Credit Castrated: The Voice of Walter Tetley

Walter Tetley was a prolific character actor in the media of film, radio and animation for many years. Like thousands of others I enjoyed his appearances in old movies, his cartoon voice work and his steady comedy roles on golden age radio. The thing was, I thought I was enjoying three different people. It took many years for me to figure out that the anonymous bellhop in countless Hollywood films was the same guy I was hearing on Stan Freberg comedy records.

Walter Tetley had the voice of a pre-pubescent schoolboy. Born with a rare hormonal disease that prevented him from fully experiencing the changes that puberty normally brings, Tetley's voice is best remembered today as the bespeckled cartoon nerd Sherman, boy companion to Mister Peabody on The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show. Many would surely be surprised to discover that the brainiac dog's boy companion in all ninety-one segments of Peabody's Improbable History  was actually a man in his late forties.

A few years back I heard the formulaic radio sitcom The Great Gildersleeve backed with the much funnier Phil Harris - Alice Faye Show  and was struck by the similarities in the "brat child" character that both shows contained. Initially I thought that Phil Harris' writers were simply ripping off the smart alleck child bit from the Gildersleeve folks, or that this child actor was mimicking the style he had heard on the other show. I turned out to be wrong - the hilarious Walter Tetley was playing the bratty sarcastic child in both instances. As the enfant-terrible Leroy to Gildersleeve and Julius to Harris, Tetley gave smarmy adult sensibilities to a school kid. I remember being struck by the incredible adeptness of the child actor at conveying adult like cynicism so precisely. I may have been less blown away about this whole thing had I known that this brilliant child actor was several decades older than I was. But I wasn't less blown away, because Tetley's performances (particularly on the Harris program) were so fucking hilarious. 

Tetley started out as a child actor but few could have predicted he would remain one for over fifty years. It's hard to find elaborate information about this unique talent as he was known to be quite private, very reluctant to speak about his condition, and was not known to have ever granted an interview. That being said, small time book label Bear Manor Media did put out a biography of Tetley three years ago that I, irresponsibly, have not read. 

Walter initially found a great deal of work on forgotten kids shows like The Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air. Around the age of sixteen Tetley started appearing on early incarnations of The Fred Allen Show when Fred's series was going under names like The Sal Hepatica Revue and Town Hall Tonight. At this point in his career it was hardly a stretch for Tetley to take on "boy roles" as he was still a minor. Throughout the late thirties and early forties Tetley became the most prolific child actor in radio and then, as he aged, one of the most prolific actors in radio. He found himself playing a plethora of like-minded characters on every major radio show of the time. Fibber McGee and Molly, The Jell-O Program starring Jack Benny, The Pepsodent Show with Bob Hope and The Burns & Allen Show featured the obnoxious Tetley constantly upstaging the comedy giants ... every time playing a child who was a complete and utter asshole. The times that Tetley did not indulge in the kid prick guise were when he was cast in dramatic roles, which was fairly often. It wasn't easy to find children who could capture the nuance that was often called for in the classic audio murder mysteries of the day, and so the adult Tetley with child like voice was naturally cast to take on these unconventional kid roles. He appeared on Radio Almanac with Orson Welles and in episodes of Suspense  with titles like "The Black Curtain" and "Death Went Along For a Ride" and joined the cast of white bread nonsense such as The Anderson Family. Although Tetley enjoyed meaty parts on radio, appearing as a regular on multiple shows for weeks at a time, when it came to working in pictures things were different.

Tetley's face always had something strange about it, but without knowledge of his condition, it was always impossible for the film viewer to diagnose what was going on. In countless Hollywood films of the thirties and forties, he'd poke his head through the doorway of a hotel room, dressed in a spiffy uniform with ill-fitting cap and announce, "Here's your baggage mister." And for that split moment the viewer would always be intrigued by this odd combination of young boy and old man with a grizzled mug, creating an aesthetic sensation similar to seeing Harry Earles portray a baby. Rarely did his screen time last longer than forty seconds. Tetley's oddball countenance and voice were considered detrimental and distracting and instead of tailoring a script to his unique look and sound, film studios had him ghettoized. Tetley's roles became memorable but it was no thanks to the studio. A Tetley cameo would create head scratching curiosity, making viewers wonder, "Hey what's up with that guy?" Since his parts were so slight and almost always uncredited, few fans of The Great Gildersleeve ever realized that they had just caught a glimpse of little Leroy. Sadly, when The Great Gildersleeve was turned into a series of cheap movies in order to cash in on the radio show's popularity, Tetley's star part had to be recast so that movie goers wouldn't be thrown off by the incongruous weirdness of kid Leroy's mature appearance. RKO put out four Gildersleeve films in total: The Great Gildersleeve (1942), Gildersleeve's Bad Day (1943), Gildersleeve on Broadway (1943), and Gildersleeve's Ghost (1944). With a combination of consolation and insult, Walter Tetley was cast in the third picture not as his trademark Leroy (that role would go to a total nobody named Freddie Mercer) but instead as the same kind of thing he played in almost every film ... a bellhop. IMDB lists Walter playing several nameless characters described merely as Bellhop, Page Boy, Country Club Page, Newsboy (four times), Delivery Boy, Mail Boy, Grocery Boy, Stock Boy, Barber Shop Boy, Messenger Boy, Telegram Boy, Messenger Boy with Telegram, Western Union Messenger, Cake Delivery Boy, Call Boy, and Florist's Assistant. He appeared without billing as an elevator operator in the 1942 Abbott & Costello film Who Done It? This role was arguably his funniest moment on the screen and, ironically, this best role takes place within a radio station. Unfortunately, like most Asian and African-American film actors of the era, Tetley was relegated to merely one insignifigant line per picture; type-cast because of his physiognomy.  

Despite being neglected by the film studios, Tetley had thousands of radio appearances under his belt and was as adept a voice actor as anyone working in the industry. Like so many who started out in radio, Tetley would make the natural leap to a different genre of film: animation. Listening to many of the old time radio shows is much like being in a recording booth at a cartoon studio. Alan Reed (Fred Flintstone), Bea Benaderet (Betty Rubble), Mel Blanc (Bugs Bunny), June Foray (Rocky the Flying Squirrel), Bill Thompson (Droopy), Paul Frees (Boris Badenov), Phil Harris (Baloo), Arnold Stang (Top Cat), Jackson Beck (Bluto) and countless other instantly recognizable voices appear in thousands upon thousands of classic radio shows of the thirties, forties, and fifties. It was inevitable that Walter Tetley would join this prestigious group sooner or later. It was nineteen forty-three when Walter was cast by his namesake Walter Lantz, to voice the sappy, sugar sweet star of the Universal cartoon outfit named Andy Panda (Tetley had previously appeared in the Lantz cartoon The Adventures of Tom Thumb Jr. and a WB short directed by Tex Avery titled The Haunted Mouse but it would be a couple years until he worked in cartoons with regularity). The Andy Panda character had been around for a few years, being voiced by a woman specializing in high-pitched cartoon voices named Bernice Hansen. She was eventually replaced by a lady named Sara Berner. Who knows what happened to Tetley's ego after receiving roles usually reserved for women. Looking at the circumstances of his career, it starts to become completely understandable why he was reluctant to grant interviews.

By the mid-fifties television had swiftly killed radio and both The Great Gildersleeve and The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show had left the air. Tetley started to lend his vocal talent to records, first appearing on Capitol Records recordings uncredited on several children's LPs and then, for the same label, some fine work with satirist extraordinaire Stan Freberg on tracks like Tom Sweet and His Electric Milky Way Machine. A few years later Freberg wrote Tetley into a Sunsweet Prune commercial, one of several for the company Freberg would develop, which provided the world with a glimpse of our hero having grown more prune-ish himself. During the mid-fifties Tetley did some voice work for the trend setting UPA studio and their cartoon Dusty of the Circus. The eccentric Bill Scott, soon to be head writer of The Bullwinkle Show, was a writer at UPA when he first met Tetley. Scott was quick to employ Tetley after joining the Jay Ward folks. Tetley was cast as the voice of Mister Peabody's pet boy, Sherman (after a female voice actor's take was decided unsuitable). Keith Scott's book The Moose That Roared (2000, St. Martin's Press) quoted the late (and unsung) comedy writer Chris Hayward who wrote most of the Peabody and Sherman segments, "I would write this stuff, and like all writers you hope that you get these tracks back that approximated what you'd written, and I'd always hear these great line readings by Walter - his voice was just marvelous for the Sherman character. It was such a sensational sound." A couple years earlier Tetley provided the voice for the endearing - and enduring - PSA character Reddy Killowatt.

In 1973, two years prior to his death, Tetley returned to radio for regular work on a new dramatic series titled The Hollywood Radio Theatre. The show took its cue from the old shows like Suspense, Inner Sanctum, and Lights Out dealing with murder, psychological torture and other morbid plots. Rod Serling acted as the show's host, horn-rimmed weirdos Ferrante and Teicher performed the theme music, while several faded b-movie players, character actors and former radio stars like Ray Danton, Richard Deacon, and John Astin made appearances. Tetley was on several episodes - but these would be his last turns behind the microphone. The pug-faced boy born Walter Campbell Tetzlaff was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident around this time and things got even worse shortly thereafter, succumbing to gastric carcinoma at the age of sixty in nineteen seventy-five.

 

Tetley wasn't the only child(esque) casualty in radio-to-film adaptations. The popular and nauseating radio comedy - The Aldrich Family - enjoyed a long popular run from 1939 to 1953 starring Ezra Stone as the Andy Hardy/Archie Andrews style of teenager. When Henry Aldrich was brought to the silver screen by Paramount, Stone lost his trademark role to another actor. The reason was simple. The voice of the character on the show gave the audio illusion of an all-American WASP, but in real life the studio audience at the live tapings were always shocked to discover that the voice of their beloved scrawny Christian teenager was a ... *gasp* ... fat, chain-smoking, Jew. Nineteen forties Hollywood being nineteen forties Hollywood would never allow this image of Henry Aldrich on the screen, and instead skinny gentile Jimmy Lydon got the part.

Comments

[Andrew]

There was a UK comic much like Walter Tetley -- a pint-sized actor (4'3") named Jimmy Clitheroe whose voice never broke and who played smartass little boys on the radio (THE CLITHEROE KID) for years.

[lee]

thanks! ''the rocky and bullwinkle book'' is large and has plot outlines for the ....get this... 335 episodes of r&b. 335 you say? yes. their plot lines had the cia, kgb, and aliens manipulating things thru the military industrial complex, and other bannable things. uhhhhh... yeah! most have never been broadcast twice, and are unavailable. 8((. a great book.
thanks again!

[Dale Hazelton]

Wow! I can't imagine how much time this post took to put together with all the information and links....amazing. Richard Crenna also had a youthful adnoidal thing down pat (obviously forced), most notably in the character of Walter in "Our Miss Brooks" (Eve Arden pre-"Mothers-in-Laws").

There is a great show for Hudson Valley folk on WVKR Sunday nights, and you can hear lots of great old radio comedies/dramas, complete with commercials for just how smooth Lucky Strike cigarettes can be and how cleanly "Blue Coal" will heat your house. I miss those days of the big old GERITOL sign behind hopefuls on the Amateur Hour, or Jack Benny pitching Pepsodent in the middle of his skits. But I suppose it actually never changed, American Idol could just as easily be called "The Coca-Cola Talent Hour".

[Nate Whilk]

Great post! One small problem - I got a 404 on that Peabody and Sherman cereal commercial.

Is this the TV prune commercial with Tetley?

[Art Shifrin]

This is very interesting and appreciated, but why must you disparagingly refer to Freddie Mercer as a "nobody"? I'd never heard of him until reading your entry. He evidently had potentially meaningful talent. For unknown reasons his career did not flourish. Could YOU sing with a major American City's symphonic orchestra? Could you be featured in a film opposite the likes of Roddy McDowell? If not, then by your apparent standards, what does that make you?

[Listener Kliph]

Art Shiffrin, I am definitely more of a nobody than Freddie Mercer. Compared to Tetley's experience and radio star power Mercer was, by historical standards, not even a blip on the radar.

[Ted Hering]

Walter never worked for Spike Jones, but the two DID appear weekly in 1943 on radio's "Bob Burns Show." Walter played a newspaper office go-fer named Dewey, and Spike Jones and his City Slickers was the house band.

By the way, an actor named Ray Hartley was Australia's answer to Walter Tetley. He played a charachter much like Leroy on the radio show, "Life with Dexter."

[Kip W]

Jim C., a commenter at YouTube says the actor in that scene is Ronald Long. (That's the prune ad I always remember. I'd like to see Tetley's.)

[kisten]

Thank you so much for this post. I love Walter's character (Julius Abruzio) in the "Phil Harris & Alice Faye" shows. I have always wanted to know more about this talented actor...thanks for shedding a little more light on one of my favorite actors!!

[credit]

thanks you so much,
same you, i love walter's character.

[Lynn Wagar]

Thank you for this wonderful story on Walter!! I love every thing he did!! He never got the credit or rewards he deserved
and his last few years of life and death were a lonely and tragic ending to a wonderful person. I can only hope that some
how he knows what a differance he made while he was on earth and
is still making every day!!

Many Many Thanks!!

Lynn

[Mark Neyrinck]

Thank you very much!
What a GREAT work to remember Walter. Like the others I cannot hope and pray enough that all the voices and talent behind the People and Emotions we have come to love, know how much we miss them.
I was lucky enough to let my love of the BBC radio pull me into Old Time Radio. Being from cent IL I have the pleasure of knowing many of the places Fibber and Molly mention regularly. On my wall is a framed disc of an actual Fibber and Molly broadcast. What would it be without Gildy? And what would have
become of Gildy without Leroy and the talent of Walter.
My kids (one of whom has served in Iraq twice) still get a kick out looking at dad and saying loudly... "ARE YOU KIDDIN?!"
My children will never know a time without the INTERNET.
My kids will also never know a time without Walter. He is still here and there...
Thanks again for the site and work.

[Johnny]

I didn't think it was necessary characterize Ezra Stone from "The Aldrich Family" radio show as "a fat, chain-smoking Jew" (b.f.d., people. Grow up. Do you REALLY expect any of us actually to "gasp"?). Anyone who has any knowledge of "The Aldrich Family" or who was alive in the 1940s knows very well that Ezra Stone was Jewish. I find it anti-Semitic even to make mention of it. Furthermore, if you don't care for the show, then that's YOUR opinion and you're entitled to it, but I don't agree with it. The show was always funny with Henry's idiotic screw-ups and Homer's "sweet geek" demeanor--Henry's best buddy! And Henry's parents Sam and Alice and his sister Mary were a picture of a close, loving family in spite of their blow-ups and arguments. What exactly, is nauseating about that? Nothing at all.

[Bill]

I think Tetley was Speedy Alka-seltzer. They play all these shows on Serius satalite radio..

[ferntail]

Awesome work! Never heard of him befor but I had to write a report on a actor and I randomly picked him. Your piece was a great help!

[Pret]

Your blog is really interesting! I have to say, I love walter's character.

Thanks!

[Rocketboy]

Dick Beals was the voice of Speedy.
B.T.W. I actually know someone with a similar disorder who is now taking hormone replacement therapy. Kind of odd, watching someone go through accelerated puberty.

[Ben Ohmart]

It's good to see Tetley remember. I wrote the book on him. There need to be more voice actor books out there!

[Information Security]

Seriously smart data, here. Thanks for posting it.