Here's something odd. Life magazine has put online a batch of never-before-published photos from its archives of various actors screen-testing for roles on the 1964 sitcom, The Addams Family. John Astin was already cast as Gomez at the time at least some of these pictures were taken so you see him posing alongside folks who hoped to land the parts of Morticia, Uncle Fester, Lurch and so on.
Can you identify any of them? The only one I recognize is in Photo #7. That's Maurice Gosfield, better known as Pvt. Duane Doberman from The Phil Silvers Show, aka Sgt. Bilko, here trying out to play Uncle Fester, the role eventually filled by Jackie Coogan.
Mr. Gosfield did not have much of an acting career apart from Bilko. He was discovered for the role of Doberman in an open call, meaning that just about anyone could audition. Those very rarely yield jobs and few as notable as this one did. Doberman was so popular that he even got his own comic book for a time. Before that job, Gosfield claimed thousands of acting credits but Phil Silvers told people that they were mostly illusionary. The Man Who Would Be Doberman was actually in three short-lived Broadway plays and a few bit parts on TV shows and in one Ma and Pa Kettle movie.
After Bilko went off, Gosfield did one more series — Top Cat, as Benny the Ball — and a tiny part in the Doris Day-James Garner movie, The Thrill of It All. Top Cat was on for ABC for one season, going out of production before Christmas of 1961. It is sometimes reported that there would have been more episodes but Hanna-Barbera decided not to make any more because of Gosfield's passing.
That's highly unlikely. Gosfield died in October of 1964 — one month after The Addams Family debuted on television, one might note. I can't think of a single network TV cartoon show that went out of production, then back in again three years later…or a single one that ended because the producers felt they couldn't recast the voice of a supporting character. Nevertheless, Maurice Gosfield was one of a kind.