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Chuck McCann

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Chuck McCann
Born (1934-09-02) September 2, 1934 (age 90)
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
OccupationActor
Years active1959–present

Chuck McCann (born September 2, 1934) is a film actor, television actor, stage actor, and a voice actor from Brooklyn, New York.

Early career

McCann was a comedy giant to a generation of children who grew up watching his children's shows in the New York metropolitan area during the 1960s, having worked his way up to regional star status by apprenticing on a number of other children's shows like Captain Kangaroo and Rootie Kazootie (the show on which he met his one-time puppeteer and sidekick, Paul Ashley). The best-selling "The First Family", an early '60s LP record album which lampooned the newly-elected President John F. Kennedy and his family, included McCann among its voices.

To around 1967, the tall, portly, moon-faced McCann hosted comedy/variety TV puppet shows in the New York area. McCann (with Ashley) did The Puppet Hotel for WNTA-TV, Channel 13; then Laurel & Hardy & Chuck, Let's Have Fun and The Chuck McCann Show for WPIX, Channel 11; and finally, The Chuck McCann Show, The Great Bombo's Magic Cartoon Circus Lunchtime Show and Chuck McCann's Laurel and Hardy Show for WNEW-TV, Channel 5. In addition, Chuck was the comedy sidekick on the WPIX long-running Clay Cole Show.

McCann's career was burgeoning by the time he left Channel 5, a victim of changing TV trends.[citation needed] By the end of the 1960s, he had appeared to critical acclaim in the 1968 film The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and performed regularly on CBS's The Garry Moore Show and Happy Days (not the later sitcom). He also began a successful cartoon voice career, doing everything from Bob Kane's Cool McCool to Sonny the Cuckoo Bird ("I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!") in commercials for General Mills. He had even been one of the stars of producer George Schlatter's ill-fated offshoot of Laugh-In, the one-episode Turn-On.

In the 1970s, McCann's life and career shifted west, and he relocated to Los Angeles. He made frequent appearances on network television in everything from Bonanza to Columbo to The Bob Newhart Show. He appeared in the 1973 made for TV movie The Girl Most Likely to.... He had a steadier job as a regular on Norman Lear's All That Glitters. In addition, he co-starred with Bob Denver in CBS's Saturday-morning sitcom Far Out Space Nuts, which he co-created. The 1970s also brought him fame in a long-running series of commercials for Right Guard anti-perspirant: he was the enthusiastic neighbor with the catch phrase "Hi guy!" who appeared on the other side of a shared medicine cabinet, opposite actor Bill Fiore. McCann also impersonated Oliver Hardy in commercials for various products (teaming with Jim MacGeorge as Stan Laurel), and for a few years he played the holiday-season recurring role of Kris Kringle on the NBC soap opera Santa Barbara.

McCann continued voice work for cartoons, playing Jollo, Bookworm, Bump-On-A-Log, and Woof in 1992's King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow and speaking as The Thing on the The Fantastic Four and Hulk animated cartoon series. He was also the voice of Leatherneck in the 2nd season of G.I. Joe. Throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium, he has been in commercials—at Christmas he has played Santa Claus for one product or another—and TV/movie gigs (Sabrina, the Teenage Witch). He also voices Navarro, and Buck in Random! Cartoons and Dumptruck,Gibber, and Sadie in Disney's Talespin.

Motion pictures

After The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, McCann's motion picture career took a turn back into comedy with many supporting roles and a co-starring turn (with Tim Conway) in They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way. His most notable post-Hunter films were The Projectionist, The Comeback Trail, and Herbie Rides Again, where he played Loostgarten, president of Loostgarten Wrecking Company. He had a supporting role in the 1988 horror film Cameron's Closet. He also had a brief appearance in Mel Brooks' 1993 comedy film Robin Hood: Men in Tights as a villager.

Return to roots

In 1980, McCann and Paul Ashley were to reunite for a pair of TV show pilots:

  • Tiny TV (a satirical/variety puppet series aimed at adults for the cable market)
  • LBS Children's Theater (a children film anthology show where McCann and The Paul Ashley Puppets were to introduce reruns of prime time animated TV specials and theatrical cartoons from Europe). However, Paul Ashley was forced to leave the projects when it was discovered that he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Tiny TV never reached fruition but LBS Children's Theater was picked up for national syndication in 1983. McCann emceed the series alone because Ashley never lived long enough to see the show, having died on September 3, 1984.

Also during the 1980s, Chuck reprised a number of his best sketches from his New York television days as interstitial material for a two-hour presentation of cartoons on KCOP-TV, Channel 13 in Los Angeles. (He was assisted by Bob Ridgely.)

And in 1989, Chuck returned to daily children's television one more time with Chuck McCann's Funstuff (produced by fellow New York kid show legend Sonny Fox). Chuck McCann's Funstuff was seen weekday mornings on KHJ (KCAL) from Monday, September 18, 1989 until Friday, October 13, 1989.

Notable associations

McCann is a close friend of Hugh Hefner and a regular at the Playboy Mansion.[1] During the 1980s, McCann appeared as an announcer in various Playboy videos, including Playboy Playmate Playoffs.[2]

In the 1990s, McCann co-founded and participated in Yarmy's Army, a group of comedians and character actors of his generation who gathered regularly to cheer up Don Adams' brother Dick Yarmy, who was dying of cancer. A group with a massive array of comic talent, its members included Harvey Korman, Shelley Berman, Tim Conway, and many others.

After Yarmy's death, the group stayed together to cheer themselves up since increasing age and health problems made it steadily more difficult for them to get steady work. In addition to having monthly dinners, they performed in various group-directed shows in select venues around the country.

New millennium

In the new millennium, McCann has appeared in They Call Him Sasquatch (2003) and Dorf da Bingo King (with his old pal, Tim Conway). He's supplied voices for The Powerpuff Girls and Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas. And he's moved into the field of video games, supplying his talents to True Crime: New York City.

He makes an important appearance in The Aristocrats (2005), with an animated rendition of a "clean" version of the "dirty" joke that serves as the movie's subject

In 2006 & 2007 Chuck made appearances on The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd as Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Floyd's father. He has also made multiple appearances as a judge on Boston Legal, including the two hour series finale in December 2008.

In 2007, Chuck voiced villain Dalton Kern on the radio drama Adventures in Odyssey.

References

  1. ^ Premiere Magazine "Everybody Comes to Hef's". URL accessed 27 July 2006.
  2. ^ McCann's imdb page, accessed October 9, 2007.


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