He’s A Pretty Nice Fellow, Too
I’m Willard Waterman but most everybody thinks I’m Throckmorton
P. Gildersleeve. The character I portray on NBC’s “The Great Gildersleeve”
radio show.
But honest I’m not the blustering Water Commissioner of
Summerfield. Really, I’m not pompous and stuffy. Believe me. I don’t argue with
neighbors and the Jolly Boys. Assuredly I’m not a predatory bachelor whose
romances never seem to bloom into marriage.
Actor, Husband, Father I’m just plain Willard Waterman, actor,
husband and father. In faot, it occurs to me that maybe you know all about the mythical
Gildersleeve, so maybe you’d like to know something about the actual Waterman.
Even if you don’t want to know about the actual Waterman, here it is:
I was born in Madison, Wisconsin, in August, 1914. I grew at
the rate of a year every 12 months and then, when I was in high school. I got
my first break in radio. I was singing with a local quartet and we were hired
to do musical interludes on station WIBA in Madison. I guess maybe my voice was
the loudest, because pretty soon the station manager let me do some announcing
and even read some poetry.
But I figured acting wasn’t the life for me, so when I
entered the University of Wisconsin I majored in engineering. However, pretty
soon I found myself veering away from engineering and into “hamming” it up in
student theatricals. I finally succumbed to the urge and decided to become an
actor.
In 1936 I moved to Chicago, and for a long time it seemed
like I should have stuck with engineering. Eventually, though, work began to
come my way and I played roles on “First Nighter,” “Ma Perkins,” “Mary Marlin”
and other network shows.
Not To Boast
I don’t want to boast, a la Gildersleeve, but between 1936
and 1946 there wasn’t a radio show in Chicago that I didn’t work on at one time
or another, and I was doing as many as 35 to 40 programs a week.
When a program I was on, “Those Websters,” moved to
California, so did I, and I’ve been there ever since. A few years ago I was
signed to do the Gildersleeve role, and that brings me up to date.
Except for one thing. Unlike “Gildy,”I have the most wonderful
family a man could be blessed with There’s my wife Mary Anna, and my two daughters,-Lynne
who is 16 and Susan who is 10.
My three women take good care of me- a little too good in
the food department, I’m afraid. They like to cook and I like to cat and, as a
result, I weigh 225 pounds.
I try to take some of the excess weight off by playing golf.
I once made a hole in on, but after 18 holes I get such a ravenous appetite
that I put it all back on again.
Anyway, the guy I’ve described is Willard Waterman. He’s a
pretty nice fellow-almost as nice as Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve.
Gildy’s Joy-“The Great Gildersleeve” in a pose he enjoys-
surrounded by young lovelies. The girls showering their attention on the Water
Commissioner of the mythical Summerfield are, (left to right) Alice Drake,
Julie Bennett and Barbara Fuller. They are heard occasionally on the
five-nights-a-week radio program as they enter the zany situations in Gildy’s
life.
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