10. After nine years of false starts and failed attempts I reached a breakthrough. I realized to be a successful stand-up comedian I needed something that made me different from the rest. I created a ne'er do well character, for whom nothing goes right. My career took off.

Jack Benny?

Not Jack Benny Mark, but check out this next clue...

11. I took my new stage name from the name of a cowboy character who was also a screw up. He had appeared on the Jack Benny radio show some years earlier.

Rodney Dangerfield?

And back to you Theodore. Rodney Dangerfield it is.

12. As my career took off I gradually worked my way up to a Las Vegas evening show.
13. At one point I took a young Jim Carey under my wing and gave him a boost with a set in my show.
14. In New York City I opened a comedy club using my stage name, and many comedians you've heard of started there.
15. I worked hard on my career as a man for whom nothing went right, but when I started appearing movies,I usually played successful characters.
16. I was one of Johnny Carson's most common guests on the tonight show.
17. I was considered the first celebrity to have his own web site in the early days of the internet.
18. in 2004 at age 82 I passed away. “I tell ya I get no respect from anyone. I bought a cemetery plot. The guy said, ‘There goes the neighborhood!’” This led my wife, Joan Dangerfield, to choose “There goes the neighborhood” as the epitaph on my headstone.

Thanks Cliff! Clue 10 is what did it.

Someone else can take it if they're ready, I have to take a dog to the vet. If no one steps in by the time I'm back I'll post one.

Well, since I have one ready to go:

1. I was born on February 28, 1906, in Brooklyn, New York,

2. I was the second of 5 children of a poor family that emigrated to the U.S. from what was then Austria-Hungary.

3. My parents constantly worked for meager wages.

4. As a boy, I left school and joined a gang on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

5. First I committed mainly thefts, but then with an accomplice, developed a protection racket in which I threatened to incinerate pushcart owners' merchandise unless they paid me a dollar.

Oh yuck! I hope he turned his life around.

I will guess, Buster Keaton.

6. I soon built up a lengthy criminal record, dating from my teenage years, that included armed robbery, rape and murder.

7. During Prohibition, I became a bootlegger.

8. After the Twenty-first Amendment was passed repealing Prohibition in 1933, I turned to gambling.

9. In 1936, I left New York and moved to California.

10. My job during this period was mainly as a hitman and muscle, as I was noted for my prowess with guns and violence.

11. After traveling to Las Vegas, Nevada, I financed some of the original casinos.

Bugsy Siegal?

You got it, Theodore! Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel.

12. I assisted developer William R. Wilkerson's Flamingo Hotel after Wilkerson ran out of funds.

13. Eventually I took over the project myself and managed the final stages of construction.

13. Three months later, on June 20, 1947, I was shot dead at my girlfriend’s home in Beverly Hills, California.

14. I was influential not only within the Jewish mob but, like my friend and fellow gangster Meyer Lansky, also held significant influence within the Italian-American Mafia and the largely Italian-Jewish National Crime Syndicate.

Thanks Arthur! I'm surprised I've known a couple of these. The first ones you guys were doing I had absolutely no ideas.

Let's see...

1. I was born in Lynbrook, New York in 1927

2. After an early graduation from high school, I joined the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1945

3. I was still in the United States when Japan surrendered.

4. I went to college on the G.I. Bill and received my Bachelor's in Education in 1951

5. An urban legend claims that actor Lee Marvin said on The Tonight Show that he had fought alongside me at the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945

6. However, Marvin never said this, not having served on Iwo Jima, and I myself never saw combat, having enlisted too late to serve overseas

7. In my lifetime I received several honorary doctorates and degrees, five Emmy Awards, three Peabody Awards, a National Education Award as well as being inducted into the clown hall of fame

8. In 1998 I was inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters hall of fame

9. My grandson became the youngest person at the time to have climbed the Seven Summits by climbing Mount Everest in May 2004. He carried photographs of me on that ascent, and buried a photo of the two of us at the summit.

10. From 1948 to 1952 I played Clarabell the Clown on the Howdy Doody show and did not speak, but communicated by honking horns on my belt

11. From 1955 to 1984 I hosted the longest running children's program of its day

12. My character was based on the warm relationship between grandparents and children and the show was an immediate success

13. You probably don't even know my real name, but will know me by my character's name and that can be accepted as the correct answer

Captain Kangaroo.