Acting, Cartoons and John Stephenson

The man to your right may look like an irritable boss and, in fact, he played one on TV. You wouldn’t have seen him though. That’s because John Stephenson supplied the voice for Mr. Slate on The Flintstones.

He portrayed a bunch of other characters on the show, too, including private eye Perry Gunite. In fact, for a number of years, it seems he found his way into most of Hanna-Barbera’s productions in secondary and/or nemesis roles. His voice is the one that comes to mind when you think of a villain foiled by “those meddling kids and that dog” on the original incarnation of Scooby Doo.

We’ve talked about the late Mr. Stephenson’s career here before—on radio, in live-action television, in animation. But you’ll be able to hear about it from a different perspective. John’s son Roger will be the guest of Stu Shotak on the Stu’s Show podcast next Wednesday at 4 p.m. West Coast time. Roger grew up while his father was at the peak of his long career and will likely have plenty of insights into his dad that cartoon fans don’t know. So tune in. Click here.

Earlier this month, we clipped a piece from the Los Angeles Times of April 28, 1989 where Janet Waldo was interviewed during her recording for her ill-fated part in the Jetsons movie. Stephenson was interviewed, too. Here’s his portion:

Stephenson is the old guard—a stage and radio actor who takes his voices seriously, even when voicing Tom and Jerry in the popular cat-and-mouse cartoon.
In his cartoon work, there were times he was “literally talking to myself.” In one half-hour “Flintstone” caper, he had nine voices and had to mark his script in different colors to keep them straight.
Stephenson may seem a perennial second banana, playing Mr. Slate to Fred Flintstone, Mr. Dingwall to Yogi Bear. He doesn’t see it that way.
“These are the guys the other guys kick around. They provoke the action,” Stephenson said in a stately voice that could easily reach the far rows of any theater.

Mr. Slate, for example, was always making Fred and Barney miserable, but in the end, they always bested the boss. Since Slate provoked the action, Stephenson said, “I never thought of his as a second banana.”
The characters, including Doggie Daddy in the “Augie Doggie” cartoon, Fancy from “Top Cat,” Mr Arable in “Charlotte’s Web,” Finkerton in “Inch High Private Eye,” and the Sheriff in “Robin Hoodnik” are “the fun parts” of his work.
With his courtly manners and resonant voice, Stephenson seems almost too dignified to play cartoon characters. But he said he never feels silly because he doesn’t view his characters as one-dimensional.
“It’s their different facets that are intriguing. You can stretch as far as you want. It’s exaggerated, but it still reflects life.”
Although his two children always got a kick from dad’s gigs, Stephenson always saw voice acting as just a job. Stephenson, who wouldn’t give his age, said he doesn’t do his shtick at parties, and he doesn’t entertain for adults. “Some people can turn it on and off. Away from the mike, I don’t like to do this,” he said.
Stephenson has had a varied career—from stage plays to product pitchman; from television appearances on “Dragnet” and “People’s Choice” (where he played Jackie Cooper’s neighbor, Roger Crutcher, another second banana) to Armed Forces training films and the voice for some Mattel toys. He hosted the travel show “Bold Journey” from 1956-57 and appeared in the 1965 NBC soap “Morning Star.”
Even as a boy in Kenosha, Wis., Stephenson wanted to act. But acting was a risky profession, so he tried studying law. He interrupted his education to serve as a radio operator-gunner flying B-24s out of Kunming, China, during World War II, and when he returned to school, it was as a theater arts major at Northwestern.
Trained for the stage, Stephenson “fell into radio by accident.” When I moved to Los Angeles in1949, I found you had two choices—radio or movies.
He found plenty of work playing lead and featured parts in hundreds of network radio shows, including the title role in “The Count of Monte Christo” and the lead in the CBS comedy series “It’s Always Sunday,” but he knew by the 1950s that “radio was doomed. When radio died, you found yourself blending into television.”

Although radio work was low profile, it was satisfying “because you could wear many hats, you didn’t have to be locked into your own skin. It’s like putting a lamp shade on your voice. Age and image were not barriers.” There were those who referred to radio people as “throat actors,” a term Stephenson sees as derogatory. “They thought that was all they were getting. You had to be an actor from the top of your toes to the top of your head.”
The early cartoons like “The Flintstones” have held up so well, he said, because the writing was so good and the human condition is the same.
“The beautiful thing about cartoons is that there is no time barrier.” But, he added, with a rueful chuckle, “If we knew they would last so long, we would have asked for more money.”

In case you’re wondering, Stephenson’s son didn’t go into voice acting or show business. Instead, Roger spent many years serving the community in law enforcement.

Those of you who love the early Hanna-Barbera animated series (and you must, otherwise you wouldn’t be here) may not know that Stu has interviewed a number of people over the years about those fun cartoons: Janet Waldo, Jerry Eisenberg, Tony Benedict and the late Earl Kress, who probably knew more about the cartoons than anyone else. Those interviews are available for purchase for under $1. They’re bargains.

If Earl were still with us, he might have had an answer to this question. To the right, you see a makeover of Mr. Slate for the Flintstones episode “Moonlight Maintenance.” Why does he look different, Stu enquired of me, because the character had already been established by the time this cartoon appeared on TV. I can’t, and won’t, pass myself off as an expert on very much to do with the studio. The credits for this particular episode say the layout artists were Dick Bickenbach and Ed Benedict. The layout guys generally designed the incidental characters. My only guess is Benedict wanted to try something different if he was the man behind it (I don’t see Bick being responsible). This was a fifth season cartoon (1964-65) and, to be honest, the series was more miss than hit that year. It was also dealing with the real possibility of cancellation as it was being killed in the ratings by TV newcomer Herman and the rest of The Munsters on CBS. And H-B was starting to be stretched pretty thin, with Jonny Quest, Magilla Gorilla and Peter Potamus in production, with Secret Squirrel and Atom Ant being developed. But all that production meant more voice work for John Stephenson, and I’m sure he didn’t mind.

John Stephenson

For years, cartoons came and went in the production line at Hanna-Barbera, but John Stephenson was always there, lending his voice to comic and not-so-comic characters.

John Stephenson died last night at the age of 91, according to his son Roger. He had been in a care home and had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for some time.

He was just as comfortable in front of the camera as in front of a microphone. He has a long list of credits on live-action shows, some in regular roles, and probably a longer list in cartoons. He graduated from radio to television with ease and was the first person who appeared on camera when “I Love Lucy” debuted in 1951 (Stephenson was the commercial pitch-man).

For someone who failed an audition with Hanna-Barbera, he sure had a long career there.

Stephenson had all kinds of roles at the studio but his most famous one is, arguably, Mr. Slate on “The Flintstones.” In the photo above, you see him hovering over Mel Blanc (and blocking Alan Reed) as Joe Barbera goes over the story with the Flintstones’ voice cast (the bald guy in the back is Associate Producer Alan Dinehart).

Stephenson was from Kenosha, about 40 or so miles from Milwaukee, where the Journal felt he was local enough to profile in a feature article published February 13, 1963. This was after his first regular cartoon role as Fancy-Fancy on “Top Cat” had gone into Saturday morning reruns and well before he cropped up on seemingly every “Scooby-Doo” episode as a stumped law enforcement guy or a disguised villain who would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids and... well, you know the line.

The article sums up Stephenson’s entertainment career, and has a surprise about the role at Hanna-Barbera he didn’t get.

Seldom Seen, Often Heard
Ex-Kenoshan With Versatile Vocal Cords Provides Voices for the Cartoon Characters You See on TV
By J.D. SPIRO
Journal Special Correspondence
Hollywood, Calif.—In Hollywood’s TV cartoon workshops, one of the major tasks is to find the right voices for the characters that pop out of the inkwells. Since not only features and shorts but also an increasing number of commercials employ these unseen performers, there is a growing need for them, and the opportunities are attracting more and more actors with vocal versatility.
Among the better known and highly regarded members of this group is John Stephenson, 39, from Kenosha, Wis., who finds working in this field more rewarding and exciting than anything he ever did in his previous show business experience.
“It has been keeping me so busy,” he said, “that from a dollar and cents point of view I can no longer afford to make motion pictures.”
In ‘The Flintstones’
Stephenson has been the voice of innumerable characters in such shows at “The Flintstones,” “Top Cat” and others. “The Flintstones,” he said, “was my first animated series. I auditioned for both Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble when they were still on the drawing boards. But I ended up doing various other roles, such as Garry Granite, Perry Gunnite, Boss Slate, Mrs. Slate, Joe Rockhead and more.”
In “Top Cat,” Stephenson, besides doing other parts, has a starring vocal role as Fancy-Fancy, the ladies man of the back alley set.
“I tried to make him come across as a kind of Brooklyn Cary Grant,” he explained.
In the cartoon studios, Stephenson is known for his creativeness and his broad range. Where dialects are needed he can do English, French, German, Italian and Russian besides the typical accents of the different sections of the United States. He also has a talent for trick voices.
Champ in Oratory
“Sometimes in the animated cartoon field,” he said, “I also do impersonations of widely known people. For these I often audition on the phone. The other day a producer called up and wanted to know whether I could impersonate W.C. Fields. I replied by doing it for him while we were talking.”
Stephenson, whose parents, Mr. and Mrs. Ray Stephenson, now live at 1029 E. Idaho st., Milwaukee, first became interested in acting while attending Kenosha high school and studying speech under John Davies, who encouraged him to give it a try. In his senior year (1941) he became Wisconsin state champion in oratory and dramatic declamation in the National Forensic league competitions. He was runnerup when the various state winners met at Terre Haute, Ind.
The next fall, Stephenson entered Ripon college, where he was active in campus drama. His intention then, however, was to become a lawyer, and after finishing at Ripon, to take a law course at the University of Wisconsin. After Pearl Harbor, World War II interrupted his studies and he became a radio operator and gunner in the air corps. By the time he got out of uniform he had decided to be an actor. Because of this change of plans, he took a course in speech and drama at Northwestern university, and he began his professional career in Chicago radio while still a student.
In 1948, with only three months to go before getting his M.A. degree, Stephenson came to Hollywood for a visit. Here he fell in with some actors he had worked with in Chicago. They encouraged him to try his luck in Hollywood radio. It proved so promising he decided to stay. He appeared in “It’s Always Sunday,” and played the title role in another, “The Count of Monte Cristo.”

After Hollywood television began to flourish in the early 1950’s Stephenson turned to it not only as an actor but also as an announcer and host-narrator. He did his first announcing with “I Love Lucy.” Later he played a continuing role in “People’s Choice,” starring Jackie Cooper—the part of Roger Crutcher, a rival for the affections of Pat Breslin. Following a year with Cooper, he became host-narrator of “Bold Journey,” then returned to acting in various shows.
Does Commercials
Stephenson also appears, or is heard as an off camera voice, in many TV commercials. Recently he went to Detroit to do one for the Ford Motor Co., intended for use in connection with the Leonard Bernstein-New York Philharmonic specials, and he filmed two others for Ford here.
“The one in Detroit, which we did at the Dearborn testing grounds,” he said, “was only two minutes long but it took a week to shoot.”
In TV, Stephenson also speaks for Bell & Howell in their specials and is heard in a number of other commercials. Besides his radio and TV roles, he has done six movies, the latest “Spartacus.”
With his wife, Jean, and two children, Roger, 5, and Katie, 2, the former Wisconsin actor lives in the Woodland Hills district of the San Fernando Valley.

Once Stephenson landed at Hanna-Barbera, Joe Barbera, Alan Dinehart, Gordon Hunt and the other recording directors wouldn’t let him go. It seems like he provided voices for just about every H-B series for the next couple of decades (the original “Jetsons” being a notable exception). 30-plus years after his arrival, his rumbling yell of “Flint-stone!” from the mouth of Mr Slate was still being recorded for soundtracks, this time for TV movies of the Modern Stone Age Family.

We offer our condolences to his family. I’m sure his countless fans do, too.

He's 91

A happy birthday wish to this man.



Okay, you may know him better as:



Or as:



If you haven’t guessed it’s John Stephenson, you must be new to Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

You can read more about his long career by clicking on this old post. He appeared on camera in a pile of shows, with a regular role on “The People’s Choice,” guest appearances on many others (including “The Beverly Hillbillies;” the picture above is from a 1963 episode), and a hosting job on a documentary show called “Bold Venture” on ABC. Mr. Stephenson told the Milwaukee Journal years ago that he auditioned for both Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble when “The Flintstones” was being cast. Evidently, Joe Barbera heard something in his voice that resulted in a long career as co-starring or incidental voices in Hanna-Barbera cartoons, including Fancy Fancy on “Top Cat” and “Mr Slate” on “The Flintstones.” In a way, his connection with Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera’s animation came earlier when he landed a job with the Philip Morris Co. announcing “I Love Lucy” in 1951 You can hear his voice over the animation that originally opened the show, animation made by the Hanna-Barbera unit at MGM.

We understand Mr. Stephenson enjoyed his birthday with his family and at least one piece of his favourite banana cream pie. We wish him the best of the day and hope he enjoys good health for birthdays to come.

I Hear Voices

You hear their voices on cartoons but, of course, you never see them. They’re the great voice actors that Hanna-Barbera hired. Most of them had training in the days of radio drama and comedy before television bludgeoned it to death. Some did live action television, so their faces may be familiar.



We’ve posted pictures of some of them here before—Daws Butler, Don Messick, Doug Young, the casts of The Flintstones, The Jetsons and Top Cat. And you’ve seen others elsewhere on the internet. But I’ve got a file folder with photos and clippings that I don’t think have been posted, so I’m doing it now.

This is not intended as a complete, definitive photo gallery, so don’t ask “Why isn’t there a picture of Lennie Weinrib?” and then list every cartoon role he ever played. I’m just putting up a miscellany of graphic files I’ve accumulated. Some are trade ads, others are publicity head shots.



Daws Butler improved every cartoon he appeared in, and some needed a lot of help. This shot must be from the early ‘50s when he was working with Stan Freberg, and comes from a biography about him broadcast years ago on PBS. Daws had so many great voices, it’s impossible to pick a favourite. I do have a favourite one-shot voice, though. It’s when Daws did his Fred Allen impression in the Huckleberry Hound cartoon “Skeeter Trouble.” My dad came into the living room when the cartoon was on and remarked that it was Fred Allen. “No, dad, it’s Daws Butler,” I replied. It’s the only time I ever corrected my father; kids didn’t do that back then. But this was important. We were talking cartoons, after all. (You can also hear Daws as Fred Allen in the August 1956 CBS Radio Workshop production “An Analysis of Satire”).



Mel Blanc was the King of Theatrical Cartoon Actors. There was no one better. He was a tremendous actor, yet he failed when handed a starring role in a radio sitcom in 1946, though the one-dimensional characters and trite concept were the reasons. He didn’t work for Hanna-Barbera until The Flintstones came along. He was Secret Squirrel and, well, a bunch of other characters that didn’t do a lot for me. This trade newspaper ad is from 1950, which gives you an idea what roles Mel thought were his most important at the time.



I love Howie Morris. One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen is Howie as Uncle Goopy on the This is Your Life send up on Sid Caesar’s show. His first H-B role, to the best of my knowledge, was Jet Screamer on The Jetsons, though he was pretty funny as Harlan, Cogswell’s lackey. He starred as Atom Ant, tried to enliven Magilla Gorilla cartoons as Mr. Peebles and got a Kellogg’s cereal gig as the voice of Hillbilly Goat, pushing Sugar Stars. He also told off Joe Barbera in language not fit for television, thus resulting in a change of cartoon addresses to the Filmation studio.



Know who this is? He’s in character as Solomon Levy on The Goldbergs radio show. It’s Alan Reed. This trade ad shot is from 1943. He carved out a good radio career before being hired as Fred Flintstone. His best role was probably that of hammy poet Falstaff Openshaw on Fred Allen’s show; the Falstaff voice got recycled as “Frederick” in the first season of The Flintstones. Reed did dialects on radio as well; Pasquale on Life With Luigi may be his best-known one.



This is the guy that Reed replaced as Fred Flintstone because he couldn’t keep enough gravel in his voice during recording sessions. It’s a picture of a young Bill Thompson, who theatrical cartoon fans will know as Droopy (MGM) and J. Audubon Woodlore (Disney). Old radio fans remember his long stint on “Fibber McGee and Molly” starting in the late ‘30s, interrupted by a stint in the U.S. Navy during the war. He was billed as “Jackie Coogan’s Double” at age five and went into vaudeville at 12. The Fibber gig dried up about the time MGM closed its cartoon studio, so Thompson got a job in 1957 as a community relations executive for Union Oil. That’s what he was doing when he arrived at Hanna-Barbera. He starred as Touché Turtle but didn’t do a lot of work for the studio. He died in July 15, 1971 at age 58.



Paul Winchell entertained audiences on radio, TV and cartoons. His sneering Dick Dastardly on Wacky Races was great, though I suspect his first H-B “appearances” were on The Banana Splits Show (both of which debuted in 1968). Winchell, of course, was Gargamel in the studio’s take on The Smurfs and popped up on other series, and made a fine Tigger for Disney. He was born Paul Wilchinsky and he, his father Sol (a tailor by trade), mother Clara and sister Rita were in Los Angeles by 1940 where Paul was acting in what was left of vaudeville. As you likely know, he was an energetic ventriloquist. You should check out a What’s My Line show where Winchell is on the panel and the mystery guests are Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. You can read Mark Evanier’s remembrance of Paul Winchell HERE.

Since we’re on the topic of ventriloquists, Yakky Doodle’s voice is still with us. Jimmy Weldon’s fame from his television appearances in California in the 1950s with his puppet Webster Webfoot. This photo is from 1959. Weldon had replaced Shari Lewis on “Hi Mom,” shot in New York, and would very soon be back on the West Coast. Red Coffey had been doing the voice of a little duck in the earliest Hanna-Barbera cartoons but when the duck was given his own series in 1961, Weldon won the role. He’s spent time in retirement, if you want to call it that, as a motivational speaker.

Hanna-Barbera’s utility man was John Stephenson, who came on board after The Flintstones went to air in 1960. Besides Mr. Slate, he grumbled a lot about “if it wasn’t for those meddling kids and their dog,” started out playing Dr. Benton Quest until Joe Barbera or someone decided to replace him with Don Messick, tried out his Cary Grant voice on Top Cat, had supporting roles on Breezly and Sneezly and Squiddly Diddly (yeah, I know, not exactly two of H-B’s greatest), used Paul Lynde-inspired voices in a couple of series and even voiced later incarnations of Doggie Daddy when Doug Young left California in 1966. He seems to have been in every one of those mid-1970s Tom and Jerry TV cartoons, the stiff-looking, talky ones where the cat and mouse are friends. I always enjoyed watching him on Hogan’s Heroes because I recognised his voice from cartoons. He was still doing commercials up to a few years ago as part of Dick Orkin’s stock company and is apparently doing well in his late 80s. The bio is from a mid-‘50s Radio-Television Mirror magazine when Stephenson was on the sitcom The People’s Choice.



I’m not a fan of the Cindy Bear character, but here are some publicity photos of the young woman who played her, Julie Bennett. The first one is from 1950, the second from 1951. I suspect Cindy’s voice was inspired by magnolia-scented Leila Ransom on radio’s The Great Gildersleeve, voiced by Shirley Mitchell (imitating Una Merkel), who had the misfortune of appearing in Hanna-Barbera’s Roman Holidays. Bennett’s first role for the studio was on “Masking For Trouble” (1959), a Quick Draw McGraw cartoon. Her whereabouts today, unfortunately, are unknown.



Okay, I’m cheating now. Gil Mack never appeared in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. But he voiced a number of H-B characters on Golden Records recorded in New York City. Gil racked up credits on some great shows, as you can see by this 1940 trade newspaper ad, but imitating Daws Butler and Don Messick’s characters wasn’t exactly his forte.



And I’m cheating again. Jack Shaindlin and John Seely never voiced characters but their music was prominent behind the voices on the soundtracks of H-B cartoons from 1957 until Hoyt Curtin started writing underscores in 1960. Biographies of both Shaindlin and Seely have been posted elsewhere on the blog. These are trade ads; Seely’s is from 1961 and Shaindlin’s from probably a decade earlier. This is as good a post as any to put them on the blog.



This is a funny photo I grabbed off Facebook. You know who it is. But someone didn’t. The caption reads:

Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland.

One of the joys of being an archivist is finding mistakes and correcting them. We found this photo in the Imogene Coca file, but it's not her. Students of 1950s television or fans of voice actors, might recognize the face as that of Arnold Stang. But when and where did he dress up in drag?

One Google search later and we learned that the picture is from an episode of the "Red Skelton Show," broadcast on April 2, 1957. One of Skelton's recurring sketch characters, "Cookie," is in the Navy and there's a chance for shore leave in Japan as the prize in a drama contest. So Red became a six-foot-three Romeo to shipmate Stang's five-foot-three Juliet.

Arnold Stang had to be a great comedian to be able to hold his own on TV with hammy scene-stealers like Skelton and Milton Berle. Here’s Stang with his alter ego in a more familiar photo you’ve seen here before.



Of course, there were many more actors who settled in front of the microphones at the Hanna-Barbera studios. All of them were talented. All of them made fans laugh, even though they couldn’t see us and, in a case of tit for tat, we couldn’t see them.

John Stephenson, Man of a Thousand Roles

I’m thoroughly convinced that there was a rule for years at the Hanna-Barbera studio—the John Stephenson Rule. One that read: “John Stephenson must appear at least once in every H-B cartoon series.” It sure seemed like it, anyway.

Sure, Mel Blanc was the “Man of a Thousand Voices,” but John Stephenson was the Man of a Thousand Roles. For years, he voiced recurring, weekly cartoon characters and countless incidental ones. It got to a point where you expected to hear him and his voice became identified with Hanna-Barbera as much as the studio’s sound effects and the brassy scores of Hoyt Curtin.

Readers of this blog can probably pick a favourite Stephenson role: the perpetually-annoyed Mr. Slate on “The Flintstones,” the Cary Grant-ish Fancy-Fancy on “Top Cat,” the original Benton Quest on “Jonny Quest,” and innumerable growling trumped villains who snarled “I might have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids and that dog...”

Unlike Mel Blanc, Stephenson had a long career on camera as well. He tested out his German accent a bunch of times on “Hogan’s Heroes” in the mid to late ‘60s; at least that’s the first thing that comes to my mind. His television career goes back long before that. While a student at Northwestern University, he debuted in a drama series on WBKB. The first episode, “The Far-Off Hills,” aired April 4, 1946. Ten years later, he appeared in not one, but two series. He was the host of ABC’s “Bold Journey,” showing amateur travel films and interviewing whoever shot the footage, while humorous ads for Ralston-Purina interrupted the proceedings. And he also showed up on NBC on the only show starring a non-animated talking dog: “The People’s Choice.” He talked about his character in this syndicated newspaper feature (I can’t find a version with a byline) that appeared in the Oakland Tribune on September 30, 1956.

How to Stuff a Shirt---And Garnish With Old School Tie
How do you stuff a shirt? Actor John Stephenson recommends this recipe: a full measure of pomposity, add restraint and spice with cliches and false heartiness, then baste with braggadocio, and garnish with an old school tie.
Mix well and serve to television audiences as Roger Crutcher, the stuffy “heavy” on NBC-TV’s “The People’s Choice,” starring Jackie Cooper and seen Thursdays on KRON.
Stephenson, a 32-year-old alumnus of the Kenosha, Wis. Little Theater and Northwestern University’s school of dramatic arts, is an expert on the subject. He’s played many a stuffed shirt on radio, TV and in movies.
He defines the character as “the businessman who feels Sunday afternoon is a poor time to sponsor a television program because ‘everyone’s out playing polo.’
“He reads the Wall Street Journal on the commuters’ train, but can’t wait to get at the Police Gazette in the sanctity of the barber shop.
“He proposes to a girl by saying, ‘Think of what I can offer you...’
“He’s long-winded, a back-slapper of the higher echelon, but looks down his nose at the lower echelon, and can carry it off even if they’re taller than he is.
“He’s not exactly a cube, but a square, who gets a joke a few seconds later than everyone else.
“He’s sartorially correct at all times. He never even puts on a sweatshirt mentally for a down-to-earth talk with anyone.
“He’s often the physical type who once captained the boxing team at Princeton— and doesn’t hesitate to remind you of it, for ‘I’ is the first letter in his alphabet.
“And if he meets with reversal, he’ll rationalize by saying, ‘Oh, well, it’s tax deductible, anyway.’
“But,” admonishes Stephenson, “don’t sell the stuffed shirt short. He can’t be portrayed as completely obnoxious. His good qualities usually out-balance the superficial ones that stamp him as stuffy. He’s competent, proper, and restrained, as well as basically honest.”
Stephenson, a rugged Air Force veteran who saw combat action in China during World II, went to Hollywood for a visit in 1948 and stayed. He lives in North Hollywood with his wife, Jean.
He enjoys playing the role of Crutcher, Cooper’s rival for the affections of pretty Patricia Breslin of “The People’s Choice.”
“The part is not written too stiffly,” said Stephenson. “Roger may be a pill, but every once in a while he gets a chance to show he’s humanly sugar-coated.”

Stephenson was born August 9, 1923 to Wisconsin natives G. Ray and Martha Stephenson; his father had been an embalmer, was Commander of the Kenosha Legion Post and wrote a newspaper story in 1918 outlining how he had survived the sinking of the Tuscania by a torpedo off the Irish coast. He was named for his grandfather and was the oldest son in the family. Young John was making headlines in the early ‘40s. While still in school, he made the finals of the National Forensic League’s annual speech tournament. It’s easy picturing him reciting a serious monologue.

Besides the Man of a Thousand Roles in cartoons, he’s the Man of More Than a Thousand Roles in commercials. He may still be doing work for Dick Orkin’s company; I heard his familiar voice a couple of years ago on some radio spots.

It’s a shame Stephenson hasn’t talked more publicly about his cartoon work. I remember seeing him quoted in a Los Angeles Times News Service piece by Steve Cox a couple of years ago and thinking I’d never read an interview with him before. I’ve dredged up his comments. The piece was published September 11, 2010 to mark the 50th anniversary of “The Flintstones.” Let’s pick out his quotes:

John Stephenson, 87, who carries an undeniably familiar Hanna Barbera intonation in his speaking voice, is one of the last surviving cast members of the iconic show. Most notably, Stephenson portrayed Fred’s bombastic boss at the rock quarry, Mr. Slate, among multitudes of Bedrock citizenry throughout the program's original six-year run.
“I think the show was successful because it was an adult cartoon and viewers associated it with ‘The Honeymooners,’ ” he says. “And with the Stone Age setting and some very good writing, audiences loved it. They still do.”
Stephenson credits [Joe] Barbera’s talent for directing the cast as a key to the show’s charm, at least vocally. During those smoke-filled studio recording sessions (the show was sponsored by Winston cigarettes for a while), it was not uncommon to hear Barbera barking over the speaker, “I paid a lot of money for this script, so I want to hear the lines!”
The verbal gymnastics were always bold and lively. “Very seldom did he want anyone to talk in a moderate tone or conversational tone,” Stephenson explains. “He wanted it up there, right in your face, punctuated, laid out and hit!”

One wonders what Warren Foster would have thought hearing Barbera was paying “a lot of money for this script.”

It seems someone’s always trying to bring back a new version of “Scooby-Doo” or some other Hanna-Barbera cartoon. It’d be nice if they brought back John Stephenson, too. But even if they don’t, it’s reassuring to know he’s still out there, enjoying life we trust. People tend to want some kind of link to their happy childhood times and the Man of a Thousand Roles is one of them.