Gary Owens

For other people called Gary Owen or Gary Owens, see Gary Owen (disambiguation).

Gary Owens
Gary Owens (middle), 1982
Born	Gary Altman (1936-05-10) May 10, 1936 Mitchell, South Dakota, U.S.
Occupation	Voice actor/Disc jockey
Years active	1959–present

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 played himself in a cameo appearance 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

Jack Haley and Gary Owens, 1979.

Owens started his radio career at KORN, Mitchell, South Dakota in 1952 where he served as News Director. In 1956, he left KORN for a job at KMA, Shenandoah, Iowa before moving on to KOIL, Omaha, Nebraska. He also worked in Dallas, New Orleans, St. Louis and Denver where he got his first television experience. He made the move to California in 1959 working in Oakland, San Francisco, finally setting in Los Angeles.

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 Los Angeles.

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 9 p.m. 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 1966–1967 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, California, 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 New Orleans funkadelic band, 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.

Owens moved from KMPC to KPRZ (both Los Angeles) in the early 1980s, hosting mornings at the "Music Of Your Life"-formatted station. Owens in morning, and Dick Whittinghill in afternoon drive was an inversion of his KMPC years.

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. Jeff Gehringer was brought on as producer. The program ended after the station changed format to talk.

Owens also co-starred in a number of documentaries about dinosaurs in the 1980s 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.

Present

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. Reprises his role in 2011 for an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold(credited as Gary Owen in the original series).
• 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
• Substitute announcer for Bill Nye The Science Guy
• 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 SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron
• The Narrator for the pilot episode of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog
• The Narrator for the US commercial of Super Mario Land 2
• 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 1960s and early 1970s, 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, and others. The games spoofed a game show and the prize for winners was an interview with the chosen celebrity the contestant selected at the start of the game.

External links

• Comprehensive Gary Owens interview with Kliph Nesteroff
• Gary Owens at IMDb