Pat Boone

He was awarded two Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 1731 Vine Street and for Television at 6268 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.

Boone was heavily criticized in the 1950s, and since, for singing homogenized, sanitized versions of rock-'n'-roll songs written and/or popularized by Afro-American artists. For example, when he recorded Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame" (his first big hit) in 1956, he initially insisted upon changing the title to "Isn't That a Shame", feeling that the incorrect grammar of the original title would be a bad influence on young people. He was overruled. On another occasion, at around that same time, he succeeded in removing all of the more suggestive lyrics from his cover of Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally." On that occasion, he changed the original's, "I saw Uncle John with Long Tall Sally,/He saw Aunt Mary comin' and he ducked back in the alley" to, "Long Tall Sally's got a lot on the ball,/And nobody cares if she's long and tall."

Was personally invited by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to perform at his inaugural ball on 20 January 1957.

His recording of "A Wonderful Time Up There" in 1958 became the first million-selling record with religious lyrics.

His 1962 hit song "Speedy Gonzalez" featured the unmistakable vocal impression of Mel Blanc on the recording (Blanc improvised all of his lines).

Actively supported Ronald Reagan's campaigns for Governor of California in 1966 and 1970, as well as his bid to win the Republican nomination in 1976.

He badly wanted to play the lead role in The Sand Pebbles (1966), but director Robert Wise wanted Steve McQueen instead.

One of the owners of the American Basketball Association's Oakland Oaks from 1967-1969. He sold his interest in the team and it moved to Washington, DC.

Considered running for office in 1968 on a pro-war platform.

In the 1980s Boone owned a television station in Orange County, California, on which he featured a variety of conservative evangelical religious shows and launched the short-lived career of ultra-right-wing talk-show host Wally George. In 2006 Boone penned an article for the arch-conservative political magazine WorldNetDaily in which he argued that Democrats and others who are against the Iraq War cannot, under any circumstances, be considered patriotic. He was later interviewed by Neil Cavuto on Fox News, where he expressed outrage against critics of George W. Bush, especially the Dixie Chicks, saying that their criticisms of the President showed they did not "respect their elders". He wrote another article defending actor Mel Gibson, who is a member of an extremely conservative Catholic denomination, after the actor was recorded unleashing a vicious anti-Semitic tirade while he was being arrested for drunk driving by a police officer he believed to be Jewish (the officer, as it turned out, was a Christian). In early 2007 Boone wrote two articles claiming that the scientific theory of evolution is "absurd," "nonsensical" and a "bankrupt false religion".

Friends with Tammy Renne Harris, Miss Chicago 1990.

He is a staunch supporter of the Republican Party, and campaigned for George W. Bush in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.

Former next door-neighbor of Ozzy Osbourne and Sharon Osbourne. His cover of "Crazy Train" was used as the theme for "The Osbournes" (2002).

In 2006 he and his wife Shirley Boone donated $3 million to Pepperdine University for the Graduate School of Education and Psychology Center for the Family.