Voice actor Allen Swift died 18 April 2010. Born Ira Stadlen in New York City on 16 January 1924, he appeared in more than 30,000 television and radio commercials.
After graduating from the High School of Music and Art in 1942, he enlisted in the US Army Air Corps. After World War II, the budding stand-up comic appeared on radio serials and resumed his comic career. He took his stage name from two of his favorite satirists, Fred Allen and Jonathan Swift.
Swift had a big career break in 1954, when Bob Smith, the host of Howdy Doody and the voice of the title character, suffered a heart attack. Swift, who was already playing the voices of several supporting characters on the show, listened to tapes for a weekend, and was able to master Howdy’s voice. He filled in for Smith for a year. He then hosted Popeye the Sailor on WPIX-TV in New York City for four years, as “Capt. Allen Swift”.
According to The New York Times, he recorded up to 30 commercials a day over the next quarter century. During that time, he was also a mainstay for Terrytoons, voicing Mighty Mouse, several characters on Underdog, and most of the characters on the Tom and Jerry cartoons in the early 1960s.
Swift also dubbed lines for motion pictures, including a few of David Niven’s lines in Happy Anniversary (1959), and General Dwight Eisenhower’s voice in The Longest Day (1962).
His genre roles include: Courage the Cowardly Dog (2000), The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie: The Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters (1972), Mad Monster Party? (1967), Alice of Wonderland in Paris (1966), all 20 episodes of Diver Dan (1961), and King Leonardo and His Short Subjects (1960).
Swift’s financial success with commercials allowed him to pursue another passion: live theater. He appeared in several Off-Broadway productions and Broadway plays, and starred in his own dark comedy, Checking Out, which ran a brief 15 performances in 1976.
He is survived by his second wife, Lenore Loveman (his first marriage ended in divorce), one son, two daughters, and five grandchildren.