Walter Does Walter

By the 1960s, Walter Winchell’s name evoked the past. He had been hired to narrate “The Untouchables,” a TV show set in the 1920s, because his time was of another era. And it wasn’t an era too far past. Television slowly killed off newspapers and forever changed radio, the two media which brought Winchell his fame and power.

Winchell was parodied occasionally in animated cartoons but probably the most directly in the Walter Lantz short “Termites From Mars” (1952). A crazed radio newscaster is a Winchell caricature. Here are some of the expressions as he shouts about Martians.



You’ll notice the “WLP” on the mike for “Walter Lantz Productions.”

Don Patterson was the director of this cartoon. There are some great effects here to bring out an extra dimension of depth, such as background colour changes (to shades in the red spectrum) and shadows around the characters.

Paul J. Smith, La Verne Harding and Ray Abrams are the animators. There’s no story credit.