Tuesday, October 12, 2010

This just in from Leonard Maltin (through Jerry Beck and Jim Korkis) about the photos of Francis Gifford that I posted a few days ago:

[The guy at left in front of the storyboard is an artist who later became an actor and changed his name to John Forkum to Dehner—one of my favorite radio & tv character actors of the '50s and '60s.]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You may not know John Dehner by name, but you may recognize him either by sight or by sound since he had a very dignified appearance and a deep, powerful voice. He was very busy in film, radio, and television from the 1950s through the 1970s, but his most enduring role was playing Doris Day's boss in the last two seasons of "The Doris Day Show" from 1971 to 1973.

On radio, he played many characters on "Gunsmoke" and voiced the character Paladin on "Have Gun, Will Travel" from 1958 to 1960 (which role Richard Boone played on television from 1957 to 1963).

Besides appearing in "The Reluctant Dragon" in 1941 as a story artist, Dehner's later work for Disney included narration of several animated television episodes, including "The Great Cat Family" (1956), "How to Relax" (1957), and "A Salute to Father" (1961). In the latter two programs, Dehner was essentially filling the same role as John Ployardt McLeish, who narrated many Goofy cartoons in the 1940s. In 1961, Dehner narrated "The Litterbug," starring Donald Duck, and provided the voice of the race announcer in "Aquamania," which was nominated for an Academy Award.

In live-action Disney productions, Dehner appeared in one episode of "Zorro" in 1958, as well as 1968's "The Mystery of Edward Sims," which was the final story about Gallegher the boy reporter on "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color."

Jeff Peterson
Escondido, California