Chuck McCann

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McCann was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Valentine J. McCann (whose father had performed in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West) and the former Viola Hennessy. McCann started doing radio voiceovers at the age of six. By the time he was 12 years old, he founded a fan club for Laurel and Hardy and did impressions of Oliver Hardy.{{Cite news |last=Roberts |first=Sam |date=April 9, 2018 |title=Chuck McCann, Zany Comic in Early Children's TV, Dies at 83 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/obituaries/chuck-mccann-zany-comic-in-early-childrens-tv-dies-at-83.html |access-date=June 5, 2024 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}} He worked his way up to regional star status by apprenticing on a number of children's shows, such as Captain Kangaroo. McCann got his big break performing on The Sandy Becker Show on WABD after the original host vacationed to South America. The best-selling The First Family, an early 1960s LP record album which lampooned the newly elected United States President John F. Kennedy and his family, included McCann among its voices.{{cite web|url=http://classicshowbiz.blogspot.com/2015/06/an-interview-with-chuck-mccann-part-one.html|title=Classic Television Showbiz: An Interview with Chuck McCann|first=Kliph|last=Nesteroff|date=16 June 2015}}

Until 1975, McCann hosted comedy/variety TV puppet shows in the New York area with [http://paulashleypuppets.com Paul Ashley], featuring the [http://paulashleypuppets.com Paul Ashley Puppets]. Together, they 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 WPIX's long-running rock music showcase, The Clay Cole Show. During this time, McCann appeared at many New York area venues, including Palisades Amusement Park and Freedomland U.S.A., to meet and entertain children. At Freedomland, McCann hosted a yo-yo contest, filmed several Halloween specials, filmed a WPIX Freedomland special with other children's show hosts and appeared with Clay Cole at the park's Moon Bowl entertainment venue that featured celebrity singers and other performers. McCann's ties to Freedomland are featured in the book Freedomland U.S.A.: The Definitive History (Theme Park Press, 2019).

By the end of the 1960s, he had appeared in the 1968 film The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and performed regularly on CBS's The Garry Moore Show.

He began an animation acting career, doing everything from Bob Kane's Cool McCool to Sonny the Cuckoo Bird in commercials for General Mills. He had even been one of the stars of Turn-On, producer George Schlatter's offshoot of Laugh-In.

In the 1970s, McCann's life and career shifted west, and he relocated to Los Angeles. He made frequent guest appearances on network television shows including Little House on the Prairie, Bonanza, Columbo, The Rockford Files and The Bob Newhart Show. He appeared in the 1973 television film The Girl Most Likely to... and was 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 antiperspirant: 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.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N2c-AwAAQBAJ&q=chuck+mccann+right+guard+commercial&pg=PT119|title=One Great Insight Is Worth a Thousand Good Ideas|first=Phil|last=Dusenberry|author-link=Phil Dusenberry|publisher=Portfolio Trade|year=2006|isbn=978-1591841425}}

McCann appeared as Wally Stone in the Starsky & Hutch season 2 episode "Murder on Stage 17", in which he played an ex-comedian turned murderer. In this episode, McCann's talent as an actor was spotlighted, and he was able to portray various characters throughout the episode.

McCann 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. In 1965, he and John McCabe were two of the five founding members of the now worldwide society of The Sons of the Desert, an appreciation club for the works of Laurel and Hardy. He had a role in Kojak in 1974.

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 (1978).

His most notable post-Hunter films were The Projectionist (1971), Jennifer on My Mind (1971), Linda Lovelace for President (1975), Foul Play (1978), C.H.O.M.P.S. (1979), The Comeback Trail (1982), Hamburger: The Motion Picture (1986), Thrashin' (1986) and Herbie Rides Again (1974), where he played Loostgarten, president of Loostgarten Wrecking Company.

McCann had a supporting role in the 1988 horror film Cameron's Closet as well as minor roles in the Mel Brooks films Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995).

In 1980, McCann and Paul Ashley were reunited for a pair of TV show pilots: Tiny TV, a satirical/variety puppet series aimed at adults for the cable market, and LBS Children's Theater, a children's film anthology show where McCann and the Paul Ashley Puppets were to introduce reruns of primetime animated TV specials and theatrical cartoons from Europe. However, Paul Ashley was forced to leave the projects when he proved to be 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 did not live long enough to see the show, having died on September 3, 1984.

In the 1980s, McCann 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, assisted by Bob Ridgely. McCann also voiced characters for various projects by The Walt Disney Company, such as Dreamfinder in the theme park attraction Journey Into Imagination, and several characters including Duckworth, Burger Beagle and Bouncer Beagle in the 1987 animated series DuckTales.

In 1989, McCann 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-TV from Monday, September 18, 1989, until Friday, October 13, 1989.

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 increasingly 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.

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. One of his best-known voiceover roles was The Thing in the Fantastic Four and Hulk animated series, as well as the villain Blizzard in Iron Man.

He also played Heff Heffalump in Disney's The New Adventures of Winnie The Pooh. He was also the voice of Leatherneck on the second season of G.I. Joe. Throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium, he has been in commercials at Christmas time, he has played Santa Claus for one product or another—and TV/film gigs (Sabrina, the Teenage Witch).

File:Chuck McCann 2013 (crop 2).jpg

In the 2000s, McCann appeared in They Call Him Sasquatch (2003) and Dorf da Bingo King (with his old pal, Tim Conway). He supplied voices for The Powerpuff Girls and Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas.{{citation needed|date=April 2018}} He moved into the field of video games, providing voices for True Crime: New York City. He made an appearance in The Aristocrats (2005), with an animated rendition of a "clean" version of the "dirty" joke that serves as the film's subject.

In 2006–07 he 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, McCann played the villain Dalton Kern on the radio drama Adventures in Odyssey and also Navarro and Buck in Random! Cartoons.{{citation needed|date=April 2018}}

In 2013, McCann voiced Moseph "Moe" Mastro Giovanni on an episode of Adventure Time, Mayor Grafton on The Garfield Show, and reprised Duckworth, Bouncer Beagle and Burger Beagle in DuckTales Remastered. In 2016, he reprised the role of the Amoeba Boys in the 2016 reboot of The Powerpuff Girls. In 2017, McCann recorded a comedy podcast program, "Trump: The Last Family" with Kevin Sean Michaels, a modern send-up to the best-selling The First Family LP of the 1960s.{{citation needed|date=April 2018}}

McCann married Suzanne Conner in 1958 and had a son. They divorced in 1966 and he later married model Eileen Somerstrad and had 2 daughters. They divorced in 1977 and he married his agent Betty Fanning, whom he remained married to until his death.{{Cite web |last=Marzlock |first=Ron |date=November 4, 2021 |title=Chuck McCann always made the children laugh |url=https://www.qchron.com/qboro/i_have_often_walked/chuck-mccann-always-made-the-children-laugh/article_3dbdcad8-4919-5a87-b432-3a4ab1331ef1.html |access-date=July 5, 2024 |website=Queens Chronicle |language=en}} He was a close friend of Hugh Hefner and a regular at the Playboy Mansion.{{cite magazine|url=http://www.premiere.com/article.asp?section_id=6&article_id=906|title=Everybody Comes to Hef's|first=Jeremy|last=Arnold|magazine=Premiere|date=April 2002|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060508220426/http://www.premiere.com/article.asp?section_id=6&article_id=906|archive-date=May 8, 2006}}

McCann died on April 8, 2018, of congestive heart failure, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.{{cite magazine|url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/chuck-mccann-dead-comic-actor-kids-tv-host-was-83-1024097|title=Chuck McCann, Comic Actor and Popular Kids TV Host, Dies at 83|first=Chris|last=Koseluk|magazine=The Hollywood Reporter|date=April 8, 2018|issn=0018-3660}} He was cremated and his remains are in Forest Lawn Memorial Park.

He is survived by his third wife, Betty Fanning; and by two daughters from his second marriage. His son from his first marriage, Sean, died in 2009.{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/obituaries/chuck-mccann-zany-comic-in-early-childrens-tv-dies-at-83.html|title=Chuck McCann, Zany Comic in Early Children's TV, Dies at 83|first=Sam|last=Roberts|author-link=Sam Roberts (newspaper journalist)|newspaper=The New York Times|date=April 9, 2018}}{{cite web|url=http://pix11.com/2018/04/08/chuck-mccann-legendary-actor-and-wpix-personality-dead-at-83-friends|title=Chuck McCann, legendary comic and WPIX personality, dead at 83: friends|date=April 9, 2018|website=pix11.com|access-date=April 9, 2018}}

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{{Reflist}}

• {{Official website|http://www.chuckmccann.net}}
• {{IMDb name|0564841}}
• {{tcmdb name|id=126159%7C31969|name=Chuck McCann}}
• [http://paulashleypuppets.com Paul Ashley Puppets]
• November 2006 interview on [http://zigory.solidvox.com/?p=10/ The Zigory Show (SOLID VOX Network)]
• Trump: The Last Family on Friend Or Foe [https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/ubn-radio/friend-or-foe/e/49351596 (Stitcher)]
• [http://www.aveleyman.com/ActorCredit.aspx?ActorID=11452 Chuck McCann profile], Aveleyman.com

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Category:1934 births

Category:2018 deaths

Category:American male voice actors

Category:American male radio actors

Category:American male film actors

Category:American male stage actors

Category:American male television actors

Category:American male child actors

Category:Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale)

Category:Male actors from Brooklyn

Category:20th-century American male actors

Category:21st-century American male actors