The Hobbit

No, I have no rumors about what Peter Jackson's up to. I just watched The Hobbit for the first time in a couple decades. In some ways, it was better than I remember; in other ways, worse. But this isn't a review.

I'm here to talk about the voices.

Take a listen. That's gotta be Orson Bean as Bilbo, Snidely Whiplash as Thorin, old-time comedian Brother Theodore as Gollum, Captain Hook as Elrond, someone doing a bizarre parody of Otto Preminger as the king of the wood elves, Leonard Nimoy as Gandalf, and Harry "Captain Murphy" Goz as Bard, King of Lakeland. So, as soon as Leonard Nimoy finished telling Orson Bean about his adventures to come, I rushed off to IMDB to look them up.

Yeah, that's Orson Bean, and Hans "Snidely" Conried, and Brother Theodore, and Cyril Ritchard (who really is Captain Hook, even in real life). And who's doing the Otto Preminger impression? Oh, Otto himself. Well, he did it for Stalag 17. "Vith Christmas coming on I haf a special treat for you. I'll haf you all deloused und haf a little tree for every barrack, and then ve vill kill the dwarfs und take zere gold."

But it's not Leonard Nimoy. In fact, of all people, it's director John Huston. To think, if he hadn't been wasting all that time on that Bible movie (you know, the one that had the balls to call itself The Bible--and was good enough to get away with it), he could have been wearing the pointy ears, telling Kirk how illogical everything is, and getting a Swedish synthpop band named after him. And why didn't he give that overly-emotional Mary Astor a nerve pinch on the Maltese Falcon set?

OK, so I was wrong about Nimoy, but surely Bard is The Goz, right?

I mean, who else could deliver a line like "Hooray for the King under the mountain!" with that panache? (And without giggling!)

Who else could say, "Our town has been ruined, many of our people have been killed, and I'm still not an Adrienne Barbeaubot, damnit!" (I may be slightly misremembering that one, but it was something like that.)

But lo and behold, it's not Harry Goz. Harry was apparently too busy playing his first supporting role in the long-forgotten Looking Up, so they had to go with some guy named John Stephenson.

Who the hell is John Stephenson? He has a decades-spanning career with dozens of credits, but nearly all of them are as "Additional Voices" in lame Hanna-Barbera cartoons. He must have had at least one major role in the 70s, right?

There it is. Star of the original Sealab 2020, Captain Murphy.

If you haven't watched The Hobbit in a long time, it's worth it. The scene where Smaug chases Bard around the corridors in the Murphmobile until Stormy accidentally blows up the whole station rocks.

Curses to Smaug, and to Pod Six!

So now I have to go find Return of the King. I vaguely remember three hobbits that sound like Orson Bean, Roddy MacDowall, Casey Casem, and a guy who sounds like Casey Casem doing an impression of a bad Mexican actor doing a British accent, renacting the first two books in five minutes flat. Is that right?