Search Results for: Garfield

In response to this post, Roger Green wrote…

You noted: Standards and Practices at ABC had made up a list of racial and ethnic minorities and it was kind of like "Pick one." and "one of the other Standards/Practices rules at that moment…was that every show had to have a female character who was assertive and/or in a position of authority instead of just tagging along as the male characters drove the story forward."

I was wondering if you thought that was a good thing, a bad thing?

Surely having someone other than white people might attract non-white viewers, and help white ones to note, "Oh yeah, there are other people. And having a strong woman (not Nell, or '50s Lois Lane always imperiled) is a good thing for women (and especially men) to see.

In this world — or in my world, at least — one often finds situations that fall under the category of "Doing the right thing for the wrong reason" or maybe "Achieving the proper goal in an improper way." I don't think it's a good thing for, in this case, network functionaries to be dictating creative content because they're afraid of advertisers who are, in turn, afraid of pressure groups.

But I also don't think it's a good thing for police officers to pull you over for speeding. That should not be necessary. You shouldn't be speeding in the first place.

I'm fine with female characters who are strong and assertive. I'm fine with characters not all being white guys. I'm fine with both those things because in real life — or in my real life, at least — a lot of women are strong and assertive and a lot of people are not white guys. Those who felt animation was deficient in representing those kinds of human beings were right.

But the Standards and Practices people we dealt with in the late seventies/early eighties were sometimes very clumsy and tyrannical and creatively insensitive. I wrote one particular ABC Weekend Special where at the last minute, they demanded major (and, I thought, injurious) changes to the script because of some crazed concern of the week. And I was arguing with someone who really didn't care if the changes disfigured the story and betrayed the book being adapted for the special.

It was like if you were adapting Moby Dick (the classic novel, not the Hanna-Barbera cartoon show of that name) and they came to you and said, "We're under fire for not having enough black women in our shows!" You might say in response, "Okay, they're right. After I finish this, we'll come up with some stories featuring black women" and they said, "No, no! This can't wait! You have to make Captain Ahab a black woman! And make sure she's a good role model!"

And then they added, "And although we haven't had any complaints about this, we need to lose the stuff about Ahab only having one leg. Just in case!" Maybe the right long-term goal but the wrong time, place and method to achieve it.

They were also, I thought, often dead wrong about their goals. As I've written elsewhere, some of the "pro-social" messaging they demanded pushed the premise that "the group" is always right; that if all your friends want to do one thing and you think that's a bad idea, you should yield to the majority. I thought that was a dangerous message — that's kind of how The Crips and The Bloods got started — and when I worked on the Garfield and Friends show, I wrote several cartoons refuting that message.

It is perhaps worth mentioning that in (roughly) the years 1977-1986 when I wrote cartoon shows, most of which were on ABC, I battled constantly with the Standards and Practices people — and one lady in particular. Sometimes, I lost. Sometimes, I won. Often, I won but the producers of the show made the requested changes anyway because they were afraid that even if ABC would let a certain joke or action in now, they might not a few years down the line and would not then buy the show for reruns.

When I started doing Garfield and Friends in 1987 (it began airing in '88), all that changed for me. No one ever suggested pro-social concepts to me. No one at the network (CBS) really suggested anything. In 121 half-hours, the Standards and Practices guy had about five requests, all of them minor and reasonable and easy to accommodate. And as noted, I even got to do episodes ridiculing what Standards and Practices had demanded at all three networks in the previous ten years.

These days, very few cartoon shows face anything like what we faced way back when. My friends working on current programs do sometimes complain about notes from someone upstairs about story elements that might lessen a character's merchandising potential. But that's another matter.

Friends often ask me, "Did you write anything today?" That's a harder question to answer than you might think because sometimes the answer is, "Yes, but it's nothing I would ever share with anyone." If I write a few paragraphs of something and decide "This isn't going anywhere" and I delete them, did I write anything? Or if I wrote in my head and never put it down on paper or my computer, did I write anything?

Sort of. It depends on your definitions.

The truth is that I write by some definition of the word every day. It may not be any good. It may not be anything I want anyone else to ever see. But I write something. At the moment, I'm writing this.

Lately, for reasons I can't explain to myself so I certainly can't explain them to you, I've been sleeping odd hours. My body at my current age seems to want somewhere between 5.5 and 6 hours of shuteye in every twenty-four hour period…but every so often, it wants one or two more or one or two less. And sometimes, it wants them all in a row and sometimes, it wants them serialized. A few nights ago, I slept for three hours, got up and wrote for a while, then went back to bed for three more.

The COVID lifestyle has had something to do with this. There are very few times lately when I have to get up and leave the house by a specific time. There are, of course, ZOOM meetings but they seem to get scheduled later in the day even when they involve people on East Coast time.

Back when I was doing The Garfield Show and it was produced in France, we occasionally had conference calls at 4 AM. That was because we needed to tie in Jim Davis in Muncie, Indiana and the producers in Paris. 4 AM where I am is 7 AM where Jim was and 1 PM in France. (I don't know if he still does but Jim used to be up by 6 AM. So I might send him a fax or e-mail at 3:30 AM and get an immediate reply.)

Anyway, since time has become less significant in my life, I sometimes find myself wide awake these days at 5 AM and sound asleep at 3 PM. This morn, I woke up at 6 AM and my brain was buzzing with trying to find something to post here that everyone else isn't saying about school shootings. I couldn't think of one so I began working on a story of Groo the Wanderer. This morning, his world makes a lot more sense than mine.

The largest face in the above montage belongs to Alicyn Packard, one of the busiest voice actresses working these days.  She's on so many shows that I don't know how she finds the time to produce and host her own…but she does.  It's called Alicyn's Wonderland and on it, she interviews important people in the worlds of animation and videogaming. This week though, she couldn't find anyone important so her guest is me.

You can listen to this podcast on Apple, Spotify and just about everywhere else good podcasts — and even ones with me on them — are available.

Or you can watch the video version of this podcast which debuts on YouTube this evening at 6 PM West Coast Time. I think some sort of "watch party" will be happening online then but it'll be there any time after when you want to tune in.  She's a great host and you'll probably want to check out other episodes that don't have me in them.

I was just telling someone this story and he suggested I tell it on this blog. I actually did once but it was back in 2001 and I didn't tell it very well then. So let's pretend this is the first time I've told it. It involves two men…

The one on the left is Morton Downey Jr., who had a popular (for a while) syndicated talk show that mostly consisted of Mr. Downey bringing on guests, screaming at them, calling them names, etc. Here's some of what Wikipedia has to say about his program…

Starting as a local program on New York-New Jersey superstation WWOR-TV in October 1987, [The Morton Downey Jr. Show] expanded into national syndication in early 1988. The program featured screaming matches among Downey, his guests, and audience members. Using a large silver bowl for an ashtray, he would chainsmoke during the show and blow smoke in his guests' faces. Downey's fans became known as "Loudmouths," patterned after the studio lecterns decorated with gaping cartoon mouths, from which Downey's guests would go head-to-head against each other on their respective issues.

Downey's signature phrases "pablum puking liberal" (in reference to left-liberals) and "zip it!" briefly enjoyed some popularity in the contemporary vernacular. He particularly enjoyed making his guests angry with each other, which on a few occasions resulted in physical confrontations.

I did not like Morton Downey Jr. I thought he was the most repulsive "human being" (using a very loose definition of that species) on television back then. I did however like the gent on the right. His name was Stanley Ralph Ross and he was a pal of mine — a TV writer and occasional actor. Stanley was one of the main writers of the Batman TV show (the one with Adam West) and he developed the Wonder Woman TV show (the one with Lynda Carter) and also wrote for dozens of other programs. His deep, gravelly voice was often heard in announcing jobs and on cartoons.

This story takes place while I was writing and voice-directing the Garfield and Friends cartoon series. One day, I decided to use my disgust at Morton Downey Jr.'s show as the basis for an episode. I created a character named Joe Palaver and had Garfield's owner, Jon Arbuckle, go on Joe Palaver's show.

Basically, the plot was that Palaver gave Jon the Downey-style treatment and so Garfield went in and made Palaver look like a fool. For the voice of Joe Palaver, I cast Stanley Ralph Ross and we recorded the voice track and all was well.

A week or so later, Stanley called me and told me he'd run into Downey at a party and told him about the parody. For a tenth of a second, I was worried we were going to hear from Downey's lawyer but Stanley said, "He was thrilled and I gave him your phone number. He's going to call you about seeing if he can get a drawing from the episode."

A few days later, I did indeed receive a call from Mr. Downey but he wasn't interested in any drawing. What he wanted was for me to dump Stanley's voice track and replace it with a new one. "I'll come in and record my voice and you can call the character by my name and make it look just like me…and don't worry. I'll go along with whatever you write. You can make me look like the biggest idiot in the world."

I thought but did not ask, "What makes you think I didn't?"

The call didn't last long but it lasted long enough for me to realize that everything about this man was an act. He was screaming at people at TV and advocating infuriating political views just for the attention and ratings and the financial benefits from that act. This did not shock me as I've long believed in "follow the money" as key to understanding why most people do what they do. But it was jarring to have such a blatant example of it before me.

I declined his offer. When the show aired, it aired with the voice of Stanley Ralph Ross.

A few months after my phone call from Downey, I was dining with a friend in Lawry's restaurant over on La Cienega Boulevard. There, a few tables from us and very audible, was Morton Downey, Jr. He was loud and he was screaming at the fine Lawry's wait staff, carrying his on-air persona into the public arena. I hadn't thought my opinion of him could get any lower but that evening, it did.

By this time, the act was getting very tired and transparent and the ratings for his TV show were dropping. He tried some hokey publicity stunts for attention but they failed to reverse his slide into oblivion. In June of 1996, lung cancer forced the removal of one of his lungs and that apparently made him realize that smoking just might be dangerous. He became a staunch anti-smoking crusader but again, no one paid much attention to him. He died from lung cancer and pneumonia on March 12, 2001.

One person who I wish had listened to him was my friend Stanley Ralph Ross. Stanley died from the same thing one year earlier.

Here are two questions about my experience directing voices for cartoons. The first is from Dale Herbest…

I know you voice direct primarily for animation but have you ever directed V.O. sessions for a video game and if not, is there a personal or professional reason why?

I never have and there's a very good reason why. No one's ever asked me.

The next question is from Marlie, who doesn't seem to have a last name…

On the various cartoon shows, you employed a number of veteran voice actors. Was there anyone you wanted and you couldn't get?

A few. Paul Frees died around the time we went into production and by then, he'd moved out of Los Angeles and only came down to work for projects that paid way more than we did. Thurl Ravenscroft agreed to do the show and we had a couple of delightful phone conversations. He was living in Orange County and I was going to send a limo to bring him up to L.A. and take him home but he finally decided his health wasn't up to it.

Sterling Holloway was going to do an episode and then he wasn't and then he was and then he wasn't and it stayed that way. Doug Young, who was Doggie Daddy on the Augie Doggie cartoons was living up north and while he said he'd be delighted to do a cartoon on one of his occasional trips to Los Angeles, we were never able to coordinate the timing on that.

I booked Janet Waldo ("Judy" to you Jetsons fans) for a cartoon once, then got a call from her agent who told me she had a chance to do the first in a series of national commercials if I would let her out of the booking om that day. Of course I did. In fact, I replaced her with another veteran Hanna-Barbera voice actress — Julie Bennett, who was the voice of Cindy Bear, Yogi's main squeeze. Janet was on other shows I did but I never found another role for her on a Garfield project.

On one trip to New York, I recorded a couple of voice actors who lived and worked there, including Arnold Stang and Eddie Lawrence. I was going to do a cartoon with Jackson Beck the same day but he got called for one of those Little Caesars "Pizza Pizza" commercials he did so I lost him. I later recorded that script in Los Angeles with Bill Woodson doing the role Mr. Beck would have played. You know Bill best from the opening narration on the Klugman/Randall Odd Couple TV series.

There were probably a few others. I'll write about them here when they come to mind. And by the way: I could use more questions.

Here is my one Betty White story, repurposed from an item I posted here in 2018..

Some years ago, I was at a party full of Hollywood-type people and I was introduced to Betty White. Told that I was the producer of The Garfield Show, she instantly said to me, "Why haven't I been on The Garfield Show?" I smiled and said, "Because you're on everything else!" I don't think any TV actor at whatever age she was then has ever been in more demand than Betty White was at the time.

We wound up talking about other things and parting. Then a little later, she came up to me and said, "I hope you know I was only half-serious when I asked you, 'Why haven't I been on The Garfield Show.'" I said, "I assumed as much but just out of curiosity…what about the other half? You're on like twenty-seven TV shows these days. We pay scale to all our guest stars. If I did want to hire you, are you even available? And are you available for that money?"

She thought for a second and said, "No, I guess I'm not. The money wouldn't matter all that much but I just don't really have the time." Then she asked me, "Do you have any experience with feral cats?"

I told her about the small herd of them I feed in my backyard. She said, "Well, then maybe you're aware of this. Looking for food is hardwired into most feral cats. Their lives revolve around finding the next meal so even if you feed one and she stuffs herself, a minute later, she's thinking, 'Where is food? Where do I find food?' They can't help themselves. I'm afraid most actors are like that. Even when they have a job, they're thinking, 'Where is my next one?'"

"When we were doing The Golden Girls, there was a point where we were picked-up for two more seasons and I had all these other things I was doing. I was turning down offer after offer because I just didn't have the time open. And still, there were moments when a little voice in me was wondering, 'What are you going to do when this ends?' Actors…at times, we're all like feral cats!"

To put this in proper context, you have to remember how few times in her career, Betty White was in the position of not being committed to a TV appearance within the next week or two. It wasn't often. An obit like this one will list some of the shows on which she appeared with some regularity. There were probably dozens more. What an incredible career…and it was all based on producers knowing how good she'd be for their programs.

The last few weeks, it's been hard to turn on the TV without seeing Chris Christie plugging his new book. I kept hearing in my head that little earworm that was once placed there by a Hanna-Barbera cartoon: "He's here / He's there / He's everywhere / So beware!" And speaking of cartoons, I was afraid to turn on a rerun of my old Garfield & Friends show for fear he'd had himself edited into an episode.

But he was all over, doing his little act where he denounces Donald Trump, then says he might vote for him next time because Trump's definitely gonna run, then he walks that back and says Trump might not…then Christie says he hasn't decided about entering the race but argues against the notion that he won't. The guy's on all sides of every issue and, as Eric Boehlert notes, his book and comeback tour are flopping big-time.

How I hated typing that subject line. My friend — everybody's friend, actually — Will Ryan died a few hours ago. The cause was Cancer. His Wikipedia page says he was born in 1939 which would make him 82 but I don't know anyone who knew Will who believes he was anywhere near that old. He was so full of energy and talent and he sure didn't look 82. He was also one of the nicest people you could ever want to meet.

He was an actor, a historian, a voiceover specialist, a songwriter, a singer…in fact, he was a singing cowboy. There aren't many openings these days for singing cowboys but one day, Will decided he wanted to be one and danged if he didn't become one. He and his posse — the Cactus County Cowboys — could often be found at local theaters and nightclubs playing songs that sounded like they could have been from the days of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry but which were freshly written by Will.

Will hailed from Cleveland where he and a pal, Phil Baron, formed a comedy music act called Willio and Phillio. They played local venues and recorded some songs that Dr. Demento played on his radio show in the sixties. When Will relocated to Los Angeles, he began writing funny songs for the Disney company and performing on Disney records and eventually in films. He voiced the seahorse in The Little Mermaid and Willie the Giant in Mickey's Christmas Carol. He voice-matched a lot of classic Disney voices, especially for various Winnie the Pooh projects. And he was heard in a lot of non-Disney shows like G.I. Joe, Family Guy, Courage the Cowardly Dog, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, and so many others.

I had him on Garfield and Friends several times. Once, we had an episode about a very bad, evil ghost and a very timid, meek one. Will voiced the meek one and his performance was a perfect contrast to the bad, evil ghost who was voiced by James Earl Jones. He was also heard in hundreds of episodes of the radio drama, Adventures in Odyssey.

And he played ace straight man Sam Shooster in the Biffle & Shooster comedy shorts…

The producer/director/writer of those shorts, Michael Schlesinger, sent me this…

Everyone knows Will from his remarkable musicianship and his incredible voice work, but not enough is said about what a splendid comedy actor he was. The chemistry between him and Nick [Santa Maria, who played Biffle] was something to see. They reacted to each other in real time, almost as if they could read each other's thought process, and remained in character even when something went wrong. I soon learned not to yell "Cut!" at the end of a scene, because they often just kept going, ad-libbing on the spot. They could have played these characters full-time if they'd wanted.

There's so much more I could write about Will but since he touched so many lives — and always for the better — I'm sure others will say what I can't. They'll all talk about what a great, talented man he was; how he always seemed to be doing eleven things at once and all of them well.

So condolences to his splendid wife/partner Nancy. In fact, condolences to all of us who knew the amazing Will Ryan. We were so fortunate.

This is something that occurred in 2010, back when I used to occasionally commute to Indiana to work on Garfield cartoons.  It was reported here on 9/24/10.  Much has changed since then including the fact that I no longer have business in Indiana…and neither does B.D.'s Mongolian Barbecue, the chain where I stopped for lunch that day.  Their seventeen locations are now situated in Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Ohio and Michigan…but no longer in Indiana.

On the other appendage, when this happened, Costco had two locations in the Hoosier State and now they have eight.  Also, I no longer buy crates of Friskies Cat Food to feed feral pussycats — and an array of other species — in my backyard. But nothing else has changed…including, I assume, the way Southwest Airlines handles luggage. Here then is another of my…

A few weeks ago, I found myself driving from Indianapolis, Indiana to Muncie, Indiana in a car the Hertz people rented me. Did I say "car?" "Moving van" would be more like it. It was way more vehicle than I wanted or like to drive but it was the only thing they had available that had a GPS in it. I have unerring directional capabilities on my home turf but when I'm a stranger in a strange land, I can't find my way from the toilet in my hotel room to the sink. The Hertz folks put me in it for the price they'd quoted for a mid-sized sedan so I took it for the duration of my stay in Indiana. I figured that if I had some extra time, I could pay for the trip by moving some pianos.

En route to Muncie, I lunched at a B.D.'s Mongolian Barbecue — a favored chain they have back there but not out here — and while chowing down thought, "Gee, I oughta stop off somewhere and buy a new suitcase." Southwest Airlines had rendered my old one unrollable and it was fracturing up one side. I consulted the Yellow Pages app of my iPhone and found a nearby store that from its name seemed like it might have what I wanted. It didn't. Neither did another luggage shop. Both had plenty of bags but not the kind I had in mind.

As I got back into my oversized rental, its excessive bulk made me think of Costco and I realized I'd seen the perfect suitcase a few months earlier at a Costco in Los Angeles. I consulted the app again and it turned out there was a Costco less than two miles from where I was at that moment. This struck me then as unremarkable. After all, there must be Costcos all over Indiana, right? Not right. I later learned that there are only two in the entire state. I just happened to be near one of them…the one in Castleton, Indiana. Minutes later, I was pulling into its parking lot.

It looked just like the ones in Southern California which, in turn, all look like each other. I've been to five different Costcos around here. They vary a bit in whether they have certain add-ons like a tire store or a gas station but they pretty much all look the same on the outside. Within, they look pretty much the same as well, though some are mirror-imaged. As you face the rear of the warehouse, sometimes the groceries are on this side and the tools and appliance-type stuff is on that side.

Sometimes, it's the other way around. It's one of those left brain/right brain things. One of the nice aspects of Costcos, comforting in a way, is their conformity. First time I walked into the one in Burbank, I knew right where everything was. It was in the exact same place as in the Costco I've been known to frequent in Marina Del Rey.

At first glance, the Costco in Castleton was laid out just like both of them and like the one in Los Feliz and the one in Inglewood…but as I moved through it, I noticed subtle and then some not-so-subtle differences. Not everything was in its proper place. The computer software, which should have been over here, was over there. The display of batteries, where you can buy one package containing enough AAAs to power everything you will ever own that takes that size, was not where it was supposed to be, either.

I do not generally have any trace of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder but I seem to get it at Costco. I found myself wanting to grab employees and tell them, "No, no! The contour pillows go at the end of the aisle!" If everything or even most items had been in different spots, I could have coped easily…but you know how it is when just one venetian blind slat is twisted and you just have to correct it? It was like that for me at the Indiana Costco. 95% of its layout seemed correct but I couldn't stop wishing the 5% would conform.

Remembering the purpose of my visit, I took myself to the aisle where the luggage was supposed to be. It wasn't there, which I found doubly unsettling. Never mind that my needs were not being met…it was just plain wrong. There should have been luggage there, not just for me but for everyone.

I wandered the entire store to see where they'd recklessly put it and couldn't find suitcases anywhere. I was just thinking that maybe they didn't carry them when a friendly Costco employee, spotting bewilderment on my brow, asked if she could help me locate anything. We were near the spot where I could point and say, making clear I didn't think this was her fault, "Why aren't there suitcases in that aisle there? There are supposed to be suitcases there."

With a forced smile, she pointed halfway across the warehouse and said, "Luggage is right there, sir. Next to the down comforters." And indeed it was…maddeningly in the wrong place. Believe me, it was not comforting to find it near the comforters. I got back some of my bearings though when I happily discovered they did at least have exactly the suitcase I'd coveted in Los Angeles. Costco had not let me down and I have to tell you, it was a good, reassuring feeling.

Once I had my attention off the baggage crisis, I could browse the store with wider eyes. I free-sampled some new kind of potato chip that I enjoyed…and would later learn is not available, at least not yet, at the Inglewood Costco. I watched the guy preparing the hot rotisserie chickens for purchase and I was consoled to see it was the exact same guy who prepares them for purchase in any Southern California Costco.  Costco acquires everything in bulk, including that guy.

Only one other thing unnerved me. I kept spotting items I needed back home and would momentarily forget it was stupid to purchase them there. Like, I noticed the crates of Friskies I buy, two or three at a time in L.A. to feed my backyard kitty committee. For a half-second, I thought, "Hey, this would be a good time to…" before realizing I didn't really want to pack sixty pounds of canned cat food into my new suitcase and haul it back to California.

So it felt a bit odd to be checking out of a Costco with but one item. Everyone else had a cart that looked like the carts I usually push through checkout, loaded down with enough paper towels to blot up the entire B.P. oil slick. I didn't even have a cart…just one suitcase which rolled quite nicely, by the way. A friendly crew member saw me waiting behind a dozen such carts and suggested I avail myself of the self-service checkout counter. I've never seen one of those in any Costco out here but I steeled myself for something else different and did as he advised.

As I was swiping my credit card — and wondering as I always do why we use that confusing verb for that action — yet another cheery Costco crew member approached to inquire, "Did you find everything you wanted, sir?" I told him yes but added, "I'm from Los Angeles and out there, our Costcos are laid out a little differently." He smiled even more and said, "Well, we do things a little different here in Indiana." Indeed, they do…and I'm not saying any of it's wrong. In fact, in time I could even get used to the crates of yardsticks being next to the nine-packs of Kirkland-brand paprika. But it would take a lot of time.

Every so often the last week or so, I take a break from work, turn on PlutoTV and catch some episode of Garfield and Friends that I haven't seen in more than twenty years. I just watched one that had the above title card in the end credits. As usual — and as negotiated with his agent — Lorenzo Music got special billing and then we listed the other folks who did voices in this half-hour. The additional cast for this one was Thom Huge, Gregg Berger, Howie Morris, Arnold Stang and George Foreman.

Yes, that's the George Foreman who was a two-time world heavyweight champion and an Olympic gold medalist, and current grill entrepreneur.  And that's Arnold Stang, the great comic actor who was in dozens of movies and TV shows and who voiced many a cartoon superstar including Herman the Mouse (in the Herman & Katnip cartoons) and Top Cat. The two men were not in the same Garfield cartoon, nor were they in the same recording studio, nor were they recorded on the same day.

How did we get George Foreman to do the voice of a prize fighter who can't stop eating? We had the same attorney. He told me George wanted to do a voice in a cartoon.  I told him, "I think we can arrange something" and then we arranged something.  George is a very funny, sweet man and it's difficult to believe that his main profession once was beating the crap out of people.

He took direction well and proved to be a pretty good actor.  The rest of the cast was delighted to have him there and Lorenzo brought in a pair of professional boxing gloves and got George to sign them.

How did we get Arnold Stang to do what he said was his first cartoon job in many years? I called his agent and booked him but it wasn't that simple. Arnold lived on the East Coast — in Connecticut, I think. One season late in the run of Garfield and Friends, our producer Lee Mendelson was nice enough to indulge me and spend the extra loot it cost to have me record some New York voice actors for the show and one of them was Arnold.

I was in a recording studio in Manhattan with the guest stars who came in one at a time, each to be in a different cartoon. The rest of the cast was in our recording studio in Los Angeles and we were connected so well that you couldn't possibly tell from the finished cartoon that someone was 3,000 miles away. (Nifty Coincidence: The amazing Andy Morris, who ran the studio we used in L.A., picked out the studio he'd connect with in New York. When Arnold arrived, he said, "Hey, this is where I used to record Herman & Katnip!")

Arnold was our first guest voice of the day and being a seasoned pro, he arrived an hour early. I was delighted because that meant we had an hour to sit and talk, mostly about his participation in my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I was further delighted by stories of working on Top Cat and on Milton Berle's legendary TV series, and especially by the fact that Arnold Stang looked and sounded exactly like Arnold Stang.

The lovely and brilliant Howie Morris was in the L.A. cast and he and Arnold had a very nice reunion via the phone patch. Back when Howie lived and worked in New York — and sometimes since — he and Arnold were always seeing each other at auditions. Being two funny, tiny guys, they were constantly up for the same parts. Both were up to voice the title character in the 1963 Beetle Bailey cartoons and Howie got it. Both were up to play Hysterium in the national touring company of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Arnold got that one…and so on.

I wrote more about that day here. If you click over there, you can hear the answering machine message that Arnold recorded for me.

I have a lot of writing that needs to get done this week but every so often, I can't resist clicking on PlutoTV and seeing what memories it evokes. George and Arnold were two good ones.

You learn something new every day…and if you don't, I do. I found out today that all those Garfield and Friends cartoons I wrote are also on the Tubi streaming channel — and they have been for some time. Tubi is owned by Fox, Pluto is owned by Viacom and they have a lot of programming in common. Looks like I may be able to get two orders of McDonald's fries with my share of streaming revenues.

At the moment, Tubi seems to be running shows from the beginning of Season 7 and Pluto seems to be running the end of Season 7. I have no idea how many episodes each can access. Several folks who wrote in say that these streaming channels often run the same episodes over and over and over and over and over and over and don't have all episodes of a series they stream.

Ever since I learned there was a Garfield & Friends channel on PlutoTV, I've been watching occasionally. They're running shows I wrote in 1991 and 1992 and haven't seen since. One or two, I'm not sure I ever saw at all. So I sit here, occasionally amusing myself or more often thinking, "Why the hell did I write that?" Yesterday, I heard a minor character speak and I thought, "Who was that? We had such fine actors in the cast, I can't believe one of them gave that bad line reading or that I let it through."

And then I realized who it was. It was me. Yeah, I occasionally did a bit part…and when Garfield's creator Jim Davis was in town, so did he.

It's fun and educational to watch these now. I can't look back on old work without learning something. I learn it too late but at least I learn. I also have an emotional response that I'm not sure I can describe to hearing the voices of actors who worked on the show but are no longer with us. Lorenzo Music, Gary Owens and Howard Morris — three great actors and great friends — were in every episode. I'm also hearing Stan Freberg, June Foray, Rip Tay;or, Don Knotts, Paul Winchell and a few others we've lost.

I'm relatively new to Pluto TV and I still don't understand some things about it. Although they presumably have access to all 121 half-hours of Garfield and Friends, they only run a select chunk of shows at a time. I'm not keeping close track but it seems like yesterday, they were running thirteen or fourteen shows over and over, not always in the same order. Today, it seems like they're running a limited number of shows — probably the same number — but some were in yesterday's rotation and some weren't.

But I may be wrong about this. I'm not making a close study.

Each show is interrupted several times with a little "we'll be right back" message which is like a commercial break only it isn't a commercial…though Friday, I did see one actual commercial in there. For some reason, they don't put these little "time out"s between cartoons. They stick them in the middle of a cartoon or near the end. So a character says the next-to-last line of the cartoon and there's a funny end line coming but you have to wait a minute or so for that last line.

I don't understand why they do this. Perhaps I would if I understood the business model of PlutoTV. Is there any revenue stream apart from the occasional few bucks from the occasional commercials? I have a feeling that when I get my cut of what they're paying to run these shows day and night, it'll be about enough for an order of McDonald's french fries. A small order of McDonald's french fries.

If you get Pluto TV, you can now watch the Garfield & Friends channel — a channel that just runs a show that I wrote, 24/7.

If you don't get Pluto TV, you can watch it online at this link. These are copies of the show that were remastered a few years ago to be in high-def and wider in screen format. The opening and closing titles had to be re-created and we took the opportunity to fix some mistakes in the closing credits, especially in the voice credits.

There are no commercials on this channel — at least, not now — but every so often at random times, they interrupt the programming to show you a little animated graphic that tells you "We'll be right back." I have no idea why they do this or why they don't do it between cartoons instead of in the middle of them.

The nominations for this year's Emmy Awards in the category of "Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance" are as follows: Jessica Walters, Maya Rudolph, Stacey Abrams, Julie Andrews, Tituss Burgess, Stanley Tucci and Seth MacFarlane. With the exception of Mr. McFarlane, these are all actors known for their on-camera or on-stage work who do an occasional voice in a cartoon or something. When they do, they are at the center of two prejudices.

One — which I hear less often but I do hear it — is the presumption that they aren't very good and they were cast — to the exclusion of full-time voiceover performers — only because of their reputations. This is undoubtedly true in some cases. Hell, I've even had producers or casting directors admit as much to me and I can almost (almost!) defend it in certain cases, especially relating to feature films.

The sale of a movie to exhibitors — or of a TV series or special to a network — can often be easier with a S*T*A*R attached. Not everyone is cast in roles because they are the most talented or "rightest" for a role. Sometimes, they're cast for their reputation and the belief that they have some sort of following that will sell tickets or bring in viewers.  The movie Shrek might not have been made or been sold in advance to so many theaters with unknowns voicing the leads instead of Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy. A certain part of the movie business (emphasis on "business") does revolve around star names. That screenplay you wrote that no one even wants to read, let alone make, might be helped immeasurably if Tom Hanks was interested in starring in it.

Still, I love "real" voice actors — the kind who follow the lineage of Daws Butler, Mel Blanc, June Foray, Paul Frees, Don Messick and so many more…the kind who really know how to act with only their voices. No body language…no facial expressions…just their voices.

If I just start giving you the names of current "real" voice actors, I'll offend many friends by leaving them out so I'll just list the ones who've participated in the online Cartoon Voices panels I've done during The Pandemic. All of these videos can be found in this section of this website. Here's the list…

Bob Bergen, Julie Nathanson, Fred Tatasciore, Phil LaMarr, Secunda Wood, Jim Meskimen, Gregg Berger, Kaitlyn Robrock, Rob Paulsen, Debra Wilson, Alan Oppenheimer, Alicyn Packard, Jason Marsden, Elle Newlands, John Mariano, Debi Derryberry, Michael Bell, Neil Ross, Neil Kaplan, Nickie Bryar, Laraine Newman, Misty Lee, Dee Bradley Baker, Bill Farmer, Corey Burton, Kari Wahlgren, J.P. Karliak, Kimberly Brooks, Jon Bailey, Mara Junot, Maurice LaMarche, Anna Brisbin and Brock Powell. And in two weeks, the one I did with Candi Milo, Wally Wingert, Jenny Yokibori and Zeno Robinson will be online.

These are all folks who do a lot of voiceover work. Some of them also do on-camera…just as Mel Blanc, June Foray, Paul Winchell, Gary Owens, Stan Freberg and other inarguable voice actors occasionally did on-camera. But I think you can see the difference between them and when a cartoon special or Mr. Disney brought in Bing Crosby or Ed Wynn or Boris Karloff to do a voiceover for a cartoon.

As a director of cartoon voices, I've hired the "on-camera" variety — Don Knotts, Buddy Hackett, Jonathan Winters, Jesse White and even a few who weren't in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World like Jeffrey Tambor and Shelley Berman. The prejudice that such actors are only hired for their names is just plain wrong. Some of them are good at voiceover and some of them are not.

But the other prejudice is also wrong. That's the prejudice — and I've heard this one too from folks who admitted to it — that on-camera actors are somehow preferable because they're "real actors." That's absurd. Look at the names in the list above of folks who've been on my online panels. Any one of them is capable of doing things in front of a microphone that such "real actors" could never do.

We once had James Earl Jones on an episode of Garfield and Friends. I would never have thought of casting him but one day when we were recording in Studio A, he was recording promo-type announcements in Studio B. He wandered over and watched our troupe for a while and then asked me if I could use him someday for a character part. I immediately said, "Have you got a demo of your work I could listen to?"

No, I didn't say that. That stupid, I am not.  What I actually said was, "Sure if you're willing to work for what we pay." He was…and two weeks later, he came in and played — of course — a dastardly villain with a real deep voice. He was fine but throughout the whole session, he kept saying of the other actors in our cast, "I can't believe them, switching voices like that, making creature sounds." He was impressed with the sheer acting.

I don't know if we submitted him for Emmy consideration that year. If we had and he'd been nominated, that would have felt very, very wrong to me. I'm sure he was magnificent doing Othello or Driving Miss Daisy or The Great White Hope or almost anything else on the Broadway stage but not everyone can do everything.   Laurence Olivier was ten times the actor that Bruce Lee was but if you'd been casting the lead in a martial arts movie when both were around, which one would you have picked?

My point is that the great voice actors are great at voice acting.  Some who are not primarily voice actors can be fine in certain roles in certain situations as Mr. Jones was…but when I see a list of nominees like the one for this year's Emmy Awards, I think someone is disrespecting professional, full-or-most-time voice actors.  They're voting for celebrity, not talent.

They're not understanding what James Earl Jones understood about how the other actors in the session with him were exhibiting a range and expertise he did not have.  Even the late Lorenzo Music, who really only had the one voice, was using it to give life to a fully-fleshed characterization, created using only his voice, not his face or body.

I have not heard all of what earned this year's nominees their nominations.  Perhaps some of their performances were wonderful but it's hard to think some judges didn't stampede over the work of some actors with less familiar names to get to actors they'd heard of.  Come on, Academy.  Give voice acting awards to voice actors.

Here's a letter I received the other day from someone who obviously is among the billions on this planet who no have real idea who I am or what I do, nor do they care…

And I'm not saying he should; merely that he's clearly fibbing to pretend he does. I get one or two of these a week lately, leading me to suspect some autograph-collector site published my address and that it said something about me working in cartoons or comic books. That led him to the erroneous assumption that a little sketch by me might at least be worth what he spent on postage to send me five index cards and a stamped return envelope.

Usually, the signature-seekers take the time to at least Google your name and drop in one line to personalize their requests…like instead of saying "I very much respect the work you do," they'll amend the prepared text to say, "I love watching The Garfield Show." The person who sent this letter couldn't even be bothered to do that.

Another guy in comics who gets way more of these than I do told me once, "I used to sign and return a card if they only sent one of them. I figured maybe it is a true fan who will treasure it. But then I saw even those turning up on eBay so now I just toss the request in the trash. If I can peel off the stamp, I keep that and use it."

I don't feel good about tossing the requests and I don't keep the stamps. I just don't know what else to do. Past experience has told me that if I do sign the cards and send 'em back, the recipient will rush to the chat boards that cover this kind of thing and report that the address is valid and I do respond…and I'll get twenty more.

I've learned that and I've also learned one other very important thing: Don't leap to the conclusion, however tempting it may be, that just because someone asks you to write your name on something, that makes you important or famous of anything of the sort. In a way, I kinda like getting letters like this because they remind me of that.