer; although he created a number of characters of varying ethnic backgrounds, the naive, good-natured Jose -- complete with the trademark opening line "My name...Jose Jiminez -- remained the program's consensus favorite. Given that Dana himself was of Hungarian Jewish descent, there was considerable controversy over the perceived stereotyping of his characterization, but in actuality Jose Jiminez was about not ethnic humor so much as satirizing American culture on the whole. Dana made his recording debut in 1960 with My Name...Jose Jiminez, an album split between clips from The Steve Allen Show and a sketch built around a press conference. Following his success on television and on record, Dana graduated to nightclubs; his first shows at San Francisco's famed Hungry i club formed the basis for 1961's Jose Jiminez the Astronaut, which lampooned the current American fascination with the space race....