Henry Corden, R.I.P.

Henry Corden, a veteran character actor best known as the second voice of Fred Flintstone, has died at the age of 85. He had been in poor health for some time, suffering from emphysema (and sometimes from failing vision that made it difficult to read scripts) and many of the recent recordings of Fred were performed by another actor, following Henry's decision to retire. Henry had a long career in front of the camera that started with a small role in the Danny Kaye movie, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and continued with numerous film and TV roles. For a time, he was part of Jack Webb's "stock company" of players on Dragnet, and people often stopped him on the street, recognizing him from his appearances on that show. But it was as a voiceover actor that Henry found his steadiest income, especially in the sixties and beyond.

Hanna-Barbera began using him as, for example, the voice of Paw Rugg on Hillbilly Bears (a segment in the 1965 series, Atom Ant) and playing bit parts on Jonny Quest and The Flintstones. Henry's voice had a natural similarity to that of Alan Reed (who played Fred Flintstone) so Henry became a kind of "back-up" Fred, doing the role on kids' records when Reed was unavailable, and doing the singing voice for Fred here and there because the folks at H-B felt he was a better singer than Reed. When Reed died in 1977, Henry took over the role in all aspects and did it for even longer. (Reed and Corden also shared another interesting role. Both were hired at different times to redub Jackie Gleason for screen appearances. In the TV version of Smokey and the Bandit, for instance, a lot of Gleason's dialogue was looped by Corden to eliminate cuss words. It sounds like Ralph Kramden is imitating Fred Flintstone instead of vice-versa.) And Henry did other roles in animation. He growled for Ookla the Mok on Thundarr the Barbarian, and guested often on Scooby Doo, The Smurfs and many other shows.

Henry was a charming, funny man who was just a joy to be around. I remember him telling me a long story about working with Bud and Lou in Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion. He played an Arab in the film — he played Arabs and sometimes Germans in an amazing percentage of his screen appearances — and apparently Lou kept forgetting that Henry wasn't of Arabian descent. "There would be some Middle Eastern name or word in the script and Costello would ask me, 'Hey, you're from there. How's this pronounced?' And I'd have to keep telling him, 'How the hell should I know? I'm from Montreal!'"

Here's a link to an obit that will tell you more about Henry. I just wanted to tell you how much some of us will miss him.