Wendell Niles was one of the great announcers of the American golden age of radio. He was an announcer on such shows as The Charlotte Greenwood Show, Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood, The Adventures of Philip Marlowe, The Man Called X, The Bob Hope Show, The Burns & Allen Show, The Milton Berle Show and The Chase and Sanborn Hour.

On February 15, 1950, Wendell starred in the radio pilot for The Adventures of the Scarlet Cloak along with Gerald Mohr. He began in entertainment by touring in the 1920s with his own orchestra, playing with the Dorsey Brothers and Bix Beiderbecke. Niles moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1935 to join George Burns and Gracie Allen. He and his brother, Ken, developed one of the first radio dramas, which eventually became Theatre of the Mind. He toured with Bob Hope during World War II and narrated a 1936 Academy Award-winning short film on the life of tennis great Bill Tilden. Among his film credits is Knute Rockne, All American with Ronald Reagan.

Wendell Niles was the announcer for America’s Show Of Surprises…It Could Be You, and the Hatos-Hall production Your First Impression. Niles was also the original announcer for Let’s Make a Deal during that show’s first season in 1963 and 1964; he was later replaced by Jay Stewart. Wendell and his brother Ken Niles are the first brothers to have stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

James Pease was an American bass-baritone, notable for his Wagnerian roles. He was also a distinguished Balstrode in Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, a role which he was the first to perform in the U.S. in 1946, and later recorded under the composer’s direction in 1958.

Brock Pemberton was an American theatrical producer, director and founder of the Tony Awards. He was the professional partner of Antoinette Perry, co-founder of the American Theatre Wing, and he was also a member of the Algonquin Round Table. Pemberton gave the Antoinette Perry Award its nickname, the Tony (at the initial event in 1947, as he handed out an award, he called it a Tony). As Perry’s official biography at the Tony Awards website states, “At Jacob Wilk’s suggestion, Pemberton proposed an award in her honor for distinguished stage acting and technical achievement.”

Upon graduation from Emporia College, he became a press agent in New York City. Later, Pemberton directed and produced the American premiere of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author (1922) as well as its first Broadway revival two years later. In 1929 he produced and directed Preston Sturges’ play Strictly Dishonorable, which was filmed twice, in 1931 and again in 1951.

Among his other productions was Miss Lulu Bett, whose writer Zona Gale became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Drama, Personal Appearance by Lawrence Riley, which was a Broadway hit and was later turned into the film Go West, Young Man and Harvey, Mary Chase’s play about a man whose best friend is a large imaginary rabbit, later made into a film starring Jimmy Stewart.

A Tony Award was given to Pemberton posthumously in recognition of his role as the founder and the original chairman of the Tony Awards.

James Pierce was an All-American center during his time with the Indiana Hoosiers. After graduating college, James coached high school football and in his spare time, pursued acting. His most notable achievement during his time as an actor was being the fourth man to star as Tarzan in a movie, Tarzan and the Golden Lion.

Price  joined United Press in 1912 and the Associated Press (AP) soon after, where he stayed for 29 years except for two years in the United States Army during World War I. Price served as the AP’s Washington bureau chief and, in 1937, became executive news editor of the organization.

Price became the U.S. Director of Censorship on December 19, 1941. This was a day after the First War Powers Act was established. The position allowed Price to censor international communication, issue censorship rules, and set up two advisory panels to assist him in his duties. For his “creation and administration of the newspaper and radio codes” at the Office of Censorship, Price received a special Pulitzer Prize in 1944. In 1946, President Harry S. Truman presented him with the Medal for Merit for “exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services as Director, Office of Censorship, from December 20, 1941, until August 15, 1945.”

After the Office closed in November 1945, Price did not return to the AP. Instead he became a vice-president of the Motion Picture Association of America, then an Assistant Secretary General at the United Nations until retiring in 1954. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 Price reluctantly agreed to resume direction of censorship if war broke out with the Soviet Union. The Byron Price papers are located at the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison, WI.

James Pritchett was an American actor, best known for his role as Dr. Matt Powers on the soap opera, The Doctors. He was born in Lenoir, North Carolina in 1922. He appeared in the serial for its duration, from 1963 to 1982, and was the soap’s central cast members. The Dr. Powers character was one of the serial’s “tent pole” characters, to use an industry expression.

Phil Pritchett is a rock and roll musician from Texas. Members of his band have varied over the years. Phil’s performance to his eighth grade class of The Beatles Love Me Do first inspired him to enter into music. Phil got his real musical start at age 13 starting a Van Halen-style cover band and started playing local parties. His original high school band the Suburbans was an acclaimed Texas rock trio before breaking up in 1990.

Phil graduated from Highland Park High School in 1990, and entered Southwestern University studying History. At Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, Pritchett formed the eclectic acoustic duo Romantic Embargo with friend James Dewitt. They played regularly in Austin and surrounding cities and made two recordings, a live tape Cut Me Some Slacks and a CD Central Chilling Station No.5.

Pritchett went out on his own in 1996 and spent five years living in Austin, Texas and playing his original music to fans all over Texas and the South and building a large regional fan base. He started Spitune Records in 1995 and began recording and releasing his music independently. After a brief stint in Nashville, he moved back to Texas and has been touring consistently since 2002, often playing 150 shows a year or more.

Pritchett is known for his insightful songs, artistic albums and his live performances. His high-energy shows around Texas and the surrounding areas are known for the performances of songs such as Song of the Doorman, High Tide in the Heartland, Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones, Colorado On Trial, Tougher Than the Rest and the all-time fan-favorites: Maria, Snuff Machine, Antarctica U.S.A., Drink When I Think and Rolling.

In 2006, Pritchett opened Trinidad World Recording in the Fort Worth Stockyards to self-produce his album High Tide in the Heartland. After the release of High Tide, he was asked to produce records for other acts at Trinidad. His producing credits include projects by Texas High Life, Johns Guns, Ty Wick, Magee Payne, Kurt South, J.D. Clark, Kyle Redd, Clay Thrash, Kevin Smith, Slow Rollin’ Lows, Zach Huckabee, Mike Mathis, Notorious Gringos, Change of Standard and several of his own albums. Trinidad World Recording is now located in the old Handley post office in Fort Worth. Phil has played with many of the fan favorites in Texas including Jack Ingram, Roger Creager, Honeybrowne and others.

Kevin Reilly is the president of TV channels TBS and TNT and Chief Creative Officer for Turner Entertainment. He is the former Chairman of Entertainment for the Fox Broadcasting Company, where he oversaw all prime-time development, programming, scheduling, marketing, research, digital and business affairs for the network.

Prior to this he has also worked for FX and been the President of NBC. Reilly served as President of Entertainment for FX. In that role, Reilly helped redefine the basic cable business with an aggressive slate of original quality programming including The Shield, Nip/Tuck, and Rescue Me. Within a year of his arrival, FX made cable history with its seminal series, The Shield, which broke cable ratings records when it premiered and went on to receive a Golden Globe Award for Best Drama Series and an Emmy Award for lead actor Michael Chiklis.

Burton Leon “Burt” Reynolds is an American actor, director and producer. He starred in many films, such as Deliverance, The Longest Yard as well as its 2005 remake and Smokey and the Bandit. He also won two Golden Globe Awards, one for Best Actor in a Television Series Musical or Comedy for Evening Shade and one for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for Boogie Nights.

In 1957, Reynolds received his big break after he appeared in a New York City Center revival of Mister Roberts and subsequently signed a TV contract. With regular roles on Riverboat, Gunsmoke, Hawk and Dan August, he became a familiar face to television audiences and increased his popularity in the early 1970s by appearing on numerous TV talk shows.

Reynolds performance in 1972’s Deliverance established him as both a star and a serious actor. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Reynolds remained one of Hollywood’s most sought-after superstars, with films ranging from Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) to Starting Over (1979).

Reynolds returned to the small screen with the popular sitcom Evening Shade, for which he won an Emmy in 1991 and a Golden Globe in 1992.

In the mid-1990s, Reynolds began his film comeback with his role as a drunken congressman in Striptease (1996). Although the film was a critical failure, Reynolds’ performance earned widespread kudos which continued in Boogie Nights, for which Reynolds won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe award. He also appeared in the comedy Bean and starred in Mystery, Alaska in 1999. In 2001, Reynolds starred in the thriller Tempted and in the bittersweet love story Snapshots in 2002.

Bob Lloyd Schieffer is an American television journalist. Bob Schieffer began his profound journalism career at the Fort Worth Star Telegram covering both the Vietnam War and the JFK Assassination. He began his career with CBS and has been anchor and moderator of Face The Nation, CBS News’ Sunday public affairs broadcast, since May 1991. Schieffer has won virtually every award in broadcast journalism, including eight Emmys, the overseas Press Club Award, the Paul White Award presented by the TV News Directors Association, and the Edward R. Murrow Award given by Murrow’s alma mater, Washington State University.

Schieffer was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame in 2002, and inducted into the National Academy of Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame in 2013. He was named a living legend by the Library of Congress in 2008. Schieffer is currently serving as the Walter Shorenstein Media and Democracy Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center.

Schieffer covered Washington for CBS News for more than 30 years and is one of the few broadcast or print journalists to have covered all four major beats in the nation’s capital – the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and Capitol Hill. He was chief Washington correspondent since 1982 and Congressional correspondent since 1989. Schieffer covered every presidential campaign and was a floor reporter at all of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions from 1972 until his retirement.