Today is the birthday of character comedian Arnold Stang (1918-2009). He started out when still a teenager in radio (with that voice, who’d have guessed?) In the 50s he was a regular named “Francis” on the Milton Berle Show. In the attached bit, he gets the better of Uncle Miltie in a Christmas episode. Stang’s entrance is at about 1:16. If you don’t recognize that face, you’ll know the voice right away when he speaks, from a million cartoons and commercial voice-overs.
To find out more about vaudeville past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
And don’t miss my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc
