Sunday, June 11, 2006

Who Is It?

I received about twenty messages from folks answering my query about the man in the photo in the previous item. Some said it was definitely Whitney Ellsworth, some said it definitely was not and some in the latter group offered different names. The consensus — and it's not overwhelming — is that it's a gentleman named Harry Gerstad, who was a film editor on the show and later a director.

Alfred Walker, who thinks it's Gerstad, also reminds me that the A&E Network is debuting a two-hour special tomorrow night entitled Look, Up in the Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman. It's a documentary about the Man of Steel and it airs tomorrow night at 8 PM East Coast time, 5 PM West Coast time. Then it reruns four hours later and runs again on later dates. I have no idea how it'll be but the TiVo is set.

• Posted at 8:53 PM · LINK

Secret Identity

Who is this man? No, no...I know the one on the right is George Reeves on the set of the Adventures of Superman TV show. But who's the guy on the left? Someone sent me this photo and asked if it was Whitney Ellsworth, who produced the show for a time after serving as Editor-in-Chief of DC Comics for many years. I only met Mr. Ellsworth once and that was in 1968, so I'm a bit fuzzy on what he looked like. He looked something like the gentleman in question but I'm not certain...so I'm wondering if anyone else is.

• Posted at 11:48 AM · LINK

Sunday Morning Loose Ends

Here we go, here we go, here we go...

• Several folks have written to point out to me that Stevia is a natural sweetener, not an artificial sweetener. They're right. I don't particularly like it but it is from a natural herb. At the moment, I don't have much of a sweet tooth so I may not be the best judge.
• Jim Korkis sends this link to a good interview with Dick Beals and notes that Dick's autobiography, Think Big, is available on Amazon. True...but I'm going to order my copy from the address on that interview page so Dick makes a few more bucks off it. The man has had an astounding career, popping up in the darnedest places. The other day, I was watching an episode of the TV series, Captain Nice, and there was the sound of Beals in the theme song.
• Two people wrote to ask why I didn't also mention that Ross Bagdasarian (aka David Seville) did the voices of the Chipmunks in that commercial. Well, I'm not sure he did. He probably did at least one of them but contrary to popular belief, the sounds of Alvin, Simon and Theodore were not all done by Mr. Bagdasarian with a sped voice. I used to think they were all him, and perhaps some articles said so...but folks who've slowed down Chipmunks records and TV shows have noted others in there, even in the original hit, "The Chipmunk Song." And it isn't always even consistent within one project. I'm told (I haven't studied this myself) that Bagdasarian is usually Alvin, frequently Simon and rarely Theodore. Or sometimes he does the singing voices of all three but the speaking voices of only one or two — this, along with doing David Seville in his natural, unsped voice.
• As a P.S. to the above item: I never really appreciated the skill Mr. Bagdasarian put into those recordings until I decided to have some characters on Garfield and Friends sing and talk in sped voices. It takes a fair amount of engineering skill and creative direction to blend voices in that situation and to keep them understandable. There have been a lot of imitations of The Chipmunks over the years and I never thought any of them were as good because, among other reasons, they didn't have someone with Bagdasarian's skill as a record producer and performer.
• As a P.S. to the above P.S.: When we tried speeding up Lorenzo Music on the Garfield cartoons, we discovered that his voice sounded like the same guy. It just plain refused to speed up.
• I really, really enjoyed the new Lewis Black special last night on HBO. It reruns many times to come.

Lastly, a continued thanks to the folks who've sent in cash donations this weekend. I'm quite stunned by both the volume and by some of the amounts. I'm thinking of having a big party when I hit the "100 pounds lost" mark and inviting everyone who helped. If we do, we'll hold it in my old pants.

• Posted at 10:51 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

Do they still make Soaky toys? They did as of a few years ago. I have a plastic Scooby Doo on my desk filled with bubble bath — Sergio gave it to me because he thought it was a great bit of sculpture — but it's not a Soaky-brand toy. Soaky toys were a line that came out from Colgate-Palmolive — plastic cartoon character figures filled with bubble bath. I guess the idea was that once they were empty, you could play with them in the tub...but I recall that some of them had a little groove where you were supposed to take a knife, cut a slot and then use the toy as a bank. I also recall having a batch of these toys when I was a kid, though I don't recall ever taking a bubble bath.

Anyway, here's a commercial for one of the most popular Soaky lines — Alvin, Simon and Theodore, aka The Chipmunks. In the spot, the voice of the Soaky Kid is done by Dick Beals, who is still working and who can still sound like a seven-year-old boy. This is because Dick is still about the height of one. Over the years, he's done hundreds of cartoons and commercials, and was even used often to dub voices for children in live-action movies. His most famous role was probably Speedy Alka-Seltzer but he was also Ralph Phillips in several cartoons that Chuck Jones directed for Warner Brothers. And he was a regular on Roger Ramjet and on Frankenstein Jr. and The Little Rascals and all sorts of other shows. I worked with Dick on a few shows and he's a real pro and, of course, one of the great unsung voice actors of television and movies.

• Posted at 12:09 AM · LINK

Today's Political Comment

This weblog post neatly summarizes how I feel about the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. I'd like to believe it will do something to diminish terrorism but I suspect it will do that about as much as the passing of Colonel Sanders ended the frying of chicken. And I will always be at least a little uncomfortable at the celebration of anyone's death, even when the anyone is murdering scum. Which is not to say I don't understand why people are cheering.

• Posted at 12:04 AM · LINK