Jerry Mann

[Fibber Fox]

Jerry is creditted with some season one voices on The Flintstones (damned uniform credits on the DVD). He can be heard doing quasi-Phil Silvers and Ed Wynn voices. Can anyone tell me anything about him? How long was he at Hanna-Barbera?

I'm presuming he was an ex-vaudevillean. I've been going through old radio listings and see he was the in-house comedian on Ted Hammerstein's Music Hall, which was on NBC in 1935 but had moved to CBS by 1937. And on a 1940 edition of Avalon Time with Don McNeill, the listings say:

Impersonator Jerry Mann will return for his second appearance on the program, to give his impressions of Bergen and McCarthy, Jerry Colonna, Geo. Jessel and Dick Todd.

I've heard him on an Alan Young Show from 1947. And there's a column revealing he played a corpse on a table in the Rowan and Martin bomb The Maltese Bippy.

F. Fox

[Daws Butler Jr.]

I've been able to find out less than what you already know... and I talked to people who should have known him. No one seems to remember him, although I probably asked them all 40 years too late. Even Joe Barbera didn't remember him, although there was a lot Joe didn't remember by that time.

I'm going to see Janet Waldo today. I'll ask her, although my guess is that he was already not at H-B anymore by the time she started. But John Stephenson and Henry Corden didn't remember him, either.

I don't know, but judging by those credits you found for him, he was probably pretty old by the time he did The Flintstones. Maybe he died after the first season.

[Fibber Fox]

I don't know, but judging by those credits you found for him, he was probably pretty old by the time he did The Flintstones. Maybe he died after the first season.

DBJ, The Maltese Bippy was shot in 1969, so he was still around then.

I found a couple of other notes from the network radio era. He was on one of the incarnations of The Chesterfield Supper Club, as he appeared on stage in Reno with that billing in 1947. And he appeared in a stage company of Oklahoma! (in Oakland) in 1948. I found a review from 1966 where he appeared on stage of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying with Rudy Vallee and Ricky Nelson.

This is a scan of a photocopy of a newspaper photo from 1945 promoting the Supper Club show with singer Monica Lewis.

F. Fox

[Daws Butler Jr.]

DBJ, The Maltese Bippy was shot in 1969, so he was still around then.

Yes, and Mark Evanier reminded me that he's in an episode of The Munsters, so that was long after the first season of The Flintstones. He was probably the flavor of the year in that first season and then was either on the road doing shows and thus unavailable, or fell out of favor with Joe B. for some reason.

He's only in 7 episodes, beginning with "Hot Lips Hannigan" (#9) and ending with "The Astr'Nuts" (#23).

And just for the record, Janet said the name sounded familiar, but she didn't know him.

[Fibber Fox]

Thanks DBJ. I was a little curious what other H-B cartoons he might have worked on about the same time (eg. elements of the Quick Draw show).

According to this site: http://www.mst3kinfo.com/rolodex/torg1987.html he died on December 6, 1987

F. Fox

[StillHowardFein]

Jerry Mann also appeared as a photographer in one 1963 Lantz cartoon, SHUTTER BUG. The running gag involved :woody: calling him "Droop" and being corrected: "It's SCOOP!" in an Ed Wynn-type voice.

It was unusual for anyone other than either Daws Butler or Dal McKinnon to be the male 'guest voice' in a post-1960 Woodpecker cartoon. But another 1963 short, SCIENCE FRICTION features veteran comedic actor Benny Rubin.

[Daws Butler Jr.]

Thanks DBJ. I was a little curious what other H-B cartoons he might have worked on about the same time (eg. elements of the Quick Draw show).

According to this site: http://www.mst3kinfo.com/rolodex/torg1987.html he died on December 6, 1987

F. Fox

I don't think he ever worked on any other H-B shows. The only guest voices I can recall on the Quick Draw show are Don Messick, Peter Leeds, Hal Smith, Red Coffey and Jean VanderPyl. Actually, there was another woman. She played Sally in one cartoon and keeps repeating, "Hay-elp. Hay-elp. Hay-elp." It might be Julie Bennett.

P.S. I just checked IMDB and, although they're not always accurate, they say Sagebrush Sal is Julie Bennett. It makes sense, since she also played Cindy Bear around the same time.

[Fibber Fox]

I just checked IMDB and, although they're not always accurate, they say Sagebrush Sal is Julie Bennett. It makes sense, since she also played Cindy Bear around the same time.

Yeah, it's pretty easy to pick out her voice as Sal in one of them. There are some other cartoons that have left me wondering who was doing some of the voices.

I'm still trying to figure out who is doing Blabber (and Aloysius) in 'Puss 'N' Booty', 'Switch Witch' (and the title character), 'Real Gone Ghosts' and 'Desperate Diamond' (and the narrator in both). Daws takes over Blabber in 'Big Diamond Caper.'

F. Fox

[StillHowardFein]

I don't think he ever worked on any other H-B shows. The only guest voices I can recall on the Quick Draw show are Don Messick, Peter Leeds, Hal Smith, Red Coffey and Jean VanderPyl.

Also Doug Young, who played Augie's 'Dear old Dad' in QD supporting segment. Young also did incidentals in various Quick Draw and Snooper & Blabber episodes. Wasn't Red Coffey a pseudnym for Jimmy Weldon, who played Yakky Doodle and his prototype in numerous earlier H-B TV cartoons- not to mention with :tomcat: :jerry: ? The Duck Who Would Become Yakky wasn't in any Quck Draw short (unlike the Snagglepuss prototype, who was in all three segments), but was in several Augie and at least one Snooper short.

I can't seem to place Peter Leeds' voice at all. The only other animation credit I've seen for him is in 1974's HONG KONG PHOOEY.

BTW, you may be one person who can answer this. In the 1965 Winsome Witch short Wolfcraft vs. Witchcraft, the wolf has a very unusual voice not sounding like any H-B regular. I can identify pretty much a voice in any H-B cartoon made before 1966 other than JONNY QUEST. There are occasional elements of ANT/SQUIRREL regular Howard Morris and Henry Corden in the wolf's voice, but then it tails off. Sometimes I wonder if it's Arnold Stang, but he apparently left H-B after the cancellation of TOP CAT three years earlier. Here's the cartoon on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV-x8oQGq80

[Fibber Fox]

Wasn't Red Coffey a pseudnym for Jimmy Weldon, who played Yakky Doodle and his prototype in numerous earlier H-B TV cartoons- not to mention with :tomcat: :jerry: ?

They sound like two different guys doing two different ducks to me.

I can't seem to place Peter Leeds' voice at all. The only other animation credit I've seen for him is in 1974's HONG KONG PHOOEY.

You can always get out your Stan Freberg records and hear him. DBJ was kind enough to identify him as the narrator of Quick Draw's Scat Scout Scat. It sounds like him in a couple of other cartoons I mentioned above.

BTW, you may be one person who can answer this. In the 1965 Winsome Witch short Wolfcraft vs. Witchcraft, the wolf has a very unusual voice not sounding like any H-B regular.

Isn't that Jerry Mann, too? It sounds like an incidental cop voice he did in one of the Flintstones.

F. Fox

[Daws Butler Jr.]

The wolf's voice in that Winnie Witch cartoon is another NY actor, Harvey Lembeck, better known as Rocco from the Bilko show and Eric Von Zipper from the beach movies. I've heard him in a few other H-B shows. My guess would be that his old pal from Bilko, Alan Melvin, helped get him hooked up.

I didn't mention Doug Young as a guest voice since he was a series regular as Doggie Daddy. By the way, it was Daws that got Doug the gig because Daws didn't want to wreck his throat doing the Jimmy Durante impression.

And Red Coffey and Jimmy Weldon are two different people. If you listen to the two ducks, they are different. I describe Coffey's duck as more wistful than Weldon's. We had a discussion about this in another thread and decided that Coffey wasn't available for a series because he was on the road alot. That's why they got Jimmy Weldon who had been doing his duck voice on an LA kids show.

[Fibber Fox]

The wolf's voice in that Winnie Witch cartoon is another NY actor, Harvey Lembeck

I'll be damned. Thanks DBJ. I never would have guessed.

Sorry to drag this away from the subject header, but you'll know this. Who did Blabber in those early cartoons before Daws did? I originally thought it might have been Don Messick but it doesn't sound like him.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=m9yqNJxEY6s

Jump past the unidentified narrator (Doug Young?) to about the :49 mark.

F. Fox

[StillHowardFein]

And Red Coffey and Jimmy Weldon are two different people. If you listen to the two ducks, they are different. I describe Coffey's duck as more wistful than Weldon's. We had a discussion about this in another thread and decided that Coffey wasn't available for a series because he was on the road alot. That's why they got Jimmy Weldon who had been doing his duck voice on an LA kids show.

Thanks for the clarification. Having real all the various posts on Internet animation discussion boards, I somehow came to the conclusion that Coffey and Weldon were the same person, and that 'Red Coffey' was a pseudoym- the way 'Chip Spam' is credited as the voice of Dino rather than Mel Blanc.

Compounding the confusion was a 1989-90 H-B thematic home video collection that featured a Loopy De Loop cartoon with the Yakky prototype. Those mostly holiday and season-related releases (a group of mostly 1958-66 shorts bracketed by two FLINTSTONE episodes) had gang credits at the end compiling all of the voices heard in the cartoons in that respective collection. 'Red Coffey' appeared in the voice credits of the tape that contained the aforementioned Loopy short. By process of elimination, I figured that was the voice of the duck. And since the Loopy short seemed of the same vintage as the Yakky TV shorts, the mental Coffey/Weldon symetry was formed.

It's kind of hard to distinguish a voice actor's characteristics through 'duckspeak', but I'll have to give a closer listen to the :tomcat: :jerry: duck as opposed to Yakky. In any event, both of their voices are higher, and somewhat clearer than that of Clarence Nash's rendition of :donald: .

[Daws Butler Jr.]

It's kind of hard to distinguish a voice actor's characteristics through 'duckspeak', but I'll have to give a closer listen to the :tomcat: :jerry: duck as opposed to Yakky. In any event, both of their voices are higher, and somewhat clearer than that of Clarence Nash's rendition of :donald: .

They're different kinds of "voices". Donald Duck doesn't actually use Nash's vocal chords. It's all done with air. The other two ducks are a different gimmick, that if I recall correctly, has something to do with putting your tongue in your cheek... literally. Jimmy Weldon explained in on the Stu's Show that I co-hosted, but I'd have to go back and listen to it again to remember exactly.