Like most kids my age, I was heavily influenced by Walt Disney, Jay Ward, Captain Kangaroo (Bill Keeshan), and Forrest J. Ackerman (editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, and an SF agent). But there are other names which were a big influence on me, although less famous, but more ubiquitous:
Paul Frees – Everyone remembers Mel Blanc, the Warner Brothers cartoon voice, but Frees seemed to show up in more places. He was the voice of Ludwig von Drake, and of Boris Badenov and Inspector Fenwick, and of the Undertaker and Mr. Fezziwig in Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. He was Meowrice in Gay Puree, singing alongside Judy Garland and Robert Gourmet. He did countless voices for Disney, Jay Ward, and UPA. He was also the “go-to” guy for dubbing foreign movies, so his voice shows up all over the original Godzilla and Rodan and The Sword and the Dragon. I’m certain that, even though he isn’t credited (even on the internet Movie Database), he’s the voice of the Romnan soldier making the speech to the captured slaves in Spartacus (Just before they all shout “I am Spartacus!”). His deep mellifluos and versatile voice used to be all over the place, almost always without a face.
Herbert S. Zim – An author at Golden Books, he wrote several books that introduced me to science. He was also an editor, responsible for whole series at Golden. But his biggest contribution, without a doubt, was as editor and founder of the line of Golden Guides, which were the indispensable nature guides of my youth (and essential for Boy Scouting). Peterson’s and other guides are more extensive and informative, but back then nobosdy I knew ever heard of them. The Golden guides were available everywhere, relatively cheap (although still almost twice the cost of other paperbacks – expensive to a kid), slim and portable. Several of them are still in print. Some people have claimed that Heinlein lifted the last name of Seargent Zim from him, which wouldn’t be surprising if he was cribbing from the Goklden Nature Guide of Insects.
Curt Siodmak – Hard to believe he only died in 2000. You often see omnibus editions of Dracula, Frankenstein, and Dr. Jeckyll and Mister Hyde. The reason you don’t see any wolfman story bound in is that there really wasn’t a major werewold book. In fact, there wasn’t much of a werewold legend, despite what you mighgt think from the movies. A lot of man-into-wolf stuff was tied in with vampires. Siodmak didn’t invent the Hollywood wolfman – The Werewolf of london had done that five years before The Wolfman, but in his first screenplay Siodmak (who was a novelist with a PhD in Math) ignored a lot of the earlier stuff to create his own and lasting “mythology” of werewolves – the whole Pentagram thing and the verse about “Even a man who goes to Chuirch by day…” Without Siodmak’s script, the werewolf might have languished like Universal’s “The Cat and the Canary”, and been forgotten except to film buffs, instead of being a major Modern Myth. Siodmak also wrote “Donovan’s Brain”, the original dismbodied-brain-floating-in-the-aquarium story. It was filmed three times and adapted for the radio. He also gave us wonderfully awful stuff like Riders to the Stars, a justly-forgotten sf film from the late 1950s.
John Balderston – another scripter for Universal, who first achieved real fame by revamping Hamilton Deane’s original atage script for Dracula into a version that turned the play from a regional play to a hit in London and New York. He then wrote the screenplays for The Mummy, the Bride of Frankenstein, and others.
Who were the obscure but ubiquitous influences in your life?
