As a versatile singer, actor, and host, Don Ameche was one of radio's earliest male stars and one of the medium's most popular figures in the 1930s and 1940s. He was also a relatively rare example of a star who maintained his radio career despite a period of significant Hollywood film success.

     Ameche was born Dominic Amici in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1908. His Italian immigrant father changed the family name to Ameche shortly thereafter, and his fellow grade school students in Kenosha transformed the name Dom into Don. After a few years of grade school in Kenosha, Ameche left for a boarding school in Marion, Iowa. He remained in Iowa to attend high school, where he developed his dramatic talent under the tutelage of Father I.J. Semper, the school's drama coach. However, his parents had hoped for a lawyer in the family, not an actor, so Ameche enrolled in pre-law at Iowa's Columbia College. He had trouble staying focused on his studies, however, and as a result, he skipped around to different schools, including Marquette University and Georgetown University, before finally ending up at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1928.

     Acting continued to draw his interest, and he occasionally starred in campus plays with the campus's University Players. Like most successful entertainers of the period, his first steps to stardom included a mythical moment of discovery: Ameche went to see a road company play on campus one evening, but one of the leading actors had been hurt in a car accident earlier that day. Ameche arrived at the theater to purchase his ticket, and at the ticket booth, the manager of the theater recognized Ameche from his previous plays and asked him if he would fill in for the injured actor. Ameche agreed and in fact ended up staying with the stock company for the rest of the season, thereby forgoing his future career as a lawyer.

     Emboldened by this success, Ameche moved to New York in 1929 and tried to foster an acting career on stage and in radio. But after an unsuccessful audition in 1930 as a singer for WMCA, he returned to Kenosha in the early 1930s. Ameche then moved to nearby Chicago at the suggestion of a friend, who told Ameche of the burgeoning opportunities for radio singers and actors in that city. After an audition with NBC Blue in 1930, Ameche was hired for a number of NBC dramas in Chicago, including Rin Tin Tin and The Empire Builders. He subsequently received a role in the show that launched him to stardom, The First Nighter.

     The First Nighter was a 30-minute anthology drama, and the show's format fostered the illusion that listeners were hearing a Broadway play on opening night, despite its Chicago origin. As the male lead in plays for the show's first six years, Ameche was especially popular with audiences, and he quickly developed into radio's first sex symbol. In 1932 he parlayed this status into a lead role on a daily soap opera, Betty and Bob, the first of many daytime serials from Frank and Anne Hummert. Betty and Bob presented Ameche and Elizabeth Reller as a pair of seemingly incompatible newlyweds. Betty was a working-class secretary, and Bob was an urbane heir to a vast fortune. Arguments and jealousies abounded, as Bob had to accept Betty's workaday world, and she had to tolerate his dashing personality and friendliness with other women. As one can imagine, this role served to further cement Ameche's status as a radio heartthrob. Ameche also occasionally appeared on a juvenile adventure series, Jack Armstrong, All American Boy, with his brother Jim.

     Ameche’s radio success and suave persona inevitably captured Hollywood’s attention. A talent scout arranged an audition with MGM, but the studio declined to sign him. After a subsequent audition with Twentieth Century Fox, Ameche signed with that studio in 1935. He then appeared in a spate of films throughout the 1930s, reaching his height of fame with The Story of Alexander Graham Bell in 1939. Known for the “young-man-about-town” role, Ameche was said to be second only to Shirley Temple in status at the Fox studios. Despite this Hollywood fame, Ameche continued his radio career, a choice that underscored his appreciation for the aural medium. Most notably, he starred periodically on The Edgar Bergen–Charlie McCarthy Show. Among other skits for this program, Ameche appeared in a regular segment called The Bickersons, portraying half of a quarrelsome married couple.

     In the 1940s, with his film career dwindling, Ameche hosted a series of half-hour comedy-variety shows, such as What’s New? And The Drene Time Show, which featured musical skeletons, dramatic skits, and comedy sketches, including The Bickersons. On his programs, Ameche offered listeners many guest stars from the film world, including Dorothy Lamour, Herbert Marshall, and Fred Astaire, illustrating the benefits to radio of his lingering connection to Hollywood. He also hosted a talent program called Your Lucky Strike, on which their talents were judged by three random housewives who voted over their telephones. In addition to his hosting duties, Ameche appeared on Lux Radio Theater 21 times, among the most appearances of any actor, and he guest-starred regularly on The Jimmy Durante Show.

     In 1950 Ameche moved to New York and shifted his broadcasting career to television, beginning with hosting a quiz program, Take a Chance (1950). For the rest of the decade, he mainly hosted television variety shows, and he also appeared periodically on Broadway, most notably in Cole Porter's Silk Stockings in 1955. In 1958 Ameche returned to radio for a final time, hosting Don Ameche's Real Life Stories, a serial drama airing every day in half-hour installments, providing one complete narrative per week. After only occasional film and television appearances throughout the subsequent decades, Ameche made a comeback in the 1980s, winning an Academy Award for his supporting role in Cocoon (1985). He died in 1993, leaving behind a unique legacy as both a pioneering radio star and a successful film actor.