When I was a little girl, I loved this vignette. I would dance around the living room and my mother would admonish me, "Laura Beth, watch out for the candy dish! Watch out for the stereo cabinet!" Even then, I was a notorious klutz.
My favorite bit is the noise the ape makes when he lands on a bale...a bale of hay.
My favorite bit is the noise the ape makes when he lands on a bale...a bale of hay.
Some say that the vocal was Northern Calloway, aka "David." NantoVision1, a YouTuber who I like a great deal and whose opinion I trust, says emphatically that it was not Calloway. (I have wondered if it was Ben Vereen. I had this epiphany one night while watching Vereen in 1979's All That Jazz.)
p.s. Please take the time to watch the clip from All That Jazz. It's fabulous. Roy Scheider, you were robbed of the Oscar...but you were up against Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer. Yeah. Kind of tough to beat.
I loved that vignette too. Apparently some who claim to know say that it is in fact Northern Calloway. I find that hard to believe, but he might be doing schtick. And word has it he was Ben Vereen's understudy in a few shows, so evidently he could do Vereen.
ReplyDeleteAnother reason to suspect it's not Northern is that SS animated vignettes were generally not voiced (or written) by cast, and the donated work (Tom Lehrer, Gene Wilder...) was usually much ballyhooed; if it were Ben Vereen, you'd expect that to be common knowledge.
So who knows? It's interesting that so much mystery surrounds so much of early SS. And that the old stuff is so seldom available to the public. This song, for example, doesn't seem to be sold anywhere.
Thanks again!
Robin
Program Director
Radio Olympia