Danny Webb (American actor)

Did You Know?

• Webb was born David Weberman in New York City to Herman Weberman, a Hungarian Jewish furrier, and Lena (née Rubin) Weberman.
• He worked his way up to staff sergeant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War II.
• All three members of the Wide Wide World production team—Webb, Ed Pierce, and Ed Faught—had performed together as vaudevillians at the Metropolitan in Boston 15 years earlier.

Voice actor

Arriving in Hollywood in 1935 as Dave Weber, he impersonated celebrities on the Burns & Allen anniversary show and in the Screen Gems cartoon Sing Time. At Warner Bros. Cartoons from the mid-1930s, his first cartoon was The Coo-Coo Nut Grove. He voiced Egghead in Daffy Duck & Egghead, Elmer Fudd in Cinderella Meets Fella (1938) and Believe It or Else (1939), and contributed to A Day at the Zoo (1939). Weber also voiced Disney's Goofy for four years after Pinto Colvig left the studio temporarily.

Actor in Hollywood films

Columbia Pictures signed Dave Weber in September 1938 to star in 12 two-reel comedies, changing his professional name to Danny Webb. His first film, originally Behind the Eight Ball, was released as A Star Is Shorn (1939), directed by Del Lord, with Webb playing a talent agent. However, the short-subject series ended after that single film. Webb was transferred to Columbia's Community Sing series, where he made comic remarks between performances by the King Sisters. He was scheduled to work with Jack Holt in Flight into Nowhere but does not appear in the finished film. Webb then left Columbia for industrial-film producer Wilding Pictures, working on promotional films for Chrysler, before joining Warner Bros. as an actor.

Return to voice work

In 1941, Webb did trick voices for Universal's Sing Another Chorus and Hellzapoppin' and returned to Columbia for cartoon voice work. That same year, after Mel Blanc signed exclusively with Warner Bros., Webb became the first actor to take over as Woody Woodpecker for Walter Lantz Productions, voicing the character only partially in Pantry Panic before joining the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He rose to staff sergeant and performed for troops in North Africa, earning the nickname "Comedy Commando" from Dwight D. Eisenhower, a label that stuck after the war. Webb later returned to radio, voiced Sad Sack, and hosted the quiz show Guess Who starting May 11, 1945.

Television

In 1949 Danny Webb joined WPIX-TV in New York as a children's entertainer. He co-starred with Toby Sommers on Comics on Parade, a seven-days-a-week, 15-minute program reading newspaper comic strips. Webb then hosted Small Time and, in 1950, appeared as 'The Little Professor' commercial spokesman for Dr. Posner's Shoes on WPIX's Six-Gun Playhouse. On December 9, 1950 he debuted as emcee of Junior Talent Time. Webb and Sommers were reteamed on April 21, 1951 for The Danny Webb Show, a Saturday-morning comedy series that aired until June 16, 1951. He later worked behind the scenes at NBC, joining Wide Wide World in 1957 as an assistant producer, and remained with NBC as assistant producer and production supervisor for programs including the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcasts.