Lawson J. Deming

Lawson J. Deming
Lawson J. Deming as "Sir Graves Ghastly"
Born	1913 Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
Died	2007
Years active	Television: 1949–1982

Lawson J. Deming (April 23, 1913 – April 24, 2007) was a radio and TV character actor best known in Detroit, Cleveland, Washington, D.C. and parts of Canada as the Saturday afternoon television horror movie host "Sir Graves Ghastly."

Deming was born and grew up near Cleveland, OH. He attended Western Reserve University's Cleveland College, where he studied speech, dramatic arts and radio production. As part of a college radio play production class, he first appeared on the airwaves of WHK radio in the autumn of 1932. After college, Deming freelanced for a number of area stations and also landed an announcing job in West Palm Beach, FL before returning to his native Cleveland in the 1940s.

The new medium of television greatly interested Deming, and he broke in via Cleveland NBC affiliate KYW-TV as an afternoon movie host in 1949. The show, called One O'Clock Playhouse, ran until 1956. In the early 1960s, Lawson became a regular on the Cleveland children's show Woodrow the Woodsman, starring fellow Cleveland actor J. Clayton Conroy. Deming's face never appeared on the air, but he was the puppeteer and supplied multiple voices for the animal characters on the show. It was here that he finally got a chance on television to use his talents (honed on radio) for doing accents. It was stated that he could do 27 ethnic dialects.

In 1965, KYW-TV was sold and the new ownership decided they did not want any locally produced children's shows. Woodrow the Woodsman eventually got picked up by WJBK, TV2 in Detroit, late in 1966. WJBK had lost their popular horror movie host "Morgus the Magnificent" (Sid Noel) a year earlier. Shortly after Woodrow began taping, TV2 approached Lawson about filling a Saturday afternoon horror movie slot, and Sir Graves Big Show (as it was originally called) was born.