Monday, April 19, 2010

RIP ALLEN SWIFT

Allen Swift Mad Monster Party

Allen Swift has left us. He was known for doing many cartoon voices over the years including the majority of characters in Scared Silly-favorite "Mad Monster Party" (see below) and much work for Total Television Productions including voicing Simon Bar Sinister and Riff Raff in "Underdog;" and Odie, Itchy Brother and Tooter Turtle in "King Leonardo." And that's just scratching the surface.

He was also known for hosting the Popeye cartoon show as "Captain Allen Swift" - Cartoon Brew sets the dates as September 10, 1956 to September 23, 1960 - on WPIX in New York.

You can read Cartoon Brew's lovely write-up on Swift by clicking here, and you can click here to read Mark Evanier's equally nice write-up. Dave Mackey's always insightful blog offers its own Swift remembrance which you can read here. Kids show historian Kevin Butler concentrates on Swift's involvement hosting kid shows and doing voices for puppets on kid shows, and you can read his thorough remembrance by clicking here. Last but not least Rankin-Bass historian Rick Goldschmidt offers his own nice piece including a run-down of the projects Swift was involved in for that company - click here to see it.

For further reading, you may want to check out some of these animation books about the studios Swift worked with:













Here at Scared Silly, we're most interested in the fact that Swift performed several voices for the classic Rankin-Bass movie, "Mad Monster Party." Those included Felix Flanken, Yetch, Dracula, the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, and assorted additional voices.

You can read my review of "Mad Monster Party" when you click here.

You can watch the closing credits to The King & Odie (a favorite cartoon show of mine) here:

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