Wednesday, February 28, 2007

WALKER EDMISTON, 81

The speedy Brother Richard captures the point for this obituary, and although you may say "Walker Who?" the voice was familiar. CNN reports:
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Edmiston had a children's show on local television (in Los Angeles), "The Walker Edmiston Show," which featured his own puppets, including Kingsley the Lion and Ravenswood the Buzzard.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he voiced many characters on shows created by Sid and Marty Krofft, including Dr. Blinkey and Orson the Vulture on "H.R. Pufnstuf" and Sparky the Firefly on "Bugaloos."
Born in St. Louis, Edmiston also voiced Ernie the Keebler elf in TV commercials.

10 comments:

John Stone said...

Captain Briney is dead too ... probably from liver failure....

I hope he took that stinkin' little bastard monkey with him ...

Anonymous said...

I wonder if Edmiston's funeral services will be held in a hollow tree?

Anonymous said...

Wayne Grisham, a/k/a Captain Briney, died several years ago of cancer, at the end of a long career of teaching at Strafford High School. He was extremely popular with the kids there.

Salty the Monkey died of complications from HIV years ago at a flophouse in Miami, after running away from a circus retirement park. Nobody cried when Salty died.

Anonymous said...

I believe CNN, for once, is wrong. Parley Baer, who was Chester on the radio show Gunsmoke - along with the mayor on Andy Grifith Show and the cranky Judge next door on the Addams Family, was the voice for many years of Ernie the Keebler Elf. Maybe Edmiston was Baer's replacement when he died.

Jeff Boggs
KTXR-KWTO-KBFL

Larry Burkum said...

Also appearing on the Gunsmoke radio program was Howard McNear who went on to play “Floyd the Barber” on The Andy Griffith Show.

Anonymous said...

Yes, Doc Larry, you know classic radio. Bill Conrad was Matt Dillion and the radio show was a tad grittier than the TV show. Doc was kind of ghoulish (which is funny compared to "Floyd") and Kitty is refered to sometimes as a 'Madam' and sometimes as a 'lady of the evening.'

Jeff Boggs

John Stone said...

Ah .. Wayne Grisham ... I had forgotten. And also the name of that shit-head beast Salty.

Mary Elisabeth Cox, who was my second mother, had her cooking show on KTTS Ch 10 at noon and I think Briney had the cartoon show at 4. Up in the original studio at Jefferson and Walnut -- upstairs -- with the floor that acted like it would collapse from the weight of the cameras at any time.

I hated Salty -- the SOB about bit my finger off one day.

Anonymous said...

I was a kid in Springfield, moved away long ago. I recall a clown companion for Captain Briney, and one thing on the web has a photo of the Captain with a Clown. This would have been sometime in the mid to late 1960s. I recall he mimed to Buck Owen's "Tiger by the Tail" once...anyway, I think his name was Tin Tin or something like that, and I think he may have been drafted and sent off to Viet Nam---no, I'm not kidding.

Can anybody help me out with this? Please post, and thanks in advance.

Anonymous said...

I've been writing a novel that takes place in the 50's and early 60's in the Ozarks. From what I can tell from old newspaper ads for KOLR TV 10 (then known as KTTS) there were two different clowns. One was called Popcorn and the other was Ten-Spot.

Now for a real strange bit of irony or something. I mentioned that Parley Baer was the voice of the Keebler Elf and Chester on radio's Gunsmoke. Walker Edmiston was in an episode of Maverick called "Gun-shy" which was a parody of Gunsmoke. Edmiston played a limping deputy named Clyde.

Jeff Boggs

Anonymous said...

Thanks Jeff---I hadn't thought of spelling it "ten" so I did a search for "Ten-Ten" instead of Tin-Tin and low and behold, a newspaper in Springfield had a mention of "archival footage of Ten-Ten the clown". I couldn't get to the article, but it is nice to know my memory was right after 40 years!!!