Arnold Stang, a character actor whose bespectacled, owlish face and nasal urban twang gave him a singular and recognizable persona -- whether on radio or television, in the movies or in advertisements, or even in cartoons -- died Sunday in Newton, Mass.
He was 91 and lived in Needham, Mass. The cause was pneumonia, said his son, David. Mr. Stang considered himself a dramatic actor who could play serious roles. But even he was aware that with his signature heavy glasses and a manner that could be eagerly solicitous, despondently whiny or dare-you-to-hit-me pugnacious, his forte was comedy. Like his friend Wally Cox and Don Knotts, Mr. Stang was a natural for roles requiring a milquetoast, a pest or a nerd. At 5-foot-3 and never much more than 100 pounds, he once said of himself, "I look like a frightened chipmunk who's been out in the rain too long." And in a story he frequently told, after an auto accident in 1959 that left him needing extensive plastic surgery, he said to the doctor, "For God's sake, don't make me look pretty." His memorable acting moments were oddly varied signposts of popular culture. He was the 1950s-era spokesman for Chunky candy bars, delivering the slogan: "Chunky! What a chunk o' chocolate!" In Otto Preminger's 1955 film about drug addiction, "The Man With the Golden Arm," he played Frank Sinatra's pal Sparrow in a performance often cited as a precursor of Dustin Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo in "Midnight Cowboy." On "Top Cat," an animated early 1960s television series, he was the voice of T.C., aka Top Cat himself, leader of a mischievous cat gang, a character based on Phil Silvers' Sergeant Bilko. He was a gas station attendant who witnesses the destruction of his station by Jonathan Winters in the 1963 film comedy "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World." Most sources indicate that Mr. Stang was born in 1925 in Chelsea, Mass. But according to his family, though he had relatives in Chelsea, he was born in Manhattan on Sept. 28, 1918. His father was a lawyer until the 1929 stock market crash and earned a living afterward as a salesman. The Chelsea story was one Mr. Stang perpetuated himself; he told interviewers that he got his first job in radio in 1934 at age 9 after he wrote to "Let's Pretend," a New York children's radio show, and asked for an audition. Told that he could audition when he was next in New York, he took the bus from Boston, alone, the following Saturday and was hired. "We were married 60 years, and I never managed to get him to correct that," his wife, JoAnne Stang, said in an interview Monday. The truth, she said, was that her husband grew up mostly in Brooklyn and graduated from New Utrecht High School. He wrote the note asking for an audition from Brooklyn, and he was older than 9. He began his show business career as a teenager -- his first radio appearances were on "The Horn and Hardart Children's Hour" and "Let's Pretend." He went on to perform on dozens of radio programs in the 1930s and '40s, including soap operas, mysteries and comedies, and was often called upon to play more than one role. He was probably best known then for "The Goldbergs," a long-running family series set in the Bronx on which he played Seymour Fingerhood, a teenage neighbor to the title family, and later as a sidekick to stars like Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny and especially Milton Berle. After Mr. Berle moved to television, Mr. Stang appeared from 1953 to '55, bringing along his character, Francis, a pain-in-the-neck stagehand who bugged the star relentlessly. Regards, KGB ----- Kevin G. Barkes Email: [email protected] KGB Report: http://www.kgbreport.com Commentwear by KGB: http://www.commentwear.com National Temperature Index: http://nationaltemperatureindex.com DCL Dialogue on line: http://www.dcldialogue.com Random Quotations Generator: http://www.goodquotations.com Over 13,000 searchable quotations. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "World News Now Discussion List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/wnndl?hl=en.
