I don't know where the above photo of comedian and character actor Howard Morris is from. Perhaps it's a picture from when he was on Broadway in Call Me Mister or Finian's Rainbow. Perhaps it's from one of the many TV shows he did with Sid Caesar, starting in 1949 with the Admiral Broadway Revue. Caesar was the greatest, everyone agreed, and Howie was able to match him note for note, dialect for dialect, playing support and sidekick on several programs, including the legendary Your Show of Shows. It could even be a still from one of his early movie appearances…maybe Boys' Night Out, where he co-starred with James Garner, Tony Randall and Kim Novak. How many times did we, his friends, hear the story of how one weekend during the shooting, he chickened out on an invitation to spend quality time with Ms. Novak?
Most of us called him "Howie." He was a fiery, funny little man who got mad and married easily, sometimes both at once. He was very proud of a lifetime of acting but very insecure about everything he did…which was amazing because he did so many different things and did them so well.
He was a director of TV shows including The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Hogan's Heroes, Get Smart and Bewitched, and of feature films, including With Six You Get Eggroll, Don't Drink the Water and his favorite, Who's Minding the Mint? (But he actually made the real money helming commercials — hundreds of them, including many of the classics for McDonald's in the sixties. They made one of his many ex-wives very wealthy.)
He was a voiceover actor, speaking for many characters including Jet Screamer and other roles on The Jetsons, Beetle Bailey, Jughead on the Archie shows, Atom Ant, Mr. Peebles on the Magilla Gorilla show, Wade Duck on Garfield and Friends, and hundreds of others. (But he actually made the real money voicing commercials. Remember the little koala who said he hated Qantas Airlines? That was Howie, and the role made another of his many ex-wives very wealthy.)
He was an on-camera actor, with credits ranging from The Nutty Professor with Jerry Lewis to High Anxiety with Mel Brooks and Splash with Tom Hanks. (But the thing everyone remembers is Ernest T. Bass, the rock-tossing misfit on The Andy Griffith Show. Howie was only in five episodes but he made such an impression that everyone thinks he was on it all the time…a lucky circumstance. The last decade or so, Howie's main source of income was signing autographed photos and making personal appearances for fans of that classic series. And no ex-wife got much of that loot.)
Howie was just a gusher of Show Business History and to sit with him was always an amazing experience. He worked with everyone and near as I can tell, always had their respect. He worked with me, off and on for close to two decades, and always had mine. He was a brilliant, spontaneous actor who could read the same line of dialogue ten times and do it a minimum of eleven different ways. On Garfield and Friends, my big insight as a director came when I realized that the less Howie knew about what he was reading, the more likely he was to do something stunning. So I'd explain the script to all the other actors before we rolled tape, and I'd keep Howie largely in the dark. Often, on that first take when he was reading Line 1 without any idea of what he'd find in Line 2, he would do something that neither he nor any other actor could have devised in a thousand attempts.
Howie died yesterday at the age of 85. It was not a surprise — he'd been in poor health for some time — but it still hit me like a stone lobbed through the window of the Mayberry Sheriff's Station by Ernest T. There will be formal obits up in the next few days. I'll link to them and you'll see what else this man did, even beyond what I've mentioned here.
But what they might not tell you is how much we adored this man — "we" being those who were honored to be around him and to work with him. He was not an easy person to know but once you got past that fake abrasive exterior that represented perhaps his finest acting job, you encountered a wonderful interior, filled with passion and compassion and I'm sorry if this all isn't cleverer and pithier, but the more you loved the deceased, the harder these things are to write. I'll post more about Howie when it finally sinks in that I can't call him up for lunch, take him to Canter's and watch as he insults the waitresses, the busboys and everyone dining within earshot…and they all love it, every one of them. If I'd been an actor when he was, I'd have wanted to do everything he did, except I would have gotten married a few less times, and I wouldn't have said no to Kim Novak.
(Quick Aside: I just spoke to his terrific son David, who took such good care of him between and sometimes even during his many marriages. No funeral arrangements have been made yet. I'll let you know when I know something.)