Mr. Kistler,
Thank you so much for your web page honoring Walter Tetley. I am currently 61 years old and grew up hearing The Great Guildersleeve on radio so I learned to appreciate Mr. Tetley’s talent early on. Many years later when American Movie Clasics began showing old RKO product they included several Great Guildersleeve films. While most of these were based on the Guildersleeve that was one of the annoying neighbors or Fibber McGee and Molly (and hence no Leroy), later episodes did revolve around the Water Commissioner and there was a Leroy in the film. How disappointed I was when this young film star opened his mouth and spoke. It was like a fraud had been committed.
I know—-but W.T. looked too old to play a boy, even though he sounded like one. He is in one of those Great Gildersleeves movies, anyway, playing someone else—–a bellhop or an elevator boy.
That voice has alway stuck with me and if memory serves me right Walter was one of the early voices for Speedy Alka Seltker then began appearing on Freeberg recordings. How great to hear him again.
He also did one Warner Bros. cartoon in the early 40s——–I looked high and low, trying to find that episode, and I just couldn’t find it. I don’t think Warner Bros. used him more than once.
Unlike you I never thought of using the internet to try to track him down until now. So tonight I discovered you site and at long last got to see what Walter Tetley looked like.
Thank Greg, the web guy who helps me out for that—–I didn’t know what he looked like either, til Greg found pics of him.
Thank you.
Just curious – have you been able to reach Stan Freeberg and get any reaction from him regarding working with Walter?
Richard S
Everybody asks me that (well not everybody, but a lot of people). I wonder to myself, even if I did try to find Freberg, if he would have time to write to me——when you are one of just a tiny number of folks left, from the Golden Age of cartoons and voice acting, I think you tend to become very popular and in demand (for interviews and so forth).
Brian