Allen Swift

He uttered the immortal phrase "Dicky Moe!" (from the cartoon of the same name) but, fortunately, that is not what actor Allen Swift is noted for. Swift was a mainstay in the Total TeleVision stock company, and won roles as Odie Cologne on King Leonardo and the wonderfully villainous Simon Bar Sinister on Underdog (a personal favourite).

His larynx was one of the busiest on the air in New York at one time, even before Total TV formed in the early ‘60s. He appeared in almost countless TV and radio commercials. Here are three articles about him, all from 1956. I don’t recall him voicing Herman the Mouse but reader J. Lee in Texas pointed out when this post originally appeared on the GAC Forum that Arnold Stang spent time away from New York shooting The Man With the Golden Arm and Swift could have filled in then. Reader Ken Layton in Olympia, Washington says Swift did work for the Famous Studios, lending a voice in the 3-D Casper cartoon Boo Moon (1954).

These columns are before Total TV, before his buddy Gene Deitch cast him in his Czech-made Tom and Jerry cartoons, before WPIX-TV gave him the rank of Captain Allen Swift and told him to show kiddie viewers some Fleischer Popeye cartoons. The first column is from the McNaught Syndicate, dated April 12.

LOOKING SIDEWAYS
By WHITNEY BOLTON.
NEW YORK.—No man can have truck with Broadway and Madison Avenue for long without getting stray wisps of report concerning a modern Leonardo da Vinci who whisks his way through the worlds of theater, writing, music, TV, radio and puppeteering with the greatest of ease and. apparently, without working up a sweat.
It was never in my mind to track down this prodigious New Yorker, but fate tossed us together in an Irish snug the other afternoon where to the consternation of all employees in sight we both happened to be drinking tea. The proprietor was beside himself, where I left him when I sought out Allen Swift, whose only claim to attention at that point was that he was as militant about his tea as I was.
Swift was sitting in a padded booth and giving his whole attention to the tea, when I brought my cup over and said: “As a fellow iconoclast in this snug, may I sit with you for mutual protection?” He laughed and said, sure, and that was that.
Many Activities.
Introductions followed. He was Allen Swift, writer, painter, composer, magician, man of 1,001 voices, comedian, sculptor, director, producer, puppeteer and tea drinker. I told him his name sounded like the title for a boys’ adventure series; “Allen Swift and His Atomic Speedboat,” “Allen Swift and His Space Boat”—things like that. He said, yes, it did, but since it didn’t happen to be his real name, what did it matter?
How does a man of prodigious attainments start? Well, obviously, to get it all in, he has to start early. He started at 8 years of age when, in one sudden winter swoop, he began acting and painting. When he was 10 he began winning prizes for painting first prize in the annual Wanamaker art contest for children.
“The acting part just sort of happened,” he said, “I got a job acting.”
The late John Barrymore scarcely could have claimed more, for his starter. He got a job acting.
When Swift was 12, he saw a magic performance by Galli-Galli, the Egyptian who gets baby chicks out of empty brass cups. This so inflamed Swift that although he didn’t have a cent with which to buy magic show equipment, he went home and in three weeks became a child prodigy at sleight of hand and even made some home-type apparatus, based on his intellectual solution of how certain tricks were done. He turned out to be right. His home-made apparatus was as good as the kind he could have purchased—if he had had any money.
Became a Poet.
At 14 he was in the High School of Music and Art, a New York school reserved for talented young who have demonstrated their ability. It isn’t enough to dream. You have to demonstrate. He became poet laureate and editor-in-chief of the school’s magazine, and one issue won first prize in a national contest for school publications.
Feeling restless and a little empty, he passed his freshman year by organizing a dramatic group, directing it and presenting it in a play of his authorship. He went down to mid-Manhattan, rented one of the largest auditoria in town, put the show on and had a net profit of $538. Which is more than a lot of professional groups make. He told the management of the hall that he was 22—not 14—and somehow they believed him.
Since then he has been on Broadway, appeared in more than 1,000 radio and TV shows, paints with Raphael Soyer and makes a sprightly dollar for himself doing all the voices on some of those TV commercials you see in cartoon form—he can speak anything from a British Duke to Brooklyn waterfront, with animals, fowl and Martian in between.
What is left with the other 90 idle minutes in each 24 hours? He has got his foot in NBC’s door with an idea for creating a school for comedians. The young, he says, have no training ground since the demise of burlesque and vaudeville. Consequently, few young comics are coming along to displace the aging ones. He sees this as a gap to be filled if buffoonery is to survive. The lovely thing about New York is the odd and fascinating people you can meet over a cup of tea.

Next is from the International News Service, June 20:

Assignment America
By PHYLLIS BATTELLE
NEW YORK (INS) — If you know a small child with vast potential for being an actor, there are two things to do about it.
1.) Don't tell him he’s a genius,
2.) Lock him in the basement.
“It always amuses me when a parent says, ‘now watch Johnny, he’s a natural actor’,” says a trained actor named Allen Swift.
“All kids are natural actors and mimics. Before the parents botch up the job and give them inhibitions, they’re good . . .
“But the worst thing parent can do is to think they have a little genius on their hands, and promote him into becoming a professional. Because I’ve never seen a child actor who didn’t turn out to be mixed-up and obnoxious!”
Mr. Swift is not speaking with the traditional jealous, sour-grapes attitude of an adult actor who has thrown away too many scenes to child stars. He is speaking as a 32-year-old gent who thought he was pretty great at the age of eight and was—fortunately—put in his place.
That was in 1932 when an aunt in Philadelphia took him to see a double-feature movie starring, in order of appearance, Maurice Chevalier, Will Rogers and Zazu Pitts.

“On the way to the soda shoppe afterwards,” he remembers, “I had a strange experience. I felt inside me that I could talk like Chevalier and Pitts and Rogers. I waited for awhile till I was sure I could do it—kids can convince themselves of anything—and then popped out with an imitation.”
His aunt looked startled. It was “eerie,” she said ecstatically.
His father was not so impressed. Any time Allen would start to mimic a movie star or family friend, he was suppressed with the words “everybody can do that if they want to.”
And so, in the quiet of his own room, Allen Swift practiced glibly to himself—not achieving the applause of the throngs, but achieving perfection, instead. He is known today as “the man with a thousand voices.”
Also an actor, song-writer dramatist and painter, Swift gets his lucrative income from radio and TV. On both media, he is the “voice” behind such famed and fascinating personalities as Mighty Mouse, Howdy Doody, Dinky Duck, Herman the Mouse (“I’m known particularly in the rodent field”) and many unusual sounds on radio-TV commercials.
When the UN planned a show for which they needed the voices of FDR and Winston Churchill, Swift was the man they called upon.
“I’ve evolved my own theory on simulating voices and dialects,” he says. “It is a complex one—involving analyzing the personality of the subject before you try, with:
your own vocal chords, to imitate his voice. The most difficult voices to mimic are the average non-characteristic, ones. Naturally.
“It’s like a caricaturist’s art. The more perfect the features of a person, the more tough it is to capture him in caricature.”
Swift says there is no such thing as a “normal voice.”
“The important thing in the voice of a person is that it must go with his appearance and personality. For instance, a big man with a high and weak voice has a voice that jars. Keep your voice in line with your personality and it is pleasant to the listener.”
Swift said my voice was okay.
“Technically, I’d call it a ‘woman’s fog voice,’” he smiled.
“Fits the personality very well.”

And finally from September 13:

Man and Mouse is Voice of Yogurt
By WILLIAM EWALD
United Press Staff Correspondent
NEW YORK — Allen Swift is both a man and a mouse. In fact, two kinds of mouse.
He is also a tea kettle, a coffee pot, a gurgling sink, Howdy Doody, Dinky Duck, several species of bird and the voice of Yogurt.
You probably hear Swift’s voice echoing through the confines of your living room more frequently than any other TV personality, but the chances are you never recognize it. The reason—Swift’s voice assumes as many shapes as salami.
“I do voices, all kinds of voices, any kinds of voices,” said Swift today. “I’ve played in more than 1,000 network radio shows—mugs, old codgers, kids, everything. I’ve done more than 50 different characters on “Howdy Doody,” including Howdy Doody himself.
Does Movie Cartoons
“I do movie cartoons—Herman the Mouse, Mighty Mouse. Also just about all the voices for UPA cartoons in the East.
“But my principal activity right now is TV film commercials. As far as I know, there isn’t anybody who can do as many kinds of voices as I do.”
Within the past few weeks, Swift, 32, has provided the voices for more than a score of the commercials you’ll see on your home screen this season. Among others—two brands of cigarets, a hair tonic, a watch, a soft drink, a beer, an instant coffee, a razor blade, a spaghetti, a macaroni, a candy bar and a five-day deodorant pad.
Swift is a specialist at providing a voice for objects. He has done such things as houses, kitchen sinks and three-way lamps.
“What I do is try to identify each object with some kind of person,” said Swift. “You take a perking coffee pot—it’s got a big, deep, hearty kind of personality, so you give it that kind of a voice.
British Tea Kettle
“A tea little is different. A tea pot is quite delicate, very British with a hiss in its articulation.
"Now, a three-way lamp is a little more difficult. You have to do it with voice level — low and dull for a low light, medium rasp for a medium light and then light and happy and high-pitched for that bright light.”

Allen Swift was born as Ira Stadlen. The “Allen” part of his stage name came from Fred Allen, showing his excellent taste in comedy (for his part, Allen’s real name was not Allen, but John Florence Sullivan) and went to school in Bensonhurst. He died at age 87 in 2010, leaving behind performances as a plunger for Drano, Dwight Eisenhower (dubbed voice) in the movie The Longest Day (1962), a fill-in Howdy Doody, and as a cartoon sailor who alternately mumbled and shouted “Dickie Moe!”