Monthly Archives: December 2015

I don't know how long this will be online but KNX Radio in Los Angeles is airing a short tribute to Jimmy Weldon in their "Hero of the Week" department. Jimmy, as many of you may know, was a pioneer in kids' television, hosting shows in many cities…including Los Angeles where I watched him and his duck puppet, Webster Webfoot, on KCOP Channel 13 for years. The voice of Webster later went into the Hanna-Barbera character, Yakky Doodle, making for some very fun cartoons.

Jimmy is being honored for his "other" work. These days, well into his nineties, he's still an active public speaker and motivational coach. I really hope I have half his energy when I'm his age. I wouldn't mind having it now.

Here's a link that should let you hear the short radio segment on him which Tommy Donovan (Thanks, Tommy!) let me know about. Give it a listen and then I have a possible quibble with one line in it…

Okay, then: The radio segment identifies Jimmy as the last surviving member of the Yogi Bear Show cast. Is he? She wasn't a regular but Julie Bennett was on an awful lot of episodes, often giving voice to Yogi's girl friend — who seemed to be a different color every time they drew her — Cindy Bear. In fact, Julie was heard on an awful lot of cartoon shows in the late fifties and sixties. She had a very busy on-camera acting career but she found time to do cartoon voices for Warner Brothers, U.P.A., Jay Ward and all the rest.

Around 1991, I met Julie at a party and I hired her to do some voices on Garfield and Friends. A few years later, we lost touch and when I called the phone number I had for her, it turned out to have been disconnected. In 2000, she did the voice of Aunt May for one of many Spider-Man cartoon shows…and that's the last credit I know of for her. She does not seem to be listed with any of the acting agencies at the moment.

Does anyone reading this know if Julie's still around? I believe she was the third voice actor to ever work for Hanna-Barbera, following Daws Butler and Don Messick, both of whom have passed on. She was also real, real good — on-camera and off. (If you watch reruns of the sixties TV shows, especially Dragnet, you can't help but see her.)

Jonathan Chait on Climate Change Denial. It's getting harder and harder to pretend there are actual scientists who don't believe the world is getting warmer.

Sarah Larson summarizes some of the reasons some of us think John Oliver has the best show on television.

This is an entry to Mark Evanier's list of the twenty top voice actors in American animated cartoons between 1928 and 1968. For more on this list, read this. To see all the listings posted to date, click here.

Most Famous Role: Boris Badenov.

Other Notable Roles: Professor Ludwig Von Drake, Capt. Peter "Wrong Way" Peachfuzz, Inspector Fenwick, Squiddly Diddly, Toucan Sam, Poppin Fresh the Pillsbury Doughboy and hundreds of others.

What He Did Besides Cartoon Voices: Frees had occasional on-camera roles but was simply in too much demand for the off-camera ones (like the unseen philanthropist character in the TV series, The Millionaire.  He was a superstar of radio dramas, a frequent re-dubber of on-camera actors, a voice in thousands of commercials, a narrator, a recording artist and even a stand-by when someone hired Orson Welles to narrate something and needed to have someone impersonate Orson.  The most famous Frees voice job may be his voiceover as the "Ghost Host" in the Haunted Mansion attraction at Disneyland and he is still heard in other rides at the Disney theme parks.

Why He's On This List: Paul may have been the most versatile voice actor ever and his peers still marvel at some of his vocal feats.  In the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, bad guy spy Boris Badenov often adopted disguises and fake dialects…so Frees was called on to do a Russian feigning a Texas accent.  And as producer/co-star Bill Scott once remarked, "We could never stump Paul with that kind of stuff.  He always got it in one take."

Fun Fact: There are hundreds of examples of Paul replacing the voices of other actors in movies and TV shows.  Near the beginning of the Academy Award-winning motion picture Gigi, star Louis Jordan walks into a mansion and has a conversation with three servants.  All three actors were redubbed by Paul Frees.