Jesse White was an American character actor best remembered for his long-running role as the original Maytag repairman in a series of widely popular television commercials. He was born Jesse Marc Weidenfeld on January 3, 1917, in Buffalo, New York, but grew up in Akron, Ohio. As a young man, he showed an early interest in performance, participating in amateur stage productions and vaudeville before eventually moving to Los Angeles to pursue a professional career in show business.