A Friendly Ghost? Shay It Isn't so!

Remember that cartoon where Casper went up and said “hello” to someone who reacted with a take of terror and shouted “A g-g-g-GHOST!”?

Yeah, it didn’t happen often, did it?

To quote Leonard Maltin in Of Mice and Magic: “Casper was the most monotonous character to invade cartoonland since Mighty Mouse. It seemed as it every Casper cartoon followed the same story line, with only minor variations.”

However, Mr. Maltin also admits the animation on the Famous Studios cartoons was generally good and the backgrounds were often superior going into the early 1950s.

Here are some frames from a take in The Ghost of the Town (1952). You can see the anticipation, a head shake and then the extreme.



The animator keeps the take from being static by moving the eyes in every frame before they go back into the cabbie's head.

For the record, Jack Mercer’s taxi driver doesn’t say “A g-g-g-ghost!” He just says “A ghost!”

Izzy Klein is responsible for the story, and it is pretty well structured. Casper, for some reason, is in a ghost army, and kicked out by a tough-guy sergeant (Jackson Beck). Being dishonourably discharged, Casper goes to the city in search of friends, and is hailed as a hero for rescuing a baby from a burning apartment tower.

The cartoon cuts to a TV set where the news is reported by Walter Winchell, voiced by Sid Raymond.



Casper is invited to appear on (now, remember the name of this cartoon) Toast of the Town, which was the original name of The Ed Sullivan Show. Sullivan appears in some rotoscoped footage which is more stiff than the real Sullivan on camera.



Keith Scott, author of a book on cartoon voice actors, essential for any fan of old theatrical cartoons, says it actually is Sullivan doing the voice as a gag.

As for Casper, I thought Cecil Roy was the voice, but according to Graham Webb’s The Animated Film Encyclopedia, it belongs to a boy actor named Alan Shay. When he became Casper, I have no idea. Passaic News-Herald staff writer Arthur F. Lenehan met Shay at the birthday party for a child actress and reported on it on the Oct. 17, 1949 issue. Shay’s windy list doesn’t mention Casper.

“My name is Alan Shay,” said one little man with an expansive manner. “I’m Little Nick, who does those Nedick orange drink commercials you hear every day.”
“How do you do, Little Nick?” I said.
“I also have worked on the Helen Hayes Show, Calvalcade [sic] of America, and The Strange Romance of Evelyn Winters, among others. In television I’ve appeared on the Ford Theatre show, Celebrity Time, Martin Kane, Private Eye, to name a few. I’ve also done two movies and four Broadway shows. Spell my name right, will you?”

Actually, “Alan Shay” wasn’t his name. And he wasn’t the original voice of Little Nick. Dick Leone was, but because his voice changed, 11-year-old Shay replaced him in March 1949.

Shay spoke about Casper many years later, in an article in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel of May 23, 1995. He sounds a little more modest with age. If there is an earlier reference to Shay as Casper, I haven’t found it.

A LOCAL HAUNT
THE FRIENDLIEST GHOST YOU KNOW IS ONE OF US
By ROBERT NOLIN
Casper the Friendly Ghost is alive and well and living in Plantation.
As a stockbroker.
Sometimes he gets nostalgic for the old days, his old studio haunts, the crowds of autograph seekers. But time has diminished his fame. Now it's the granchildren who want to see the old cartoon videos, or co-workers who want to hear his signature song.
Alan Schreiber, the flesh-and-blood incarnation of 'toondom's blithe spirit, readily obliges. He strains to replicate the high, sweet notes of his ghostlier days.
"I'm Casper the Friendly Ghost, the friendliest ghost you know. I romp and play, sing and dance all day ... " Schreiber begins, then halts. "I don't remember the rest of it."
That's understandable. It was almost 50 years ago that Schreiber, then a professional child actor in New York, supplied the voice of the original Casper. In about a dozen cartoons he uttered such memorable lines as: "Hi, Mr. Frog, how are you?" or "I don't want to hurt you, I want to be your friend."
Now Casper, the specter of the past, has become cinema's spook du jour.
A high-tech, Steven Spielberg-produced film, Casper, opens on Friday across the nation. The would-be summer blockbuster recounts the origins of the roly-poly ghost and his adventures involving a little girl, hidden treasure and three grouchy ghouls: uncles Stinky, Stretch and Fatso.
The new movie reawakened memories for Schreiber that were previously just footnotes to a career in which he bore the stage name Alan Shay.
During the late '40s and early '50s, Casper cartoons based on the comic-book figure were screened before feature films, along with serials and newsreels. Schreiber, now 57, was already an accomplished child actor ("I was always cast as a crying orphan") when he answered an audition to play the baldheaded Casper. His high-timbred voice - sweet, pleasant, emotional - got him the job.
Acting since age 6, Schreiber had landed leading kid parts in four Broadway plays. The Casper role was just another gig. "All you had to do was be able to read," Schreiber said. "You'd walk into the studio, they'd hand you the script and you'd go to work."
Schreiber read only Casper's lines. Other characters' lines were read individually and edited in later. "I never really knew what the thing was about until I went to the movies," Schreiber said.
He took home a whopping $30 per cartoon. "But I never saw the money," Schreiber said. His mother, Lucille, used it to pay for his private school.
But to a 12-year-old, being noticed was better than money. "I think what I liked most was the recognition of the fans," Schreiber said.
Still, stickball and football on the streets of New York City's West Side were more appealing than possible stardom. "I never had that feeling that I was a big shot, I just felt good about what was happening to me," Schreiber said. "I didn't have a care in the world."
Then Schreiber's voice changed. At about 17, he decided to give up showbiz, go to college and get a "secure job."He followed in the footsteps of his father, Moe, and worked in finance. Now, though he's a vice president at the Smith Barney investment firm, traces of singing commercials from his days as a child actor still rattle around Schreiber's head. He can recite snatches of jingles for Cream of Wheat, Nedick's candy bars and Bosco chocolate drink.
"I get kind of nostalgic when I think about it sometimes," Schreiber said. "It was a fantastic time of my life."
Schreiber is eager to see the Casper film when it opens - he's still enough of a trouper to want to check out the competition. "I'd be curious to listen to the voice," he said.

It’s bad enough Shay never got a screen credit for his work as one of Famous’ Studio’s most popular characters, but $30 a session is scarier than any Casper cartoon. The kid was robbed.

Shay was born in Brooklyn on July 12, 1937; his father Moe Schreiber managed a food store. As best as we can tell, he’s still living in the Sun Belt.

Just to wrap up about this cartoon, Steve Muffatti and Morey Reden are the credited animators. Anton Loeb did a fine job with the backgrounds, especially the blue-ish nighttime ones.