I just happened to learn that radio comedian Dick Orkin died just before Christmas.
He’s best know for a series of short radio spots featuring his superhero parody, Chickenman (“He’s everywhere! He’s everywhere!”) that started out over WCFL in Chicago during the 60s. Originally conceived as a parody of Batman, Chickenman developed a style of its own, with low-key madness. Orkin wrote the episodes and did the male voices. The show was quickly syndicated and continued throughout the 70s.
Orkin later repeated his success with The Tooth Fairy (he played the title character) and joined up with Dick Bertis to create a series of funny radio ads in the footsteps of Stan Freberg.
Oh, man. I heard The Tooth Fairy when it was broadcast way back in 1982 and thought it was great. I’ve had a hard time finding it, or anyone who had even heard of it. But I never heard his name, or of Chickenman.
Ah, Chickenman. When I was working summers at Del Monte sharpening cutter blades during corn pack, we always tried to arrange our work so that we were in the back actually sharpening when the show was on the radio.
The local station played segments of Chickenman way back in the 60’s, I was in high school and boy, did it crack us up! ‘He’s everywhere, he’s everywhere!’ I can just hear the Commissioner’s secretary, Miss Helfinger, voice dripping with contempt at dealing with those fools!
He was still active in radio advertising up until his death, running a production company in southern California. He had a long-running campaign in Chicago for First American Bank (here’s an ad from the campaign), for which he’d still been doing ads as recently as last year.
I remember Chickenman. I thought it was on WLS rather than WCFL though. Maybe it was after Lujack moved to CFL. I still break out Animal Stories now and then.
My sister was also in radio advertising in Chicago; she worked with Dick occasionally. I always enjoyed the bank ads where he’s trying to talk his grandmother out of some harebrained scheme to make money.
Chickenman was hilarious. “He’s everywhere! He’s everywhere!” was ingrained deep in the synapses of everybody who ever heard it. It would pop up in their brains for the next five decades, more indelible than any Monty Python meme.
Yes, it must seem strange to younger folk to have a 50-year-old radio parody be the headline of your obituary, but that’s like saying that it would be strange to have The Beatles be in the headline of Ringo’s death. Some things just can’t be topped.
People forget that Dick Orkin did a lot of boring ads, too. he was so prolific that you heard his voice on hundreds of “normal” furniture or mattress ads, too – If you grew up in Chicago (or like me, within radio earshot – the best AM stations in Milwaukee were WLS and WCFL).
We used to hear Chickenman on the radio in DC when I was a kid. Suddenly they stopped playing it and there was a local kerfuffle about the missing radio program.
Dick Orkin was most definitely a radio man. His skits required imagination on the part of the viewer to take the place of visuals. I still remember the ads (pseudo-ads?) he did for the thin vinyl record inserts that could be put in magazines.
A burglar breaks into an apartment and finds a brochure on the coffee table advertising the burglar alarm. But the brochure can only simulate the sound of the alarm…bing-da-bing-da-bing, like dat? It was an illustration of what the record could do to sell your (audio) product. I guess you hadda be there.
For certain – the First American Bank ad that I linked to is from that campaign.
When I posted about Orkin’s passing on Facebook, I learned from a former co-worker of mine (I work in advertising, as well, though never worked with Orkin) that her sister was a longtime associate of Orkin’s, and, in fact, was the voice of Grandma in those ads.
Those segments were part of my morning routine getting ready for school. I bought the entire cd set several years ago, to listen to on long road trips. Great memories.
