Some of the obits for Allan Melvin, who died last Thursday of cancer, are missing the whole point of Allan Melvin. They say that Sam, the butcher from The Brady Bunch, has died and then mention all the other stuff in a kind of "Oh, and he was also in these other things" manner. The point of Allan Melvin is not that he was on The Brady Bunch. It was that he was in everything.
He was a regular on the Sgt. Bilko series (aka You'll Never Get Rich and The Phil Silvers Show). He was a semi-regular on The Dick Van Dyke Show and All in the Family. To have been a part of one series of that stature would be impressive. To have been on all three? Amazing. That's in addition to the fact that he was the "go-to" guy time and again for the producers of The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle USMC, The Joey Bishop Show and so many others. That's all in addition to The Brady Bunch.
In an amazing number of these, he played a soldier — a typecasting that dated back at least to his role on Broadway in Stalag 17. I always liked to think of all those soldiers as the same guy changing his name and rank as he moved from camp to camp and decade to decade. (There was a nice in-joke once on Dick Van Dyke, where Melvin played a buddy while Rob Petrie was in the Army. In one episode, everyone was confined to the base while a crime was investigated. At the end, Melvin's character tells Rob that they caught the culprit…some soldier named Henshaw. Henshaw was, of course, the name of the soldier Melvin had played for five years on the Bilko series.)
Allan was also a cartoon voice actor, usually cast in tandem with his close pal, Howie Morris. The two of them did all the male voices on the Beetle Bailey cartoon show and, until Howie got himself fired from Hanna-Barbera, on Magilla Gorilla and Atom Ant and several others. (Melvin was the voice of Magilla.) Howie and Allan also did uncredited voices on the movie, Hey There, It's Yogi Bear, and Melvin was on many H-B shows without him, including The Popeye Show, where he spoke for Bluto.
The first time I met Allan Melvin was an unpleasant experience. It was in the Denny's restaurant over on Sunset Boulevard, across from KTLA Studios. I was doing one of the Krofft shows there and I went to lunch with Lennie Weinrib, who was the voice of H.R. Pufnstuf on that series. Nearby was KTTV Studios where All in the Family taped, and Allan went to lunch that same day with Carroll O'Connor. We all happened to converge on the Denny's at the same moment. I recognized Melvin and assumed, since Lennie had been a recurring player on the Dick Van Dyke Show as well that the two of them had crossed paths. So, finding myself standing between the two of them, I said, "Well, you two must know each other," which caused each to notice the other was there.
Well, it turned out they were acquainted and not in a good way. When the 1969 Pufnstuf feature film was made, Weinrib had been holding out for more money and Melvin wound up doing the voice of the title character replacing Lennie. It had been the cause of much bad blood between them and they'd almost had a slugfest once because Lennie felt Allan had done something unprofessional and Allan felt that all he'd done was take a job that Lennie had quit. Angry words were exchanged that day at the Denny's and we separated the two men and dined in separate rooms. A few days later, I was back there without Lennie and as it turned out, Allan Melvin was having lunch there, as well. He recognized me and came over to apologize for the squabble and tell me (briefly) his side of the dispute. I have no opinion as to who was right or wrong, but Mr. Melvin struck me as a very nice man who was deeply bothered that anyone thought he'd done anything unethical. If he did, I'm sure it was an atypical lapse.
Later, I worked with him on cartoons a few times and it was easy to see why everyone always wanted to hire Allan Melvin. He was a thorough professional, a very good actor and a man with a wonderful, wicked sense of humor. I cannot recall him ever in his long career appearing on TV in an unscripted capacity…say, on a game show or talk show. If he had, he'd have surprised people with how funny he could be out of character and out of uniform. Another one of the good guys gone.