After one doozy of a week, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog were wondering what the next blog post would cover. Thankfully, the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum and favorite authors Kliph Nesteroff, Ben Ohmart and Keith Scott have provided said topics for us! Turns out tomorrow is the natal anniversary of comic character actor and all-time great cartoon and radio voice artist Walter Tetley.
Mr. Tetley is best known today as the voice of Mr. Peabody's intrepid boy assistant Sherman.
He's also the voice of Felix The Cat in the Van Beuren Studio's Disney-fied revival in the Rainbow Parade series, the Walter Lantz Studio's Andy Panda, UPA's Dusty of The Circus for The Gerald McBoing-Boing Show and PG&E's energetic singing spokes-electron, the ELECTRIC Reddy Kilowatt, who should have played a solid body electric guitar featuring a bolt-on neck.
It would be a grotesque understatement to state that Walter Tetley was one of the hardest working radio actors not named Mel Blanc. He was a scream appearing with Jack Benny, Bob Hope and Burns & Allen, on satirist Fred Allen's Town Hall Tonight, as a key driver of the comedy in The Great Gildersleeve and as the not-so-secret weapon, a cleanup hitting laugh-getter, on The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show.
In addition, he has brief but very funny cameos in a gazillion movies, such as this one in the Abbott & Costello vehicle Who Done It.
The aforementioned and formidable Kliph Nesteroff penned, as one of his many excellent articles for WFMU's Beware Of The Blog, Credit Castrated: The Voice of Walter Tetley, a very good overview focusing on Mr. Tetley's numerous hilarious turns as radio's "mean widdle kid" and both varied and prolific work on records. (NOTE: posters on OTRCAT and YouTube have done us comedy and OTR fans a massive favor by compiling devastatingly funny turns in the Walter Tetley Radio Collection, including his memorable appearances on The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show)
Expert on old time radio and mid-20th century pop culture Ben Ohmart, with OTR archivist Charles Stumpf, penned an outstanding book, Walter Tetley: For Corn's Sake on the voice artist's life and times.
The description of Walter Tetley: For Corn's Sake elaborates:
WALTER TETLEY (1915-1975) was the quintessential kid voice of radio. His distinguished voice career began in the early 1930s and lasted until radio s final years in the 1950s. He was also a very private person who never gave interviews, instead choosing to immerse himself in charity and voice work throughout most of his life. For the FIRST time in print finally a complete biography on one of radio s most beloved character actors. Including many RARE PHOTOS and THOUSANDS OF CREDITS, most of which have never been seen or discussed in any article or book. That is because this biography has been written with the aid of Walter s personal scrapbooks! From The Great Gildersleeve to Rocky and Bullwinkle's Peabody and Sherman and beyond. Includes a detailed account of Walter's 1930's public appearances.
It's tough to know where to start or where to end with Walter Tetley's career, given how, in addition to countless radio show roles, his cameos in movies and voice-overs on records are numerous. Among said credits, Walter was a favorite of Stan Freberg's. He's a hoot as the hipster in Yankee Doodle Go Home, from Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America volume 1: The Early Years (1961).
Wikipedia adds: In 1973 Tetley made an appearance on Rod Serling's radio series The Zero Hour. He could be heard in the "Princess Stakes Murder" episodes beginning the week of November 19.
So, a day before his birthday, Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog respectfully tips the battered showbiz top hat to the great Walter Tetley. Along with Mel Blanc, Danny Webb, Kent Rogers, June Foray, Bea Benaderet, Sara Berner, Don Messick, Daws Butler and Bill Scott, to name just a few, he is paramount among the ace voice-over artists we LOVE in classic cartoons!
The unparalleled queen of the animated screen - made of pen and ink, she will win you with a wink, ain't she cute, boop-oop-a-doop, sweet Betty - will be back on the big screen tomorrow afternoon, in new restorations of classic cartoons.
Sunday June 2nd at 3:00p.m. PST, our pals at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum present a classic Fleischer cartoon matinee, Betty Boop For President. Purchase tickets here.
Everybody's favorite flapper not named Clara Bow or Colleen Moore shall rock the Edison Theater in a selection of classic Max Fleischer Studio cartoons. Max' granddaughter Jane Fleischer hosts.
The program includes short presentations about the development of the design of Betty Boop and the inventiveness and creativity of Fleischer Studios by Ray Pointer, animation professional and author of The Art and Inventions of Max Fleischer: American Animation Pioneer, a superlative tome covering the filmmaking career, art and technological innovations of Max.
The cartoon lineup is as follows:
Betty Boop’s Rise to Fame (1934) Music and dance (rotoscoped) performances by the Royal Samoans and Cab Calloway. With Max Fleischer in his only speaking role in a cartoon.
Dizzy Dishes (1930) Betty Boop's debut.
Betty Boop And Grampy (1935) 3-D stereoptical process.
Minnie The Moocher (1932) Song and dance (rotoscoped) performed by Cab Calloway.
Betty In Blunderland (1934)
Betty Boop’s Little Pal (1934)
A Language All My Own (1935) Betty rocks Japan! 3-D stereoptical process.
Betty Boop’s Penthouse (1933)
Poor Cinderella (1934) Max Fleischer Color Classic in two-color Cinecolor, with 3-D stereoptical process and rotoscoped dancing.
Betty Boop, M.D. (1932)
Popular Melodies (1933) Sing-alongs, including the Betty Boop theme song.
Betty Boop’s Bamboo Isle (1932) Music and dance (rotoscoped) by the Royal Samoans
Betty Boop for President (1932)
2 comments:
Paul, thanks for all this on Walter Tetley. I put together a post on him a few years ago, trying to reconcile his age with various newspaper stories from the 1920s and early '30s.
I discovered only yesterday he made an audition radio show with the idea it would be pitched to Lever Bros. for airing on NBC in the summer of 1948, replacing Bob Hope. It didn't sell.
A nice twist in my research was finding Walter was a Freemason and belonged to a charity group open to Masons called the Grotto (I'll skip the longer name). It helps kids with cerebral palsy and provides dental care; I belonged to the one locally (which closed a number of years ago). I was happy to learn Walter wanted to help children, even as he was dealing with cancer.
I heard him the other day on the Harris/Faye debut for Rexall. His evil laugh is terrific. He was good on the Fred Allen Show, too, ranging from snooty kids to brats.
My pleasure! Walter's efforts for good causes is (like his contributions to Stan Freberg's comedy on radio and records) a sub-topic I hadn't even thought about before writing this post.
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