| Caption | Gary Owens (middle), 1982 |
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| Birth name | Gary Altman |
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| Birth date | May 10, 1936 |
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| Birth place | Mitchell, South Dakota, U.S. |
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| Occupation | Voice actor/Disc jockey |
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| Years active | 1959–present |
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Gary Owens (born May 10, 1936) is an American
disc jockey and
voice actor. His polished baritone speaking voice generally offers deadpan recitations of total nonsense, which he frequently demonstrated as the announcer on
Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. Owens is equally proficient in straight or silly assignments and is frequently heard in television, radio, and commercials. He's best known as the voice of
Space Ghost on
Space Ghost. He also was himself on
Space Ghost Coast to Coast in 1998. Gary Owens was the voice of Roger Ramjet on The Roger Ramjet Cartoons. He is currently the voice of the over-the-air digital network
Antenna TV.
Early life
Owens was born
Gary Altman in
Mitchell, South Dakota, the son of Venetta (
née Clark), an educator and county auditor, and Bernard Joseph Altman, a county treasurer and sheriff.
Career
1950s
and Gary Owens, 1979.]]
Owens was a journeyman DJ/announcer throughout the midwest and southern U.S. in the late 1950s, finally ending up at
radio station KEWB,
Oakland, California in 1959.
1960s
Owens moved to KEWB's sister station
KFWB in
Los Angeles in 1961. From there, he joined the staff of
KMPC in
1962 , (replacing previous host Johnny Grant), where he remained for the next two decades working the 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. shift, Monday through Friday. A gifted punster, Owens became known for his surrealistic humor. Among his trademarks were daily appearances by
The Story Lady (played by
Joan Gerber), the Rumor of the Day, myriad varieties of "The Nurney Song", and the introduction of the
nonsense word "insegrevious", which was briefly included in the
Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary.
His regular on-air radio terms included "krenellemuffin", as in "We'll be back in just a krenellemuffin". Gary always credited his radio engineer at the end of his broadcast: "I'd like to thank my engineer, Bob Jones, for creebling at the turntables." He also created the heretofore non-existent colors "veister" and "krelb".
In the early 1960s, like punster-TV star comic colleagues Ernie Kovacs, Steve Allen, and Jonathan Winters, Gary Owens created a few comic characters of his own, such as the gruff old man Earl C. Festoon and his wife Phoebe Festoon, the stuffy old businessman Endocrine J. Sternwallow, and the goofy good ol' boy, Merle Clyde Gumpf. Another character was crotchety old cantankerous Mergenthaler Waisleywillow.
Owens also did very funny radio promotions like sending in for "Yours", which turned out to be a postcard from him at the radio station which simply said "Yours" on it; and autographed pictures of the Harbor Freeway in Los Angeles; and his famous "Moo Cow Report" in which Gary and his character Earl C. Festoon would describe where moo cows were moving inbound on the crowded freeways of L.A.
During this time Owens was also known as "Superbeard", because like his contemporary radio icon Wolfman Jack, he sported a goatee-beard, wore Hawaiian shirts, baggy Bermuda shorts, and his "1941 wide necktie with a hula girl on it". Often during these comedy skits on the air he would have the assistance of other radio comics, most notably Bob Arbogast (known as "Arbo" to his adoring fans), Stan Ross (of "Drowning in the Surf" fame in 1963), and Jim "Weather Eyes" Hawthorne.
Owens also did his famous "Good Evening Kiss" on KMPC when he was on from 9PM to Midnight, by saying "Now I'll just snuggle up to a nice warm microphone, and embracemoi," making a big wet kiss sound effect followed by the sound effect of a gong striking. In 1966, Owens collaborated with Bob Arbogast, June Foray, Daws Butler, Paul Frees and others on a hilarious comedy spoof record album
titled "Sunday Morning With the Funnies" with the Jimmy Haskell Orchestra on Reprise Records.
During this period, Owens became more widely known as the voice of the eponymous TV cartoon characters in Roger Ramjet and Space Ghost, the excitable narrator/announcer from The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, and perhaps most well-known, as the announcer on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, all the while continuing his show on KMPC. He appeared regularly as a television newscaster on The Green Hornet during the 1966-67 season. He also hosted its daily game show spin-off, Letters to Laugh-In, during its brief run in 1969. Capitalizing on Owens' "Laugh-In" fame, Mel Blanc Audiomedia, an audio production company based in Beverly Hills, CA, developed and marketed "The Gary Owens Special Report," a 260-episode package of syndicated radio comedy shows. He also appeared in the Sesame Street pilot in a skit called The Man from Alphabet.
He was a scriptwriter for Jay Ward Productions, has appeared in many series for Walt Disney, and has done over 30,000 commercials. He was also a guest star on The Munsters and McHale's Navy.
During the late 1960s, when the films of 1930s comedians such as The Marx Brothers, W. C. Fields and Mae West were finding a new audience, Owens narrated phonograph records containing sound clips from the films.
1970s
In 1973, Owens wrote
The (What to Do While You're Holding the) Phone Book (ISBN 0-87477-015-7), a comedic look at the history of the
telephone.
On the album Uptown Rulers, Owens can be heard on the first track introducing the great funkadelic band from New Orleans, The Meters. The live recording took place on March 24, 1975 at Paul and Linda McCartney's release party for the Venus And Mars album held on the Queen Mary.
Owens did the humorous news blurbs that are interspersed throughout the 1975 film The Prisoner of Second Avenue. In 1976, he hosted the first season of the nighttime version of The Gong Show; he was replaced by the show's creator, Chuck Barris. The same year Owens became the voice of a new cartoon character, Blue Falcon, a character that fought crime in fictional Big City with the help of his clumsy sidekick, Dynomutt, also known as Dynomutt, Dog Wonder. The series was a parody of Batman, specifically the live-action version starring Adam West. It wasn't uncommon to see the Blue Falcon use various falcon gadgets much like Batman used various "bat gadgets". The falcon belt was used in a similar fashion to Batman's utility belt with an endless supply of weapons and other devices. Owens would provide the voice of the Blue Falcon from 1976 through 1977 in 20 half hour episodes. The 1977 episodes were broken into two parts that ran 11 minutes each. 16 episodes in 1976 and 4 episodes in 1977.
1980s
Owens received a
Hollywood Walk of Fame Star in 1980, between
Walt Disney and
Betty White.
In the 1980s, he announced on jazz radio station KKJZ (then KKGO-FM) in Westwood, California.
On August 8, 1981, Gary announced the Corps at the Drum Corps International Midwestern Championship. It was held at Warhawk Stadium UW Whitewater
On the weekend of September 12–13, 1981, Owens substituted for his old KEWB station partner Casey Kasem on American Top 40; it was Gary's only appearance on radio's first nationally syndicated countdown show. That same year Watermark chose Owens to replace Murray the K as permanent host of "Soundtrack of the '60s", an oldies retrospective show. It ran in syndication through 1984.
He was the voice of Walt Disney's Epcot Center ride, World of Motion, which operated between 1982 and 1996. His television special was "The Roots of Goofy" which aired from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s.
When Roger Barkley surprisingly walked out of the long-running "Lohman and Barkley Show" on KFI in Los Angeles, Owens briefly teamed with Al Lohman for the successful morning commute show, which soon after flopped.
Owens also co-starred in a number of documentaries about dinosaurs in the 80s along side Chicago's Eric Boardman. These documentaries were distributed by the Midwich Entertainment group for the Disney Channel before it went from being a premium pay channel on cable to a standard channel.
1990s
In the late 1990s, Owens hosted the morning show on the
Music of Your Life radio network, where he later had the evening shift and hosted a weekend afternoon show until 2006. He also announces pre-recorded
station IDs for
Parksville, British Columbia radio station
CHPQ-FM (The Lounge), and for humorist
Gary Burbank's long-running afternoon show on
WLW in
Cincinnati, Ohio. Owens was also the announcer for
America's Funniest Home Videos from 1995–1997, replacing
Ernie Anderson.
Voice acting
Owens has provided the voices for
Roger Ramjet Voice of Roger Ramjet
Space Ghost for the original Space Ghost 1966-1968 Series and on Space Stars from 1981-1982.
The announcer for Garfield and Friends
The Narrator of Dr. Phibes Rises Again (uncredited)
Powdered Toast Man of The Ren and Stimpy Show
Captain Squash on Bobby's World
Dirk Niblick on PBS's Square One TV
Announcer and Principal in two different episodes of Two Stupid Dogs
Blue Falcon in Dynomutt, Dog Wonder
Badly Animated Man in Raw Toonage
Commander Ulysses Feral in
The Narrator for the pilot episode of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog
The voice of Cy (Cylon) from the Galactica 1980 episode The Return of Starbuck
The announcer for Space Ghost Coast to Coast
The announcer for Superhuman Samurai Syber Squad
The voice of "Antenna TV" (2011- ), intoning "Vintage...without the funny smell".
He has narrated or announced dozens of other cartoons, as well as the
fourth and
sixth installments of the
Space Quest PC game series.
Trademarks
When appearing "in character" on camera as
Gary Owens, the announcer, Owens holds his right hand up to his right ear while speaking into a
gimbaled boom
microphone. This is done in imitation of the announcers in the early days of radio, who had to rely upon the acoustic feedback of their cupped hand to hear how they sounded to the audience. However, on his KMPC radio show in the late 60s and early 70s, he claimed that this was because a piece of shrapnel took off his ear during the war; sometimes he said it would come loose and he had to hold it on; at other times he said that he was given a wooden ear, and was keeping the termites warm.
Owens coined the phrase "Beautiful downtown Burbank" which was later used on Laugh-In and The Tonight Show.
Blast From the Past
In 2001,
TV Land released two computer games entitled
Blast From the Past, "hosted" by Owens and featuring other TV celebrities including
Florence Henderson,
Ed Asner,
Davy Jones,
Bob Denver,
Don Adams,
Barbara Eden, and
Marion Ross, among others. The games spoofed a game show and the "prize" for winners was an interview with the chosen celebrity the "contestant" picked at the start of the game.
References
External links
Comprehensive Gary Owens interview with Kliph Nesteroff
Category:1936 births
Category:American radio personalities
Category:American voice actors
Category:Living people
Category:People from Mitchell, South Dakota
Category:Actors from South Dakota
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