Howard Morris

Seen more than heard during his twilight career, he continued on with directing commercials and popped up here and there well into the 1990s in comic cameos and as a vocal artist.

He served as the voice of the Qantas Airlines Koala for the airline's famous television commercials during the 1980s. He also as well as television's Atom Ant in "The Atom Ant Show," Beetle Bailey and General Halftrack in "Beetle Bailey and His Friends," and Jughead Jones and Big Moose Mason in "The Archie Show."

In the 1970s, he directed some McDonaldland commercials featuring Ronald, the Hamburglar, Mayor McCheese, and friends. Morris also performed the voice of Mayor McCheese throughout the decade.

Morris also turned to film directing and helmed such fluff as Who's Minding the Mint? (1967), With Six You Get Eggroll (1968) and Don't Drink the Water (1969), the last-mentioned written by Woody Allen.

Way Out (1966), both with Jerry Lewis, and Mel Brooks' spoofs High Anxiety (1977) and History of the World: Part I (1981). As for television, Howie directed Danny Thomas and Andy Griffith in their respective sitcoms, and made a wonderfully eccentric impression on-camera as the grizzled, bucolic, rock-tossing Ernest T. Bass on Griffith's 60's show. The role became such a popular character that Howie was invited to play it sporadically for three seasons.

Directed the classic black-and-white pilot of TV's Get Smart (1965).

He added zest to a host of standard comedy films including Boys' Night Out (1962) with Kim Novak, The Nutty Professor (1963) and Way. . .

On the New York stage he co-starred as the leprechaun Og in a 1960 revival of "Finian's Rainbow" and, from the early 1960s on, his mastery of dialects and vocal versatility made him an important staple at the Hanna-Barbera animation studio, offering hundreds upon hundreds of voices for The Flintstones (1960), The Jetsons (1962), Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1971), and other such classic Saturday morning cartoon shows as well as the popular voices of Adam Ant, Gerald McBoing-Boing, Beetle Bailey and Jughead Jones. He would intersperse this work with some catchy offbeat characterizations in front of the camera, usually comedic but occasionally dramatic, on both the big and small screens.

" He and Reiner would reconnect when asked to come aboard as part of the acting repertory team on Your Show of Shows (1950) and it's successor Caesar's Hour (1954), the classic sketch TV show of the 1950s that starred Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. After years of "second banana" TV success, Howie wished for "top banana" stardom and sought work as such with varying degrees of success.

Following military service in World War II, in which the two entertained troops together (they appeared in Army productions of "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" directed by none other than Maurice Evans, they returned to the professional entertainment fold and appeared together in a 1946 road company of the stage musical "Call Me Mister. " Howie also went on to be featured on Broadway as Rosencrantz in "Hamlet" and in the original production of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Comedic actor Howard ("Howie") Jerome Morris, of Jewish heritage, was born in The Bronx, New York, on September 4, 1919. This short, quicksilver comic of TV's "Golden Age" also went on to possess one of the finest vocal instruments for animation. Classically trained on the Shakespearean stage, he forged his own destiny in an entirely different direction after a chance meeting with Carl Reiner in a radio workshop.