The Classic TV Legacy of Casey Kasem

 

Most Saturday mornings you’ll find me driving around Las Vegas listening to a 1970s edition of American Top 40 with Casey Kasem on Sirius XM. I live in the past as much with music as I do with television.

Hearing Casey count down tracks from Fleetwood Mac, Andy Gibb and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils is a happy reminder of tuning into the same broadcasts when they originally aired, as well as a way to remember Kasem in his element, before recent months have turned him into a post-mortem punch line on par with baseball great Ted Williams. 

Kasem was certainly best known as a radio personality, but he also had a successful and somewhat bizarre acting career that also deserves commemoration. He was, to borrow a phrase from Nick at Nite back when that network was worth watching, part of our television heritage.

Here is just a sampling of the shows where he appeared and the roles he played over an eclectic career.

Norville “Shaggy” Rogers

Outside of daytime drama you rarely find an actor portraying the same character for 40 years. Casey Kasem created the voice of Shaggy for Scooby Doo, Where are You when it debuted in 1969, and kept coming back for revivals and adaptations and direct-to-video DVDs until 2009. That’s a lot of “Zoinks!” From 2010 to 2013, he voiced Shaggy’s father, Colton, in Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated.  

Kasem’s voice was often described as unmistakable. But to me Shaggy’s high-pitched quaver sounds almost nothing like the soothing, resonant voice you heard on the radio, or in voiceover the commercials he narrated for Heinz ketchup or Dairy Queen or Oscar Meyer. The difference was so distinct that Kasem often voiced secondary characters in Scooby Doo shows (like the various cops who drag the phony monster to jail) and if you didn’t know you’d never suspect it was the same performer.

Dick Grayson/Robin

This was Kasem’s second most famous animated character, one that predates his time in the Mystery Machine. He played an earnest Boy Wonder in 1968’s The Batman/Superman Hour, and reprised the role in Hanna Barbera’s long-running Super Friends shows. Super Friends and Scooby Doo were Saturday morning staples throughout the 1970s – no wonder my generation grew up with Kasem’s voice in our heads. 

Adolf Hitler

In 1974, when Don Rickles was the guest of honor on one of Dean Martin’s legendary roasts, Casey Kasem was introduced as “the man who writes every word that comes out of Don’s mouth.” Out he strolled as Hitler (not in Nazi garb, but in a purple smoking jacket), to claim that Rickles is “the only man who has bombed more places than I have.” It’s a bizarre moment but Casey does his best to commit to the character.

Peter Cottontail

Here Comes Peter Cottontail (1971) was the first of three Rankin-Bass Easter specials, none of which are as fondly recalled as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Still, here’s a chance to hear Casey sing, and you try to find another actor who played both Hitler and Peter Cottontail. 

Charlie’s Angels

The season 3 episode “Winning is for Losers” finds the Angels on bodyguard duty, after a professional golfer receives death threats. Jamie Lee Curtis plays the golfer, the same year she starred in Halloween. And Casey Kasem appears as sportscaster Tom Rogers, who has a sinister secret but may or may not be the killer. Despite the appearances of Curtis and Kasem, the episode is most memorable for a scene in which petite little Kris Munroe (Cheryl Ladd) wrestles an alligator.

The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries

In the two-part thriller “Mystery of the Hollywood Phantom,” Kasem plays struggling actor Paul Hamilton who, as in Charlie’s Angels, may or may not be a murderer. In his first scene he impersonates Peter Falk as Lt. Columbo, and pulls it off surprisingly well. 

Saved By The Bell

Casey played himself in more than 50 television appearances, including two episodes of this awful but strangely beloved series. In “Dancing to the Max,” he appears as the host of a dance contest, which is somehow won by Screech. Apparently no one saw Elizabeth Berkeley on Dancing With the Stars. Or Showgirls.

These selections are just a small sampling of Kasem’s TV work – if you’re a viewer of the various retro TV channels you’ll also spot him in episodes of Fantasy Island, Hawaii Five-O, Ironside, Quincy and My Two Dads. And if you need a fix between reruns please join me Saturday mornings on the Sirius 70s on 7 channel. I’ll bet it’s been years since you’ve heard “Convoy” or “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” on the radio.

As you do, say a little prayer if you’re so inclined that Casey Kasem’s body will soon be at rest, as his soul ascends to the stars he always encouraged us to reach. 

The (Real) Home of Comfort TV

 

There is a fantasy shared by many of us who love Comfort TV, and that is the prospect of visiting the fictional worlds created in classic shows. What would it be like to attend one of those martini-drenched cocktail parties hosted by Sam and Darren Stephens? Or listen to the Partridge Family rehearse in their garage? Or to see snow falling over Major Nelson’s house in July, and realize that Jeannie is at it again? 

Impossible, of course. But there is a place that would bring one closer to realizing this dream than any other in our mundane real world. It’s in Burbank, California, on a section of the Warner Bros. Ranch known as Blondie Street. If classic TV has a home, this is it.

At first glance it looks like any other gently-curving street you would find in suburban cities throughout the United States – single family homes with attached garages and neatly-manicured lawns out front, some with a white picket fence surrounding the property.

But if you know your classic TV shows, it won’t be long before every house on the block begins to look familiar. Start with the Blondie home, built for use in a series of 1940s films based on the long-running comic strip. For TV fans, however, it is famous as the home of the Andersons in Father Knows Best, as well as the home of Major Nelson on I Dream of Jeannie. 

This is also where you’ll find the homes used on Hazel and Gidget, and the Oliver house that was home to both the Stones on The Donna Reed Show and the Mitchells on Dennis the Menace. Next door to the Blondie home is the Partridge Family home  – note the driveway on the right where the iconic bus was often parked. 

At the end of the street is the Higgins house, most famously used as the Stephens residence on Bewitched. 

There is a park on the other side of the street, which has appeared in all of the above shows and hundreds more. Its most famous feature is a circular, white stone fountain that should also be familiar to every TV fan. It was prominently featured in the opening credits of Friends, but sharp-eyed viewers can spot it in dozens of other shows, from The Waltons to The Monkees.

If you want to know the full history of the Warner Bros. Ranch, there is an excellent website that details every aspect of the property, from its initial construction to the movies and television shows filmed there. Mischa Hof, with whom I’ve exchanged a number of emails over the past 10 years, created the site. It’s a labor of love for him, and I can’t imagine how much time and money he’s devoted to research and interviews that celebrate its pop culture heritage.

A few months ago I received an email from a woman named Janet who works on the Blondie Street part of the property. She asked if I would be willing to write a blog on the site and on Mischa’s work.

I immediately accepted, having wanted to visit the place for years. I’ve walked the perimeter of the property during more than one trip to Los Angeles (there’s a pretty good pizza place across the street), and peeked through the chain-link fence where you can glimpse some of the houses. 

Unfortunately, just two weeks after Janet extended the invitation, she was laid off after 10 years on the job.

I didn’t know much about Janet then –  I have since learned that she was much loved by her coworkers and those fortunate enough to tour the lot in her presence. 

It’s important that those who work in special places have an appreciation for their history, and for what they mean to people. This should be true whether it’s a metropolitan art museum, a Broadway theater, a venerable old sports arena, or Blondie Street. 

Janet got that. At the time of her dismissal she was working with Mischa on a “Friends of the Ranch” program that would have opened the street to visitors for the first time in its history. Now, that probably will not happen.

I’ll get there one day. I have a few somebodys who know somebodys who will be able to set something up. And as Blondie Street is still a valued part of the studio (you’ll also see it in more recent series like The Middle), I do not fear for its future. But it is without a caretaker now, and that concerns me.

There’s a reason we bestow landmark status on exceptional places. It elevates them above mere property controlled by a corporation, and protects them against the whims of the bureaucrat, the robber baron and the unenlightened. Blondie Street is a place to walk in the footsteps of television’s most beloved characters. It has the ability to reconnect adults with the blissful days of their childhoods.

Perhaps that’s not sufficient for the kind of safekeeping afforded to the Ryman Auditorium or the Old North Church. But if the home of Millard Fillmore can make the cut, so can the home of Samantha Stephens.