Radio and Cartoon Voice Actors

Two recent events have demonstrated the convergence of two entertainment media. 1) I watched one Flintstones video on Facebook and now I'm inundated with them. 2) I've been listening to old radio shows on Spotify. Thanks to both of these events, I noticed that many radio actors from the 1940s and 50s later did cartoon voice-overs in the 1960s. Their abilities to create multiple, distinct characters with their voices led them from one defunct medium to a new thriving one. Alan Reed who played the rough, plebian Fred Flintstone, also enacted the patrician poet Falstaff on Fred Allen's Allen's Alley segment of his various radio broadcasts.

Prolific radio actor Gerald Mohr
voiced Reed Richards on
Hanna-Barbera's Fantastic Four...

Gerald Mohr had a distinctive, masculine voice which led to many radio roles as detectives and tough guys. He played Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe on a continuing series and was named Radio Actor of the Year in 1949. I often listened to his adventures while driving to work at 6 in the morning to teach school. I first thrilled to his manly voice when he played Reed Richards aka Mr. Fantastic on Hanna-Barbera's adaptation of The Fantastic Four on ABC (1967-68) and Hal Jordan alias the Green Lantern on CBS's Aquaman on CBS the same season. Mohr voiced the Green Gladiator in three solo adventures and three outings with the Justice League of America. His segments were incorporated in the Superman/Batman/Aquaman Adventure Hour and lived on in syndication. The actor died of a heart attack the following year at age 58. He had also appeared on dozens

...and Mohr also played Green Lantern (far right)
on CBS' Aquaman Show

of live-action TV shows including both I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show as well as Lost in Space (I have to find that episode.) He had a small role in Funny Girl opposite Barbara Streisand and starred in the infamous Grade-Z sci-fi epic Angry Red Planet.

Frank Nelson was another radio vet who made the transition to TV toons. He became famous on the Jack Benny radio series as the omnipresent annoying waiter, doctor or salesman who would greet Jack with an exaggerated "Yeeeeeeeeeees!" Nelson later appeared on several episodes of The Flintstones

Frank Nelson on The Flintstones

similarly bedevelling Fred as a clerk selling bowling balls, pianos, or credit for jewelry. He later showed up on the 1980s iteration of The Jetsons as a smart-aleck robot. (Both Jetsons series are on available on Max. I will have to catch those episodes.)

Howard McNear was best known as the dithery, chatty barber Floyd on The Andy Griffith Show, but to an earlier generation he was the town doctor on the radio version of Gunsmoke as well as appearing on various other shows including Jack Benny's where he played a multitude of slow-moving government officials. On The Flintstones, he was an incompetent doctor who made Barney invisible.

Of course Bea Benaderet was famous as Betty Rubble, the Flintstones' second female lead. She also did numerous Warner Brother's animated shorts opposite her future Flintstones' spouse Mel Blanc (Barney Rubble). The only short I could find where she played the lead was the screamingly funny Wild Wife (1954) in which an oppressed homemaker recounts her stressful day to her hubby who accuses women of having all the time in the world and accomplishing little. After detailing endless humiliations and inconveniences, she

A scene from Wild Wife (1954)

clobbers him with a rolling pin. I only recently saw this short on MeTV's Toon in With Me, as it never showed up in previous syndication packages.

Bea later starred opposite Lucille Ball on her radio show My Favorite Husband and would have reunited with the redhead as Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy but she was already contracted for The Burns and Allen TV Show. So the role went to Vivian Vance. Bea was a regular as Aunt Pearl on the first seasons of the Beverly Hillbillies and starred on Petticoat Junction. (She passed away while the series was still filming and her role as maternal figure to three gorgeous young women was filled by June Lockhart. Bea's character's absence was never fully explained. She was "out of town" for good.) On The Flintstones, Benaderet showed her versatility by playing many other roles in addition to Betty such as nosy neighbors, tough-talking waitresses or secretaries, and harried nurses.