Howard Morris, 85, Comic Actor and Voiceover Artist (Ernest T. Bass)
NY Sun | 5/23/05 | STEPHEN MILLER

Howard Morris, who died Saturday at 85, was an actor and voiceover artist who became a familiar figure to television viewers of the early 1950s as one of the regulars on "Your Show of Shows," the Sid Caesar variety series that launched some of the biggest names in American comedy.

While his face was less known to later generations, Morris's voice popped up all over the airwaves. He could be heard in cartoons, as Fred Flintstone's boss, Mr. Slate, and as Jughead Jones in various televised versions of the "Archie" comic strip, as well as the title character in the animated series "The Atom Ant Show." Morris could also be heard in hundreds of advertisements, as the voice of the Qantas Airways koala ("I hate Qantas"), and as the Hamburglar, burbling "Robble Robble" while making off with Mayor McCheese's lunch in spots for McDonald's. "I have a beach house at Malibu with arches on top of it," he once claimed.

Sporting a list of show-business credits even more varied than his list of marriages - there were six in all - Morris directed such film comedies as "With Six You Get Eggroll" (1968) and "Don't Drink the Water" (1969), as well as episodes of "Hogan's Heroes," "Bewitched," and the original pilot of "Get Smart."

As an actor, he made appearances on "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "The Twilight Zone," and he attained continuing celebrity for a series of appearances as Ernest T. Bass, a rock-throwing, doggerel-spouting hillbilly on "The Andy Griffith Show." A sample of Bass's poetry, written by Morris: "If I knew you was coming, I know what I'd do, I'd a rose both arms, and I'd a wove at you!"

www.nysun.com/article/14245

All the really great actors are gone.

It's me, it's me!

How DO you do Mrs. WIIII-LEEEEE?...







(The article didn't mention it, but IIRC he also played Jerry Lewis' father in the original The Nutty Professor... )

Yep, Mr. Elmer Kelp

I ain't no creature, Andy!