Familiar Fiedler

You likely haven’t heard of the Greenbush Players in Blauvelt, N.Y. You probably haven’t heard of the play “Over 21,” presented by the aforementioned players in August 1945.

You probably have heard of the director of the play, Ruth Gordon, who later won an Oscar, an Emmy and two Golden Globes. And you may have heard of one of the supporting players who had a small part in her stage effort.

His name was John Fiedler.

You saw him on television through the ‘60s and ‘70s. He played meek, quiet guys, though occasionally he portrayed a meek villain.

He also had good fortune in being re-cast. Fiedler was hired to play Vinnie in The Odd Couple on Broadway, then appeared in the role in the film. Despite his TV experience, he wasn’t in the television version (Larry Gelman played it until network research found viewers didn't like poker on TV and the role was dropped). Fiedler appeared in the television and movie versions of Twelve Angry Men and in Raisin in the Sun, both in film and on stage.

This story appeared in papers on July 29, 1979.

Live TV Gone
By DICK KLEINER
United Feature Syndicate
HOLLYWOOD — Like so many other successful New York actors, John Fiedler had it pretty good in the heyday of live television. But the live TV dried up and TV production moved to Hollywood.
And so did Fiedler.
"I came out here in 1960,” he says “for a month. And I’m still here — and I love it." Actually, Fiedler came out to California in the company that was performing “A Raisin In the Sun.” Most times, Broadway play casts are replaced for national, but this particular group came west intact.
“I thought I’d just be here for the run of that play,” Fiedler says. “I kept my New York apartment, so I'd have something to go back to. But that month slowly became a year, then several years, and after a year or so, I gave up the apartment.”
Of course, almost as soon as he gave up his New York apartment, he needed it. He was summoned back to New York to do a play, which turned out to be a classic. Fiedler was in the original can of Neil Simon's “The Odd Couple.” He was fortunate in that he was able to trade apartments with a west-bound New York actor.
Incidentally, Fiedler believes he has a very unusual achievement — he wrote some of Neil Simon's words. In “The Odd Couple," one of the great comic moments involves a poker game.
"All Simon's script said," Fiedler recalls, “was just, ‘They play poker,' with no directions and no dialogue. So Mike Nichols, the director, asked which of the group of us actually played poker. I said I did, and it turned out I was the only one who really knew the game.
“So Nichols asked me to arrange the scene, and to add the necessary dialogue — you know, things like 'I raise you five' — so it would all look realistic and wind up at the right moment. Anyhow, when the play was published, all those lines I had added like ‘I raise you five', were in the manuscript."

Actually, card playing is perhaps Fiedler's only hobby. He plays some poker, but bridge is his real game, and be is a frequent and ardent player. He plays duplicate frequently and is also part of a game of friends that meets regularly. Among the group is actor Billy Sands, a veteran of the Phil Silvers days.
“Each week,” Fiedler says, “we all put $20 in the kitty, and we use that money once a year to go on trips. We've been to San Francisco and we've been to Hawaii. This year, we're not going anywhere, hoping that if we skip a year we’ll have enough to go to Europe next year."
Fiedler is, as anyone who has seen his ingenuous face and heard his distinctive voice knows, one of our more successful character actors of the moment. It's a role he likes, since he thinks there is more security in playing character parts than in being a leading man.
He comes from Milwaukee, Wis., and went right into the Navy in World War II after graduating from high school. It was a good life — he became a yeoman and most of his service was spent at the Pentagon.
After World War II, he used his GI Bill of Rights payments to attend drama school — New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. He graduated just in time to be smack in the middle of the live TV boom in New York, and he flourished.
When he came here, and elected to stay, he was also in demand. That was in the days when guest-starring roles paid pretty big money. But those days appear to be over.
He just did a guest-starring role on “Vega$!" and enjoyed it. He says he played a school principal who was a pimp on the side. He enjoys playing parts like that, parts that are unusual. One of his all-time favorites was on “Star Trek," when he played Jack the Ripper reincarnated.

This feature story in the June 1, 1996 edition of the Hartford Courant gave a good summary of his career.

What's-his-name at TheaterWorks
By FRANK RIZZO
Courant Staff Writer
John Fiedler knows the look.
From across the counter at the lunch shop in Hartford, the man who is getting him his tomato soup gives him a curious gaze.
He knows Fiedler, he's just not sure from where. He knows he's famous, he's just not sure how. He knows that he likes him, he's just not sure why.
He might know him as Mr. Peterson, the perpetually worried psychiatric patient, in the television series "The Bob Newhart Show," which ran from 1972 to 1978.
It could be as Vinny, the poker-playing buddy in the stage play and movie, “The Odd Couple.”
Or if Fiedler opens his mouth to speak, it could be as the voice of Piglet in Walt Disney's animated version of "Winnie the Pooh" (or as the voice of characters in "The Rescuers," "Robin Hood" and "The Fox and the Hound").
Fiedler has one of those distinctive faces and voices. And he finds that this waiter's reaction in Hartford is no different from any other city in America where the Brooklyn Heights-based actor has traveled.
The 71-year-old Fiedler is currently starring in TheaterWorks production of Jeffrey Hatcher's "Three Viewings." The play is composed of three separate monologues set in a mortuary. (Rosemary Prinz and Catherine Curtin are featured in the other two solo pieces.)
In Fiedler's piece, entitled "Tell-Tale," the actor plays Emil, a mild-mannered undertaker infatuated with a woman who comes to every one of his funerals.
"He's a dreamer," says Fiedler. His high-pitched voice is the sound of an old child, tentative yet seasoned, breathless yet weary. "It's very amusing, but it's also an emotional piece."
'A Raisin in the Sun'
Fiedler, who grew up in Milwaukee, loved the stage as far back as he can remember.
After high school, with World War II raging, he joined the Navy. When the war ended, he went to New York and studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse.
"I was a movie buff, but I always wanted to be on the stage," he says.
He made his Broadway debut in "The Seagull" with Montgomery Clift and his career was launched.
"By the time I was 26, I supported myself as an actor," says Fiedler. "I knew I was going to be a character actor from the beginning. With my voice and my looks, I got the milquetoast, nerd parts."
Countless roles followed, and he often worked the mild-mannered image to villainous advantage, playing a presidential assassin in 1960 [sic] in "I Spy," or a murderer in "Perry Mason."
His first big hit was playing Mr. Lindner, the white-collar racist in the original production of Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun," directed by Lloyd Richards (which had its world premiere at New Haven's Shubert Theater).
The play went through drastic revisions, says Fiedler. "Lloyd helped make the brother played by Sidney Poitier the focus of the play," he says, "because Lloyd felt there was no conflict with the sister who was the main character in the original version."
Fiedler made his movie debut in 1957 by re-creating his role in the television production of "12 Angry Men," starring Henry Fonda. (He would again appear with Fonda in a stage revival of "Our Town.")
Among his more than three dozen film roles were parts in "That Touch of Mink," "True Grit," "The World of Henry Orient," "Kiss Me Stupid," "Cannonball Run," "Sharkey's Machine," "Harper Valley P.T.A." and the screen versions of "A Raisin in the Sun" and "The Odd Couple."
But it seems that he gets the most recognition from his television roles, especially since cable television has revived many of those shows. Some nights you could call Fiedler king of Nick at Night.
There, he is on regular episodes of "Bewitched," "Dobie Gillis," "The Munsters," "The Odd Couple," and, of course, "The Bob Newhart Show."
Fielder says he gets residuals from some, but not all, of the old shows. He said it wasn't until the mid-'70s that a new contract was established for the television industry giving actors residuals for their work.

Though he is most recognized as Newhart's Mr. Peterson (a role he performed for 17 episodes), he says he gets an amazing amount of recognition from just one episode, "The Wolf in the Fold," in the original "Star Trek" series, in which he played Jack the Ripper reincarnated in outer space.
Because of that singular appearance, he often is asked to appear at "Star Trek" conventions.
"They pay me $2,000," he says. "I go there for the weekend; they show the thing; I talk a little bit; they ask questions; and I sign a hundred pictures."
'Buffalo Bill'
Fiedler's favorite role was as Woody, the unctuous lackey to the self-centered talk show host played by Dabney Coleman in the much-admired but short-lived TV series, "Buffalo Bill," which ran in 1983 and 1984.
That 26-episode series also featured such talents as Geena Davis, Joanna Cassidy, Meshach Taylor, Max Wright and Charles Robinson.
"That was my favorite character, and that was my favorite work situation," he says. "I was truly happy for every minute of it. We were all heartbroken when it ended."
Fiedler says his voice spurs as much recognition as his face, especially from people with young children who hear the sound of Piglet. (Walt Disney personally chose Fiedler to be the voice of the Pooh's pink pal.)
Fiedler has just completed voicing Piglet for the first feature-length "Winnie the Pooh."
"They're usually in the woods, but for this there's a dream so they go all over," he says. "It's going to look spectacular."
Of all the characters he has played, Fiedler says "there are lot of elements of Piglet that are me: the shyness and the anxieties and the fears. Even after all these years. The more you know, the higher your standards are and the more you have to lose."
Suddenly, a waitress approaches Fiedler, who is finishing his lunch.
"Good afternoon," she says. "Are you that famous actor on 'Bob Newhart'? You are? May I please have your autograph?"
Fiedler obliges.
"Thank you," says the woman. What’s your name?"

I remember him on Get Smart and Bewitched but, in the later years, he was off-camera and working in animation. Fiedler was 80 when he died in 2005.

Fly, Spider, Jekyll, Hyde

Two things are notable about Van Beuren’s Fly Frolic—there’s a great anonymous vocal of “Kickin’ the Gong Around” in mid-cartoon, and the John Foster/Harry Bailey team tossed in a spoof of Paramount’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931).

A hideous spider (after singing the aforementioned song) kidnaps a girl fly, takes her to his secret lab and then mixes a concoction. You know the scene. Van Beuren didn’t exactly have top-flight animators, but I get the impression they were trying for something beyond what they were normally doing, as we get double-exposures and an animated swirling effect.



Now that the transition has happened, nothing is done with it. Maybe Foster and Bailey realised they were almost out of time, so they quickly wrapped up the cartoon. The heroine points at the transformed spider, shouts “That’s. Him,” and he quickly changes back before being beaten up to end the cartoon.



This was the 500th Aesop Fable made by the Van Beuren studio, going back to the silent days when the Fables studio put out 52 of them a year. Sound cut that number and, by 1932, the company was producing Tom and Jerry cartoons as well.

Multiple-Armed Hassan

Hassan realises something has got past him while guarding the cave with treasure in Ali Baba Bunny.

Here’s how Hassan turns. Each drawing is on twos.



Ken Harris, Dick Thompson, Ben Washam and Abe Levitow animated this 1957 release.

Jack's Formula

On the radio, Joe Penner had “Wanna buy a duck?” “You naaaasty man!” and “Don’t ever DO that?” Jack Pearl had “Vass you dere, Sharlie?” And when those phrases got tiresome, there wasn’t a whole lot left.

Jack Benny was different. Yes, he had pet phrases, but over the years he also developed so many traits and side characters that his show didn’t sound exactly the same every week.

Unlike Penner and Pearl, whose repetitious routines wore out in time, Jack was able to carry on year after year, adding a host of occasional, but familiar, traits into plots with his established characters.

The entertainment columnist of the Kansas City Star commented on that in a column of January 25, 1948, admitting audiences were quite happy with Benny’s approach.

The Jack Benny Show Follows A Strict Comedy Formula
On Almost Every Program the Listener May Expect the Dialogue to Touch on at Least Ten Set Subjects and the Dialers Like It
ACCORDING to a Sedalia reader, this department has been derelict in its duty to radio listeners. We have been paying too much attention to Bob Hope and overlooking two of the greatest comedians on the air— Jack Benny and Fred Allen.
The letter from the reader was kind of rough in spots and we will not quote any of it directly. The theme was that Hope is lousy and if it were not for his stooges he wouldn't have a listener, and that Benny and Allen are so doggone funny they leave him rolling in the living room floor or someplace every Sunday night.
Laugh at Their Jokes
Our sense of humor apparently isn't quite as keenly developed as that of the Sedalia man, but we laugh occasionally at both Mr. Benny and Mr. Allen as we do sometimes at Mr. Hope. And we may not have given either Benny or Allen any “plugs" recently but it isn't because we have anything against them. A year or so ago we used so much about Allen we were accused of being on his pay roll.
That pay-roll crack hurt us. Someone thought all those "plugs" were good enough to bring in some of that stuff comedians call "happy lettuce" and we weren't getting a cent. So we just quit saying anything about Mr. Allen and he kept right on being funny (occasionally) and staying in the first ten (every week).
We kept right on listening, too, and probably haven't missed any more broadcasts of Benny or Allen than the Sedalia fan. However, we can truthfully say we never have been knocked off our chair by either. The only radio comedian who ever did that was an upstart named Henry Morgan and it wasn't with a joke about being stingy, having no hair, the bags under Allen's eyes. But more of that later.
His Timing Is Tops
We still are sensitive about that Allen affair so until the wound heals we will confine this largely to Benny's program. We believe Benny is one of the top comedians of the air. He has a remarkable sense of timing and emphasis. Sixteen years on the air and still in the in the top ten testifies to his ability and appeal better than anything we could say. But Benny like so many others isn't any better than his writers, and like the writers in other camps, they have built an illusion from which most of the comedy springs.
For some reason or other people like to laugh at the shortcomings, the abnormal traits and physical deficiencies of others, especially when the others are radio comedians. Benny and his writers have capitalized on that. The show generally follows the formula sometimes (as in the case of last week's program in Denver) almost exclusively.
Maybe it isn't fair to pick last week's show for analysis since it was on the road and all the bromides were dusted off. However it emphasizes the pattern.
A Formula Broken Down
There must be at least one joke or mention of:
1. Don Wilson's bulk.
2. Benny's (imaginary) toupe.
3. Benny's frugality.
4. Mary Livingstone's poem (or letter from mother).
5. Phil Harris's lack or education.
6. Harris's fondness for hard liquor.
7. Fred Allen.
8. Benny's age (38).
9. Dennis Day’s innocence (not used in Denver).
10. The latest magazine in which a picture or article appeared about Benny or one of the cast.
With these essentials as a starting point, the writers get together and throw in a few topical jokes, a couple of places for Mary to go haw, HAW, HAW, and if there is a guest, some formula gags that have come to fit the particular star. It's good stuff though.
The Denver broadcast followed the pattern pretty closely. Wilson told Benny that he was an incubator baby, born in Denver, and that Denver loves him (Wilson).
Benny to Wilson—Denver loves every square mile of you. They still have the incubator and are holding a rodeo in it—ro-dayo as in Anaheim, Cucamonga and Azusa.
Mary remarked to Benny that Denver's mayor was only 35 years old and Benny answered that he was only three years older than the mayor.
Mary read a poem about Wilson's size.
Wilson told Benny he heard the "that's a lot of bull" line on the Fred Allen show two weeks ago.
Harris didn't know what was the capital of Colorado but knew how many pool rooms there were in the state.
Rented Out His Suite.
Rochester called on the telephone to tell Benny that the hotel was complaining because Benny rented out the twin bed, rented part of the suite for a coffee shop, a barber shop and laundry in the bathroom and had installed slot machines.
A telegram from Fred Allen was read which said: "I understand there also is a stock show in Denver and it is fighting a losing battle."
And finally there was a plug about a Liberty magazine picture of Benny.
The high spots of the show, in the opinion of this listener, were:
When Rochester was told that Colorado's governor was 38 years old, he replied:
"Ain't everybody."
When Kitzel said he was carrying an .88 revolver and Benny asked him if he didn't mean .44, Kitzel said:
"No, an .88, why be half safe."
And the quartet singing the commercial to the tune of "Home On the Range."
Benny is the man behind the improved commercials on the show. The quartet idea is one of the best and most clever on the air. And it has been due to Benny's insistence that the tobacco auctioneers have become less and less a part of the commercial message.
The only solid criticism we have of the Benny programs is its tendency to get extremely loud at times, especially when Benny goes into his screaming routine in an attempt to stop the quartet. Then we would just as soon hear the auctioneers.
And speaking of commercials, if Fred Allen does his "Tobacco Opera" a few more times, he may laugh the outlandish cigarette claims off the air.

The columnist, on one hand, seems dismissive of the Benny formula, but admits “it’s good stuff.” And he or she misses the fact that Jack was involved in the writing and gave the “yea” or “nay” to every word spoken on the show (with the exception of ad-libs by Bob Hope, Fred Allen, Bing “Who the Hell Picked Out This Key” Crosby and other guests).

And there was much more to the Benny show than what was outlined in the column. All kinds of rotating elements were added: the telephone operators, Sheldon Leonard’s tout, Frank Nelson’s floorwalker, the Maxwell, Sara Berner’s sinus-y singer, Professor LeBlanc, the vault, and many more familiar to, and loved by, Benny fans. Jack was still getting mileage out of both Kenny Baker and Carmichael/gas man into the ‘50s, long after they left the show. He had a knack of knowing when those gags might work. It provided him with an audience on television, long after other top radio acts faded away.

Mouse Makeover

Once upon a time, there was a man named Amedee Van Beuren who owned the Fables Studios, which made silent cartoons starring, among others, Milton and Rita Mouse.

Here are Milton and Rita in the 1929 cartoon, Jungle Fools.



Then, one day in 1928, along came a gentleman named Walt Disney, who cleverly took advantage of sound when it was married to cartoons that starred Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

Van Beuren liked sound, too, and it seems he liked Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Because, soon, Milton and Rita began to look like, and even sound like, Mickey and Minnie.

Just how many Fables cartoons are we talking about? These are the ones I could find on-line, in order of release.


Singing Saps, February 7, 1930.


Foolish Follies, March 7, 1930 (incidental character).


Western Whoopee, April 10, 1930.


Hot Tamale, August 3, 1930.


Circus Capers, September 28, 1930.


The Big Cheese, October 26, 1930 (incidental character).


The Office Boy, November 23, 1930.


Stone Age Stunts, December 7, 1930.


Cowboy Blues, February 15, 1931 (Milton only).


College Capers, March 15, 1931 (a whole team of them).


Old Hokum Bucket, March 29, 1931 (incidental character).

For reference, here are Mickey and Minnie in The Karnival Kid from 1929.



By the start of 1931, Uncle Walt had (and had seen) enough. In what became a seemingly popular habit, the corporate lawyers went to work.

Here’s the Associated Press’ version of the tale:

“MICKEY” IN COURT
Movie Mouse Producer Sues Alleged Imitators.
LOS ANGELES, March 31— (AP)—Enter Mickey Mouse into the courts.
Mickey, through his production company Walt Disney Productions Ltd., filed suit against Pathe Exchange Inc., and the Van Beuren Corporation, New York, for an injunction to prevent the defendant companies from further use of animated cartoon characters "in any variation so nearly similar as to be mistaken” for the original Mickey and his side kick Minnie.
Further, the company demanded an accounting damages and surrender of all profits made on the alleged imitations.
Mickey contended his alleged double is doing all sorts of things he (Mickey) wouldn't think of doing, and has brought down on the bewildered creators of Mickey a flood of Irate letters and complaints.| Disney set forth he saw various “Aesop’s Fables” in which Mickey was imitated in a "jerky and amateurish style, ugly, unattractive and lacking in personality,” further that representations of the Van Beuren organization threatened to put him out of business unless he entered a contract with them.
Disney's suit was supported by several affidavits, one of which, made by Mr. and Mrs. E. H. Holton, recited the Holtons took their two Mickey enthusiast children to the theater and were embarrassed when the alleged Mickey’s girl friend lost important garments. The picture they saw was “Stone Age Stuff,” [sic] a Van Beuren production, the affidavit said.

(Dubs on-line of Stone Age Stunts show no scenes of clothing being removed).

A story in the United Press added Disney had copyrighted Mickey and Minnie in September 1928, and claimed Van Beuren et al had taken in more than $1,000,000 in profits from the imitation cartoons.

Apparently, Amedee Van Beuren claimed in response that Milton and Rita pre-dated Mickey and Minnie, which was true, but also disingenuous. As you can see above, the Van Beuren designs changed after Mickey and Minnie were born.

A wire service story dated April 28, 1931 reported Federal Judge George Cosgrave had granted that day a preliminary injunction stopping the further release of the offending cartoon(s). In hunting through newspapers, I have not found whether the case reached a conclusion in court or was settled in lawyers’ offices, but it should be noted Milton and Rita disappeared and, on August 1, the Fables began to star two humans, Tom and Jerry.

Nine years later, MGM pasted the Tom and Jerry names on an animated mouse and cat. Van Beuren couldn’t do anything about it. The Van Beuren studio folded in 1936 and Van Beuren himself was dead in 1938.

The irony is the shorts with Milton and Rita are being lovingly restored in new Blu-Ray collections of Fables by Steve Stanchfield’s Thunderbean Animation. Take that, Mickey and your corporation.

Thus, Van Beuren cartoon fans lived happily ever after.

Today's Sniffles Question

Non sequiturs happen in cartoons. That I can understand. But there are times I’m watching something and thinking “What?! What was that? Why?”

It happens with Van Beuren shorts, but I give them a pass because the plots are full of things that are funny-weird. It happens with some of the later shorts at Columbia/Screen Gems, but I figure they’re trying for Warner Bros. or Tex Avery gags and failing.

But there’s one by Chuck Jones I simply don’t get.

He and writers (Rich Hogan gets the screen credit) came up with The Brave Little Bat (1941). The National Board of Review magazine describes it:

A nice little dope of a bat saves a strange mouse when a giant cat invades their home.

Okay, so here’s the bat.



But then the bat strolls from behind a beam and comes out the other side as a mouse with little bat wings under his arm pits. And remains that way for the rest of the cartoon.



My question is—why?

The bat isn’t in disguise to trick him because there’s no trick involved. Is Sniffles hallucinating? I’m missing something. Maybe.

In this short, Sniffles is boring, the bat is annoying. Eventually the ridiculous, repetitive chatter (stolen from Teeny of Fibber McGee and Molly) would be put by Jones into Sniffles himself. There isn’t much of a point to the cartoon, which inches along. The climax is a cat falls a long way to the floor.

Rudy Larriva is the credited animator. I suspect Paul Julian painted the backgrounds.

Big Heel-Watha Background

A pan over a Johnny Johnsen background was a favourite way for Tex Avery to start a cartoon. Generally, there was an overlay of some kind panned at a different speed to add depth.

These are parts of the opening background of Big Heel-Watha (1944). The tall fir trees in front are on an overlay. You can see they’re at different spots over the background, as the camera moves left to right.



I’m not certain about any of the Tex Avery’s MGM layout people at this point. Claude Smith designed characters and he may have done the setting layouts, too, though Avery supervised everything pretty closely.

Ed Love, Preston Blair and Ray Abrams animated the cartoon. The opening narration is by Frank Graham.

Doris Packer

Television typecast actors. If I mention, say, Gale Gordon, or Charles Lane, or Maudie Prickett, you pretty much know what kind of character they’re going to play.

If comedy casting directors were looking for a somewhat snooty, humourless, perhaps wealthy, woman or authority figure, they likely didn’t look any further than Doris Packer.

Perhaps her best-known roles were as the school principal on Leave It To Beaver and the mother of spoiled rich kid Chatsworth Osborne on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. I remember her guest appearances as the operator of an exclusive private school in early episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies. There were many more shows, too.

What you may not have known was her acting career went back to the 1920s. Here’s a neat feature story from the Portland Herald (Maine) of Oct. 31, 1927

Doris Packer, Known To Cast As “Overture Sal,” Likes Ben Turpin
Celebrates First Anniversary As Actress With Jefferson Players
(By Edith W Haines)
"Out in the alley, Rose Burdick has her new straight-eight waiting for her, Frances Morris has her dog and a car, too, to make off-stage moments happy, but I have nothing," and Doris Parker had a sympathetic audience of one in her dressing room at the Jefferson.
After seeing that young woman in her numerous sophisticated roles, the thought farthest from one’s mind was that one ever would be placed in a position to sympathize with her. But those roles have done Doris Packer an injustice.

Instead of the stand-offish sophisticate, she is delightfully ingenuous, the Sally of Jefferson Alley. She is known among the players as ’’Overture Sal," a nickname wished on her because of her ability to appear on the stage without the usual coatings of grease-paints and other contents of mysterious jars that decorate actors' dressing tables.
Last week Miss Packer celebrated her first anniversary as an actress, and in Portland. Miss Packer began her professional career in Portland, but does not plan to end it here. Like every actress she sees Broadway in the offing. Just out of college where she had appeared in Greek plays and the like, the youthful ingenue came East to make a name for herself and begin her career in the most practical and wisest way. Today she appears as one of the most talented and finished players of the Jefferson company.
To remain sad and sympathetic in Doris Packer’s presence would be impossible, however. for cars and dogs are not necessary to her happiness and peace of mind.
"Lindy's” airplane is going to have nothing on Rose Burdick's new car, for it is big enough to hold the entire Jefferson family, and is called "Our” car. And Miss Morris isn’t selfish with Trouper, either, for she would just as soon have him dragging shoes out of Doris Packer's dressing room as out of her own. Instead of being envious of her associates, it is for them to be envious of Miss Packer. She has an edge on them for she can take half an hour extra between shows to see a movie, for with an extra dash of rouge, a little shading for eyes and a change of costume she is ready for the performance.
While flappers are worshipping at the shrine of John Gilbert or Ronald Colman, Doris Packer kneels down to—don’t laugh—Ben Turpin!
A confession that some would hesitate at making, came out as calmly as if she were whispering the deepest of secrets. There is a sad story behind Ben Turpin's life— a tragedy. And while Ben Turpin's eyes are leading him in two different directions and making folks howl at his doings—he is secretly nourishing a sorrowful past. His broken heart hidden behind an unlovely fave [face?] is just as admirable masquerade—and that is what Miss Packer reveres.
“I've just been to see ‘The College Hero’ in which Ben Turpin plays, and which was filmed at the University of California from which I was graduated—so it was just a glimpse of home for me.”
With the last performance of “The Masquerader” over, and her seven-line tale finished, Miss Packet lined up with the others to try out the family car. It remained for Joseph McInerney to put on the finishing touches.
"Out of all the footsteps on the pavement, you can single out Doris Packer, for it is always the sharp tap, tap, tap of her quick little heels. And when she is mad you can tell that, too, for it’s taptaptap—just like that! And— But the sentence remained unfinished for the little comedienne's sharp heels were after the informant clearing the stage of his presence.

Packer spent her time on the stage, before and after war duty, relocating to California with her husband in 1947. He died in Los Angeles in 1953, the year she made her film debut in Universal’s Meet Me At The Fair.

By the time this story appeared in the St. Lucie News Tribune on April 14, 1961, she was well established in television.

TV’s ‘Richest Woman’ In Town
By SALLY LATHAM
Fans of the Dobie Gillis TV show shouldn't be a bit surprised this week if they see "Mrs. Chattsworth ’Osborne” walking down the street. She's here as a houseguest of her cousin.
"Mrs Osborne," who also has several other simultaneous identities on the silvered tube, is Doris Packer, an able and versatile character actress with more years of successful Broadway and Hollywood experience then her animatedly attractive appearance admits to.
Miss Packer, as she is known professionally, has been enjoying a visit here with her favorite “girl” cousin, Mrs. R. J. Olson, in the latter's charming estate home in Maravilla. It's the first reunion for the two in six years and “we haven't stopped talking yet." says “Sis" Olson.
However, the visiting celebrity has also been during some of her time with another pet cousin, Earl Magrath of South Beach. The air, around the two homes, has been rich with reminiscence, shared memories and catch-up chat.
Much of the chatter concerns the TV actress’ fascinating adventures In cinema-land. In addition to having one of the top character roles in Dobie Gillis (NBC-TV) she also appears in the family program "Happy,” and in “Leave It to Beaver.” You've seen her, too, in "Laramie,” and several others in which she's had spot roles.
“I’m always the richest woman the world,” grins Miss Packer. “Which can get to be pretty expensive, since I have to buy all my own clothes."
The nice part about this comparatively new career, tells the dramatic veteran, is that it came to her— he didn't have to go looking for it. She’ll [missing words] she considered her full share of service in the theatre seven years ago, when she moved to the west coast. After all, she’d started in stock back in ’27, in Portland, Me., had moved to Broadway and covered the road from coast to coast and across the ocean on tour. She felt she’d earned a rest.
But it wasn’t to be that way. A fellow trouper, Larry Keating, who’d become a wheel in the west coast television industry, refused to let her rest on her laurels. “They need you,” he insisted, and promptly proceeded to get her booked, solid. She’s been at it ever since, with no signs a second let-up.
While on Broadway, Miss Packer’s favorite role was that of Nancy Blake, the part Clare Booth wrote herself into in the immortal satire, "The Women.” Miss Packer went on the road with this enduring play, covering “40 weeks, 40 states with 40 women.”
To top it off the troupe on request crossed the Pacific to do another long run with it in Australia. That’s a lot of traveling for a lot of gals—especially ones whose nightly dramatic job on the stage was a socialized cat-fight.

During her career, Miss Packer has acquired some wonderful friends among the top echelon of the theatrical world, high-ranking among whom are George Burns and Gracie Allen. In fact, their son Ronnie, star of the Happy show, is like a son to her. Ronnie, she says, is brilliant and talented, but he needs plenty of steering and discipline.
“And I give it to him, good,” chuckles Miss Packer.
Miss Packer’s career has been a colorful one—in other areas than the world of the stage. Back in the early years of World War II “my patriotism got the best of me.” She joined the Women’s Army Corps, and probably contributed in large measure to the size of the Armed Forces.
She and a close friend, who enlisted together as privates to the WACs, took a stand right to the middle of Times Square, New York City, and made with the patriotic pitch. They had as “shills” such tempters as top name bands and Broadway’s most brilliant stars.
Widow of Rowland Edwards, Broadway director-producer, Miss Packer now lives quietly (between shows) in her Hollywood home, her only “roommate” her Lakeland Terrier. But she has as “family” half of the television industry, from stars to crewmen (whom she thinks are pretty wonderful guys).
She particularly relishes a recent experience while to the Bank of America with her financeer-brother. A nice-looking young man came up and addressed her warmly calling her “Doris.” After a long and endearingly vague conversation, she was really worried— she couldn't remember where she'd met the guy.
Finally, it came to her.
He was the cook at the studio commissary.

Doris Packer is one of those people I associate with the black-and-white era of TV. I don’t know if I’ve actually seen her in colour (mind you, we didn’t get a colour set until the early ‘70s and I inherited our old Philco). By the ‘70s, she was appearing mainly in trivia columns in newspapers. She died in Glendale on March 31, 1979.