Top Cat Dies
Just heard news that Arnold Stang, the voice of “Top Cat” has died. Stang was 91 and died of pneumonia in hospital in Massachusetts.
Top Cat was the Hanna Berbera prime time animated television series that ran from September 1961 through April 1962 and ran for 30 episodes on the ABC Network on Wednesday evenings. Reruns can regularly be seen on Boomerang which is a sub-division of the Cartoon Network.
“T.C.” was the leader of a gang of New York City alley cats, Fancy Fancy, Spook, Benny the Ball, The Brian and Choo Choo and the gang was inspired by characters from the Phil Silvers show and it was said that Stang’s voice greatly resembled Phil Silver’s voice.
Perhaps the most frequent plot line for the cartoon series revolved around a local NYPD police officer… Officer Dibble. Dibble constantly tried to evict the alley cats from the alley and always failed. It was a great show and the fact it is still remembered some 50 years later lays testament to that fact.
Stang also starred in The Man with the Golden Arm alongside Frank Sinatra and also in the 1963 comedy “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”.
