Howard Morris, 85, Comic Actor and Voiceover Artist

Howard Morris, who died Saturday at 85, was an actor and voiceover artist who became a familiar figure to television viewers of the early 1950s as one of the regulars on “Your Show of Shows,” the Sid Caesar variety series that launched some of the biggest names in American comedy.While his face was less known to later generations, Morris’s voice popped up all over the airwaves. He could be heard in cartoons, as Fred Flintstone’s boss, Mr. Slate, and as Jughead Jones in various televised versions of the “Archie” comic strip, as well as the title character in the animated series “The Atom Ant Show.” Morris could also be heard in hundreds of advertisements, as the voice of the Qantas Airways koala (“I hate Qantas”), and as the Hamburglar, burbling “Robble Robble” while making off with Mayor McCheese’s lunch in spots for McDonald’s. “I have a beach house at Malibu with arches on top of it,” he once claimed.Sporting a list of show-business credits even more varied than his list of marriages – there were six in all – Morris directed such film comedies as “With Six You Get Eggroll” (1968) and “Don’t Drink the Water” (1969), as well as episodes of “Hogan’s Heroes,” “Bewitched,” and the original pilot of “Get Smart.”As an actor, he made appearances on “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “The Twilight Zone,” and he attained continuing celebrity for a series of appearances as Ernest T. Bass, a rock-throwing, doggerel-spouting hillbilly on “The Andy Griffith Show.” A sample of Bass’s poetry, written by Morris: “If I knew you was coming, I know what I’d do, I’d a rose both arms, and I’d a wove at you!”“Even today, if I put on tattered clothes and go down south, I get a standing ovation in every hotel lobby,” Morris claimed recently.It was quite a transformation for someone who grew up in the Bronx and attended DeWitt Clinton High School. Morris’s father was an executive at the U.S. Rubber Company who lost his job in the Depression and “died of unemployment,” Morris said. His mother found work playing the organ in theaters, giving Morris early exposure to show business. He majored in drama at DeWitt Clinton, then attended New York University, where he was a member of the Washington Square Players before dropping out and joining the Army during World War II. After seeing action in the Pacific, Morris was transferred to an entertainment unit stationed in Hawaii, where he appeared as Rosencrantz in a touring G.I. version of “Hamlet,” starring Maurice Evans. The show eventually made it to Broadway in late 1945.Morris later appeared in “Call Me Mister” and “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” also on Broadway. He found work in radio, and in 1949 was cast by Sid Caesar for his new variety show, originally titled the “Admiral Broadway Review.”In an interview with the Knoxville News-Sentinel in 2001, Morris recalled how the show’s producer, Max Liebman, introduced him to the volatile Mr. Caesar: “He grabbed me by the lapels and lifted me up in the air and said ‘Max! Him! Get!’ And that was my audition for the ‘Admiral Broadway Review.’ “Morris was a stalwart of the show, which also featured performers Carl Reiner and Imogene Coca, as well as writers Woody Allen, Neil Simon, and Mel Brooks, who became a lifelong friend. Morris had fond memories of Coca (“a wonderful, magnificent lady”), but gave Mr. Caesar a more mixed review: “He was the most skillful performer I ever met, observed, or worked with, but I don’t want to be buried with the guy,” Morris said in the News-Sentinel interview. “Sid was a [bleep]. He was a [bleeping] talented animal.”After “Your Show of Shows” ended in 1954, Morris joined Mr. Caesar for another year in “Caesar’s Hour.” In 1966, he reunited with his old cast members for “The Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris Special,” which won two Emmys.By then, Morris was doing most of his work off-camera, either as a voice artist, director, or in commercials. He eventually formed his own production company, Sidekicks Inc., to produce commercials for McDonald’s and Kellogg’s, among others. In cartoons, he also voiced Mr. Peebles and Mushmouse on “Magilla Gorilla,” as well as multiple characters on “Fraggle Rock,” “Garfield and Friends,” and many others. He had small parts in a number of films, including “The Nutty Professor” (1963), “High Anxiety” (1977), and “Splash” (1984). His earnings helped support a growing cast of ex-wives.Perhaps it was the way the character of Ernest T. Bass resonated with audiences that made him particularly vivid for Morris.“I was born and raised in the Bronx, New York City. No dirt, no cows, no roosters,” Morris wrote in a memoir on his personal Web site, Ernestt.com. “None of the scripts called for Ernest to jump around like a nut. That was just the result of my innards searching for ways that the character needed to move.”Howard Jerome MorrisBorn September 4, 1919; died May 21 in Los Angeles of natural causes after a lengthy illness; survived by a son and three daughters.

Howard Morris, 85, Comic Actor and Voiceover Artist

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