Vanna White

The film was universally panned, and TV Guide said White's acting was "wheely" bad. A measure of the Wiggles' growing fame in America is the fact that Captain Feathersword was mentioned in an episode of the acclaimed political TV drama The West Wing. In 1989, she was in the NBC TV-movie, The Goddess of Love, in which she played Venus. By guest-starring on their show, the Wiggles have also introduced non-Australian audiences to performers such as Jimmy Little, Kamahl, and Christine Anu (though many will recognize her by face if not by name). White was the subject of "Weird Al" Yankovic's 1988 song, "Stuck in a Closet With Vanna White". They have also recorded with numerous Australian and international music stars including John Fogerty, Tim Finn and Ross Wilson. The spread comprised photos of White wearing see-through lingerie that were taken before Wheel. [1] The group is currently franchising its concept to non-English speaking countries, with the idea already successfully sold in Taiwan, which now has its own Taiwanese Wiggles.

Also in 1987, she was featured in a Playboy pictorial. In 2001 The Wiggles were reported to have earned more than A$14 million, a sum which had grown to A$45 million by 2004. Her 1987 autobiography, Vanna Speaks!, was a best-seller. All the members play a musical instrument, which has become an important educational aspect of their shows. Within a year, Wheel was the highest-rated syndicated program, in large part because of "Vannamania". The Wiggles' music and performances were given an additional strength by the members' interest and experience in live pop music, skills which they incorporate into their CDs, videos and live shows. White's popularity soared after the nighttime version of Wheel debuted in September 1983. Informed by their studies and teaching expertise, they brought a fresh approach to the genre which, at its worst, could be simplistic, old-fashioned and sometimes downright patronising in both style and content.

She remained with the daytime version of Wheel until its cancellation in 1991. The quality of content was another crucial factor in The Wiggles' success. Merv Griffin chose her over two other finalists, and her first episode as Pat Sajak's regular assistant aired December 13, 1982. Increasing reliability, falling cost and simplicity of operation saw many children in this age group learning how to operate CD players and VCRs themselves. Two years later she auditioned for the letter-turning job on Wheel of Fortune that Susan Stafford vacated. Crucially for the Wiggles, both the VCR and the CD player were ideally suited to repeat playing, and like TV before them, both technologies were almost immediately harnessed to entertain the preschool children of the late Baby Boomer generation (most of whom had grown up with TV as a constant childhood companion and babysitter). White's first national television appearance came in a 1980 episode of The Price is Right, where she was one of the first four contestants to "come on down" but did not make it on stage (this clip would go on to be rebroadcast as part of The Price is Right's 25th anniversary special in 1997). By the early 1990s, the introduction of the new compact disc technology saw CD players emulating the near-universal market penetration of TVs and VCRs.

She later took the name of her stepfather, Herbert White, a former real estate agent in North Myrtle Beach. Just as they did with television in the 1960s, Australians took up the domestic video cassette recorder in the 1980s with extraordinary speed, with the result that, by the end of the 1980s there was both a TV and a VCR in more than 90% of Australian households. Vanna White was born Vanna Marie Rosich, in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to a family of Croatian background. By the time the Wiggles became established, two important changes had taken place in the Australian household. Vanna White (born February 18, 1957) is an American television personality who is best known as the hostess and puzzle board operator on the long-running game show Wheel of Fortune. But they are very good dancers, and help out when they want to. They don't speak at all, and they are very mischievous and cheeky.

The Wagglets are Wags the Dog's 'children' as such, in which he takes care of them in his house. The Wiggles have a rather unusual house, mainly because it's alive! The house can be very moody and stubborn, and in the movie didn't even recognise the wiggles! When the password 'sillypants' is stated, the house opens up like a lolly wrapper, much to the house's dislike, as he says he thinks he's falling apart. She was only featured in the video/DVD appropriately named 'Wiggle Bay'. She helped the wiggles find their adrift rowing boat when they visited the bay.

Magdelena is a mermaid who lives in the ocean near Wiggle Bay. In The Wiggles Movie: Magical Adventure, Officer Beaples had a speaking role. The part is typically mimed; she usually communicates through her whistle, and has many young police officers to teach (As seen on the Wiggles Live Video). Dressed resembling a British bobby, Officer Beaples is played by a woman in drag.

He longs to be like his grandfather Waldo the Great, and finally realized his dream after winning a magic competition in the Wiggles Movie. Wally is a children's magician who, despite his regular tries, fails at being a great magician. Vanessa taught Dorothy how to dance, but was only featured in one video. (A special note is that the video 'Toot Toot Chugga Chugga' Video had a special note at the end acknowledging John's death).

The first Wiggles Chef was John Field Snr., until his death. He was played by former Crowded House drummer Paul Hester until his death in 2005. A friendly cook who taught the wiggles how to cook cold spaghetti, mashed bananas, and hot potatoes.
There are also some minor extra characters featured in some of the videos/DVDs:.

Originally played by Anthony Field and his brother Paul Field, Captain Feathersword is now permanently played by Paul Paddick. A running joke with Captain Feathersword is his use of the phrase "Well, blow me down!", which usually results in the characters nearest him obeying his wishes by blowing him to the ground with a gust of breath. His catch-phrase is "Ahoy There, Me Hearties". Captain Feathersword is a friendly pirate, and is characterised by his pirate coat and hat, eyepatch and eponymous sword made of feathers.

. He is said to have a bubbly personality and loves a good joke. Henry lives under the sea and is the leader of the Underwater Big Band. Henry likes to wave to all his friends simultaneously, an easily accomplished feat considering his eight tentacles.

He wears tartan clothes, a straw hat and black polished shoes on the end of every tentacle. Henry is a fun-loving octopus with purple skin.
. He believes everyone is his friend and is said to love having a good time.

Wags is a skilled Tango dancer. Wags cannot talk, but The Wiggles understand him when he barks. Wags also enjoys digging in his garden. He enjoys eating, and is said to keep The Wiggles up all night if he gets hungry.

Wags is a tall, brown, furry dog with floppy ears and a happy face. Dorothy has a heart of gold and is a very friendly dinosaur. She loves her birthday as The Wiggles always make it a very special fun day for her. She loves dancing, and is known to do ballet, Irish, Scottish, and line dancing.

Dorothy is 5 Dinosaur years old, and is very wise for her age. She wears a floppy white hat and enjoys eating roses. Dorothy is a large green dinosaur with yellow spots. Occasionally touring without The Wiggles as "Dorothy The Dinosaur And Friends", they enable the group to maintain a touring presence even when The Wiggles themselves are off the road.

They were developed in the early 1990s, and were originally played by group members and by Anthony's brother Paul, but are now played by hired actors. Aside from the four Wiggles, there are many secondary characters that appear in their many songs and shows. American audiences responded warmly to the freewheeling Wiggles style and they now regularly sell out major venues around the country. audiences with the same easygoing presentation style that they had used in Australia.

Their early experiences touring in the USA with the 'Barney' shows -- which reportedly featured high production values but lacked spontaneity -- showed The Wiggles that they could break through to U.S. Their stage routines are often augmented by some gentle ironic humour aimed at the adults, although this is never done cynically, or at the expense of the children. They have, notably, made few concessions to the cultural imperatives supposedly prevalent in the American media, and they still display the same relaxed, accessible and good-natured performance style that was evident in their earlier Australian work. Although their live shows have lately become increasingly sophisticated, the Wiggles' basic style has changed little since their earliest days and a Wiggles concert can be enjoyed by parents and children alike.

Aside from their commitment, dedication and sheer hard work, a crucial aspect in The Wiggles' American success has been their on-stage spontaneity, humour and talent for improvisation. They now regularly play to packed houses across the USA, have performed at both Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall, and have appeared on TV shows such as the NBC "Today" show and the Regis Philbin talk show, as well as featuring in several Thanksgiving Parades in New York City. Since it was originally shown from 1997 to 1999, and in 2002 (also entitled Network Wiggles or Lights, Camera, Action, Wiggles!) on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Kids, The Wiggles are now seen nationally in the USA on the Disney Channel and as a result their popularity has sky-rocketed. After an initial slow entry into the United States market (touring with the organization that produces the Barney & Friends children's show), the Wiggles secured a breakthrough deal with The Walt Disney Company, and saw their videos and TV series screened to preschool children across America.

that they had their first major international success. Their first overseas tours brought the Wiggles to the United States and Britain in the mid-1990s, but like many other Australian acts, it was in the U.S. They performed literally hundreds of shows each year, their videos and CDs sold in ever increasing numbers and they regularly won every major industry award in their category. After several years of relentless touring around Australia, the group were firmly established as the most successful children's entertainment act Australia had ever seen.

With international exposure, the group became extremely popular in the United States and elsewhere in the 2000s. Their first CD, released in 1991, is the only recording to feature founding member Philip Wilcher, who left the group soon after the CD's release. Their combination of kid-friendly songs, videos and characters were a quick hit in Australia in the early 1990s. The group was able to capitalise on the contacts and goodwill that The Cockroaches had built up during the 1980s -- that band toured regularly and successfully throughout Australia -- and they also built up their performance expertise and public exposure with occasional busking around Sydney, although they would undoubtedly be mobbed if they were to attempt this today.

They developed a hugely successful system where receipts for their shows were split with the centres, who were able to use the popular Wiggles concerts as lucrative fund-raising events. Originally a five-piece group, the Wiggles began their career playing at pre-schools and childcare centres. They have also been able to successfully respond to criticism of the content of their act by pointing out the sound theoretical and educational bases of their work. They have been (unfairly) accused of pandering to allegedly 'trendy' notions of political correctness, but the Wiggles were in that case able to defend themselves by pointing out that the composition of the group -- including the Chinese-Australian Jeff Fatt -- was a matter of pure happenstance which arose out of a simple necessity, rather than being a concept deliberately created to try and exploit a market or imitate an existing act (e.g Hi-5).

Although there is now regular coverage of their ongoing financial success, The Wiggles near-universal popularity has meant that they have only rarely been victims of the so-called "tall poppy syndrome", though they have occasionally come in for some mild criticism. In the process their success has spawned a slew of lesser imitators including The Hooley Dooleys and the 'concept' children's group Hi-5. Thanks to a productive (if occasionally difficult) alliance with the ABC, the Wiggles created a distinctive blend of music, comedy and educational content that saw them rise over the course of the 1990s to become the most popular and successful children's group in Australian entertainment history, and then in turn become one of the most successful Australian entertainment exports of all time. Children's entertainment was up to this time dominated by presence of the long-running ABC-TV children's program Playschool, who marketed much of the most successful children's material, and whose various presenters often performed at children's concerts and similar events.

In Australia it had become a small but profitable "cottage industry" which operated in fairly traditional styles. Up to this time, the mass-market potential of entertainment for preschool children had yet to be tapped to its full extent. Their shows were such a hit with young audiences that they soon found themselves in regular demand and they soon discovered that could earn considerably more working as children's entertainers than as preschool teachers (a profession that is notoriously underpaid in Australia). The original five Wiggles initially teamed up to produce a music performance project for their studies.

Like Field, Cook had experience playing on the booming Sydney live rock scene of that period; he had played bass in a minor Sydney 1980s pop band, Finger Guns, while working as a clerk at the Australian Taxation Office. Page, the youngest of the group, had come into the course straight from high school, but Cook, Field and Wilcher were all mature-age students. Field enrolled in early childhood studies at Macquarie University in Sydney in the late 1980s, and it was here that he met three other students who were also musicians -- classically trained pianist Philip Wilcher, guitarist and singer Murray Cook and vocalist Greg Page. Anthony Field (vocals, guitar) and Jeff Fatt (vocals, keyboards) had been members of The Cockroaches, a popular eighties pub rock band who toured widely and had a number of Top 40 hits in Australia.

The animal characters also enabled them to create a (hugely successful) range of merchandising items that did not have to rely exclusively on the Wiggles own personae. The inclusion of the Dorothy character was one of their most successful innovations, since it enabled them to tap into the massive expansion of interest of dinosaurs among young children. The basic act was later augmented with popular supporting characters -- the parodic pirate Captain Feathersword (Paul Paddick) and the animal characters Dorothy the Dinosaur, Henry the Octopus and Wags the Dog. This simple device also allows the Wiggles to go about in public (at least in Australia) with relative ease, since children rarely recognise them without their trademark colors.

The colour coding is -- Greg, yellow; Murray, red; Anthony, blue; Jeff, purple. Very early on, they adopted differently coloured shirts for each member, which assisted their recognition by very young children, and they invariably wear the Wiggles 'uniform' when appearing as The Wiggles in the media or in public. The Wiggles originally consisted of five people, but for almost all of their career the lineup has consisted of the remaining four founder members. The Wiggles also adapted the Bob Wills tune "Silver Bells That Ring In The Night" with a duck-like "quack quack-quack" in the refrain.

Much of the Wiggles' music was written by John Field, the brother of the blue wiggle - Anthony. Another distinctive feature of the group's songs is easy-to-repeat gestures, such as the "romp bomp a chomp" hand motions in the song "Dorothy the Dinosaur". These costumed characters include Dorothy the Dinosaur (a horticulturalist dinosaur who eats only roses), Captain Feathersword (a harmless pirate), Wags the Dog, Henry the Octopus, and Officer Beaples (a female police officer who communicates through mime). Wiggles songs are often about simple topics that children can relate to: sleeping ("Rock A Bye Bear", "Wake Up Jeff"), eating ("Fruit Salad"), animals ("Do the Monkey", "Rockabye Your Bear", "Ponies") or the cast of characters created for their home videos and TV shows.

. The Wiggles are an Australian band who specialise in creating and performing music for preschool children. Anthony Wiggle Field. Jeff Wiggle Fatt.

Murray Wiggle Cook. Greg Wiggle Page. Jeff - single with no children. Anthony - married with two children.

Greg - married with two children. Murray - married with two children. Jeff: 177 cm (5'10"). Anthony: 182cm (6').

Murray: 192 cm (6'3 1/2"). Greg: 194 cm (6'4 1/2"). Jeff: 21st July. Murray: 30th June.

Anthony: 8th May. Greg: 16th January. Greg wears a yellow shirt, drives the Big Red Car, and often performs magic tricks. Originally, he wore a green shirt but switched to blue because Dorothy is green.

Anthony eats healthy food, especially fruit salad. Murray wears a red shirt and plays a guitar. Jeff wears a purple shirt and falls asleep (children are asked to shout 'Wake Up Jeff!').