The original voice of Chuck E. Cheese

[dheineCECfan]

I recently found a source of the original 1977-1980's voice for Chuck E. Cheese long before Scott and Duncan handled the CEC voice.: The original CEC rat voice from 1977-1980's was done by Joe Spano who in the 1980's went on to have a role on TV's "Hill Street Blues".

[Shiney Happy Jenn]

Darryl....how do you discover this stuff?

Any pix of this gentlemen? I assume there are since he was on a popular 80's tv show.

[captslappy]

Wonder how long he did it before it changed. CEC seemed to stay pretty consistant as did Jasper for many years. Obvioulsy the guest stars all had different ones and Munch had quite a few. Hard to tell on Pasqually but that is an awesome find Darryl. I was told a young black woman did Dolli D. Nolan reportedly saw her in a night club or piano bar and asked her to do the voice but I have no idea what her name was. I have also always wondered about who voiced Harmony Howlett.

[dheineCECfan]

I got the information on the original 1977-1980's CECPTT voice from someone I e-mailed from the Frontier Village Yahoo! group. You can learn more about Joe Spano by looking him up in the Internet Movie Data Base at www.imdb.com

[menutia]

...and google his name for some pics.

I still can't believe this as he was not working in LA during the CEC-PTT era.

~M

[captslappy]

Yes but I don't think all the CEC stuff was necassarily all in California. That was the home base but the show tapes could very well have been recorded elsewhere or he might have been working various jobs and come out to make the show tapes. They didn't change out every 3 months back then. Early on they had one show tape a year. I'm not sure at what point they went to making new tapes quarterly but it was later. During the guest star era they were only up to 2 tapes a year. At least that was the case with Harmony and Madame Oink. They may have only done one per year with Foxy Colleen and Sally Sashay.

[CEC3066]

the shows of the early days were recorded in Sunnyvale,CA

[Shiney Happy Jenn]

Just had to update this outdated thread: The original voice of CEC was John Widlock. He was hired to provide some character voices for this "new entertainment concept" and after his audition was given the option of choosing whatever character he wanted to play. He naturally chose the lead, Chuck E. He played the part right up until PTT folded and was then replaced by Scott Wilson who during PTT days was playing Mr. Munch.

John was originally from New York, thus Chuck E. Rat had a authentic East Coast accent. He based his vocals on a gangster program he was fond of as a child and Classic Rat was born!

Interestingly, early recording sessions were done seperately for all the characters, but it was too time consuming to edit them all together for the final cut so they soon starting recording everyone together "live". I think this is why the early shows from the Classic Era exspecially have a really nice feel to them....you can always tell when voice actors are together in a room as the interplay is so much better and usually more amusing. The work done for the Rock-aFire recordings is a excellent example.

There is a great promo photo of John with CyberCEC from Jul Kamen that our own Pizzacam posted in another thread. Perhaps one of out Mods could find it and repost it here, as i never have much luck posting pix on dial up service!

[captslappy]

We need to compile a list now of who did all the voices in what order with approximate dates. It would be nice to see. Also, in the mid-80s they had some really bad Munch and CEC voices during the transition. I'm curious if these were short term stand-ins or what the story was there. What show was on with the really bad Munch and CEC voices At the PTH I hated so much?

[pizzacam]

Yeah, I think that's coming... it would be great to have a section like that for these guys and the Rock-afire... :D

Here's that pic of John Widlock with classic Chuck...

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p89/pizzacam/JohnWidlock-redone2.jpg

[dheineCECfan]

What if John Widlock did a guest voice in a CEC show playing Chuck E.'s father if he has the ability to do it?