I just read your very interesting accounting of Walter Tetley’s existence. I had heard Walter died some years back in the early ’80’s but I didn’t know he was in a motorcyle accident. I was really writing you to remind you, if you don’t already know it, that Walter’s biggest claim to fame, was his long-time portrayal of Leroy on the classic radio show, “The Great Gildersleeve”. He played Leroy for 17 years of his life, from 1941 till 1958, he also had a great and recurring role as Julius, a wise-cracking teenager on the Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show.
His Julius character was a slightly older more smart alecky character than Leroy, but the Leroy character was very much like the character you seem most familiar with, Sherman on the Bullwinkle cartoons. But he played both Julius and Leroy at the same time, although the Phil Harris show was on for about 7 years, ’47-’53, he was on both radio shows and this is where Walter Tetley made his name, not in the Bullwinkle cartoon.
Although, don’t get me wrong, I am also a child of the ’60’s and grew up watching Bullwinkle and was always a great fan of the Sherman and professorial dog who was his friend. I didn’t discover Gildersleeve till the early ’70’s, but I’ve been a great fan of it since. If you like Walter Tetley, listen for some of the Gildersleeve shows, or the extremely funny Phil Harris-Alice Faye Shows (the funniest radio show I’ve ever heard) and you’ll hear Walter Tetley at his very best. He was very good as Sherman, but he was great as Leroy & Julius.
Thanks for your patience and your well thought out web-site. I would only add to it the important part of Walter’s history that you skipped, (the info. I’ve wriiten above).
Thanks Again,
Lee R
Yeah, I know you’re right about all this info. I first heard about the Great Gildersleeve from my partner, Greg Jones, who does the web design. Later on other people emailed me about that radio show. I thought about adding the info, in the Tribute, about Gildersleeve, but then I got to thinking, later on, that since we did mention it, in the mailbag feature (PEABODY’S PONY EXPRESS), that does give readers a chance to see something new, that we didn’t cover, in the Tribute part of our web page……..
It kind of makes the PONY EXPRESS more valuable that some info, about Walter, is covered there, and not covered in the Tribute………What’s more, it gives some of the credit to our readers, for supplying some of the info. I’m really kind of torn about whether to just include the info in the PONY EXPRESS, and let the readers have the credit, or cause a bit of repetition, by having it mentioned in both places……….I just haven’t been able to decide what to do about that. Perhaps, at a later date, Greg and I might decide to include the info in the Tribute too…….We shall see………. Thanks for your interest!
Brian