Milton Berle's father Moses Berlinger, the son of a German immigrant, was a dreamer, a jack-of-all-trades, and master of none. He tried to earn a living doing everything from painting houses to selling door-to-door to "inventing" chocolate-covered cherries (which had already been invented). But nothing he tried ever worked out.

"We lived in the Bronx and on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in an assortment of crummy flats and brownstones but there was never enough money to pay the rent," Berle remembered years later. "We were always having to sneak our furniture and belongings out... and move to a new place. It wasn't until I was fairly grown that I learned that moving could be done in the daytime. I thought it was like sleeping -- something you had to do at night."

[The host of television's first telethon -- which raised $1.1 million for cancer research -- was not Jerry Lewis. The honor goes to Milton Berle.]