The New York Times has corrected its obit on Sid Raymond. They now quote his favorite joke in a way that makes sense. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, read this earlier item on this site.) Naturally, we would like to take credit for this…so we will.
The Times credits Sid as having provided the voices of the Terrytoons magpies, Heckle and Jeckle, and several folks have written to ask me if this was so. Yes, it is was…briefly. There are one or two cartoons in which Raymond appears to have done the voice of Heckle and/or Jeckle.
I say "appears" because those of us who profess to know a lot about animation voice work are all still a bit puzzled by the credits for many films that came out of Paul Terry's studio. A gentleman named Tom Morrison, who also worked there as a storyman, did an awful lot of voices. So did a New York based singer named Roy Halee. The two of them swapped off certain voices from time to time. Both were Mighty Mouse at different times, occasionally in the same cartoon — Halee singing, Morrison speaking. Sometimes, one of them did Heckle and Jeckle, sometimes the other did the magpies and sometimes they split the chores. There are also other, unidentifiable voices in Terrytoons, some of which sound like the director grabbed a janitor and stuck him in front of a microphone.
I'm glad someone was skeptical about Sid Raymond's credit. There's a lot of misinformation out there about the voices on these cartoons. Many sources say that character actor Ned Sparks was the voice of Heckle and Jeckle at one point. As far as I know, this is wrong. Impressions of Mr. Sparks turn up in a lot of cartoons produced in this country in the thirties and forties but I don't think he ever actually did animation voice work. Comedian Dayton Allen voiced the magpies a few times in the fifties, including redubbing old footage to serve as interstitial segments on the CBS TV series, but he's often credited as if he did all the voices in all their cartoons. Also, some sources say that Roy Halee went from voicing Mighty Mouse and the magpies to producing records by popular recording artists, including Simon and Garfunkel, The Lovin' Spoonful and Bob Dylan. Actually, Roy Halee Senior was a singer and cartoon voice and his son, Roy Halee Junior, became a top record producer.
Incidentally — getting back to the first topic for a moment — isn't it interesting that the Times, which published many assertions about Whitewater, and later about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq, has never corrected those stories…but someone there was conscientious enough to fix Sid Raymond's joke?