40 Facts About Gary Owens

Gary Owens was best known, aside from being the announcer on Laugh-In, for providing the voices of the titular superhero on Space Ghost and of Blue Falcon in Dynomutt, Dog Wonder.

Gary Owens played himself in a cameo appearance on Space Ghost Coast to Coast in 1998.

Gary Owens was born in Mitchell, South Dakota, the son of Venetta, an educator and county auditor, and Bernard Joseph Altman, a county treasurer and sheriff.

Gary Owens started his radio career in 1952 as a news reporter at KORN, Mitchell, South Dakota, and two years later was promoted to news director.

Gary Owens worked in Dallas, New Orleans, St Louis, and at KIMN in Denver before relocating to California in 1959, working at KROY in Sacramento and KEWB in Oakland before finally settling in Los Angeles.

Gary Owens moved to KEWB's sister station 980 KFWB in Los Angeles in 1961.

Gary Owens created the previously non-existent colors "veister" and "krelb".

Gary Owens did his famous "Good Evening Kiss" on KMPC when he was on from 9 pm to midnight, by saying, "Now I'll just snuggle up to a nice warm microphone, and embracemoi", making a big wet kiss sound effect followed by the sound effect of a gong striking.

In 1966, Gary Owens collaborated with Bob Arbogast, June Foray, Daws Butler, Paul Frees, and others on a comedy spoof record album titled Sunday Morning With the Funnies with the Jimmy Haskell Orchestra on Reprise Records.

Gary Owens hosted its daily game show spin-off, Letters to Laugh-In, during its brief run in 1969.

Gary Owens was a scriptwriter for Jay Ward Productions, appeared in many series for Walt Disney, and did over 30,000 commercials.

Gary Owens was a guest star on The Munsters, I Dream of Jeannie, and McHale's Navy.

Gary Owens appeared as the racing correspondent in Disney's The Love Bug.

Gary Owens did the humorous news blurbs that are interspersed throughout the 1975 film The Prisoner of Second Avenue.

In that same year, Gary Owens became the voice of a new cartoon character, the Blue Falcon, a character who fought crime in fictional Big City with the "help" of his clumsy sidekick, Dynomutt, known as Dynomutt, Dog Wonder.

Gary Owens would provide the voice of the Blue Falcon from 1976 through 1977 in 20 half-hour episodes.

Gary Owens received a Hollywood Walk of Fame Star in 1980, between those of Walt Disney and Betty White.

In that same year, Watermark Inc chose Gary Owens to replace Murray "The K" Kaufman as permanent host of Soundtrack Of The Sixties, an oldies retrospective show that ran in syndication through 1984.

Immediately afterward, he hosted Creative Radio's Gary Owens' Supertracks, which was an oldies retrospective show similar to Soundtrack Of The Sixties, except it presented the fifties, sixties, and seventies.

Gary Owens was the narrator of Walt Disney World's EPCOT Center pavilion, World of Motion, which operated between 1982 and 1996.

Gary Owens moved from KMPC to another Los Angeles station, 1150 KPRZ, in 1982, hosting mornings at the "Music of Your Life" adult standards station.

When Roger Barkley surprisingly walked out of the long-running Lohman and Barkley Show on KFI in Los Angeles, Gary Owens briefly teamed with Al Lohman for the successful morning commute show.

Gary Owens had a hilarious bit part as an emcee for "Pimp of the Year", a dream scene in the 1988 comedy I'm Gonna Git You Sucka.

Gary Owens co-starred in a number of documentaries about dinosaurs in the 1980s alongside Chicago's Eric Boardman.

Gary Owens guest starred on one episode of The Super Mario Bros.

Gary Owens was the voice narrator on the ABC Saturday morning animated series Mighty Orbots in 1984.

In 1989 Gary Owens appeared in Night Court, season 7 episode 7, entitled Auntie Maim.

Gary Owens announced pre-recorded station IDs for Parksville, British Columbia radio station CHPQ-FM, and for humorist Gary Burbank's long-running afternoon show on WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Gary Owens was the announcer for America's Funniest Home Videos from 1995 to 1997, the last three years of Bob Saget's hosting tenure, replacing Ernie Anderson.

Gary Owens lent his voice as the narrator for the 1992 voiced CD-ROM version of Sierra On-Line's Space Quest IV.

Gary Owens again assumed the role in the series' final installment, 1995's Space Quest 6.

In 1996, Gary Owens would narrate the opening and interstitial bumpers of Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad.

In 2004, Gary Owens co-wrote a book titled How to Make a Million Dollars With Your Voice.

Gary Owens married Arleta Markell on June 26,1956; they remained married for nearly sixty years until his death in February 2015.

Gary Owens died on February 12,2015, at age 80 from complications due to Type 1 diabetes, a condition with which he was first diagnosed at the age of eight.

Gary Owens narrated or announced dozens of other cartoons, as well as the fourth and sixth installments of the Space Quest PC game series.

Gary Owens was originally cast to voice in a spiritual successor to Space Quest called Space Venture but unfortunately he died before he could commit to the project.

Gary Owens used this as a running gag and gave various outlandish reasons for this pose: On his KMPC radio show in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he claimed that this was because a piece of shrapnel took off his ear during the war; sometimes it would come loose and he had to hold it on; at other times he said that he was given a wooden ear, and was keeping the termites warm.

Gary Owens coined the phrase "Beautiful downtown Burbank", which was later used on Laugh-In and The Tonight Show.

In 2001, TV Land released two computer games titled Blast from the Past, hosted by Gary Owens and featuring other TV celebrities including Florence Henderson, Ed Asner, Davy Jones, Bob Denver, Don Adams, Barbara Eden, Todd Bridges, Alan Young, and Marion Ross, among others.