Profile of Parley Baer on Famous Like Me

Parley Baer (August 5, 1915 - November 22, 2002) was an American character actor in film, television, and radio. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Parley Baer had a circus background, but began his radio career at local station KSL. With a fairly high pitched voice often accompanied by a Western twang, he became one of the busiest radio performers in the late 1940s and 1950s.

His first network show was The Whistler which was soon followed by appearances on Escape (notably narrating "Wild Jack Rhett" and as the title patriot in an adaptation of Stephen Vincent Benet's "A Tooth for Paul Revere"), Suspense, Tales from the Texas Rangers (as various local sheriffs), Dragnet, The CBS Radio Workshop, Lux Radio Theater, The Six Shooter, and more. In 1952, he first played Chester, the unofficial deputy to Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke, eventually ad libbing the characters full name, Chester Wesley Proudfoot; this protrayal was almost undoubtedly his finest and most memorable performance.

Baer worked on several other Norman MacDonnell produced radio shows, including the situation comedy The Harold Peary Show (aka Honest Harold) as Pete the Marshal, Rogers of the Gazette (loosely based on the early life of Will Rogers) as Doc Clemmens, and Fort Laramie . Other recurring roles included Eb the farm hand on Granby's Green Acres (the radio predecessor to television's Green Acres), Gramps on The Truitts, and Rene the manservant on the radio version of The Count of Monte Cristo. His later radio work included playing Reginald Duffield and Uncle Joe Finneman on the Focus on the Family series Adventures in Odyssey in the 1980s and 1990s.

As an on-camera performer, he was recognizable by both his voice and his balding, paunchy appearance, often as fussy or obstinate officials or neighbors. Television roles included obnoxious Mayor Stoner on The Andy Griffith Show neighbour Darby on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet frequent guest appearances on The Addams Family as Arthur J. Henson, and in later years, Miles Dugan on The Young and the Restless in the late 90s. Film roles included parts in several live action Disney features, including Follow Me Boys, The Ugly Dachshund, and Those Calloways, and Dave (as the Senate majority leader).

He also voiced Ernie Keebler in the cookie commercials before suffering a stroke in 1997 which affected both speech and movement. He recovered sufficiently to make a handful of appearances at old-time radio conventions before finally passing away from related complications in 2002, at the age of 87.

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Parley Baer