Everything about Arnold Stang totally explained
Arnold Stang (born
September 28,
1925 in
Chelsea, Massachusetts) is a
comic actor who plays a small and bespectacled, yet brash and knowing big-city type. Never known as a solo performer (despite the existence of an unsold
television pilot called
The Arnold Stang Show), he works best in, and prefers, an
ensemble cast in which he plays only one of a diverse group of comic characters.
Career
On radio, he was popular in the 1940s as a
sidekick to cantankerous comedian
Henry Morgan---whenever Morgan wasn't driving himself off the air after zapping one sponsor or network official too many. During television's so-called Golden Age, Stang became something of a star as a sidekick on
Milton Berle's groundbreaking
Texaco Star Theater. In film, he played Sparrow in
The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) alongside
Frank Sinatra and
Kim Novak. In
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) he played Ray, who along with his partner Irwin (played by
Marvin Kaplan) owns a gas station that's destroyed by
Jonathan Winters. In one of the weirdest-ever movie pairings, he was teamed with the young
Arnold Schwarzenegger (billed as "Arnold Strong") in the latter's first film, the
camp classic
Hercules in New York (1970). As a voice actor for animated cartoons, he provided the voice for
Popeye's pal Shorty (who looked somewhat like Stang as it was),
Herman the mouse in a number of
Famous Studios cartoons, the
Hanna-Barbera character
Top Cat (modeled explicitly on
Phil Silvers's popular television character as scheming, wisecracking
Sgt. Bilko), and Catfish on
Misterjaw. He also provided many extra voices for the
Cartoon Network series,
Courage the Cowardly Dog. In television commercials, he was spokesman for the
Chunky candy bar, when he'd (after listing most of the ingredients) smile and say, "Chunky, what a chunk of chocolate!" He provided the voice of the
Honey Nut Cheerios Bee in the
1980s and also spoke for
Vicks Vapo-Rub. Stang also appeared on an episode of "
The Cosby Show" with guest star
Sammy Davis Jr. In one TV ad he played
Luther Burbank, proudly showing off his newly-invented "square tomato" to fit neatly in typical square slices of commercial bread, then being informed that the advertising bakery had beat him to it by producing round loaves of bread.
Family
His wife, Joanne Stang, is a writer for the
New York Times.
Early beginnings
Stang began his career at the age of nine, in such radio shows as
Let's Pretend, but playing in dramas and mysteries as what he once called "little killers," according to radio historian Gerald Nachman (
Raised on Radio). He told Nachman that he knew his voice was his meal-ticket. "I'm kind of attached to it," he quipped to Nachman. "My personal logo. It's like
Jell-O or
Xerox." He also told Nachman that the bulk of his fan mail doesn't even address his film or television work, even though
Top Cat still appears periodically on cable television and Berle's show became such an icon. "All about my radio career," he said.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Arnold Stang'.
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