#barry blitzer

[mikyapixie]

𝚃𝚘𝚙 𝙲𝚊𝚝 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚖𝚒𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚍 𝟼𝟺 𝚢𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚜 𝚊𝚐𝚘 𝚝𝚘𝚍𝚊𝚢!!

[sarroora]

Transcript: Cool Cats Interview

(I tried my best. Things put between (??) are things I don't understand or can't hear clearly)

---start---

Kress: Hi, I'm Earl Cress, and to those of you who've just watched 15 hours of Top Cat episodes, go ahead and get yourselves some eye drops, and welcome. And to those of you who cheated and skipped right ahead to the bonus material, this disk will self-destruct in 15 seconds.

In the words of T.C: "Hahaaa, nothin'!"

You know, the voice cast certainly had a great deal to do with the success of Top Cat, and the role of Top Cat of course was Arnold Stang, and Benny the Ball was played by Maurice Gosfield. Officer Dibble, or Dribble as Top Cat called him, was played by Alan Jenkins, and Fancy-Fancy was John Stevenson. And now we come to the characters of Spook and Brain – both of them were played by our first guest, Mr. Leo de Lyon.

Lyon: That's me. Yaaay! –claps-

Kress: And next to Leo, playing the role of Choo-Choo, is Mr. Marvin Kaplan!

Kaplan: As a child. –he and Kress chuckle

Lyon: Yaaay! –both he and Kaplan clap-

Kaplan: Thank you.

Kress: And we're also very lucky today to have one of the original writers of Top Cat with us, Mr. Barry Blitzer.

Blitzer: Great to be here! I wish I was an actor..

-Lyon and Kaplan are clapping, and everyone's chuckling-

Kress: So guys, did you think you'd be talking about this show and these characters?

Kaplan: Yeah, I thought we'd be talking about it because it was a different kind of cartoon. It was a very intelligent cartoon. Nowadays, they do a cartoon and it's all grunts and people falling off mountains and y'know – it's very violent. Top Cat wasn't. Top Cat was very good humor. Adult humor, and we even had an adult slot at night, which is very unusual for a cartoon series.

Kress: Right, it was only the 2nd primetime cartoon following the Flintstones..

Kaplan: That's Right.

Kress: And I read a quote somewhere and I'm not sure whether it was either Joe or Bill who said that it was the most sophisticated cartoon they'd ever tried. So John Stevenson had been already working for Hanna Barbera, and of course Arnold Stang had done cartoon voices for years..but both Leo and Marvin, how did you get into doing cartoons?

Lyon: Well, – realizes that Kaplan was about to speak and he didn't want to interrupt him – yeah, Marv.

Kaplan: Well, when you did a cartoon for Hanna Barbera, they had a special procedure. You did a tape – an audition for them, and they had 3 (?mavins?) on the contract. They were Lenny (?Winerib?), (?Daws?) Butler, and (?Don Messi?). And if none of them could do your voice, you got the job.

Kress: -laughs-

Kaplan: And none of them could do my voice. And so I got the job.

Lyon: (?Alan Dienard?) Junior, actually. He directed a lot and he did some casting – he did a lot of directing on it (meaning Top Cat). And he was a big fan of mine from my performance days. And years later, when they were putting Top Cat together, he said he's like me to read for some of these characters. And one he had in his mind specifically was The Brain line. You know, 'Duuuuh' that thing. (??) And I went down and did a couple of audition tapes, and that's how I got it. John Stevenson and myself -we were also what they would call utility (??), in other words, the garbage man or the phsychiatrist..and I was sometimes used as the enforcer: 'Aaaa alright T.C, you betta come around at 4 o'clock or we're gonna belta ya, ya know what I mean?' that kind of stuff. Etc. We just did all those weird voices. And that's the way it happened.

This is a gang show, I mean like McHale's Navy, y'know –sounds of agreement from Lyon and Blitzer and something I couldn't catch from Lyon –  Absolutely, and they had to get voices that were very distinctive for the radio, for the audience of the cartoon, yet blend, you know. They got actors who worked well together.

Kress: So did you record together?

Kaplan and Lyon: Yes!

Kaplan: We all did at the beginning. It was like doing a stage play. We would do not only whole scenes, whole acts in one take. If they didn't like it, they'd say line so and so has to be done over, and they would number each line. You know, like they do in a cartoon script. And you'd have pickups and so on, and you'd stay after school and that sort of thing. But I don't remember a session lasting over an hour and a half.

Lyon: No! We did them fast, and you know there was a certain amount of choreography involved! That's gonna sound strange. There were certain scenes where we would be going in and out and you know – they didn't wanna be: 'you record your thing. Boop! You recond your thing. Boop!' They didn't do it that way. They had sometimes one, sometimes two microphones. And we'd all line up, knowing when our entrance was, and we'd go in there and he would do his line and go over to the right, and then this one would come shoot in and do his line..and you really needed to know what you were doing. It was a lot of fun!

Kress: -laughs-

Kaplan: Maurice Gosfield. He was one of a kind. He was a marvelous human being. I loved Maurice. The worst driver I ever met in my whole life. He rented a car..-looks over to Lyon- do you remember the car he rented? It was a Thunderbird –

Lyon: Yes! Yes!

Kaplan: A white Thunderbird. He had more dents on it, but he ended up owning it. But this is the problem with it: It had a wheel that…his feet couldn't touch the gas pedal and the wheel was too big in front of him so it could move over to the side. So if you were a passenger you could stir it with him.

Kress: -laughs-

Kaplan: And then he'd call me every day and tell me: "Marvin –" and I'd know from the tone of his voice. I said: "Another one..?" and he said:"Uh-huh."

Lyon: -laughs-

Kaplan: And he said: "I made a right turn –" well, I knew he made right turns from the center lane. And he said:"A policeman followed me, and they pulled me over and I backed into his motorcycle." And I said: "Maurice..you know, you shouldn't have done that-" –laughs- but then he said something: "What I wanna know, Marvin, is..should I find it?"

-everyone laughs-

Kaplan: (??) the best. It was quality all the way. Radio actors were the best all-around group of people.

Lyon: There were times when we – seriously – we'd be rolling, you know, and there'd be a little break, and we'd look at each other and say: "You mean we're getting paid for this, too?"

Kaplan: It was a party.

Lyon: It was that much fun.

Kress: Can you tell me a little bit about working with Alan Jenkins?

Lyon: Well, we were honored to be with Alan Jenkins because his background was incredible with all the Warner Bros great films he was part of that whole gang (James Cagney, Patt O'Brian-

Kaplan: Frank McHue, Ed Brophy-

Lyon: Keep going. All of them. And he was such a pro, and you know, you couldn't imagine him in the world of animation. But I can't even dream of anyone else who could've done Officer Dibble because he was just fantastic – the voice, the understanding of the part…the whole thing, it was just marvelous.

Kaplan: Allan pretended to by grumpy - he wasn’t grumpy at all. He was a marshmallow, and he loved cats..he had this cat who owned him –chuckles- and he was a marvelous man and a legitimate actor – and he was marvelous, he was wonderful. Alan was perfect casting for that part because you needed an authority figure who wasn't obnoxious. And he was very kind and very gentle. He was the nice cop and yet we were all scared of him, supposedly. And you need – the gang had to be scared of somebody.

Kress: Well, how did you get into cartoons, because you had been writing-

Blitzer: well, because of Bilko.

Kress: Because of Bilko-

Blitzer: Yeah, because of Bilko. I knew Allen Dinehart, and he tested me out on a..I think I did Flintstones or a Jetsons whatever-

Kress: Did you do the Flintstones first?

Blitzer: Yeah, I did some Flintstones, and then later on came – I don't remember the order.

Kress: It was Flintstones, Top Cat, Jetsons.

Blitzer: Jetsons. So then Jetsons must've come later, obviously. But yeah, so I came in and because I had done Bilko they thought I'd be able to get more of a feeling of a gang comedy. But then, because of Bilko (??) I got typecast. I was doing (??) from one show to the other – McHale's Navy, Gomer Pyle..I couldn't get out of the service!

Kaplan: -chuckles-

Blitzer: And then came variety shows and the same thing happens – you get typecast (??) you have to get the work, but then you become one of the boys on variety shows, it's a different feeling.

Kress: Barry, talk about the writing process a little bit, on Top Cat

Blitzer: I'd write mostly with Joe. I'd sit with him and he'd say 'yeah how about this', 'we can do that', then you'd do an outline. And that was part of your deal, you know, an outline. But, I guess you could be cut off, but I wasn't. They were looking for writers and the supplies for the Flintstones and the Jetsons and everything, that had done a lot of physical comedy in TV. Formally, animation was very short – and when they started going to the longer form, and they wanted more story, that's when they brought in writers. –Then Blitzer briefly says something about writing verbal scenes versus gag scenes, but it was confusing-

Kress: Marvin, let's talk a little bit about post-Top Cat. Both you and Arnold were in It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad world together, so it's Choo-Choo and Top Cat together! Was it –

Kaplan: Yeah, it was a man named Jonathan (??) Gray..

Kress: Was it a coincidence that you two were cast together?

Kaplan: I got the part and my agent sent me the script, and I called him up immediately and said: "Y'know, I almost got killed reading the script-"

Kress: -laughs-

Kaplan: I mean do you realize what I have to do in this picture? I have to throw stuff through windows – I have to be thrown through a window. He said: "Marvin, your deal is you can do all the stunts that your partner can do" And I said "Who's my partner?" "Arnold Stang."

-everyone laughs-

Kaplan: I said I knew Arnold was the biggest coward in the American Theater, so I said whatever Arnold consents to do, I'll be glad to do.

Kress: I think a lot of people today know you best from the TV show Alice.

Kaplan: That's right. Yeah, I did that for 8 seasons.

Kress: Let's talk a little bit about character development. It sounded like from what you said before that Brain kinda was fully formed when you went in.

Lyon: Well, it was kind of a generic, dopey guy. The thing that made Brain so appealing from what I heard – I mean on the animation itself, it always had to have droopy eyes.

Kress: Right.

Lyon: -impersonates Brain - Worry, Worry, Worry, Worry…

Kaplan: -laughs-

Lyon: It was just so great. It was really great. So you just maintained that thing. Now Spook on the other hand, he was like in those days the hipster, 'Hey like, T.C baby! We're gonna wreck the scene, ya know what I mean!' That kinda stuff.

Kress: And was it written that way?

Lyon: Yeah! Oh yes. Spook was written as the hippie – the hipster, you know. And I just gave him that kinda gravelly, swingin' cadence.

Kress: So was that the first thing you did, I mean when you went to audition, you just came up with that voice?

Lyon: Yeah. The way the script was written, it just shoehorned me right into it. –Looks to Kaplan – is that a good word?

Kaplan: Yeah, that's a good word. 'Shoehorn me', I like that.

Kress: And Marvin, what about Choo-Choo?

Kaplan: Choo-Choo was the cat that went to CCNY.

Lyon: -bursts out laughing-

Kaplan: He was the intellectual of the group. The way they dressed him with the turtleneck and all of that. And he loved Top Cat, you know. But he would never (?block??) him on anything, but he didn't always think his ideas were that great. He would intellectualize everything, he was the intellectual in the group. It was a wonderful, wonderful..they were all so harmless. All those characters were just – they would be the opposite of what they would be today. They were very kind to each other and they liked each other and there were certain faults they'd point out to one another and so on. But I knew I wasn't the cop – I wasn't the head guy. He was the assistant to the head guy, who's a very nice guy.

Lyon: But you know, it seemed to me that T.C generally trusted any messages that you had to deliver!

Kaplan: Because I was the smartest one in the group.

Lyon: he never questioned them too much. The others' he'd you know –strikes his hands against each other – forget about it!

Kaplan: Yeah, yeah

Lyon: Choo-Choo was okay, he was alright. He trusted him.

Kaplan: Right.

Kress: In fact, I wonder, I don't know if you guys would even remember this, but later in the series, Top Cat starts calling Choo-Choo 'Chooch'

Kaplan: Right.

Blitzer: And Top Cat's schemes always came out good in the – people would benefit. He would have to stop wheeling and dealing, but something would be nice and it would be a happy ending.

Kaplan: Right. He was very humanitarian.

Blitzer: Humanitarian, that's a good word. Yeah.

Kaplan: He would usually do something for (??) reason.

Blitzer: Yeah

Lyon: And John Stevenson! I used to love the way he played the character! A little bit of Cary Grant!

Kaplan: And he dressed accordingly. He that that muffler-

Kress: Yeah, the scarf

Kress: So, I'll start with Leo, when I say Bill Hanna what comes to your mind?

Lyon: Uh..I see a white-haired gentleman, you know he's such a contrast to Joe Barbera. I didn't have much that contact with him, I had a lot more contact with Joe Barbera than Bill Hanna. So all I can think of and comment on is what he looked like to me visually in the booth, you know.

Kress: Marvin?

Kaplan: Uhm..he was a wonderful, kind, and creative man. But he was a rather quiet man. And Joe takes stage, you know, and is very flamboyant and on the ball – I mean those aren't bad qualities. It's the extrovert and the introvert. He couldn't figure out what I did in the first place and he said 'I can't get you a reading. Your readings are wonderful. Leave 'im alone'. So he never gave me too many notes.

Blitzer: Joe's an interesting guy, a wonderful guy to be with. He's very creative and bright and funny and made you feel good.

Lyon: Very creative, very dynamic, very forceful in certain ways, but he sure gets things done and creates a great atmosphere for creativity and fun.

Kress: Marvin?

Kaplan: I agree, he's razzle dazzle. Joe's magic is mercury, his moods are from one to the other. He's a magnificent human being and a very kind human being, and he's a very doing human being. Active man.

Kress: He's worked his whole life.

Kaplan: Right.

Kress: Barry?

Blitzer: Well, I think of Joe as dynamic, active, and Joe loved to travel! He went to Rome, and saw the Pope, and saw all these different – yeah, he loved that.

Kaplan: And Joe's more political.

Kress: Joe's the salesman, too.

Blitzer: Exactly. I remember when he'd go to new York to pitch and he'd have these enormous leather cases and he'd go there and he'd be pitching these shows.

Kress: Tell me your fondest memories, or just what you think when you see the shows today.

Lyon: A couple years ago, my granddaughter saw them for the first time, and y'know, they just got a kick out of – all they would wait for is 'oh that's his voice! That's his voice!'

Kaplan: -laughs- Grandpa!

Lyon: And it's so wonderful when you don't see it for a while, you know, then it gets fresh all over again. And it's amazing how many of – as I see it – I say oh! I remember doing that! Or I remember the session, the recording session, just by hearing certain things. It's a great memory and one of the highlights of my whole life. Professionally speaking!

Kaplan: -lsighs-

Kress: Marvin?

Lyon: Excuse me, Marvin's laugh is another highlight!

-everyone laughs-

Kaplan: To you, maybe!

Kaplan: Dickens said it was the best of times..and this was the best of times. It was wonderful – a very happy experience. Animation and cartoons were at a very high level. They were at a high intellectual level, there was some content to them. And the people were kind and generous and warm and philanthropic and humanistic, and we lived in a very different kind of society and it was a wonderful, wonderful time and I was so glad to be a part of it. And the people, those wonderful people – the ones who are still here, and the ones who are gone..they were remarkable in terms of their talent. I can only think of one word in terms of the show itself: Quality. Very high quality.The writing, and the concept, and the performance. Beautiful.

Lyon: And we were all TEAM PLAYERS. That was a great connection and a great bonding with that enthusiasm.

Kaplan: But each individual stood out, which is very rare in a team. There was no friction – I don't remember there being any kind of competition or back-biting or anything like that.

Lyon: No.

Kress: Barry?

Blitzer: Personal experience, I had an office in west LA for years and I recently for various reasons moved back into my home. And in the process of leaving the office where I was almost for 15 years, I had a lot of scripts, and I had a lot of scripts of the Flintstones and Top Cat and I was looking at some of the scripts and it got to me. I remembered all that with a lot of sentimentality so I'm gonna miss that. I really am. But here's my number, just in case.

Kaplan: -laughs-

Kress: Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for taking this time with us. This has been a real treat. And thank you for the laughter and fun. It's just been really great.

Blitzer: I have some final words – for those of you who purchased this…no refunds.

Kress: You got it. You bought it. Forget it.

 ---end---

((Bear in mind that Top Cat's a very old cartoon, and naturally not even the people working on the project remember every detail or even every trait of the characters they wrote/played correctly. I'm sure some of you spotted a couple oddities here and there. Still, it's a delightful material and I am incredibly impressed with their amazing memories and ability to recall little stories and tidbits like that. It’s awesome get their personal opinions on the characters that they and their colleagues portrayed.))