Quiz 2 – Teddy Bergman

If you've just checked our blog, we're playing a game on our Facebook “Media Heritage, Inc.” and “Big Broadcast” pages. If you'd like to play, “like” one or both of those Facebook pages and on Mondays, we'll post a photo of an old radio “second banana”…a secondary or character actor from the 1930s through ‘50s. You'll be instructed to email a guess as to the identity to our email and from the correct answers, we'll pick a winner for a prize each week on Wednesday night! Then check back here at the blog, later in the week, for the answer.

This week, our celebrity “second banana” is Teddy Bergman….born Herbert Theodore Bergman in New York City in 1907. Bergman was a master of dialects, at one time proclaiming he could speak in some 22-different voices. Because of this talent, he was a popular character actor on many radio programs in the 1930s and ‘40s. It should be noted that, usually, when Bergman acted in a dramatic role he used his real name but when he appeared on a radio comedy, he often adopted the pseudonym “Alan Reed.” Bergman (or, rather, Reed) appeared as the father on Baby Snooks in the late 1930s (before Hanley Stafford took over the character) and was heard in a variety of roles, including as foreman, on The Life of Riley. He was Falstaff on Fred Allen and, perhaps his most famous radio role was as Pasquale on Life with Luigi. When the television age came about, Bergman (Reed) appeared on several early programs including My Favorite Martian but it was the first, primetime animated TV show that elevated him to new heights of fame. Alan Reed supplied the voice of Fred Flintstone through the original run of The Flintstones and subsequent features. Reed died of a heart attack in 1977.

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