Rogering Ramjets! It's Gary Owens Part Three

By: Andrew Hershberger
Date: Sunday, March 17, 2002

With Image Entertainment's recent release of the classic cartoon ROGER RAMJET on DVD, Cinescape got the chance to catch up with Gary Owens, the voice behind Roger and many other characters. Today, we present the final part of our talk with Owens.

While Ramjet

is receiving a long overdue revival, and with all Owens' other work, what is it that he finds himself most recognized for?

"ROWAN AND MARTIN'S LAUGH-IN," he says. "The series began January 23, 1968 and prior to that I had been doing shows like the Jack Benny TV show, McHALE'S NAVY, THE MUNSTERS, all those kind of programs and I was a regular on THE GREEN HORNET, with Bruce Lee. LAUGH-IN was so powerful; we had 40 million people every Monday night watching us. 40 million, that's phenomenal. You could go to any city in the country when that was on, walk down the street, and you couldn't go but about two feet without people asking for your autograph or talking to you. Ruth Buzzi and I were the only two regulars who did every show on LAUGH-IN in addition to Rowan and Martin, of course."

"I think my biggest thrill as far as television," he continues, "was having both Jack Benny and John Wayne imitate me on the show. John Wayne came out dressed as me wearing my glasses and put his hand out over his ear. 'From beautiful downtown Burbank,' the Duke spoke and then there's a huge explosion. I jump out, stand next to him and we both announce ROWAN AND MARTIN'S LAUGH-IN. It was very cute."

As LAUGH-IN'S

popularity proved phenomenal, celebrities started jumping over one another to get on the program. One of the most impressive guests was Richard M. Nixon. Owens explains how they tried to get democratic presidential nominee Hubert Humphries on the show, a feat that if achieved may have just changed the course of American history.

"We tried to get Hubert Humphries on the show," he says. "I ran down to meet the press and Humphries said, 'I'll get back to you.' Then he said, 'I don't think I should do it cause you'll throw me through a trap door and throw water on me and hit me with a boxing glove,' and I said, 'Well, we wouldn't do that.' It probably cost him the election, you know, with 40 million viewers and he just barely lost the election to Richard Nixon and Nixon had done it, so it wasn't a good judgment on his part or somebody's part."

With Ramjet and many other Owens-voiced characters playing consistently on the Cartoon Network, does he feel that he's entered a resurgence of popularity, or has it always been a constant?

"Even before LAUGH-IN

it was a constant, because I do about a thousand commercials a year," says Owens. "I was the voice of NBC for about ten years and the voice of comedy for ABC for 15 years with Bob Ridgley. Now I work for Fox and CBS. LAUGH-IN made a lot of difference because it increased my act and it never stopped, thank God. I have always kept working hard and I do everything from four to five commercials everyday and then I do promos for the Networks. This is wonderful and I've been so lucky to do all the things I do."

Things do look wonderful for the ever busy Owens, whose recent work include the following: He filmed a TV pilot with Jonathan Winters for a show called YOUNG AT HEART; he teamed up with Winters for a series of popular comedy albums, including PATIENTS; he's appearing in the upcoming Disney Movie FRANK McCLUSKY, CI; he voiced a new Blue Falcon for DEXTER'S LABORATORY; he plays and appears on the best selling CD-ROM TV LAND PRESENTS: BLAST FROM THE PAST; and he's currently working on his autobiography.

Always with a joke and a smile, Owens bids us farewell to play basketball, concerned that if he doesn't hurry the team will "wonder where I am, or have to put Goldie Hawn in my place."