Walter Tetley

You’ll see in the obituary that Walter was first doing live radio somewhere back east, at WABC and WOR, and Fred Allen did discover him there and took him to Hollywood. It also mentions that he worked on radio with W.C. Fields. I’d like to hear those skits with Fields, if any recordings still exist.

When you read the death certificate, that I am sending, you’ll notice that the “length of stay in California” was 38 years, putting his arrival in California around 1937. But the “number of years in occupation” is 50 years, which means he was working in 1925 at the age of ten before moving out west. It even gives his “last employing company” as Hanna-Barberra. This is why I want you to see these documents–they will help you put some of the pieces together, and along with what you already know from speaking to other voice actors who knew him, maybe we can finally see a decent (and true) biography of Walter Tetley.

Don H

Don:

Interestingly enough Daws Butler did tell me, in his taped letter to me (from March, 1974) that he had seen Walter Tetley, three years earlier, at Hanna-Barbera, when they were taping a Christmas cartoon special together. But that was the last time that he saw him. Daws Butler was like the Mel Blanc of Hanna-Barbera, so he would probably have run into Walter, quite a bit, had he been working there a lot.

I did kind of suspect that Walter was not doing a whole lot for Hanna-Barbera……..Because I had researched some of their cartoon shows, and his name really did not come up, at all, as part of the voice talent………not as a regular cast member anyway.

I too would love to hear the exchanges between W.C. Fields and Tetley, since he was so famous for being “the man who HATED kids and dogs”!!

Brian

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