Between its opening day on January 1, 1892, and when it shut down in November 1954, the immigration processing station on Ellis Island outside of New York City was the first stop in trying to make the American Dream come true. Set up to handle the massive influx of immigrants arriving on ships from Europe, Ellis Island welcomed in more than 12 million people, the ancestors of 40% of today’s U.S. residents. You’ve probably got a relative processed at Ellis Island. Also, some of the most well-known and respected Americans entered the U.S. through Ellis Island. 

Bela Lugosi

In the 1930s and 1940s, Bela Lugosi was the face of Universal Studios’ monster movie division. It’s his choices that established the image and persona of Dracula, a character he played in 1931’s Dracula and 1948’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. In October 1920, the Hungarian Lugosi served as a crewman on the SS Graf Tisza Istvan when it left Italy. When it arrived in New Orleans, Lugosi absconded, but he was found six months later in a Hungarian neighborhood in New York by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Agents sent him to Ellis Island to be properly processed. Fearing he’d be denied entry because he was from a Communist country, Lugosi lied and said he was Romanian. 

Frank Capra

Arguably the definitive American filmmaker of Hollywood’s “Golden Age,” Frank Capra made Best Picture Oscar winners It Happened One Night and You Can’t Take It With You, as well as inspiring, moving, and beloved pictures like It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Six days after Capra turned six years old in 1903, he and has family landed on Ellis Island after an arduous journey in steerage class on a boat that sailed out Sicily. The groups waited in a noisy room for two days to be processed. 

Bob Hope

Hope is regarded as a wartime hero, not for battlefield heroics but for his tireless work in entertaining  troops fighting in World War II, the Vietnam War, and other conflicts. He was already a radio and movie superstar by the time he started staging shows for American troops, defending a country that was actually Hope’s adopted homeland. Just before he turned five in 1908, he left home in Southampton, England, with his mother and siblings, to join his father, who had previously emigrated to Cleveland for stonemasonry work. 

Isaac Asimov

A towering figure of literature, Isaac Asimov wrote 500 books and is best known for his foundational science-fiction, such as I, Robot, Fantastic Voyage, and the Foundation saga. When Asimov was two, his maternal uncle in the U.S. wrote to the family in Russia, wondering if they’d survived the Russian Revolution and recommended they join him in the U.S. Asimov’s family left the U.S.S.R., and sailed out of Latvia, to England, and then to Ellis Island, arriving in February 1923. Just 15 months later, the U.S. government made it nearly impossible for immigrants from Eastern European Communist countries to enter the country. 

Irving Berlin

The proverbial “Great American Songbook” was composed in large part by Irving Berlin, a Russian immigrant. He wrote 1,000 songs in the early 20^th century, many of them classics like “White Christmas,” “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” and, in a burst of patriotism, “God Bless America.” Born Israel Berlin, the musician’s family fled brutal Russian persecution of Jewish people and its Siberian shtetl in 1893. Five-year-old Israel sailed with his family of eight through Belgium to Ellis Island.

Chef Boyardee

There are few things more quintessentially American than canned, heat-and-eat pasta dishes like beefaroni and ravioli, and their containers bear the image of Chef Boyardee — a real person. After working in kitchens in his hometown of Piacenza, Italy, from the age of 11, 17-year-old Ettore Boiardi sailed to the U.S. in 1914 on a French ship out of Borgonovo, Italy. After receiving approval to enter at Ellis Island, he joined his brother, Paolo, who had already immigrated to New York City. Within a decade, he’d moved to Cleveland and opened his first restaurant, Il Giardino d’Italia.