Jesse White

• Birth name:

  Jesse Marc Weidenfeld

• Date of Birth:

  9 January 1917 Buffalo, New York, USA

• Height:

  5' 10" (1.78 m)

Lovable, laid-back Jesse White made acting seem fun and easy. He was born Jesse Marc Weidenfeld in Buffalo, New York, and was raised in Akron, Ohio. He made his first amateur appearance on the local stage at age 15. Before breaking into professional theater in the 1940s, he held many different jobs, including selling beauty supplies and lingerie. Jesse got his start in vaudeville and burlesque, and eventually reached Broadway in 1943. The following year he played the rascally, gruff-mannered asylum atten... more

Lovable, laid-back Jesse White made acting seem fun and easy. He was born Jesse Marc Weidenfeld in Buffalo, New York, and was raised in Akron, Ohio. He made his first amateur appearance on the local stage at age 15. Before breaking into professional theater in the 1940s, he held many different jobs, including selling beauty supplies and lingerie. Jesse got his start in vaudeville and burlesque, and eventually reached Broadway in 1943. The following year he played the rascally, gruff-mannered asylum attendant in Harvey, starring Frank Fay. This role made him famous and he went on to appear with James Stewart in the movie version (Harvey (1950)). The 50s was a decade of transition to the new medium of television. As a TV regular, he did something that had never been done before - he appeared regularly in two shows at the same time. In "Private Secretary" (1953) and "Make Room for Daddy" (1953). This record stood for 23 years until Richard Anderson appeared simultaneously on "The Six Million Dollar Man" (1974) and "The Bionic Woman" (1976)). One of the earliest TV appearances of Jesse's is a 1961 episode of the sci-fi series "The Twilight Zone: Once Upon a Time (#3.13)" (1961) in which he played, prophetically enough, The Repairman. Jesse would make guest appearances on dozens of TV shows, and appear in 60 movies, almost always playing a lovable rascal. Some of his last movie appearances were in the sci-fi movies Pajama Party (1964) and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966). Then the 50-year-old Jesse seized a terrific career opportunity. From 1968-1989 he would be TV's second and longest running Maytag Repair Man in a long series of commercials. For this he made several hundred thousand dollars a year, for just a few days' filming. Even though he was semi-retired during this time, Jesse appeared in a dozen movies, his last film being Matinee (1993), which was an homage to some of the 1950s-1960s sci-fi films of which he had been a part. Jesse always seemed to be having as much fun acting as the fans did watching him.