An intentionally campy film designed to capitalize on Linda Lovelace's sudden fame following 1972's DEEP THROAT, LINDA LOVELACE FOR PRESIDENT centers around Linda's fictional grass roots campaign to run for president. Touring the country with a rag-tag team of strange and wacky people, hilarity supposedly ensues at every stop. Appearing under the pseudonym Alfredo Fetchuttini, Chuck McCann plays a racist and lecherous weirdo called "The Assassinator." Claudio Guzmán and Arthur Marks co-directed the 1975 film, which had music by a group called Big Mac & The Truckers.
From an adult film to a children's show all in one year. Beginning in September 1975, McCann appeared in a Sid and Marty Krofft Saturday morning show for CBS. "Far Out Space Nuts" starred Bob Denver as "Junior," a grey-haired (Denver was 40 years old at the time) and seemingly dim-witted but uniquely clever NASA maintenance worker, and Chuck McCann as "Barney," his plump and grumpy co-worker. Patty Maloney played "Honk," their furry little alien friend who made honking sounds out of the horn on the top of her head instead of speaking. The series only lasted one season (12 or 15 episodes, depending upon which source you consult). And it appears as if it and its competition, NBC's "Return To the Planet of the Apes" animated series, knocked each other out, as "Apes" lasted only 13 episodes as well.
In 1976, McCann played a studio gate guard in Mel Brooks' comedy about the old-time movie business SILENT MOVIE. John Morris' score was released on a United Artists LP, but has not been re-issued on CD.
In 1978's FOUL PLAY, McCann played a theatre manager. Colin Higgins directed the comedy. Charles Fox's score was released on an Arista LP and re-issued on CD by Intrada in 2009 and Varese Sarabande in 2016.
In the made-for-television biopic MAE WEST, Ann Jillian starred as the sultry 1930s actress, and Chuck McCann appeared as W.C. Fields. Lee Philips directed the film, which aired on ABC on 2 May 1982. Brad Fiedel provided the unreleased score.
McCann's third film with Mel Brooks was DRACULA: DEAD AND LOVING IT, in which he played an innkeeper. Hummie Mann's score for the 1995 film received only a promotional release.
Chuck McCann became a household name in New York when he took over a variety show, entertaining a generation of children with light-hearted humor and puppets.
Tim Conway and Chuck McCann
He expanded his work into animation acting and created the voice of Sonny the Cuckoo Bird, who cried "I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!" in commercials for General Mills.
McCann was a prolific voice actor, lending his voice to characters such as Mayor Grafton on "The Garfield Show," Ducksworth in "DuckTales: Remastered," and Heff Heffalump in Disney's "The New Adventures of Winnie The Pooh."
In 1971, McCann began a series of popular commercials for Right Guard deodorant and antiperspirant.
OK. I have been thinking of TV hosts like McCann & Becker all day. I know Becker was on WNEW. There was also another guy I'm pretty sure was on Channel 5 too. I think his name was Fred. Kids would send him two or three drawn lines and his challenge was to draw whatever they asked out of those lines. He was really good. It's not Fred Scott who I remember, it must be another Fred? Does he ring a bell, Ray? It's driving me CRAZY...
PS a few minutes later
Fred Hall! Holy cow. And Herb Sheldon on WOR!! Should've gone to the 'net earlier in the day. Kept saying Sheldon...Sheldon...Sheldon. Must've been 5 years old. Unreal.
I didn't know Fred Hall or Herb Sheldon. Just Fred Scott. And Johnny Seven (with his pal Milton and his portable movie projector). My pal Milt Moss, who recently passed away, played the WPIX Zoo keeper, showing Magilla Gorilla, Touche Turtle, and Lippy the Lion cartoons. Milt was also the star of the Alka Selzer commercial "I can't believe I ate the whole thing".
But Chuck and Sandy were kings. With Soupy close behind for double-edged humor!
Chuck McCann, Zany Comic in Early Children’s TV, Dies at 83 By SAM ROBERTS
Chuck McCann, a comic whose loopiness defined live children’s television beginning in the 1950s and who later became a familiar TV and film character actor and a versatile voice on cartoons, died on Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 83.
The cause was congestive heart failure, his daughter Siobhan Bennett said.
The Brooklyn-born son of the music arranger at New York’s famous Roxy Theater, Mr. McCann was precocious, irrepressible and persistent.
“You’ve got to be able to pick yourself up, brush yourself off and do it all over again,” he said in a 2007 interview with the American Comedy Archives. “Persistence alone is omnipotent; you have to keep hanging in there.”
He began by doing voice-overs on radio when he was 6 and struck up an enduring cross-country friendship by telephone with Stan Laurel when he was 12 — leading to roles impersonating Laurel’s huskier other half, Oliver Hardy. (He was a founder of the Laurel and Hardy fan club Sons of the Desert.)
He got his big break in his early 20s while performing on “The Sandy Becker Show,” a children’s TV show on what was then WABD in New York. Without advance notice, Mr. Becker left on a Friday for two weeks in South America and asked Mr. McCann to host his show beginning on Monday.
“ ‘So long!’ ” Mr. McCann recalled Mr. Becker saying. “The elevator doors close, and off he went. That was my baptism by fire. The first day was just disastrous.”
Mr. McCann survived to become the host of his own children’s programs and to voice cartoon characters in “DuckTales,” “Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers,” “Garfield and Friends,” “The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh,” “The Powerpuff Girls” and commercials for Cocoa Puffs cereal (as the cuckoo bird, crying, “I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!”). He also appeared as a character actor on “Bonanza,” “Columbo,” “Little House on the Prairie” and other television series.
Along with Soupy Sales, Buffalo Bob Smith, Bob Keeshan (better known as Captain Kangaroo), Fran Allison and his mentor, the puppeteer Paul Ashley, Mr. McCann helped shape zany, impromptu preteen local programming in television’s formative years.
In his book “Politics and the American Television Comedy: A Critical Survey from ‘I Love Lucy’ Through ‘South Park’ ” (2008), Doyle Greene compared “The Chuck McCann Show” on WNEW in the mid-1960s to a blend of “Howdy Doody” and the spontaneous, experimental comedy of Ernie Kovacs.
To Mr. Greene, the McCann show represented a “deconstruction of TV taken to Dada levels (whether driving around the studio smashing into props on a scooter while lip-syncing a song, or doing a lengthy impersonation of Jack Benny playing screeching violin worthy of Stockhausen).”
Charles John Thomas McCann was born on Sept. 2, 1934, in Brooklyn to Valentine J. McCann (whose father had performed in “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” show) and the former Viola Hennessy.
After the family moved to Queens, he attended Andrew Jackson High School, where he once convulsed his classmates by performing a King Kong satire standing on a chair and inviting them to toss paper airplanes at him.
Besides getting his high school diploma, he was also educated at the Roxy, the majestic midtown Manhattan movie palace and venue for vaudeville-style stage shows, where his father played trombone in the orchestra.
“He was not only a great musician, but he was a great arranger,” Mr. McCann said of his father, “and that’s where I think the show business bug bit me, sitting in the pit of the Roxy watching those comedians.”
His mother’s relatives wanted him to follow in the family tradition and become a firefighter, but an introduction to Paul Ashley, the puppeteer, led to a stint on the “Rootie Kazootie” television puppet show.
Mr. McCann later hosted Laurel and Hardy fill-ins during rain delays on Yankees broadcasts as well as another children’s show, “Let’s Have Fun,” on WPIX in New York.
During the 114-day New York City newspaper strike in 1962-63, he kept his young television viewers up to speed on the comic strips by playing the characters on camera, echoing a role Mayor Fiorello La Guardia played on radio during a newspaper strike in the 1940s.
“Mayor La Guardia did it many, many years before,” Mr. McCann said, “and I was the first one to do it on television.”
He also helped launch Mr. Becker’s Sunday morning show “Wonderama” on WNEW. Mr. McCann’s local TV finale in New York was “Chuck McCann’s Laurel & Hardy TV Show,” in 1966, which featured Hanna-Barbera cartoons of the titular comic duo and Mr. McCann’s Oliver Hardy impersonations.
In his movie debut, Mr. McCann played opposite Alan Arkin to critical acclaim as a mentally defective deaf mute in the 1968 adaptation of Carson McCuller’s novel “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.”
He went on to play the lead role in “The Projectionist” (1971), as the lonely title character in a movie theater’s projection booth. The film gave him a vehicle with which to demonstrate his dexterity imitating movie stars. Rodney Dangerfield, in his movie debut, played his boss.
In addition to his daughter Siobhan, Mr. McCann is survived by another daughter, Jennifer Strasser, from an earlier marriage, which ended in divorce; his wife, the former Betty Fanning, who was an executive with the William Morris agency; three grandchildren; and a sister, Moe Sanders. A son, Sean, from a still earlier marriage, died in 2009.
Mr. McCann had two mantras: to have as much fun as possible and to keep working to survive, whether he was appearing at the Friends of Old Time Radio Convention in Newark or as the exasperating neighbor bellowing “Hi, guy!” through a shared medicine chest in an early 1970s commercial for Right Guard deodorant.
In 1969, after he moved to California, he appeared in the cast of “Turn On,” George Schlatter’s aborted attempt to match his success in producing “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.” “Turn On” lasted one episode.
“I did everything,” Mr. McCann told TVParty.com in a 2007 interview. “I never closed doors. If you look at my career — if I had one — I never think of it as a career, I just look at it as things I love to do. I have just as much fun doing a 30-second commercial as I do making a movie.”
I didn't know Fred Hall or Herb Sheldon. Just Fred Scott. And Johnny Seven (with his pal Milton and his portable movie projector). My pal Milt Moss, who recently passed away, played the WPIX Zoo keeper, showing Magilla Gorilla, Touche Turtle, and Lippy the Lion cartoons. Milt was also the star of the Alka Selzer commercial "I can't believe I ate the whole thing".
Herb Sheldon is the first one out of all of 'em that I remember. Which is ridiculous since I may have been 4 at first glance. My memory may be shaky on this one but I remember something in the further reaches about a cuckoo clock or maybe even a bird puppet. Can't say for sure.
Great Alka Seltzer commercial. Spicy meatball one too. Unforgettable. Like Chuck and the medicine cabinet.
But Chuck and Sandy were kings. With Soupy close behind for double-edged humor!
Chuck McCann, Zany Comic in Early Children’s TV, Dies at 83 By SAM ROBERTS
Chuck McCann, a comic whose loopiness defined live children’s television beginning in the 1950s and who later became a familiar TV and film character actor and a versatile voice on cartoons, died on Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 83.
The cause was congestive heart failure, his daughter Siobhan Bennett said.
The Brooklyn-born son of the music arranger at New York’s famous Roxy Theater, Mr. McCann was precocious, irrepressible and persistent.
“You’ve got to be able to pick yourself up, brush yourself off and do it all over again,” he said in a 2007 interview with the American Comedy Archives. “Persistence alone is omnipotent; you have to keep hanging in there.”
He began by doing voice-overs on radio when he was 6 and struck up an enduring cross-country friendship by telephone with Stan Laurel when he was 12 — leading to roles impersonating Laurel’s huskier other half, Oliver Hardy. (He was a founder of the Laurel and Hardy fan club Sons of the Desert.)
He got his big break in his early 20s while performing on “The Sandy Becker Show,” a children’s TV show on what was then WABD in New York. Without advance notice, Mr. Becker left on a Friday for two weeks in South America and asked Mr. McCann to host his show beginning on Monday.
“ ‘So long!’ ” Mr. McCann recalled Mr. Becker saying. “The elevator doors close, and off he went. That was my baptism by fire. The first day was just disastrous.” To Mr. Greene, the Mc =click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
i "knew' Sandy Becker (well, he lived nearby and all the kids would go to his house!) I think I still have my autograph picture!!!! bruce
I also remember someone before Jack McCarthy doing the Popeye show. He had a pretty thick Captain's beard a la Sebastian Cabot.
And then there was Claude Kirschner on WOR. Ah yes, his Cocoa Marsh vs. Officer Joe's Bosco. Good stuff. Not to mention Yogi's Yoo-Hoo.
That was Captain Allan Swift.
As for Claude, I'll never forget when he was hosting Super Adventure Theater Saturday mornings on WOR. Three weeks after they had just shown it, they showed RIDE 'EM COWBOY. So Claude announces "RIDE 'EM COWBOY with Abbott & Costello!" and Clowny pipes up "Aw, gee, C.K., they've seen that one ten times!" And Claude responds, "Well, they're gonna see it again!" Ah the joys of local kids tv.
There was a store called Grand Way in Paramus that was the Kmart of its day. It had a holding pen called the Kiddie Corner where moms could place the offspring so they could do the family underwear shopping, etc. in peace. KC had coloring books, paints and all kinds of things to keep the brats occupied. I will never forget the afternoon that Claude Kirchner showed up in a surprise visit. In full regalia. And not in b&w. I must have spent the whole time staring to make sure he was a real man that wouldn't disappear into a TV set or something.
A few moments ago I had another epiphany. All that talk of chocolate syrups--it strikes me that Bozo hawked Ovaltine.
PS It says Allen Swift hosted the show from the year of my birth until I was a little over 4. I'm at a loss to explain why I remember him. And so much other useless stuff. Should've been a professional Jeopardy player.