![]() In the 1940s Delmar got the job of announcer for the prestigious, intelligent comedian Fred Allen. Welles hired him in 1938 for his famous “War of the Worlds” broadcast, where Delmar, although playing “Secretary of the Interior,” imitated President Roosevelt’s voice and added to the reality feel that Welles was after. An accomplished dialectician, he worked scores of East Coast shows like The Shadow where he met Orson Welles. He began, like so many others of his era, performing in vaudeville (with his mother and aunt as The Delmar Sisters), before he broke into radio in 1936. Kenny Delmar (1910-84) was a highly successful New York-based radio actor and announcer. But Senator Claghorn, ironically just ten months old, was already a national sensation. Here he sounds much more like Yosemite Sam – loud and very gruff, and incorporating the Sheriff’s habit of starting a sentence and then re-starting with “I say…,” such as when the rooster yells, “Lose something – I say, didja lose something?” And the way he shouts “Pay attention, boy…”Īlthough a major influence on the cartoon, Jack Clifford’s Sheriff was virtually a forgotton local LA radio character by the time the cartoon was released in late August of 1946. A careful listen to this cartoon’s track reveals that Blanc sounds totally unlike the Foggy voice of the 1950s. (Actually a major running gag for The Sheriff – bad puns based on mis-hearing what somebody was saying to him – was never a part of Foghorn Leghorn’s character.) But as McKimson mis-remembered it in his later years, he and Foster merged the two characters – the old sheriff and Senator Claghorn – and made them parts of the rooster.īut the plain fact is that the dialogue-track for Walky Talky Hawky was recorded on January 13, 1945, a full ten months before the debut of Senator Claghorn on Fred Allen’s New York-based show. ![]() ![]() But it must be emphasized, only for the first cartoon, Walky Talky Hawky. The Sheriff – who would yell obnoxiously, talk over people, and repeat what he’d just said, prefacing each reiteration with “I say…” – was indeed the inspiration for Foghorn. Clifford continued appearing as the Sheriff all through the 1930s on local LA programs like Comedy Stars of Hollywood, Komedy Kapers and The Gilmore Circus. At that point most of its cast began Hollywood acting careers, including character man Jack Clifford who originated The Sheriff. The Jamboree, like much of early West Coast radio, came out of San Francisco, before the show moved to Los Angeles in 1933, when network lines became operational in Los Angeles. He also believed that “Claghorn” had taken his vocal delivery from the old, deaf sheriff on the early variety show, Blue Monday Jamboree. McKimson recalled telling Foster that he was listening to the radio and had heard Claghorn. ![]() It is at this early point in the Foghorn saga that even Bob McKimson himself falls victim to the vagaries of recall, because by the time he began being interviewed in the mid-1970s (along with Clampett, Jones and many other Warner veterans), his memory was clouded by both the passage of time and the enormous fame that another old-time radio character, one Senator Claghorn, had enjoyed from 1945-49 on the highly respected comedy program The Fred Allen Show. But when that performer didn’t work out, Blanc came aboard and, McKimson recalled, “did a real good job.” Rather than using Mel Blanc (McKimson recalled he didn’t think Mel could do ), another actor was auditioned (frustratingly, I don’t know who this person was). McKimson decided to base the loudmouth’s voice on a hard-of-hearing West Coast-only radio character from the 1930s, known simply as The Sheriff. But it was obvious from the storyboard that Foster’s funny rooster would “steal” this cartoon. This story, eventually titled Walky Talky Hawky, ostensibly starred Henery Hawk, a tough-kid character originally created by Ted Pierce for Chuck Jones’s 1942 release The Squawkin’ Hawk. In late 1944, story man Warren Foster came up with a rooster story for Bob McKimson, recently promoted to a directing position and getting ready to begin his fourth cartoon. I would like to clear up the origins of one of the most beloved stars in Looney Tunes history, Foghorn Leghorn. ![]()
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