Chuck McCann
| Chuck McCann | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
September 2, 1934 Brooklyn, New York, United States |
| Occupation | Actor, voice actor, television personality |
| Years active | 1940s–present |
Chuck McCann (born September 2, 1934) is an American stage, film, television, and voice actor and television personality.
McCann was a comedy giant to a generation of children who grew up watching his children's shows in the New York City metropolitan area during the 1960s, having worked his way up to regional star status by apprenticing on a number of other children's shows, such as Captain Kangaroo and Rootie Kazootie (the show on which he met his one-time puppeteer and sidekick, Paul Ashley). The best-selling The First Family, an early '60s LP record album which lampooned the newly elected President John F. Kennedy and his family, included McCann among its voices.
Until late 1967, the tall, portly, moon-faced McCann hosted comedy/variety TV puppet shows in the New York area. McCann (with Ashley) did The Puppet Hotel for WNTA-TV, Channel 13; then Laurel & Hardy & Chuck, Let's Have Fun, and The Chuck McCann Show for WPIX, Channel 11; and finally, The Chuck McCann Show, The Great Bombo's Magic Cartoon Circus Lunchtime Show, and Chuck McCann's Laurel and Hardy Show for WNEW-TV, Channel 5. In addition, Chuck was the comedy sidekick on the WPIX long-running Clay Cole Show.
His career was burgeoning by the time he left Channel 5, a victim of changing TV trends. By the end of the 1960s, he had appeared to critical acclaim in the 1968 film The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and performed regularly on CBS's The Garry Moore Show and Happy Days (not the later sitcom).
He also began a successful animation acting career, doing everything from Bob Kane's Cool McCool to Sonny the Cuckoo Bird ("I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!") in commercials for General Mills. He had even been one of the stars of producer George Schlatter's ill-fated offshoot of Laugh-In, the one-episode Turn-On.
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