#Otto matic tom slick tv#
Paul has literally talked himself to success and, although he's a competent TV actor, he's happy right now to go on being heard and not seen. Those, he added to more than 100 others he's won over the years. Last year he won nine awards at the Commercial Film Festival. His impersonations paved the way for his present voice work. Along the way, he's been a singer, dancer, nightclub emcee and impersonator. Paul began training for his unusual profession when he went into vaudeville at the age of 13. Radio listeners will remember him as the voice of the old "Suspense" and "Escape" shows and TV viewers have heard him as the voice on “The Millionaire” series, among other shows. So good is he at voice duplication that he did the voice "stand in" work for stars like Orson Welles and Humphrey Bogart and once, he says, did a half hour radio show for Bogart when the actor couldn't make it.
Besides, he says he can deliver three or four versions of each of the common dialects and, in one feature picture, "A Time to Live and Time to Die," he took the speaking parts of 17 different German characters. "I can duplicate any voice and any dialect I hear," he says, confidently. He's always driving at something and he's not beyond scolding you for lack of attention."Ī German dialect like the professor's is just one of the things Paul carries in his bag of voice tricks. "The professor is bright, good natured, has a sense of humor and is marvelously absent-minded at times," Paul adds. "Walt Disney gave me a lot of liberty in portraying the professor and I've made him more personal than any of my other characters," Paul says, resisting a temptation to slip into the German dialect he uses on the show. Of all the roles he's played, he likes Professor Von Drake best. Paul figures he's played in 15,000 radio shows, more commercials than he can count and currently, he's the voice of Professor Ludwig Von Drake on "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" and of Boris on "The Bullwinkle Show," both on NBC-TV. One of the group of performers known as "voice men," he's virtually unknown outside casting offices and advertising agencies, yet there's hardly an adult in the United States that hasn't heard his voice. In fact, Paul is the talkingest man you're likely to meet and he's seldom seen at all. Paul Frees has never been able to follow the parental dictum that he be seen and not heard. Let’s not bother with lists and move on to an unbylined article that appeared in a bunch of newspapers in 1961 I spotted this in papers published in August through November. This isn’t including animated commercials. well, it’s probably easier listing where he didn’t work than where he did. On television, Jay Ward, Hanna-Barbera, UPA and Rankin/Bass found animated characters for his voices. In the theatrical world, he was hired by MGM, Walter Lantz and Walt Disney. If radio performers ever start electing their own stars, you can bet that Paul Frees' name will be high on the marquee-a thought which should be some consolation.Ĭartoon fans know Frees from all kinds of places. "It's fun," says Paul, "but I'd rather be a star." He does every dialect known to human speech, and often takes several roles in a single production." Described by Spike Jones as "one of the greatest impersonators in the world," he has simulated the voices of virtually every celebrity you can think of, from the late Franklin Roosevelt to Sidney Greenstreet. Remember the hilarious Peter Lorre impersonation on Spike Jones recording of "My Old Flame." That's Paul Frees, too.įrees is, in a sense, a victim of his own versatility-for he has so many voices that he has no single identity. a tale well calculated to keep you in-Suspense!" That's Paul Frees. Here's a young actor who recently won two important radio awards in one week-one of which named him as the "outstanding supporting player of the year"-and still scarcely anyone, outside the business, knows who he is.ĭid you ever hear of Paul Frees? Remember the deep, ominous voice of the narrator on "Suspense"-the guy who gives you the shivers as he introduces ". This appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on May 29, 1949. In 1949, Frees landed starring parts on two shows-the aforementioned Crime Correspondent and then the title role in The Green Lama.įrees was already catching the attention of columnists in the late ‘40s. Frees even played himself a radio station hired him for a late-night show for a little while in the early ‘50s.
Mind you, that applies to an awful lot of characters on radio, TV and films.
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