William Rock

William Baker Rock (August 5, 1872 – June 27, 1922) was an American vaudeville comedian, dancer, and Broadway performer born in Evansville, Indiana, to William Beverly Rock and Matilda Baker. His career spanned musical comedy and vaudeville, and he remained active on Broadway from 1904 to 1920.

Rock began his professional life in musical comedy before transitioning into vaudeville, where he partnered with Maude Fulton in the act known as Rock and Fulton. He is credited as the first vaudeville performer to bring a band onstage to accompany his act, and he was also among the earliest performers to adapt a Broadway musical into a condensed vaudeville format. After Fulton departed to pursue a solo career, Rock formed a new partnership with former chorus girl Frances White (1898–1969), billed as Rock and White. The duo made their debut together in 1916, though White came to be regarded as the act's principal performer, and the partnership dissolved in 1919.

Among his Broadway credits, Rock starred in the musical Funabashi and appeared in the revues Silks and Satins, Let's Go, and Hitchy-Koo in 1920, the last of which also featured Helen Eby of Altoona, Pennsylvania, whom he married on July 6, 1921.

Rock was married three times. He wed Jane Ryder on October 5, 1905, in Manhattan, and later married Gladys Tilbury of Brighton, England, before his marriage to Eby. On July 13, 1921, one week after his third marriage, he was hospitalized and underwent surgery to remove one-third of his stomach. He died on June 27, 1922, at the National Stomach Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from stomach cancer, and was buried in Fairview Cemetery in Bowling Green, Kentucky.