Search Results for: PAUL WINCHELL

This is an entry to Mark Evanier's list of the twenty top voice actors in American animated cartoons between 1928 and 1968. For more on this list, read this. To see all the listings posted to date, click here.

Most Famous Role: Tigger.

Other Notable Roles: Dick Dastardly, Fleegle of the Banana Splits, Gargamel (on The Smurfs), Goober of Goober and the Ghost Chasers and many more.

What He Did Besides Cartoon Voices: Paul was one of the greatest ventriloquists ever and a true superstar of early television. He was also an accomplished inventor holding dozens of patents including one for a prototype artificial heart that he built in his home workshop. In the sixties, he was a frequent actor in live-action comedy shows including The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Lucy Show.

Why He's On This List: Paul brought to cartoon voicing the same skills for characterization that he brought to his famous ventriloquist figures, Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smif. In recording sessions, he would sometimes forget himself and deliver his lines without moving his lips. This unnerved other actors in the session.

Fun Fact: Paul's daughter April has followed in one of the family businesses, becoming one of the most in-demand voice actresses these days. She got interested in the field accompanying her father to recording sessions at Hanna-Barbera and other studios.

Yesterday, we discussed a clip from The Lucy Show in 1965 where Lucy was involved with a show not unlike Shindig! or Hullabaloo.  As I mentioned, that episode of Ms. Ball's series guest-starred my favorite male singer, Mel Tormé as a struggling songwriter named Mel Tinker. Two years later, Mel was Mel Tinker for two more episodes of The Lucy Show that were pretty obviously an attempt to spin his character off into a new series called Main Street, U.S.A. Our clip today is a musical number written by Mel for one of those episodes.

A number of actors appeared in both episodes as characters who would have been in the series and you'll see a few of them in this clip — mainly John Bubbles, who was famous for his dancing, and Burt Mustin as Uncle Joe, and you may get a fast glimpse of Paul Winchell in old man make-up as Doc Putnam. The idea for the potential series seemed to be to catch the small town flavor of The Andy Griffith Show, which was coming to an end and being reborn as a series called Mayberry, RFD with some of the same players. By that time, they'd pretty much dropped the character of Otis the Town Drunk so Hal Smith, who played him, was available to be part of the cast of Main Street, U.S.A. also.

In the storyline, the town is threatened by a proposed freeway and Gale Gordon, who played Lucy's boss, had a financial interest in seeing the project go forth…but as you'll see, the song convinced him to join Lucy and the others in keeping Main Street, U.S.A. from going away. (In case you can't spot them, Winchell is to the right of the petition and Hal Smith is on the podium, eventually playing a tuba.)

Someone named Mike wrote to ask…

First of all, I'm a big fan of your blog. Your recent post about voice actors that you wanted to have guest star on productions got me wondering… what voice actors auditioned to lend their voices to the Garfield projects you worked on? Were there auditions for Jon, Roy and Binky before Thom Huge decided to voice those characters? Were there any voice actors who auditioned for characters, didn't get the roles, but still wound up guest-starring on Garfield and Friends? Were there auditions at all, or did the crew just call up various actors they liked and offer them the roles?

Well, the first Garfield project with which I was involved was the Saturday morning series, Garfield and Friends. Jim Davis, the cat's creator, selected the voices before I came along. Garfield's first voice was, briefly, a radio personality named Scott Beach and you can read about him here. He did the voice for a short segment in a 1980 CBS special called The Fantastic Funnies.

That segment more or less served as the pilot for a series of prime-time animated Garfield specials, kicking off with Here Comes Garfield!, which aired in October of 1982. For that special and all that followed, Jim decided Garfield needed a different voice and the answer to the question, "Who did they audition?" would be "Who didn't they audition?" Just about every voice actor in L.A. read for the part and some of them read several times before Lorenzo Music tried out and got it. (Lorenzo, by the way, redubbed the Fantastic Funnies clip for when it was later shown here and there.)

One of the people who auditioned for the role of Garfield was Gregg Berger. Jim liked Gregg tremendously and while he felt Gregg was wrong for the cat, he found out Gregg could make dog sounds and awarded him the role of Odie. To this day, Gregg has been Odie in every case where Odie has had a voice.

Sandy Kenyon (you can read about him here) was the voice of Jon in that first special. With the second special, Garfield on the Town, Jim decided to give the role of Jon to a friend of his who'd been working for his company and had a background in radio and voice work. That was when Thom Huge became Jon…and he also picked up other roles, including Binky. For that special, Jim also selected Julie Payne to voice Jon's lady friend, Liz. As far as I know, Liz was the last role for which auditions were done. In other specials, Jim just cast actors he'd heard of or who had auditioned for other roles.

When Garfield and Friends started, Jim was originally the Voice Director but I took over casting new roles and eventually took over the voice direction when Jim got too busy to fly out here and do it. Thom Huge, who lived back in Indiana and worked for Jim there, flew out for voice sessions so we ganged-up recording dates so Thom could do several shows while he was out here. He turned out to be quite versatile so he did a lot of other roles in the show, plus he played Roy in the U.S. Acres segments. Gregg Berger also turned out to have an endless supply of other voices.

To cast the other regular characters in U.S. Acres, we did the only other auditions ever done for the Garfield and Friends series. We decided that since they were already part of the show, we'd have Julie Payne voice the character of Lanolin, and we'd assign Gregg one of the male roles and I brought in about eight of my favorite voice actors to audition. I directed the auditions, Jim listened to the tapes and he picked Gregg to be Orson, Howie Morris to be Wade Duck, and Frank Welker to play Bo, Booker and Sheldon.

And that was that. Thereafter, when we needed a new voice for a recurring or one-shot character, I might be able to have Gregg, Thom, Howie, Julie or Frank — or even Lorenzo, once or twice — do it but otherwise, I'd just hire someone I knew could give me what I wanted. A few of the actors who auditioned for U.S. Acres, like Chuck McCann and Lennie Weinrib, wound up doing guest voices.

Over the 121 half-hours we did of that series, we hired a lot of people who were new to the voice business. We also hired a lot of actors who'd voiced cartoons I'd loved as a child including Stan Freberg, June Foray, Larry Storch, Don Messick, Gary Owens, Dick Beals, Shep Menken, Paul Winchell, Julie Bennett, Marvin Kaplan and Arnold Stang. I certainly didn't need to audition any of those people.

What has been occupying me for the last week or so continues to occupy me…and longer than I'd expected. The reruns here will soon be displaced by new material but today, you get the one about the time I had Scarlet Fever. A bit of Googling tells me this disease is no longer as common as it once was but it still occurs here and there. I don't think I have a "worst enemy" or anyone I dislike enough to wish it upon and if I ever do get one, I will not even wish it upon that person. This ran here on December 27, 2015…

When I was about six, I came down with a very, very bad case of Scarlet Fever. A couple of other kids in my class at school had it and that's apparently how I got it…but I got it really, really bad. It was so bad that for a day or two there, there was a very real worry that I might die from it. [POSSIBLE SPOILER: I didn't.]

I do not remember everything about that time but I recall my pediatrician, Dr. Grossman, making a house call to our home late one night. That scared me. Watching TV shows as I did, I had heard any number of jokes about how doctors did not make house calls anymore. And this is how my mind worked even then: I thought that if Dr. Grossman and his little black bag were at my bedside, I had to be nearing death's door.

That was one of the two things that got me worried. The other was that for the first time, I saw my father cry.

My father was a lovely, kindly man who never in his entire life hurt another human being intentionally or failed to help out one — even a total stranger — who was in need. But he was also a very nervous man who worried about everything…and especially about illness. In later years if I had some minor ailment, my mother and I conspired to hide it from him. It just got him too upset. He was upset that night when Dr. Grossman came.  At that age, I figured that if my father was upset, I should be as well.

I was bright pink from the infection, absolutely covered in rashes. My throat felt like I'd tried to swallow a porcupine and I had a temperature so high, they wouldn't let me know what it was. I think my mother just told me I had an unlisted number. But I managed to get myself mostly unscared by remembering that Dr. Grossman was a great doctor. He would know how to fix me.

And of course, he did. First thing, he ruled out taking me to a hospital. I was not part of the conversation but later, my mother quoted him as saying, "Mark's too weak to be moved and if we take him to a hospital, he's liable to infect other children or pick up something else he doesn't need now. There's nothing they can do for him there that you can't do just as well here."

It was close to Midnight — and I think it may have been a Sunday evening — when he left our house, having written several prescriptions that had to be filled A.S.A.P. At the time, pharmacies that were open 'round the clock were not common even in Los Angeles. My mother worked her way through the Yellow Pages and found a few but none of them were well-enough stocked to have what we needed on their shelves.

Finally, she called a Horton and Converse out on Wilshire that was closed but the pharmacist was still there and had what was required. He agreed to wait around if someone could come right away for it.

My father was instantly dispatched in his car to fetch the drugs. One day years later, he told me the story of driving to the pharmacy but he turned pale as he did and his hands began shaking. He said that that night, they were shaking so badly he could hardly drive. After a near-collision, he pulled over to the side of the road and thought, "I can't do this."

Then he realized he had to do it. His only child's life was at stake…or seemed to be at stake, which in this case was the same thing. He finally drove to the drugstore and waited anxiously for the order to be filled.  Then he raced home, trembling all the way and probably hearing the Lone Ranger theme song in his head.

If you'd known my father, you would understand that he did not tell me this story to impress me with any heroism on his part. Indeed, he did not think he had been heroic. He told it to me to admit a certain weakness on his part and to tell me that as I went through life, I had to try to not be like that. I have tried to not be like that.

Once he was home that night — or rather, that morning — my mother gave me the pills, which I suppose were antibiotics. They may even have been precursor drugs to what I'm taking now for the infection I had recently in my knee.

There was also an external drug which had to be administered — a purple liquid that was to be applied to my forehead and chest with compresses. Pure cotton cloths were needed and we had no rags around or cotton sheets that could be cut up — and of course by now it was around 2 AM. There was nowhere to buy any so my father's handkerchiefs were sacrificed.

He had about a dozen of them and my mother, wearing the gloves she used for dishwashing, used them all up over the next few days. Each was soaked in a bowl of the purple liquid, then used to softly wipe my brow and chest. This went on most of that first night and apparently it along with the pills helped to bring my fever down and out of the danger zone by 7 AM. That was when my mother staggered off to bed and my father got up to keep an eye on me. He'd been trying without much success to sleep.

He didn't get much the next few days. He stayed home from work and he and my mother slept or took care of me in shifts. One was always at or near my bedside and when I was awake, I was read stories…but not too many because I was supposed to sleep as much as possible. Dr. Grossman phoned often and about three days after his late visit, he came by during the daylight hours, inspected the patient and announced that I was well on my way to a full recovery.

I don't recall hearing him say that. I do remember how happy my parents were and that's how I figured it out before they informed me.

I had missed enough school because of the illness and was so weak that it was decided I should skip the rest of that semester and build back my strength. I had previously skipped two semesters (one year) of elementary school so I eventually graduated one semester ahead instead of two. During my recovery, I had one interesting visitor whose visit I managed to sleep through. I wrote about that here.  And if you'd like to read more about Dr. Grossman, I wrote about him here and here.  The piece at the first of those links guest stars Jerry Lewis.

When I was awake, I read comic books. I read "real" books too.  A very inspirational one was Ventriloquism for Fun and Profit by Paul Winchell but I also read tons of comic books. My father almost never came home from work without a few, mostly Dell Comics featuring characters I also watched on television. I had read comics before getting sick but it was as the Scarlet Fever was departing that my interest in them became obsessive. Some would say I traded one illness for another…but at least I managed to turn the new one into a profession.

Finally, I was well enough to accompany my mother to the Von's Market where I could buy my own comic books, at which point my father was asked politely to cease bringing any home for me. I liked it better when I could pick them out myself. I got less Casper the Friendly Ghost and more Bugs Bunny that way. Also, though my father made notes of what he was buying for me, he did occasionally bring home duplicates.

The first time he brought me one I already had, I told him so and he got terribly embarrassed. He wanted to rush back out to the store and see if they'd let him exchange it for one I didn't have. Thereafter, I learned not to tell him. When he handed me a duplicate, I'd feign delight and if he asked, I'd lie and say I'd never seen that one before. Then I'd put it in a little pile I maintained of comics to be traded to friends at some future date.

Instead of giving me comics, he gave me money to buy my own…but I didn't spend every cent of it on issues of Looney Tunes and Yogi Bear. With my mother's help, I went to a J.J. Newberry's — a "dime store" next door to the Von's — and I bought my father a present. It consisted of two six-packs of fine cotton handkerchiefs embroidered with an "E" for "Evanier." These were to replace the dozen of his that had to be thrown away after they became permanently stained with the purple liquid. It was the second time I saw my father cry but it was a good cry.

Another rerun. This one is rerunning from February 22, 2015…

Let me tell you about the photograph you see before you. It was taken in the backyard of the home in which I lived with my parents from age 1 to about 22. I'll guess I was about seven, maybe eight in this picture. The little girl was named either Roxy or Lee.

The reason I'm not certain is that Roxy and Lee were identical twins — and I mean identical. Their grandmother, who lived next door to us, could not tell them apart and she claimed that even their parents had trouble. Roxy and Lee liked this and encouraged their folks to dress them alike. When their folks didn't, they were known to swap outfits, just to keep everyone guessing. They would also sometimes claim to be each other. If you took a guess, they'd usually tell you you were wrong, even if you were right.

Every week or three, Roxy and Lee would come stay with their grandmother for a few days and when they did, we'd play games and I would make up little adventure stories for us to act out. Once, we put on a show in that backyard for my parents, their grandma and as many of the neighbors as we could bring there under duress. We opened with a magic act that utterly baffled the three people there who didn't know that my assistant had a twin. For a few seconds there, they actually thought I'd magically transported her from one big cardboard box to another.

The other seven people in our audience laughed because they knew the secret. Then we intentionally gave it away to the other three so Roxy and Lee could both be in the rest of the show together. They sang and danced to a record I played there in the yard thanks to a phonograph and an ungodly-long chain of extension cords. I did other magic tricks and a ventriloquism act that did not have Paul Winchell sweating the competition.

I liked Roxy and Lee a lot. One day, we learned that their grandmother was moving away. Actually, everyone in the small apartment complex next door was moving away.  It was being demolished to be replaced by a large apartment building.  I was quite sad because it meant the end of my friendship with Roxy and Lee.  I never even got to see them for a "last time."

In the above photo, one of them and I seem to be running some kind of mobile exhibit of rocks we'd found or something. I have no idea what we were doing but I do remember that wagon which served me well. It was at different times, a spaceship and a stagecoach and an ice cream truck and a door-to-door lemonade stand and I believe I even won the Indianapolis 500 in it a few times. Finally in my teen years, I gave it to a younger boy who lived down the street and he too found all sorts of imaginative uses for it.  He may even have used it as a wagon.

The main thing I would call your attention to in the photo is that little house we had in our yard. It was there when we moved in and I'm not sure of its original purpose. It had no plumbing or electricity, which suggested it was built as a tool and storage shed. But it also had big windows all around it which suggested people were expected to be inside it. Here's another photo where you can see it…

I don't know what caused me to make that face. Usually when I'm around females, they're the one making that face.

For a time, I used the little house cautiously as a playhouse — cautiously because many of the windows were broken, the floor had weak spots on it, there were portions of the ceiling that looked like they might come down at any minute, and there were a great many rusty nails in its walls. My Uncle Nathan, who was marginally handy with tools, occasionally went in and tried to remove some of the greater hazards but it finally came down to a simple decision: My father would either have to spend a lot of money to have someone come in and fix it up or it would have to be demolished.

A neighbor recommended a carpenter who came by and quoted a price to make it safe and inhabitable. The amount was clearly out of the question so my father asked, "How much to tear it down and haul everything away?" That fee was less but also more than he could spend at that time. Uncle Nathan boarded up the windows and the one door…and the little house just sat there for a year or two looking sad and maybe haunted.

During that time, the apartment complex next door was razed and a new, modern building took its place. As you might expect, we began finding termite droppings in our home. A bunch of them probably came in when they lost their residence next door and another wave probably arrived with all the lumber that was trucked in to build the new building.

An exterminator gave us a price to have our house tented and fumigated but, he said, there was no point in doing that as long as that little house was in the backyard. It was swarming with the little beasts and would re-attract them after any "kill."  He gave my father an estimate on what it would cost to rip the place down now. It was $300, which seemed like a lot at the time. My father thought about it for a few days and finally decided he had no choice but to pay it.

Then my mother had a thought. She asked our gardener Felipe what he would charge to do it. He said he didn't do that kind of work. Then she asked him, "If someone else tore the building down, what would you charge to haul away all the old wood and broken glass?" That, he said, he would do — for $40.

She came to me and said, "How'd you like to make $130?" That was half of what would be left if she and I tore it down and Felipe cleaned up after us.

I think I was ten at the time and $130 seemed like…well, less than a million dollars but not by much. The primary expenditure in my life was the purchase of comic books, most of which I bought at used book shops where I could get six for 25 cents. I did some instant arithmetic. $130 was 3,120 comic books.

But not really. There were many current comic books on the newsstand that looked so wonderful that I couldn't resist paying full cover price, which then was a dime. So maybe it was more like 2,000 comics. I remember thinking, "Gee, it's too bad I won't have a little house in the backyard to store them in."

My mother then said, "Now, don't think I'm going to let you spend the $130 all on comic books. Some of it's going to have to go for clothes and other expenses."

I asked, "Could I buy a pair of socks and spend the rest on comic books?" She said no. I could spend $30 on comics and then the remaining $100 would go towards, as she put it, "Necessities of Life." I tried to argue that Detective Comics was one but all she said was, "Nice try, kid. Nice try." I never could put one over on my mother. My father, yes…but not my mother.

Still, I took the offer. Thirty bucks worth of comic books was, after all, thirty bucks worth of comic books. Even at twelve cents apiece, that was a lot.

She presented the proposition to my father: "Give us the money and Mark and I will tear down the little house." He was skeptical but obviously, there was a value to keeping the dough within the family. "You've got a deal," he told us. "But for God's sake, be careful."

We were…and it was, up to a point, enormous fun. The little house was built like a real house but without a concrete foundation. We bought tools so I had safety goggles and gloves and a sledge hammer that was appropriate to my size and a big crowbar that I used to pry the shingles off the exterior. Once I did that, some of the walls beneath them could be knocked down with the sledge hammer, even by a ten-year-old boy. The little house turned out to be in even worse shape than we'd thought, plus we also had a big assist from those termites.

When we got the place down to the framework, Uncle Nathan decided to get in on the action. He went someplace and rented a gasoline-fueled power saw and then came over and cut down some of the upright beams, collapsing the roof. Boy, that was exciting. Many years later, I was outside the Hacienda Hotel in Las Vegas the night it was imploded with thousands of gallons of liquid explosives. Watching the little house come down was more memorable and astonishing.

Then Uncle Nathan sawed the roof and interior paneling into smaller chunks that Felipe the Gardener could fit into his truck. When the house was almost down, we paid Felipe to dig up the wooden frame that had formed the foundation. He then hauled the wreckage away and we were done.

My father was amazed. Absolutely amazed. He stood out in the backyard, staring at the plot where the little house had been and he said over and over, "I can't believe you did it! I cannot believe it!"

Between that extra cost of Felipe's excavation and what we spent on tools, we didn't clear $260. It was more like $200 but I still put aside $30 from my share for comic books and the rest went for clothes, shoes and some new shelving for my bedroom. I had to have a place to put all those comic books, after all. That was a Necessity of Life.

Only days after the little house was gone, we had to spend two nights at a nearby motel while our big house was covered with a tent. It was then filled with poison gas…which, the exterminator swore to me on the life of his children, would not harm my beloved comic book collection. As we were checking into the motel, the clerk noted that the address my father wrote on the registration card was less than a mile away. "You're not from out of town, I see. Might I ask the reason you'll be staying with us?"

My father was still reeling with astonishment at our demolition work. I guess it was partly that and partly to make a joke that he told the man, "My son here tore down our house."

The clerk gave me a look of incredulity and he asked, "Did you really do that?"

I said, "Yes." And motioning to the little suitcase I was holding, I added, "I packed my sledge hammer and my crowbar! If the TV in our room doesn't work, this place will be a parking lot by morning!"

Ever since I learned there was a Garfield & Friends channel on PlutoTV, I've been watching occasionally. They're running shows I wrote in 1991 and 1992 and haven't seen since. One or two, I'm not sure I ever saw at all. So I sit here, occasionally amusing myself or more often thinking, "Why the hell did I write that?" Yesterday, I heard a minor character speak and I thought, "Who was that? We had such fine actors in the cast, I can't believe one of them gave that bad line reading or that I let it through."

And then I realized who it was. It was me. Yeah, I occasionally did a bit part…and when Garfield's creator Jim Davis was in town, so did he.

It's fun and educational to watch these now. I can't look back on old work without learning something. I learn it too late but at least I learn. I also have an emotional response that I'm not sure I can describe to hearing the voices of actors who worked on the show but are no longer with us. Lorenzo Music, Gary Owens and Howard Morris — three great actors and great friends — were in every episode. I'm also hearing Stan Freberg, June Foray, Rip Tay;or, Don Knotts, Paul Winchell and a few others we've lost.

I'm relatively new to Pluto TV and I still don't understand some things about it. Although they presumably have access to all 121 half-hours of Garfield and Friends, they only run a select chunk of shows at a time. I'm not keeping close track but it seems like yesterday, they were running thirteen or fourteen shows over and over, not always in the same order. Today, it seems like they're running a limited number of shows — probably the same number — but some were in yesterday's rotation and some weren't.

But I may be wrong about this. I'm not making a close study.

Each show is interrupted several times with a little "we'll be right back" message which is like a commercial break only it isn't a commercial…though Friday, I did see one actual commercial in there. For some reason, they don't put these little "time out"s between cartoons. They stick them in the middle of a cartoon or near the end. So a character says the next-to-last line of the cartoon and there's a funny end line coming but you have to wait a minute or so for that last line.

I don't understand why they do this. Perhaps I would if I understood the business model of PlutoTV. Is there any revenue stream apart from the occasional few bucks from the occasional commercials? I have a feeling that when I get my cut of what they're paying to run these shows day and night, it'll be about enough for an order of McDonald's french fries. A small order of McDonald's french fries.

The nominations for this year's Emmy Awards in the category of "Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance" are as follows: Jessica Walters, Maya Rudolph, Stacey Abrams, Julie Andrews, Tituss Burgess, Stanley Tucci and Seth MacFarlane. With the exception of Mr. McFarlane, these are all actors known for their on-camera or on-stage work who do an occasional voice in a cartoon or something. When they do, they are at the center of two prejudices.

One — which I hear less often but I do hear it — is the presumption that they aren't very good and they were cast — to the exclusion of full-time voiceover performers — only because of their reputations. This is undoubtedly true in some cases. Hell, I've even had producers or casting directors admit as much to me and I can almost (almost!) defend it in certain cases, especially relating to feature films.

The sale of a movie to exhibitors — or of a TV series or special to a network — can often be easier with a S*T*A*R attached. Not everyone is cast in roles because they are the most talented or "rightest" for a role. Sometimes, they're cast for their reputation and the belief that they have some sort of following that will sell tickets or bring in viewers.  The movie Shrek might not have been made or been sold in advance to so many theaters with unknowns voicing the leads instead of Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy. A certain part of the movie business (emphasis on "business") does revolve around star names. That screenplay you wrote that no one even wants to read, let alone make, might be helped immeasurably if Tom Hanks was interested in starring in it.

Still, I love "real" voice actors — the kind who follow the lineage of Daws Butler, Mel Blanc, June Foray, Paul Frees, Don Messick and so many more…the kind who really know how to act with only their voices. No body language…no facial expressions…just their voices.

If I just start giving you the names of current "real" voice actors, I'll offend many friends by leaving them out so I'll just list the ones who've participated in the online Cartoon Voices panels I've done during The Pandemic. All of these videos can be found in this section of this website. Here's the list…

Bob Bergen, Julie Nathanson, Fred Tatasciore, Phil LaMarr, Secunda Wood, Jim Meskimen, Gregg Berger, Kaitlyn Robrock, Rob Paulsen, Debra Wilson, Alan Oppenheimer, Alicyn Packard, Jason Marsden, Elle Newlands, John Mariano, Debi Derryberry, Michael Bell, Neil Ross, Neil Kaplan, Nickie Bryar, Laraine Newman, Misty Lee, Dee Bradley Baker, Bill Farmer, Corey Burton, Kari Wahlgren, J.P. Karliak, Kimberly Brooks, Jon Bailey, Mara Junot, Maurice LaMarche, Anna Brisbin and Brock Powell. And in two weeks, the one I did with Candi Milo, Wally Wingert, Jenny Yokibori and Zeno Robinson will be online.

These are all folks who do a lot of voiceover work. Some of them also do on-camera…just as Mel Blanc, June Foray, Paul Winchell, Gary Owens, Stan Freberg and other inarguable voice actors occasionally did on-camera. But I think you can see the difference between them and when a cartoon special or Mr. Disney brought in Bing Crosby or Ed Wynn or Boris Karloff to do a voiceover for a cartoon.

As a director of cartoon voices, I've hired the "on-camera" variety — Don Knotts, Buddy Hackett, Jonathan Winters, Jesse White and even a few who weren't in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World like Jeffrey Tambor and Shelley Berman. The prejudice that such actors are only hired for their names is just plain wrong. Some of them are good at voiceover and some of them are not.

But the other prejudice is also wrong. That's the prejudice — and I've heard this one too from folks who admitted to it — that on-camera actors are somehow preferable because they're "real actors." That's absurd. Look at the names in the list above of folks who've been on my online panels. Any one of them is capable of doing things in front of a microphone that such "real actors" could never do.

We once had James Earl Jones on an episode of Garfield and Friends. I would never have thought of casting him but one day when we were recording in Studio A, he was recording promo-type announcements in Studio B. He wandered over and watched our troupe for a while and then asked me if I could use him someday for a character part. I immediately said, "Have you got a demo of your work I could listen to?"

No, I didn't say that. That stupid, I am not.  What I actually said was, "Sure if you're willing to work for what we pay." He was…and two weeks later, he came in and played — of course — a dastardly villain with a real deep voice. He was fine but throughout the whole session, he kept saying of the other actors in our cast, "I can't believe them, switching voices like that, making creature sounds." He was impressed with the sheer acting.

I don't know if we submitted him for Emmy consideration that year. If we had and he'd been nominated, that would have felt very, very wrong to me. I'm sure he was magnificent doing Othello or Driving Miss Daisy or The Great White Hope or almost anything else on the Broadway stage but not everyone can do everything.   Laurence Olivier was ten times the actor that Bruce Lee was but if you'd been casting the lead in a martial arts movie when both were around, which one would you have picked?

My point is that the great voice actors are great at voice acting.  Some who are not primarily voice actors can be fine in certain roles in certain situations as Mr. Jones was…but when I see a list of nominees like the one for this year's Emmy Awards, I think someone is disrespecting professional, full-or-most-time voice actors.  They're voting for celebrity, not talent.

They're not understanding what James Earl Jones understood about how the other actors in the session with him were exhibiting a range and expertise he did not have.  Even the late Lorenzo Music, who really only had the one voice, was using it to give life to a fully-fleshed characterization, created using only his voice, not his face or body.

I have not heard all of what earned this year's nominees their nominations.  Perhaps some of their performances were wonderful but it's hard to think some judges didn't stampede over the work of some actors with less familiar names to get to actors they'd heard of.  Come on, Academy.  Give voice acting awards to voice actors.

In my little tribute piece about Mark Wilson here, I wrote mainly about his TV show, The Magic Land of Allakazam, which ran on Saturday mornings for four years. It was, as you'll see in this clip of the opening, sponsored by Kellogg's cereals. Kellogg's also was backing Hanna-Barbera's second TV series — their first for syndication — Huckleberry Hound. So every episode of Allakazam the first season contained a cartoon from my other favorite show. (The cartoons were eliminated after the first season and they remade the opening to omit Huck, Yogi and the others.)

I started watching this show when I was eight, way back in the days when you had to be in front of the TV when your favorite shows were on. You couldn't pause the show. You couldn't slow-mo it or replay a scene. If something distracted you and you took your eyes off the screen for a moment, you missed whatever you missed…possibly forever but at least until reruns months later. Oh, if we'd had TiVo back then, I would have studied each and every trick in obsessive detail.

By that age, I was reading books…from the children's section of the Public Library. My parents were big on libraries and they went at least once a week, sometimes more often, to take books out and take books back. They also took me along and I had my very own library card.

One day, I asked the librarian if they had any books on magic tricks. They did but, alas, they were in the adult section for which my card was not authorized. I got my father to check out a few of those books on his card and this led to me, at around that age, getting a special one that let me check out books from both ends of the library. I believe we had to get a letter from the principal of my school saying that I was mature enough or smart enough or something enough…but it was arranged.

I studied them backwards, forwards and inside-out. None of Mark Wilson's tricks were revealed in them exactly but some of the tricks taught in the book were based on similar principles so they helped me figure out a few of the feats from The Magic Land. I was proud that I could do that and even prouder that I was able to perform a few for my friends and relatives.

At the same time I was imitating Mark Wilson, I was also shadowing another magical guy on TV — Paul Winchell — trying to learn ventriloquism with my very own Jerry Mahoney figure. I don't recall ever thinking I might someday follow in either profession or even become a performer of any sort. But I do recall wanting to be able to do something that was kinda/sorta like what those two men did. And I recall how happy I was each week when this theme song played as I could spend a half-hour in The Magic Land of Allakazam…

Dale Herbest writes…

I loved Howard Morris's role as Gopher in the original Winnie the Pooh featurettes and I wonder if you could clear something up for me. I've heard from other fans that the reason he didn't reprise the character for The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is because he was under contract to Garfield & Friends at the same time and legally couldn't. I know you were just the head writer and V.O. director but do you know if that's true? I'm sorry he never reprised the role either way.

I do know if it's true and it isn't. Howie was free to work on any cartoon show…and I think he missed one recording session (with my permission) because another show needed him that day.

It is very, very rare that cartoon voice actors these days have any kind of overall contract, probably one that just says they agree to be available for a certain number of recording sessions and that they'll be paid some higher-than-most rate for their work. Most just sign a short contract for each episode we call them in for but I've never heard of any kind of exclusivity clause stopping anyone from working on another show. If it happens, it's very rare.

Did someone else take over the role of Gopher while Howie was still alive? If so, it would mean he couldn't do it for health reasons, he wouldn't do it for the money he was offered or someone at Disney decided they simply wanted someone else in the role. Paul Winchell was replaced as Tigger for at least two of those reasons if not all three.

Today's Bad News for Donald Trump
Republicans continue to not back Trump's decision to withdraw from Syria. Even Mitch Friggin' McConnell thinks it was a mistake, which is kind of like Edgar Bergen being condemned by Charlie McCarthy, Paul Winchell being denounced by Jerry Mahoney or Señor Wences getting the finger from his own left hand.

Today's Outrage by Donald Trump
Read this account of Trump's cabinet meeting today and pick any or all. Adam Schiff was the informant to the Whistleblower! You have to get into wars to get out of wars! The Emoluments clause in the Constitution is phony! Mitt Romney is disloyal to his party! Trump gets the biggest cheers! The Never-Trumpers are dying off! This man is losing his marbles or my name isn't Pierre Delecto.

An Interesting Scenario Involving Trump
Jonathan Chait theorizes on how Donald Trump's own party might vote to convict him in the Senate and remove him from office. It's possible but it doesn't seem likely to me. I don't think anything's predictable about this guy except that he'll always act in his own self-interest and that he'll be steadfastly wrong about how to do that.

Around the age of eight — give or take a year — I began answering the oft-asked question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" with "A writer." And I never again answered it any other way. But before six, there were a few months there when I said "A ventriloquist." I can't explain what the appeal of that profession was to me but it had a lot to do with seeing great practitioners of that art on TV: Paul Winchell, Edgar Bergen, Shari Lewis, Señor Wences, one or two others…and Jimmy Nelson.

Jimmy Nelson's main "figures" were Danny O'Day (who was a pretty generic dummy) and Farfel (a canine puppet who was a star with his laid-back, hound-dog attitude).  Nelson was proficient at not moving his lips — he may have been the best of the bunch at that — and at being a good foil for his friends. I liked him every time I saw him, which wasn't as often as I would have liked. A lot of those times when I did see him were when he, Danny and Farfel were selling Nestlé's Quik or allied chocolate products. Here's just such an appearance…

Jimmy Nelson died yesterday at the age of 90. A gent named Joe Gandelman wrote a much better appreciation of the man than I could have mustered so go read that. Make sure you watch the clips there too, and there's a good, long interview with Nelson. He was a great showman.

Our Trump-Free Weekend on this blog ended at Midnight and you'll notice I held off until 12:05 AM to post something about him.  That's admirable restraint on my part.

For months now, friends of mine have been telling me that the guy was totally outta control; that there was no logic, no restraint, no discussion before he opened his mouth and/or his Twitter app.  I knew most of what he said or posted were hateful lies but I kinda thought maybe there was some strategy behind it, some factor that made it not as gonzo as it all seemed.  Trump prides himself on being a great negotiator and I know that some negotiators deliberately play a little crazy in ways that put the other side on the defensive.  It can give them a bit of an advantage and I thought maybe that was what was going on with Trump.

I don't think that anymore.  All weekend, he kept tweeting that Alabama was in the path of Hurricane Dorian…this despite the fact that the National Weather Service kept sending out tweets correcting him…

You'd think anyone in any position of authority — not just the President of the United States but anyone — would want to make sure they got this right lest folks panic needlessly. And you'd think once he did get it wrong, someone would have stopped him from saying it over and over…perhaps the same person who might have told him, "Uh, Mr. President, may I respectfully suggest that with this huge hurricane destroying lives and homes, this might not be the best time to be seen playing golf?"

But no. No one can tell this guy anything and what comes out of his mouth or Twitter feed at any given moment is just what he felt like saying at that moment. The truth is whatever he says it is at the moment and anything that doesn't match up is Fake News.

Even Neil Cavuto — a Fox News commentator who will smooch the heinie of anyone who lowers taxes on the rich — has had trouble falling dutifully into line lately. When Trump started slamming Fox, mainly for a poll that showed him losing to four Democrats, Mr. Cavuto finally grew the beginnings of a spine…

Cavuto noted, however, that the president had made it "clear [that] to fact-check him is to be all but dead to him and his legion of supporters who let me know, in no uncertain terms, I am either with him totally or I am a 'Never Trumper' fully."

Perhaps, the host said, it was this "Loyal on everything or not to be trusted on anything" mentality that prompted the president to once again bash Fox News on Wednesday and urge his supporters to stop watching the channel. Interpreting the president's criticism as a suggestion that Fox News had been operating as an extension of his administration and reelection campaign, Cavuto, like other network personalities, pushed back against the notion. Trump's tweet also drew critical responses from Fox News political analyst Brit Hume and on-air personalities Guy Benson and Howard Kurtz.

Granted, this is a little like Knucklehead Smiff telling Paul Winchell to stop putting words in his mouth but it's something.

Saturday morning, September 17, 1988: The first episode of Garfield and Friends makes its debut on CBS.  I was the writer of the show — and this confuses some people. I was not the Story Editor of the show. Most cartoon shows have a Story Editor and he or she will hire the writers, supervise their work and, when necessary, rewrite their scripts. There was no such person on this program. I was just hired to write all the episodes and later, they also made me Voice Director and Co-Producer. plus I even wrote lyrics for some of the songs — and there was one whole song I wrote all by myself. That ain't easy when you can't read music or play any musical instrument. They also eventually let me hire a friend of mine to help with some of the scripts for a while.

The initial deal was for two seasons of thirteen half-hour episodes each but before we got anywhere near Season Two, CBS was so happy with the ratings that they wanted to up the show to an hour.  So for Seasons 2-7, it was an hour.  Ultimately, we did 121 half-hours and that's a lot of lasagna jokes.

Around 73 of those half-hours went into syndication and did real, real well. We were in the midst of negotiating the fees for an eighth year on CBS when the Biz Affairs guys there decided that since we were making so many bucks off the syndication, we should charge them a lot less for further Saturday morning episodes. We decided not to do that, the show ceased to be — and before long, so did cartoon shows on CBS Saturday mornings. I am not suggesting we caused that to happen but I'd think twice before I messed with that cat.

All 121 half-hours were issued on DVD and rerun in many venues and recently, a lotta bucks were spent to remaster them all in hi-def and they'll be appearing somewhere. We redid the closings of every episode and fixed a number of errors in the voice credits.

It was the most fun I'd ever had working in animation. You hear a lot about nitwitted network interference and insane Standards and Practices demands…and goodness knows, I had plenty of both when I worked for other studios. There was none of that on Garfield and Friends. None.

We had some wonderful artists and directors working on this show and this is far from a complete list: Mitch Schauer, Karl Toerge, Scott Shaw!, Gary Conrad, Floyd Norman, John Sparey, Bill Riling, Ron Myrick, Art Roman, Dave Brain, Lin Larsen, Norman Quebedeau, Tom Tataranowicz, Bob Givens, Cliff Voorhees…and boy, am I leaving a lot of people out.

We had some wonderful producers: George Singer, Bob Curtis, Bob Nesler, Vince Davis and — running the whole Film Roman animation studio — Phil Roman.

We had a wonderful regular cast: Lorenzo Music, Thom Huge, Gregg Berger, Frank Welker, Howie Morris, Julie Payne, Desiree Goyette and Gary Owens.

We had wonderful guest voices: Stan Freberg, Neil Ross, June Foray, Chuck McCann, Don Knotts, Paul Winchell, Don Messick, Carl Ballantine, Lennie Weinrib, Julie Bennett, Marvin Kaplan, Will Ryan, James Earl Jones, Victoria Jackson, Larry Storch, Robin Leach, Jeff Altman, Bill Kirchenbauer, Thom Sharp, Tress MacNeille, Greg Burson, Pat Buttram, Greg Berg, George Foreman (yes, the George Foreman), Chick Hearn, Buddy Hackett, John Moschitta, Louise DuArt, Jewel Shepard, Charles Aidman, Susan Silo, Dick Gautier, Bill Saluga, Eddie Lawrence, Imogene Coca, Kevin Meaney and the list goes on and on.

It was a joy — not that the subsequent series, The Garfield Show — hasn't been. But this was Garfield and Friends and I want to especially acknowledge the trust, wisdom and creative contributions of the creator of Garfield, Jim Davis, and of the best and most honest producer I ever worked for in animation, Lee Mendelson. And perhaps most of all, I should acknowledge Judy Price, who was running the Saturday morn schedule for CBS then and who said to me after I moonwalked off a proposed Michael Jackson Saturday morn cartoon, "Would you like to work on Garfield instead?"

I believe all those people and many unnamed ones deserve great thanks and recognition. What I don't believe is that we went on the air thirty years ago. It's not possible, I tell ya. It's just not possible.