Martin Sans Rowan

Dan Rowan and Dick Martin were nightclub comedians who made it big—monster big—in 1968 with Laugh-In. They had been together maybe 15 years at that point. But Martin had a brief solo career as actor which was pretty much doomed from the start.

Lucille Ball wanted to move on from I Love Lucy so she bought the right to a book about a divorced woman raising her family, assembled a cast and began shooting The Lucy Show. The problem was TV viewers were accustomed to seeing—and, I suspect, wanted to see—Lucy get into and out of scrapes with her best pal and pull one over under the disapproving eye of the male authority figure. You know, just like on I Love Lucy.

So any similarity between Lucy’s show and Irene Kampen’s book soon disappeared. Before long, Lucy and Vivian Vance were pulling shenanigans while television’s most dour man, Gale Gordon, groused, burned or shouted. What else did the show need? Nothing. So Lucy and Viv’s kids disappeared. And so did the next door neighbour who kind of, may have been, sort of was, Lucy’s boy-friend. He was played by Dick Martin.

Why did he leave the show? “They obviously didn’t need me,” he told the Archive of American Television. And if you watch any of those first episodes, you may wonder why he was even there. (A notable exception was an episode where, silent-film style, Lucy played a 1920s flapper trying to mooch a meal in a restaurant/tavern, with Martin as the waiter).

But Martin never knew any of that was ahead when he talked about his new job, and his pairing with Rowan, in an interview with the King Features Syndicate. This feature story appeared in newspapers on February 26, 1963.

TV Keynotes
Comedian Plays Straight Role
By CHARLES WITBECK
HOLLYWOOD — "I'm really George Burns," says comic Dick Martin, talking about his role of Harry Connors, the next door neighbor on the Monday night CBS Lucy Show.
Martin gets all the punch lines for the comedy team of Rowan and Martin. He's the talkative drunk, the idiot diet expert, the fella with the two big eyes who won't shut up, as he pulls all the laughs in night clubs and on Ed Sullivan's Show, while his handsome partner, Dan Rowan, plays straight man.
On the Lucy Show, it's the reverse with Martin playing straight man for Gracie-Lucy. And what a straight man, he is—Harry gets one line every five shows so far. "The first six were written before Harry was cast," says Dick Martin who is not complaining a bit.
In episodes coming up this winter and spring Harry will have more to say. He does a couple of shows, and then goes to San Francisco for a hotel date with partner Rowan. When the two return to Hollywood a few weeks later, Martin shoots some more and takes off again with Rowan, so the Lucy Show isn't interfering with the Rowan and Martin comedy career.
Likes Character Switch
When the idea of a character like Harry Connors came up Lucy immediately thought of her old friend Dick Martin. Other names were tossed in the hopper, but Lucy could only see Dick Martin. He came in for a reading and Lucy said, "play yourself as I know you. Don't play your comedy character." Martin did and got the job.
"I like the switch in character," says Martin. "It's great for me not playing an idiot."

"There's not much you can really do with the part," says Martin. "I'm just the fella who is always around when Lucy needs him. I can't be brought in for the romantic interest—that would limit the show. Lucy has to have other dates. But none of that matters. I like doing another character and I should pay to just be with these people. You can't call it work."
Hard To Follow Script
The only work for Martin comes in saying lines as they're written. He's not used to it. "Dan and I have been working for nine years, and I don't think we've ever repeated a routine word for word," says Martin.
"Then I get a script on the Lucy Show and I'm supposed to do it exactly as written. That's a problem.
"We have a framework to work from," continued Martin. "In London's Palladium we were told 'we had a frightfully elastic script." When the two did "Babes in Toyland" and "The Red Mill" in the St. Louis Municipal Opera House, they rewrote both musicals. "We're used to working nose-to-nose," said Martin. "But in St. Louis the mikes were 8 feet apart and I felt all alone."
Summer musicals and parts like Harry Connors are efforts by the team to move out of the night club circuit if possible. The two have seen the country and Australia, and they would like to stay home and be able to work. "We carry golf clubs and a tuxedo on the circuit," says Martin. "Golf helps combat boredom, but in the wintertime life on the road is pretty dull. You can blow all the movies in a strange city in two days."
Golf is the big game among night club entertainers. They, at least, can get on a course during the week. Among all the courses Martin has played, one on the Fiji Island, a stop-over on the road to Australia, sticks out in his mind. "You have to hire three kids to caddy there," he says. "Kids pick up the balls with their feet and walk off, unless you ship them a quarter. And the fairways are narrow. One slice and you're in the oven."

Rowan and Martin have also learned from experience to play hotels rather than straight night clubs. From a financial point of view, of course. "You play hotels," says Martin "and your room is paid. That's a big saving. You can also go to your room between shows and read. Another plus. You can almost call it forced savings."
But there's no place like home, or work on a series like Lucy. Martin is getting some reading done on the set too. He's learning about self-hypnosis after watching hypnotists for half his life in clubs.
"I'm trying to learn how to sleep on planes." says Martin. "I think this book can help."
Maybe the book will help Martin on planes, but it really sounds like the basis for a pretty funny Lucy script.

One Step Ahead of My Shadow Backgrounds

It’s really unfortunate that few artists were ever credited in animated cartoons in the 1930s. It’d be great to know for certain who was responsible for backgrounds, layouts, even the animation itself.

Here are some nice, effective backgrounds for the Merrie Melodies short One Step Ahead of My Shadow (1933). Who drew them? No one today may know. The gong in the opening shot is on a cel (as is the character and his mallet), but the rest of the work is by the unknown background artist.



Hugh Harman or Rudy Ising go for an overlay with a tree in this scene. Very effective and attractive.



The layout artist has designed shots at an angle instead of a stage viewpoint in various parts of the cartoon.



The blossoming trees in the foreground are on an overlay.



More angles. The backgrounds feature tapestries, rugs and screens.



Friz Freleng and Max Maxwell are the credited animators on this short. The title song by Irving Kahal and Sammy Fain is featured hot-cha style and, as usual in a Harman-Ising Merrie Melodie, it bops along at double-time in the second half when the bad guy (a dragon) chases the good guys (the little boy and girl). The soundtrack also includes “Chinatown, My Chinatown.”

People! People!

In the opening of The Cat That Hated People (1948), the title character begins to elucidate why he is what he is. He paces, waves his arms and clenches his fists in a lengthy bit of animation with a different drawing on each frame. Look at the varied poses.



I believe the animation is by Mike Lah. Bill Shull, Walt Clinton and Louis Schmitt also receive animation credits. The cat’s voice is a growly version of Jimmy Durante played by Pat McGeehan; he did the same Durante voice in The Uncultured Vulture at Columbia.

Jack Benny and His Violin

One of many comedy routines on the Jack Benny show (radio and TV) featured Benny scratching out some racket while practising on the violin, with teacher Prof. Le Blanc reeling in pain or annoyance. Listeners and viewers thought—“He couldn’t really play that badly? Could he? Just how well can he play?”

Well, yes, he could play better. But the question of how well he really could play is open for discussion.

The impression I’ve been left with is that to the average audience, Jack Benny was a very accomplished violinist. To professional musicians with trained ears, well, he wasn’t great, and never would be, but he was dedicated and serious about his love for music.

One person who would know the answer to the question better than I was the man who helped Benny improve his skills on the instrument. Larry Kurkdjie was a serious symphony musician who, somehow, found himself in Phil Harris’ orchestra on the Benny radio show. Jack seconded Kurkdjie to give him lessons. Someone thought to interview him about Benny’s violin virtuosity and it appeared in a newspaper weekend magazine supplement on November 13, 1960. Unfortunately, the scan is very poor; I’d love to have a better copy of the drawing of violinist Benny.

Benny's Fiddle Teacher Tells All
By BILL MIDDLETON
In speaking of Jack Benny's violin playing, the late Fred Allen made this classic remark: "Jack's a very funny guy. I love him. But he's the only violinist who makes you feel the strings would sound better back on the cat!"
Despite his almost three decades in broadcasting, audiences still do not know how to accept Benny: is he a virtuoso side-tracked into a career as a comedian, or is he a comic with a musical sideline?
Benny isn't talking. But what about Larry Kurkdjie? He is Benny's violin teacher, and shouldn't he have a pretty fair comprehension of which Jack is which? Of course, Larry is a funny man, too. He's rotund and jovial, and can it be a thing of seriousness when he and Jack, adjusted to laughing, put their fiddles under their chins and stare at each other?
Larry says it's serious. When he phoned TV WEEK from California, he pointed out that Jack practices his violin diligently, every day.
"Of course," chuckled Larry, "when we first started we used to have our lessons in the room where people take their Saturday night bath. Jack said that was the only appropriate place. But we've graduated now to Joanie's (Jack's daughter) quarters. Now, nobody objects.
"Also, when we first started we had to close the windows real tight. Now we leave them open. So you can see how well he's progressed."
But back to the original poser — is Benny a musician turned comedian, or a comic who likes to fiddle around?
Larry put it this way:
"I really believe that, as a comedian, he's one of the best violinists. Not the best violinist by a long shot, but one of the best — as a comedian. Jack gets by with difficult, technical passages that fool the layman. That's the beauty of his artistry, the way he covers up. His timing is absolutely beautiful. But he's a human being like the rest of us, and he makes lots of mistakes." Larry chuckled again. "And more so on the violin than otherwise!
"I've had a lot of people tell me they know Jack is a great violinist, and that he makes mistakes purposely. That's wonderful — let them think that.

Larry has been with Jack for twenty-three years, but only within the last four or five years has he been instructing Benny in the art of fiddling. That's because Jack has become serious about playing the violin.
"He recently bought a gorgeous Stradivarius," said Larry. "I'd say it's worth about $28,000. And he owns a beautiful bow that used to belong to the great Belgian violinist, Eugene Ysaye. So, the combination of the Strad (which Jack carries to rehearsals and practices in his dressing room when there's time) and the bow helps him get over the bad passages!"
During the 1960-61 season, Jack's calendar includes nightclub appearances and concert engagements with symphony orchestras in Indianapolis, Cleveland, Milwaukee and Cincinnati. He will, of course, be violin soloist, and his program will not include minor works such as "Love In Bloom." He will choose from such major fiddle fodder as the "Mendelssohn Concerto" (which Larry says is just about Jack's favorite composition) and some bowing exercises by Rimsky-Korsakov.
"He loves Brahms, too," said Larry, "but he hasn't tackled it yet. He likes any good music. He likes to play quartet, and plans on doing some trios — violin, cello, piano. All these things, he gradually plans to use on his TV shows."
Some of Benny's greatest fans include such bowmen as Jascha Heifetz, Mischa Elman, Isaac Stein and other distinguished musicians who count him "one of the boys."
Leonard Bernstein, conductor of the New York Philharmonic, says about Jack:
"Benny has done more than raise thousands of dollars to erase operating deficits of major orchestras. He has brought multitudes of people, who would otherwise not be there, into the concert halls (Jack does the concerts for free) to prove that good music can be entertaining and rewarding."
And the master violinist, Isaac Stern, says with tongue-in-cheek: "When Jack walks out in tails in front of 90 musicians he looks like the greatest of soloists. What a shame he has to play!"
The 66-year-old comedian's violin instructor also used to play with symphony orchestras, two of which were the Boston Symphony and Cleveland Symphony. Larry left Cleveland for Hollywood, and in 1938 he substituted on Jack's show.
"Evidently," said Larry, "he thought I did a pretty good job because I've been on the show ever since. I'm the first violinist — every time you hear that high squeaky fiddle, that's me.
"But Jack uses his fiddle playing to perfection on his TV shows. He's very serious in his playing. Tries very hard. He really plays to the best of his ability."
Larry hesitated, then couldn't resist another chuckle.
"Of course, at times the playing sounds funny, but still he plays to the best of his ability!"

When he was scarcely out of diapers, Jack began (at his father's behest) taking violin lessons and was soon considered something of a child prodigy. While still in grammar school, he became the only knickerbockered member of the pit orchestra at the Barrison Theatre in Waukegan, Illinois.
During high school he doubled between the school band and the Barrison pit, and at 16 he teamed up with Cora Salisbury, the Barrison pianist, as a vaudeville duo. When she left the act, Jack teamed with Lyman Woods. The team of Benny and Woods in due time became vaudeville headliners here and abroad.
Then what made him decide to be a comedian?
Larry explained that he didn't exactly. "One day he just stopped playing and started talking. They laughed."
The story goes that during the first World War, Jack was a sailor in grease paint, and his prime duty was the raising of funds for Navy relief. His routine in the Great Lakes Revue was musical, but one night during his performance the electricity failed and the lights went out in the auditorium. To keep the crowd from getting restless, Jack started to talk. The audience roared with laughter.
The rest is Humorsville history. The fiddler began his career as a comedian, and the violin probably gathered dust notes in Jack's legendary bank vault. But now, with the fiddle tucked neatly under his chin, Jack is both comic and violinist.
"You know," said Larry, "besides the public concerts he gives, Jack plays for benefits that the public doesn't hear about. For service men, hospital groups - he does a lot of that."
Larry used to give concerts himself, but "I've given it up. Takes too much practice!" He also used to play violin on other television shows, but now is only on Benny's. Although he jokes about Jack's violin playing, it is obvious that Larry does consider him to be a good violinist — as a comedian.
"Jack loves to fiddle," said Larry, "but he loves his show better than anything else. It's the first thing in his life, because he loves to make people laugh. He loves to see them happy.
"His second big love is his fiddle. His third big love is golf. I don't know where his wife Mary comes in!"
Then does Larry think that if Jack continues to practice and take his fiddling seriously, he'll turn out to really be one of the best violinists, comedian or not?
"As I told him," Larry said, "if he ever tries to be a greater violinist than he is, I'll punch him in the nose!"

Kurkdjie’s interview answers another question listeners may have had—Jack Benny was not the one playing those off-key scales and Kreutzer exercises on the radio show. Kurkdjie was. I always figured Benny was doing it because the studio audience might not give a good reaction if someone else at the back of the stage was playing the instrument. But Laura Leibowitz, the very knowledgeable president of the International Jack Benny Fan Club, pointed out in a recent interview (and this makes perfect sense when you think about it):

“[O]n television, he is playing the violin. Radio was different. To play, Jack had to put down the script, pick up the violin and settle it, under his chin, before he could play. After he played the violin, he reversed these steps.
“The set up and take down took time. It was hard to write-around the setup, which disrupted the flow of the show. On radio, Jack playing the violin was rarely feasible.
“Larry Kurkdjie usually played the violin for Jack.”

So it sounds like Jack played the violin during longer, non-dialogue parts (such as the middle commercial for the sponsor, or during his performances of “The Bee” and “Thanks For the Memory” in the ‘30s). Whatever the case, Jack’s violin playing resulted in millions of laughs—and millions of dollars for good causes.

Grace Stafford, Better Than Mel Blanc?

You’ve got to forgive Walter Lantz if he thought Mel Blanc wasn’t the best voice of Woody Woodpecker. For one thing, Blanc sued him. But, more importantly, one of the people who played Woody was Lantz’s wife. I suspect he was a little biased.

Lantz, if nothing else, loved to travel. Trade magazines over the years are full of stories about Lantz taking trips across North America and around the world to plug his cartoons. And it would appear one such junket happened toward the end of 1963 and the start of 1964 when Lantz had once again sold his cartoons for a syndicated half-hour. His wife Grace went along and some papers took the “hey-look-who-voices-Woody” angle.

I have to laugh a bit at the piece in Newsday of December 12, 1963, where Lantz claims that Blanc “wasn’t quite right for Woody” and Blanc’s laugh was “too harsh and malicious.” Really? Blanc was the guy who invented the voice and laugh. In fact, the laugh was still being used in cartoons for about 10 years after Blanc was forced to leave the Lantz studio because he signed an exclusive cartoon contract with Warner Bros. Some people dislike Grace’s version—I don’t mind it, to be honest—but Blanc clearly was a better actor than Grace Stafford. And I suspect Blanc would have cringed if he had read Gracie talking about not copyrighting the Woody laugh. A judge insisted Woody’s voice couldn’t be Blanc’s property because a laugh couldn’t be copyrighted. And it certainly wasn’t Grace’s to begin with.

Here’s the story.

She Does the Talking for Woody Woodpecker
By Alan Patureau
If you really want to create some excitement in Sardi’s during a jampacked lunchtime, just fill your lungs, rock back from the table and blast out, “He-he-he-HOE-hoo!” in the manager [sic] of Woody Woodpecker, the cartoon character. Bugle this three times, rapid-fire, then machinegun it down with a long, leer-pitched, “Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh!”
That’s what the nice grandmotherly lady in our party did the other day, and, my, what a reaction, Jackson. Forks dropped with a united clink, and in the silence that followed, gasps of surprise reported in front the plush-red Netherlands of the joint. Critical seconds later, as it became evident the lady wouldn’t require a straightjacket, everyone laughed.
“Amazing! I get the same delayed reaction when I do Woody’s laugh at a sponsor’s board meeting,” said the plump matron with the twinkly eyes. Sober, too. “They’re not as quick as the youngsters. But they never fail to pick up our option.”
NO doubt the members of the board are as shocked as the average cartoon fan is when he finds out that a 60-year-old actress, Grace Lantz, does the raucous, infectiously gleeful laugh and voice of Woody Woodpecker. She also happens to be the wife of Walter Lantz, the easygoing cartoonist who created Woody 22 years ago and has made a mint since—but that’s not why she got the job.
“Mel Blanc was the first Woody,” Lantz explained. “He makes a terrific Bugs Bunny, but I’m afraid he wasn’t quite right as Woody—made the laugh too harsh and malicious. We had tryouts and, unknown to me, Gracie made an audition recording. My staff narrowed the choice to four—Gracie’s and three male actors’. When I heard hers, I blurted, “Who’s that? Sign him up! I almost fainted when I learned it was my wife.”

Lantz says that Gracie puts just the right blend of fun, irreverence and coyness into Woody’s voice. The dialogue is tape-recorded, then speeded up by 20 per cent to achieve the right effect, Lantz says, but that famous Woody cackle is the undoctored real thing. “You need good breath control to get through the whole cycle,” Gracie volunteered. “I don’t have a copyright on the laugh, but I don’t go out of my way to teach it to people, either. How did a radio actress like me develop such a talent? Oh, I’ve always had a streak of fun. When Walter created Woody, I practiced on the sly.”
Woody Woodpecker burst onto the movie scene in 1941, and Lantz has turned out an average of 10 six-minute cartoons a year since. Woody came to television in 1957 with a weekly half-hour series on ABC. After three years, all the movie cartoons from the 1940s were used up. Recently Lantz signed a seven-year contract with a syndicate to get a new batch of Woodys from the 1950s on TV. In New York, they will be seen Tuesdays at 6:30 PM on Channel 11 starting Jan. 6.
“For years we kept the identity of Woody’s voice a dark secret,” Gracie said. “I was afraid the children might be disappointed if they found out a woman my age was actually Woody. But now we’re to that point in life where we want people to know.” They smiled at each other. “I’m developing some change-of-pace laughs for Woody now. An I’ve-been-sick laugh and an irritated laugh. Shall I demonstrate? No?...”

Grace had a chance to chat with the Baltimore Sun during a whistle stop on the press tour. It’s interesting to read she and her husband apparently sat around thinking up ideas for Woody. Isn’t that what the studio paid Homer Brightman and Cal Howard to do?

The Voice Of Woody
By VIVIAN BROWN
WALTER LANTZ is one husband who never gets tired of hearing his wife talk.
No wonder. She’s the voice of his brain child, Woody Woodpecker, the animated cartoon.
And Woody is lucky, too. He has a pair of delightful lovebirds to worry about his upbringing.
Woody has been around for a quarter of a century feathering the nest of his inventor and cheering children on screen and in books in 72 countries. Yet Lantz was pioneering animated cartoons long before Woody. He began in 1916 with Gregory La Cava, a year after animated techniques were begun.
Woody Came To Call
The inspiration for Woody came to Lantz when an annoying woodpecker actually pecked his roof into disrepair to the tune of $200. “The best investment I ever made,” he says.
Woody is almost real to Lantz and his wife, Grace.

“I guess you might say we begin talking about Woody at breakfast, and sometimes our imaginations get so wound up, we start laughing like a couple of fools. Then in the evening before dinner, we sit around and throw out all the ideas we had in the morning,” Gracie explains, laughing.
“Woody is like having a good child you’re proud of. We never give him anything to do we wouldn’t like our own child to do, if we had one,” says Lantz. “That’s not to say we don’t let Woody get into mischief,” he adds, “but it is the kinds of naughtiness that’s natural.”
Children write asking what Woody eats, what time he goes to bed, whether he goes to school. The couple answers all the letters.
Now She Growls
Born in Brooklyn, reared in Worcester, Mass., Gracie was in vaudeville with her father, Ed Boyle, before marrying Lantz in 1941. She dubs all the voices on a tape which is speeded up by 15 per cent to attain the metallic effect.
“Walter was not anxious to have me do it in the beginning,” Gracie explains. But she inveigled the studio directors to let her submit a take in the auditions “to see if the old man recognizes my voice.”
Whether he did or did not, she doesn’t say. But she got a lifetime hob of speaking for her husband’s lively sketches.
Gracie has learned how to growl for a new series, the Beary family, the story of mama, papa, teen-age and a 9-year-old bear.
“But Woody is still our baby, and just as popular as ever. He’s starting a brand new television show on 160 stations from coast to coast. Imagine at his age,” says Gracie, proudly.

Brown’s assessment of “delightful lovebirds” was on the mark, as far as I’m concerned. Walter and Grace Lantz strike me as a couple who enjoyed each other, enjoyed life and enjoyed cartoons. Their interviews together were always light-hearted and talked about funny things. Lantz was liked by his employees and philanthropic in retirement. Grace died in 1992. Walter joined her two years later. She may not have been as good an actor as Mel Blanc but she comes across in news stories as a nice person with a sense of humour, and there’s nothing wrong with that in the slightest.

Can You See It Coming?

Maybe tired jokes the 1930s were funnier back then because they were new. Or new-er. There are some in old cartoons that have been seen so many times in so many cartoons, people know what’s coming.

Consider this one from the Willie Whopper cartoon The Good Scout (1934). A variation on the Iwerks studio’s old crone tests a mud puddle at an intersection with her foot.



Here’s Boy Scout Willie to the rescue with his trusty coat. I already know what’s going to happen. I wonder if they did in 1934.



Hey, crone! Why are you beating up on Willie? He didn’t do anything wrong. He even helped pull you out of the puddle.



Anticipating a Hanna-Barbera cartoon where Mr. Jinks chases Pixie and Dixie past the same light socket seven or eight times, the avenging crone pursues Willie past the same “444” dress shop five times, and then Willie passes it three more times when he jumps on the back of a roadster.



Tex Avery was great at masking ancient or obvious gags by making fun of them on the screen. You don’t expect a cartoon to say “Corny gag, isn’t it?”

Harman-Ising grads Norm Blackburn and Bob Stokes are the credited animators. 20 years later, both were working in live-action TV at NBC. Iwerks was back at Disney displaying his technical adeptness.

How Fast is That?

There aren’t too many gags in I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead, You Rascal You, a 1932 cartoon by the Willard Bowsky unit of the Fleischer studio. A lot of the time is taken up by Koko and Bimbo running away from the disembodied head of Louis Armstrong (which turns into an animated caricature a couple of times).



One gag that Dave Fleischer throws in is a speedometer that sprouts on Koko’s butt. Koko keeps picking up speed. He’s running so fast that, well, I’m not up on my Hebrew.



It’s neat to see a young Armstrong and his band (three saxes, three horns, two strings, one percussion and a piano) percolating away on the title song.

The rotating animation credit went to Ralph Somerville.

Famous, But Invisible

People heard their voices on the radio but never knew who they were—guys like Bill Hanrahan, Mel Brandt, Howard Reig, Gene Hamilton. They were among the men who said “This is NBC, the National Broadcasting Company” before the electronic G-E-C chimed out over the air.

Many of NBC’s staff announcers toiled anonymously for years, giving network IDs and announcements. Some rose from the ranks to host programmes; Wayne Howell, for example. And a select few found themselves with regular and high-profile television announcing jobs where everyone recognised their name and voice. Bill Wendell was one. But maybe the best example was Don Pardo.

Depending on your age, you might have heard Pardo reading late night radio news in the mid-1940s. Or you might have caught Bill Cullen asking him to tell a contestant what they won on the original The Price is Right, or elucidating about the World Book Encyclopedia to viewers of the original Jeopardy! (executive producer Merv Griffin was big on the announcer being thanked, so host Art Fleming thanked Pardo for his introduction five times a week). But a different generation gave him his biggest fame as he stretched his vowels opening “Saturday Night Liiiiiiive!!!” for years. Pardo had a wonderful ability to self-kid his announcing style without being a self-parody. He was very professional about what he did, but even he seems to have understood it was somewhat ridiculous for a grown man to buoyantly bleat “It’s a mink stoooooole!” or “A two-week stay in Bermuudaaaaaa!”

We’ve talked about Pardo’s career in this post, and in this post about the time Pardo was suddenly faced with handling a bomb threat in his studio. Here’s another newspaper clipping, this one from February 25, 1978. Writer Frazier Moore is with the Associated Press out of New York these days, but I gather he did this on a freelance basis while living in Florida.

THE VOICE
By Frazier Moore
NOBODY SAYS “Jeopardy” like Don Pardo. He revs up like a firetruck’s siren (Jeeee-ep), the rides a steep but graceful slope of resonance until his voice glides to a rest (“- -pard-deee”).
Pardo, the man with a voice like a firm but soothing rubdown, introduced the TV gameshow “Jeopardy!” five times a week for more than a decade. He was the off-camera announcer, but even after grinning emcee Art Fleming took the stage each day with a squeaky “Thank-ya Don Pardo,” the voice of his unseen sergeant-at-arms still hung in the air.
Years before “Jeopardy!,” Pardo had announced for “The Price Is Right,” the original version in the ‘50s, when Bill Cullen hosted. And Pardo—not Sir Laurence Olivier or Orson Welles—acquainted innumerable youngsters with the majesty of the speaking voice, even as he recited something as mundane as where to send for free tickets to the show.
Now Pardo’s career has taken a curious twist, thanks to his role for the last two years as announcer on “Saturday Night Live,” NBC’s live-from-New-York satirical loony bin which can be seen tonight from 11:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. on WSB-TV, Channel 2 in Atlanta. During each segment’s 90 minutes, Pardo’s buoyant voice periodically bobs up from the sea of insanity. His deep dragline voice dredges up beauty-mud diction as he scoops a path amongst the cast’s precocious young hipsters.
But who is this man with the ear-cuddling splendor, the man who plays second fiddle with a Stradivarius?
It was a little after 4 p.m. a couple of Fridays ago, and Pardo was roosted in the NBC announcing booth, snug in Manhattan’s RCA Building. He greeted the report’s phone call graciously.
He had just arrived at work, and would stay until 7—“and that’s my day,” he crooned into the receiver with the same transcendent tones that tickle airwaves from coast to coast. “It’s pretty deadly, but it’s not bad. I’m sort of sitting back and enjoying my three hours a day.”
Pardo’s day-to-day job is that of staff announcer, which means he sits before a microphone for a given shift and makes all the needed announcements, live. Pardo, a native of Westfield, Mass., has had such a position at NBC since he arrived in New York City in 1944, at the age of 26, after a short stint at a Providence, R.I., radio station.
He’ll [sic] was 60 Wednesday, Feb. 22. And now, one of a dwindling breed thanks to tape cartridges and the TV industry’s exodus to Hollywood, Pardo is a party to a “contract of attrition,” which protects him and his remaining 13 colleagues from dismissal, then terminates each slot as each announcer retires.
So here was Pardo, sitting, waiting until the 4:30 p.m. station break, and welcoming a chat.
Things hadn’t been so rosy a few days before. Then the voice that claimed to be Don Pardo’s sounded like a dime-store photograph; he had a cold.
“When I catch a cold, it goes straight to my pipes,” he was saying now, his voice back in the stirrups and spurring every word. “And that’s my Achilles heel. I wind up with laryngitis.”
It recalled another case, 34 years ago.

“I must have been here about six weeks or so. Then, (veteran newsman) Lowell Thomas was on for Sunoco, from 6:45 to 7, and one afternoon I was rushed into the studio because his announcer ad laryngitis and couldn’t do it. And I went in there—and you think I wasn’t terrified?”
“Lowell Thomas used to come in at the last minute. Sometimes he used to come in when they had the beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep sound going on, and there’s nobody there, and this is L-I-I-I-I-IVE, and I think ‘What the hell do I do?’ ‘cause the moment you get through with the beep-beep-beep, “... And now, Lowell Thomas’—that’s your introduction. ...” Pardo halted, to let the potential horror of the situation sink in.
“But, by George, he’d just make it to the studio. Wouldn’t even take his hat off. But I remember I thought I was gonna have a cardiac arrest, right then and there. Oh, my God!” And he laughed a husky laugh—his laugh a worthy partner to the Pardo voice—at the memory.
Throughout his NBC careet, Pardo has been on hand for broadcasting’s grand parade, which he witnessed, rain or shine, day in, day out, from the reviewing stand his job provided. He’d been at NBC a long time, but his brimming memory began to spill out recollections.
“All the years I’ve been around here, and all the shows I’ve been affiliated with, good heavens!,” he marveled, as if his lengthy tenure had just occurred to him. “I did just about everything . . . ‘Caesar’s Hour,’ with Sid Caesar, and ‘The Martha Raye Show’ for five years. . . . I did the first two soaps that were ever on television—two 15-minute shows, ‘Follow Your Heart’ and ‘Three Steps to Heaven.’ . . .
“There was ‘The Colgate Comedy Hour; starting in 1950, and all the great stars we had on that. Martin and Lewis, Eddie Cantor, Abbott and Costello, the whole lot. . . .
“And I did Fred Allen’s only TV show, ‘Judge for Yourself,’ in 1953, and there was ‘The Kate Smith Hour,’ and ‘The Four Star Revue,’ with Martha Raye, Danny Thomas, Jackie Gleason and Jimmy Durante—every Saturday they would rotate. . . . And the ‘U.S. Royal Showcase,’ and Jonathan Winters’ 15-minute show. That’s where I met Art Fleming. He did the commercials.”
Then there was “The Price Is Right,” “Winner Take All,” “Jackpot,”—“for 11 long, beautiful years,” says Pardo.
Many of these projects were freelance jobs supplementing his staff chores. For Pardo, “Saturday Night Live” is such a sideline.
“Everybody on the show is about 32 or younger,” Pardo said. “The gimmick was to get a veteran announcer. (Producer) Lorne Michaels and (writer) Herb Sargent had grown up with me, ever since they were little tots, hearing ‘Don Pardo, Don Pardo’ on the air—I’ve been at NBC longer than Lorne has been on earth. So they called me in, looked me over, and that’s how I was hired.
“We coming up?” he asked suddenly, speaking to somebody else. “We got the director over there going bananas,” he said. “There’s a break coming up. . . .” A few seconds’ pause, then Pardo’s voice returned in a slightly richer, much more forceful manner: “It’s ‘The $100,000 Name That Tune,’ tonight at 7:30. . . . “Now we’re set,” he said into the telephone, sliding his voice out of hiking boots and into suede slippers.
Three weeks ago he got to “die,” when “Saturday Night” concluded its show in ultra-bizarre fashion with an onslaught of “giant atomic lobsters the size of helicopters.” Pardo, along with the rest of the cast, crew and studio audience (and for that matter, the whole of the Northeast United States( expired at their hands—er, claws.
And he’s even had a starring role. Once, a “Saturday Night” sketch cast Pardo in a tribute to himself. And lo and behold, Don Pardo was exposed as an INVISIBLE MAN!
Is it true?
“I’ll send you a picture,” Pardo replied, then went on to explain that his recent anonymity isn’t part of a conspiracy to keep him under wraps. In many of the series in which he participated during the ‘50s, he worked on-camera. In a series of long-ago TV commercials, he put a Benrus watch through its paces by swimming laps with it strapped on his wrist. He hosted his own local kids’ show in New York City. “And on ‘Jeopardy!,’ I was seen once a year,” he said, “when I’d wheel out the anniversary cake.”
Otherwise, the fact that no one knows what Don Pardo looks like, “Why, that’s one of beauties,” he said. “I’m free as a bird. But on ‘Saturday Night,’ I get out there for a few minutes and do a warmup, and the minute I open my chops and say, ‘Good evening, I’m Don Par. . .’—‘Yayyyyyyyyyy! That’s him!’ they scream. ‘THAT’S the one!’
“I’ve never in my life seen such a group of people,” he said of The Not Ready for Prime Time Players, the show’s seven-member repertory company. “Changes are made up until airtime, but they only have to be told once, and you wonder how they do it. I’d flip out. They’re a most talented bunch.” Pardo is a stranger in a strange land, and “Saturday Night Live” is his passport.

“Last Christmas (1976) we had (rock avant-gardist) Frank Zappa on the show. I didn’t know he was fond of me, but it turned out he had kind of grown up with me on television.” So Zappa recruited Pardo to join his troupe during a four-show engagement at a New York-area concert hall.
“I was dressed in a white tux and tails, the whole thing, and they practically tore me apart, those kids. I ran up and down the aisles, and, Christamighty, they floored me. They grabbed my cape, tore everything apart. And I got kissed by a few fellas. Man, I tell you, what a crowd, what an experience that was! “And they were selling posters. I’m like Farrah Fawcett-Majors, on these big posters. There as a sign, ‘Don Pardo posters, $1.’ And the last night: ‘Free! Don Pardo posters, with every purchase of a Frank Zappa shirt.’” He laughed. “And I’m thinking to myself, ‘Boy, how the mighty have fallen.’ Used to be, when Pardo was doing the live-TV grind every day, he kept an apartment in Manhattan to save commuting during the week. This
time-saving arrangement led to time squandered every evening in bars, he confessed, which inspired this question: Does Pardo’s perma-pressed voice succumb to wrinkles when he has a few drinks?
“I wouldn’t dare, if I’m going on the air, I’ll tell you that,” Pardo said, with a laugh. “Man, it’s sound like, “And now, it’s ‘Saturday Night Liii-i-i-i-i-i-ive.’ You know, your diction would be slooo-o-o-o-o-o-o-ow; ‘Gillll-l-l-l-l-llida Radner-r-r-r-r-rrrrrr,’” he demonstrated, his voice ebbing and flowing with the names of the stars, “Laraine Newwwwman-n-n-n-nnn. John belushiiii-i-i-i-i-i-i-i...”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
But announcing isn’t as easy as it sounds, Pardo warned. “There’s a lot of tension, my friend. You need the voice, and endurance”—he laughed—“and personality. Be different.”
Along the way, Pardo had interrupted the conversation for another announcement: “Visit the New York Public Library,” he boomed. No one could have said “visit the New York Public Library” quite that way.
“That’s it,” he said a moment later. “My next break is coming up in about 2/4 minutes, when I say ‘Chuck Scarborough and News Center 4—next.’”
Shortly after 7 p.m. he would be through for the day and, since there was no “Saturday Night” that weekend, for the week.
For now, Don Pardo, The Voice, had spoken his piece.

He Gave More Than a Goodtime Hour

There he was on your TV set, with a big beaming face enthusiastically shouting “Hi! I’m Glen Campbell!” before launching into “Gentle on My Mind,” one of the songs that resulted in him winning four Grammys and Entertainer of the Year by the Country Music Association in 1968.

Campbell’s music, in a way, wasn’t really country at all, not in the terms of twanging steel guitars, songs lamenting about hurtin’ and drinkin,’ and accents that were so backwoods, they could light a fire under the still out back. He belonged to that valuable category of country pop. An inoffensive, plaintive voice with a hint of farm belt coupled with a rhythm guitar made him perfect for country and middle-of-the-road stations.

By the time Campbell was handed his Grammys in May 1968, he had already by picked by Tommy Smothers to co-host the Smothers Brothers’ Sunday night summer replacement show with deadpan comedian Pat Paulsen. It seems like an odd combination, but viewers tuned in. Campbell was set up in his own variety show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, which opened on January 29, 1969 with a happy identifying shout at the camera.

Here’s a syndicated feature story from December 2, 1969, with a good look at Campbell’s attitudes at the time.

Better Than Pickin' Cotton
Glen Campbell Unspoiled
By Skyrocketing Career
By BOB ROSE
LOS ANGELES — Glen Campbell says:
—"People want a guy to come out and cut his guts out and say. This is it. This is me. I do bad? At least you're honest about it."
—"These Charley Showbiz people come out and sing, "La de da, this is my song, and I'm going to sing it to you.' That's all bull. All fake. And it comes through that way."
—"I looked at myself in True Grit' and I ain't worth a damn, from an actor's standpoint. Critics? I read some beauts, man. 'Glen has never acted in movies before, and his record is still clean.' He was right."
This is the off-the-cuff, down-home talk of the singer-guitarist-songwriter and TV star—perhaps the hottest property in song and show business today. Grammy awards and awards from the Academy of Country Western Music come to him in batches. His records regularly hit the top of the charts. He's applauded by college kids, teens and just folks alike.
And he's modest about it all.
"I GIVE THE CREDIT to the song. If it's a good song, it'll go. Like 'Gentle on My Mind.' It was a rhythm track and a voice and it didn't have any sweetening on it at all. No strings, no horns, nothing. It was a hit because it was a good song. Not because it was Glen Campbell. I mean, who the hell was Glen Campbell?"
It's good the question was in the past tense. Then nobody knew. But nearly overnight, true to show business legend, everybody knew. True to show-business fact, Glen had been in the background working up to stardom for a long time, from the time he was 4 and his old man gave him a mall-order guitar.
That was back in Delight, Ark. (pop. 450), ("Well, we didn't actually live in Delight. But up the road about 8 miles, on a farm.") As one of a family of 12 kids where everybody, including ma and pa, played some sort of instrument and sang.
"Let's face it, there ain't a helluva lot to do on the farm, except milk the cows and slop the hogs, and when you go in the house after dark, what do you do? We didn't play cards because Mom wouldn't allow them in the house. So we played guitars and sang."

GLEN GRINNED as he talked, leaning back on a couch in his CBS office, a suite that used to be occupied by the Smothers Brothers, who gave him a big lift up in television before they and the network split in a squabble over censorship.
"Those were some kind of days, back in Delight, I'll tell you. I picked cotton at $1.25 a hundred pounds, and boy, if I worked my tail off I picked 80 or 90 pounds a day."
Glen decided a better future might lie with his music. Something of a prodigy, he could play anything he wanted to by the time he was 7 or 8—rhythm, country music, jazz, old-time religion— and by 14 he left home to work with his uncle's band in Albuquerque. He's made his living as a professional entertainer ever since.
He mastered the five-string banjo, the 12-string guitar, six-string guitar, electric guitar, mandolin and bass fiddle. In 1961, his last year on the road, he traveled 105,000 miles in a station wagon for 11 months, and then decided to try his luck in Hollywood.
His skill put him in demand as a studio musician.
"I PLAYED for all kinds. Easy ones like Dean Martin, who says, 'Anything you want is OK with me.' And tough ones like Bobby Darin, who tells every musician how to play each note. But the money was good. You could get $105 for a three-hour session. If you could pick up three or four of those a day, you made good dough. Sometimes I'd work from 9 a.m. until 4 a.m. with damn few breaks in between."
Glen was working for Capitol Records, and kept it up for five years, then he went to his bosses and asked for a chance to do his own thing. They agreed. He came in with "Gentle On My Mind," and shortly after, "By The Time I Get to Phoenix," and then, "Hey Little One," three massive hits.
Characteristically, Glen pays tribute to Capitol.
"They're a great outfit. They back you 100 per cent. I'm still with them."
Tom and Dick Smothers, whom Glen played behind on several records, picked him to head up their "Summer Brothers Smothers Show," and he was a solid success. Then CBS gave them his own regular season show, another hit.
Glen bought out the Smothers Brothers share of his show so he could have control over just what he was going to do and say.
"There was no bitterness, no unhappiness, you understand. But last year they had me doing some things that I just didn't think fit. And if I don't feel comfortable doing something, it comes out looking phoney. That is bad news."
GLEN ALSO DIFFERS with Tommy's one-man, or two-man war to run a completely free-of-censorship network show in which he can say anything he wants.
"I think Tommy's real talented. But he has this hangup. I told him I have a point of view, too, but I'm not going to use my show as a vehicle to try to express it. There's 200,000,000 other people out there with a point of view and they don't have a television show to express it on. Why should I be different? Besides, ain't nothing we're going to say that's going to change a damn thing anyway. Except it's going to raise a lot of stink. It ain't common sense."
Glen plays country music because he likes music that tells a story.
"I like music that has a beginning, a middle and an end. I look for a human interest story, maybe a story of a boy and girl in love. And I don't look for depressing endings."

But Glen doesn't like to be typed as a country and western singer because he does all kinds—pop, jazz, rock 'n' roll and some classical along with it. ("I'll jump in with the Juilliard String Quartet with my five-string banjo. I love all kinds of music").
One music critic described Campbell as "all smiles and welcome, a style that is as open and natural as church on Sundays, and a fearsome agility in his top notes which are as acrobatic and far-reaching as a razorback's hog calling . . . his big, silky baritone is a polished instrument, with equal vocal measures of Las Vegas and Nashville."
HIS ACTING may be something of a different story, but Glen thinks it's improving.
"I act" Glen admits, "like I shank a four-Iron. But in this new picture, 'Norwood,' I think there are a few places I look like an actor. I'm really working on it."
In "Norwood," Glen works at a service station In Ralph, Tex., and a guy suckers him into driving a car to New York for him.
"Halfway there I find the car's hot. And the chick who's riding with me is a hooker, and I don't know it. Dumb. Naive. Boy, that's me. I fit right in."
Well, "dumb" and "naive" Glen will be putting away cash like he's bailn' hay this year from television, records and movies—and he thanks Daddy for a lot of his good fortune.
He proudly describes him in a way that could be applied to himself.
"My dad, Wes, he's the kind who always won first prize for singing and playing at the county fair. He's a helluva showman. He really is. We had him on the show and we got more letters than any one we ever had. He's a card. But very honest. Very open. And people can see that."

Despite the sunny, down-home optimism, Campbell’s life unravelled and not just because comedy-variety TV shows became passé. There are a bunch of divorces. A lot of drinking. And then came Alzheimer’s, which he publicly fought to set an example for others.

The first impression is always a lasting one. Glen Campbell is still thought of today as an unassuming young man from a small farm town who crooned pleasantly with a simple string guitar. A guy who deserved success. It’s why he’s being mourned today.