Marian Richman

They wanted someone besides Bea Benaderet.

Bea provided voices for almost all female characters in Warner Bros. cartoons starting in 1942. Toward the end of the decade, someone felt another woman should be brought in.

You may think that “another woman” was June Foray, but it wasn’t. She wasn’t regularly heard until 1955. Someone else, never credited at Warners, was hired instead. Her name was Marian Richman.

There’s not a lot of information about her out there, so allow me to cobble together some things based on government records, newspapers and a few other contemporary sources.

Richman was born Marian S. Pearlson on April 10, 1922. Her parents were Louis Elehoenon and Lillian (Jacobson) Pearlson. Her father had come to the U.S. from Lithuania, grew up in Boston, then moved to Los Angeles by 1906 where he went into the jewellery business. She attended Belmont High School.

She married Lionel Richman on March 27, 1944. Whether they were high school sweethearts, I don’t know, but they attended Belmont at the same time. He had been working in his father’s garment manufacturing company though, at the time of the wedding, it appears he was in the U.S. Coast Guard. After the war, he was hired by the Teamsters legal department, passing the bar in 1950.

In the meantime, Marian found employment in radio, which was the home of most of the major cartoon voice actors of the era. In the “Frisco Chatter” column of Daily Variety of March 2, 1945, we learn:

Marion [sic] Richman, 21, shipyard worker and latest KPO-NBC “Opportunity Theatre” winner, appears in tomorrow’s Hollywood aircast.

The Hollywood Citizen-News of June 21, 1948 reported on her. You should recognise other names in this squib.

A group of young radio actors, Don Messick, Daws Butler, Marian Richman, Bob Young, Frederick Campbell, Jean Young and Helen Winston, have staged a production of “Night Must Fall,” for presentation at the “little theater” of the Crescent Heights Methodist Church, Fountain and Fairfax, at 8:30 p.m. June 21 to 24. The group goes by the name of the Crescent Players.

Later that year, a writer named Bob Bellem came up with the idea of talking comic books and employed Daws Butler and Marian to provide the voices. The two helped Bellem with stories while “Miss Richman keeps in voice by emitting hyena laughs from time to time,” according to a story at the time in the Los Angeles Daily News. One was called “Sleepy Santa,” and included sound effects by radio whiz Ray Erlenborn.

Television was expanding in Los Angeles at the time, from two channels at the start of 1948 to seven in Sept. 1949. TV stations grabbed talent wherever they could find it, and there was plenty in radio. The Los Angeles Mirror revealed in July 1949:

Marian Richman is one of television’s “heard, not seen” stars. She is the voice of the marionette clown Bobo on the KTTV children’s show “Bozo’s Circus” aired Saturdays at 7:30.

Richman lent her voice to a puppet show, along with Butler and Colleen Collins, who you can hear in a number of MGM cartoons, such as Counterfeit Cat. The footage came from France. Gigi and Jock debuted on KTSL in Los Angeles on September 16, 1950. The Hollywood Reporter called Richman “fine” and praised Butler in its review. The series was written by Bill Asher, who went on to direct I Love Lucy and Bewitched.

Variety of September 27, 1950 mentioned she and Daws Butler dubbed voice tracks for Courneya Productions’ chimp starrer Chimplock Hums and the Net of Fate series satirizing Sherlock Holmes for Bing Crosby Enterprises. This was not a cartoon. The site sherlocktron.com says Jerry Courneya used trained chimps as performers, and the series was shown in Canada in 1953 as Professor Lightfoot and Dr. Twiddle after the Conan Doyle estate complained about the name. In 1951, Richman signed with Pathway Productions for a proposed Cinnamon Bear half-live, half-puppet TV show.

She eventually appeared on camera as well, being featured on an episode of Mystery is My Hobby on KTTV on February 6, 1950. At the end of the year, she was sending out cards reading “Surprise, I’m Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on Spike Jones’ record.” The Los Angeles Times revealed her voice is the one hiccupping on Jones’ “Molassess, Molasses.” The following year, she sung the refrain behind Jones’ parody of “Peter Cottontail.”

The National Automatic Merchandising Association named her Miss Red Feather of 1951. Richman landed a regular spot as a hostess on Star Hostess Party on KNXT in July 1952 (Johnny Carson was an emcee on it at one time with her) and then on KTTV’s Sav-On Theatre about half a year later.

The Today show was gaining ratings in the East, so stations on the West Coast decided to broadcast at 7 a.m. as well. In November that year, Richman was one-third of the cast of Panorama Pacific, which aired in Los Angeles (KNXT), San Diego (KFMB-TV) and San Francisco (KPIX). It was the first programme of the CBS-TV Pacific Network. The critic of the San Francisco Examiner shrugged “Marian Richman...did what most women do best—talk. She talked about the weather and whether they should play another record or not.”

TV trade publications report she appeared on shows as diverse as Hallmark Hall of Fame, Dragnet and Betty White’s Life With Elizabeth. Herb Stein’s column in Photoplay once remarked:

The versatility of a gal trying to get ahead: Actress Marian Richman sent letters to talent scouts and columnists, mentioning the characters she plays (and dig this): “Lead, ingenue, neurotics, toughs, housewife, sophisticate, commercials—and the real, real friendly type.”

Her publicist seems to have been at work. Newspapers had pictures aplenty of her, and a story in 1953 got her ink when it said:

TV actress Marian Richman, receiving a contract and asked to “execute it in the spaces provided,” returned it filled with bullet holes. A note added that “as per your request, the contract was executed—at dawn.”

Science fiction was big in the 1950s, and Richman became part of it with a role in Ivan (“Flipper”) Tors’ 3-D feature film Gog, released by United Artists in 1954, starring Richard Egan as a security agent and two robots that went around killing secretaries.

Now, let’s talk a bit about her animation career. Let’s first point out this is not a filmography with each and every cartoons she was in. If you want that, you can do no better than to buy Volume 2 of Keith Scott’s book “Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age.” Richman was first hired at Warner Bros., as best as I can tell, in 1949. You can hear her in Friz Freleng’s Canned Feud, copyrighted that year but released in 1951. However, Keith reveals her first cartoon was Chuck Jones’ The Scarlet Pumpernickel, released in 1950, where she created the role of Melissa. Her next cartoon was Bob McKimson’s Strife With Father, also 1950, where she is Gwendolyn, playing a bird version of Benita Hume, Ronald Colman’s wife. Keith has found her in nine Warners cartoons, all uncredited.

UPA also hired her for a number of shorts, beginning with Giddyap, first appearing on screens in 1950. Her last role for the studio was in Gerald McBoing Boing on the Planet Moo, 1956. She received screen mention on some of them. The Citizen-News of December 12, 1950, reported she was on the very limited animated NBC Tele-Comics.

What happened to Richman? It’s another sad story. Her career ended at the age of 33. She died in her Hollywood home on February 24, 1956 after what Variety called “a short illness.” The trade paper was being less than forthright. Her death certificate says she committed suicide, overdosing on pentobarbital. Richman’s last cartoon appeared in theatres more than a year after her death. She played Ralph Phillips’ mother in Boyhood Days, a Chuck Jones short released on April 20, 1957 (she was Phillips’ teacher in From A to Z-z-z-z-z in 1954).

Two final notes about Richman—she was made an honorary first sergeant of the 112th Air Forces Communications squadron, according to the Hollywood Reporter of Oct. 20, 1949. And her name is among the signators in a full-page ad in the Reporter of Nov. 3, 1947 supporting actor Larry Parks, already fingered by the right-wing for his progressive causes. Among the other people signing was Bea Benaderet.

Here are a couple of examples of Richman’s non-cartoon work. First, her recording of “Peter Cottontail.”



And here’s one of her “Talking Komics” with Daws Butler called “Flying Turtle.”