As I've mentioned here, Frank Welker is the current voice of Garfield the Cat, replacing our dear friend Lorenzo Music, who passed away in 2001. Lorenzo was so identified with the role that a lot of people didn't know he wasn't the first voice of the character. When Garfield was first animated, it was for a short segment in a special on newspaper comic strips, and the character's voice was supplied by an actor and radio personality in San Francisco named Scott Beach. Soon after, the first animated Garfield special was sold and that's when the character's creator, Jim Davis, decided he wanted a different voice. They auditioned every actor in L.A. about nine times before they found Lorenzo.
Between the time Lorenzo died and the time Frank got the gig, a few other actors did Garfield for little-seen commercials and public service announcements…and of course, Bill Murray spoke for The Cat in the live-action Garfield movies. But the lasagna-guzzling feline had one more voice during the time Lorenzo was still voicing the character.
For a number of years, Garfield adorned the labels of Alpo Cat Food and did the commercials, and Lorenzo did the voice for those commercials. But in the midst of those campaigns, there was one batch that somehow triggered a money dispute. Lorenzo wanted a certain amount. The sponsor wanted to pay a different amount. You can guess which was higher.
98% of the time in show business, one side comes down enough and the other side goes up enough to make the deal. This time was in the 2% and another actor wound up supplying the voice, at least when the commercials debuted. I think Lorenzo may have later redubbed the voice after everything finally got settled…but this clip has the fill-in voice, which you may recognize…
Wanna guess who it is? It's someone rather famous…someone you've probably seen and heard. See if you can figure it out. Whether you can or can't, you'll want to click here to get the answer.