Tuesday, September 17, 2013

You Know the Voice: Olan Soule (1953)

Well before being cast as the voice of Batman by Filmation in 1968, Olan Soule had racked up an impressive resume as a character actor. We previously featured him in a review on Captain Midnight, and he also had appeared on Dennis The Menace & The Andy Griffith Show among other gigs. In the 1967-70 revival of Dragnet, Olan played forensic scientist Ray Murray and a judge in a couple of other episodes.

Apparently, Murray was actually in the Witness Protection Program or something when he made it back to L. A., because in the original Dragnet, the character was known as Ray Pinker, but the job description was the same. In all seriousness, the name change may actually have come about because the word "pink", or variations thereof, were used to describe suspected members of the Communist Party. Anyway, here's Olan, in the Dragnet episode, "The Big Hands", with Jack Webb & Ben Alexander. I think you might be able to find Cliff Arquette, aka Charley Weaver from Hollywood/Storybook Squares in this clip, too.

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