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Charles John Thomas McCann (September 2, 1934 – April 8, 2018) was an American actor, comedian, puppeteer, commercial presenter and television host. His career spanned over 70 years. He was best known for his work in presenting children's television programming and animation, as well as his own program The Chuck McCann Show and he also recorded comedy parody style albums. Career Early life and career McCann was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Valentine J. McCann (whose father had performed in “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West” show) and the former Viola Hennessy. McCann started doing radio voiceovers when he was 6 years old. By the time he was 12 years old, he had struck up a friendship with Stan Laurel, founding a fan club for Laurel and Hardy and doing impressions of Oliver Hardy. He worked his way up to regional star status by apprenticing on a number of children's shows, such as Captain Kangaroo. McCann got his big break performing on The Sandy Becker Show on WABD after the original host vacationed to South America. The best-selling The First Family, an early 1960s LP record album which lampooned the newly elected United States President John F. Kennedy and his family, included McCann among its voices. Variety shows and voice work Until 1975, McCann hosted comedy/variety TV puppet shows in the New York area with Paul Ashley, featuring the Paul Ashley Puppets. Together, they did The Puppet Hotel for WNTA-TV, Channel 13; then Laurel & Hardy & Chuck, Let's Have Fun, and The Chuck McCann Show for WPIX, Channel 11; and finally, The Chuck McCann Show, The Great Bombo's Magic Cartoon Circus Lunchtime Show, and Chuck McCann's Laurel and Hardy Show for WNEW-TV, Channel 5. In addition, Chuck was the comedy sidekick on WPIX's long-running rock music showcase, The Clay Cole Show. During this time, McCann appeared at many New York area venues, including Palisades Amusement Park and Freedomland U.S.A., to meet and entertain children. At Freedomland, McCann hosted a yo-yo contest, filmed several Halloween specials, filmed a WPIX Freedomland special with other children's show hosts and appeared with Clay Cole at the park's Moon Bowl entertainment venue that featured celebrity singers and other performers. McCann's ties to Freedomland are featured in the book Freedomland U.S.A.: The Definitive History (Theme Park Press, 2019). By the end of the 1960s, he had appeared in the 1968 film The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and performed regularly on CBS's The Garry Moore Show. He began an animation acting career, doing everything from Bob Kane's Cool McCool to Sonny the Cuckoo Bird ("I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs" and "Ripe for Rice Krispies!") in commercials for General Mills. He had even been one of the stars of Turn-On, producer George Schlatter's offshoot of Laugh-In. 1970s television In the 1970s, McCann's life and career shifted west, and he relocated to Los Angeles. He made frequent guest appearances on network television shows including Little House on the Prairie, Bonanza, Columbo, The Rockford Files and The Bob Newhart Show. He appeared in the 1973 made-for-TV movie The Girl Most Likely to... and was a regular on Norman Lear's All That Glitters. In addition, he co-starred with Bob Denver in CBS's Saturday-morning sitcom Far Out Space Nuts, which he co-created. The 1970s also brought him fame in a long-running series of commercials for Right Guard antiperspirant: he was the enthusiastic neighbor with the catch phrase "Hi, guy!" who appeared on the other side of a shared medicine cabinet, opposite actor Bill Fiore. McCann appeared as Wally Stone in the Starsky & Hutch season 2 episode "Murder on Stage 17", in which he played an ex-comedian turned murderer. In this episode, McCann's talent as an actor was spotlighted, and he was able to portray various characters throughout the episode. McCann impersonated Oliver Hardy in commercials for various products (teaming with Jim MacGeorge as Stan Laurel), and for a few years, he played the holiday-season recurring role of Kris Kringle on the NBC soap opera Santa Barbara. In 1965, he and John McCabe were two of the five founding members of the now worldwide society of The Sons of the Desert, an appreciation club for the works of Laurel and Hardy. He had a role in Kojak in 1974. Film After The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, McCann's motion picture career took a turn back into comedy with many supporting roles and a co-starring turn (with Tim Conway) in They Went That-A-Way & That-A-Way (1978). His most notable post-Hunter films were The Projectionist (1971), Jennifer on My Mind (1971), Linda Lovelace for President (1975), Foul Play (1978), C.H.O.M.P.S. (1979), The Comeback Trail (1982), Hamburger: The Motion Picture (1986), Thrashin' (1986) and Herbie Rides Again (1974), where he played Loostgarten, president of Loostgarten Wrecking Company. He had a supporting role in the 1988 horror film Cameron's Closet. He had a brief appearance in Mel Brooks' 1993 comedy film Robin Hood: Men in Tights as a villager and also appeared as an innkeeper in another Brooks production; Dracula: Dead and Loving It in 1995. Return to roots In 1980, McCann and Paul Ashley were reunited for a pair of TV show pilots: Tiny TV, a satirical/variety puppet series aimed at adults for the cable market, and LBS Children's Theater, a children's film anthology show where McCann and the Paul Ashley Puppets were to introduce reruns of primetime animated TV specials and theatrical cartoons from Europe. However, Paul Ashley was forced to leave the projects when he proved to be suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Tiny TV never reached fruition, but LBS Children's Theater was picked up for national syndication in 1983. McCann emceed the series alone because Ashley did not live long enough to see the show, having died on September 3, 1984. In the 1980s, McCann reprised a number of his best sketches from his New York television days as interstitial material for a two-hour presentation of cartoons on KCOP-TV, Channel 13 in Los Angeles, assisted by Bob Ridgely. McCann also voiced characters for various projects by The Walt Disney Company, such as Dreamfinder in the theme park attraction Journey Into Imagination, and several characters including Duckworth, Burger Beagle and Bouncer Beagle in the 1987 animated series DuckTales. In 1989, McCann returned to daily children's television one more time with Chuck McCann's Funstuff, produced by fellow New York kid show legend Sonny Fox. Chuck McCann's Funstuff was seen weekday mornings on KHJ-TV from Monday, September 18, 1989, until Friday, October 13, 1989. 1990s In the 1990s, McCann co-founded and participated in Yarmy's Army, a group of comedians and character actors of his generation who gathered regularly to cheer up Don Adams' brother Dick Yarmy, who was dying of cancer. A group with a massive array of comic talent, its members included Harvey Korman, Shelley Berman, Tim Conway, and many others. After Yarmy's death, the group sta.... Discover the Benjamin Hardy Franklin Foer popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Benjamin Hardy Franklin Foer books.