Alan Reed is best remembered as the original voice of Fred Flintstone, but he'd also logged some time doing "face acting", working on live-action projects. After The Flintstones' original run ended in 1966, Reed took advantage of his lack of recognizance with viewers to pursue some "face acting" jobs. One of these landed him on The Beverly Hillbillies in the episode, "The Great Tag Team Match", which first aired in February 1968. Here, Reed plays a wrestling promoter dealing with a spike in television ratings after a relative novice----Granny (Irene Ryan)----becomes an overnight sensation. Hey, this would be the sort of scenario that Fred Flintstone would fit into, wouldn't it? In fact, Reed uses Fred's voice for this job.
2 comments:
Reed also did a lot of radio work in the 40s & 50s.
My dad & I used to listen to a radio show (on tape) called, "Life With Luigi", in which Reed played the Italian friend of the titular character. The running joke was he was trying to pawn off his fat daughter, "Rosa" onto Luigi.
Thanks to that tape collection, I got to hear many familiar cartoon voices! Boy did that seem weird!
I know. A lot of toon stars came from radio, like Reed, Mel Blanc, Paul Frees, Walter Tetley, Dick Beals, and, in the modern era, Casey Kasem, who parlayed his regional DJ gigs into twin careers on TV and became rich beyond his wildest dreams.
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