| rdfs:comment | - Dick Wilson was frequently seen as a drunk on Bewitched. See IMDb entry.
- Dick Wilson was born in Preston, Lancashire, England to an Italian father, Aldo DiGuglielmo, who was a vaudeville performer, and an English mother, Victoria Wilson, a singer. In late 1916, his father moved the family to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, where Dick would spend his childhood in the Corktown neighborhood and on the Mountain. He attended Queen Victoria and Sacred Hearts Schools. At the age of fifteen, he got a part-time job at CHML radio in Hamilton. To avoid being typecasted as an Italian while performing at the station, Dick Anglicized his first name and changed his last name from his father's DiGuglielmo to his mother's Wilson.
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| abstract | - Dick Wilson was born in Preston, Lancashire, England to an Italian father, Aldo DiGuglielmo, who was a vaudeville performer, and an English mother, Victoria Wilson, a singer. In late 1916, his father moved the family to Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, where Dick would spend his childhood in the Corktown neighborhood and on the Mountain. He attended Queen Victoria and Sacred Hearts Schools. At the age of fifteen, he got a part-time job at CHML radio in Hamilton. To avoid being typecasted as an Italian while performing at the station, Dick Anglicized his first name and changed his last name from his father's DiGuglielmo to his mother's Wilson. Dick graduated from the Ontario College of Art & Design and then became a comic dancer in vaudeville. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force early in World War II, serving as a fighter pilot against the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain. After the war, Dick would move to the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1954. He moved first to New York City where he would perform as an acrobatic dancer before finally moving to California in 1954 to work in films and on television. His first appearance on television was on the New York based The Better Home Show playing himself, in 1951, before appearing before a national audience in The Adventures of Jim Bowie. His first film appearance would be in 1957, where he played the First Jury Foreman in The Tattered Dress. Dick would spend the next several years making appearances as several characters on such television sitcoms as Bewitched (usually as a drunk) and McHale's Navy, mainly as either a neighbor or other stock characters. He would play similair characters on such films as The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, The Shakiest Gun in the West and The World's Greatest Athlete. He would also make guest appeareances on Hogan's Heroes and The Bob Newhart Show. In 1964, Dick began doing commercials for Procter & Gamble's Charmin bathroom tissue, playing George Whipple, who, at the start of the series, would admonished the females inside his store, telling them "Not to squeeze the Charmin" before being caught doing it himself. About halfway through the run, the direction of the commercial was changed, where he was actually suggesting that people do squeeze the Charmin. The series of television ads ran originally from 1964 to 1989, and then returning for an encore run in 1999, before being replaced by a series featuring animated bears. He would make over 500 commercials for the company, making anually $300,000 U.S. and working 12 days a year, while his character and his character's original tag line would become a part of popular culture. In the 1970s and 1980s, he would appear in less films and television shows because of his Charmin commercials' popularity, although he would make guest appearances on such shows as Maude, Alice and Quincy, M.E. and films such as The Incredible Shrinking Woman and Get Out of My Room. On November 19, 2007, Dick died at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. He is survived by his wife, Meg, and daughters Woody and actress Melanie Wilson, and five grandchildren. He was buried at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles. Several days after his death, Procter & Gamble released a short tribute to Dick for his commercial work.
- Dick Wilson was frequently seen as a drunk on Bewitched. See IMDb entry.
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