Foghorn Leghorn

[Cartman]

Is Foghorn Leghorn supposed to be based on Colonel Sanders?

[Singin' Stray Cat]

I read somewhere that he was based on a California senator with a similar name. I can't recall it, maybe someone else here can give you better info.

[Jack]

No, he's partly based on a radio character called Senator Claghorn, who was played by Kenny Delmar on the Fred Allen radio show, from what I've heard.


Jack:D

[happyheathen]

OK -

so where/when/how did the title 'Colonel' become so popular in the South?

(and why is there a 'R' sound in it - never mind...)

[BourgeoisBuffoon]

If he WAS based on Col. Sanders, there'd be an apparent irony...

...
Now what you say, boy?! Me, based on a chicken killer?! Now that, I say THAT is just wrong!
...
:D

[laugh4me]

http://imagem.webphotos.iwon.com/1000013852/1000013852_910200152908PM0.410606.jpghttp://a1980.g.akamai.net/7/1980/3432/ff90a613760051/www.kfc.com/images/col_bucket.jpg

Foghorn Leghorn came before Colonel Sanders.

Harlan Sanders had a small local restaurant in Kentucky. In the mid 50's he was forced to sell his place and rather than just retire, he got together some investors to build a new restaurant chain featuring his chicken recipe (and called it Kentucky Fried Chicken). So which came first, the chicken or the Colonel? The chicken!

You want to hear a couple of clips of Kenny Delmar doing his Senator Cleghorn character? There is a strong resemblance to Foggy. At this Earthstation site (http://www.earthstation1.simplenet.com/radio.html) you can listen to these clips:

clip #1 (http://www.earthstation1.simplenet.com/pgs/radio/des-cleghrn1.wav.html)
clip #2 (http://www.earthstation1.simplenet.com/pgs/radio/des-cleghrn2.wav.html)
clip #3 (http://www.earthstation1.simplenet.com/pgs/radio/des-cleghrn3.wav.html)

[DR. BELCH]

--Foggy, along with old nemesis Henery Hawk, did do TV spots for Kentucky Fried Chicken a decade or so ago.

Kenny Delmar also voiced The Hunter for the Jay Ward studios.

"That girl reminds me of the highway between Ft. Worth and Dallas...no curves."

[lislebartman]

According to Leonard Maltion's book "Of Mice & Magic", Robert McKimson's inspiration for Foggy goes back even further, to an old radio program called 'Blue Monday Jamboree'.

Whatever the inspiration may be, Foggy is funny!

[laugh4me]

Originally posted by DR. BELCH
--Foggy, along with old nemesis Henery Hawk, did do TV spots for Kentucky Fried Chicken a decade or so ago.


...which you can listen to at one of Jon's pages - in fact, it's near the bottom of this one! (http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/7864/ltsounds.html)

[Joe Tully]

Kenny Delmar also voiced The Hunter for the Jay Ward studios.

Hunter was done by Total Television, which had their animation done at Gamma Productions studios. While the studios did the animation for Jay Ward's toons too, Ward had no connection with them other than getting them up & running. So while the Hunter and other King Leonardo productions are sometimes packaged with Ward material, and look similar due to the exact same studio, they should not be confused.

[johnmcw]

The standard factoid on Foghorn's genesis comes from Mel Blanc's saying that he was based partly on the Senator Claghorn character from radio's THE FRED ALLEN SHOW and partly on a character on a show called BLUE MONDAY JAMBOREE.

This latter show is not one that has come down the ages accessibly and I have never heard it. However, as an old radio nut I have heard reams of Senator Claghorn, and from what I hear, Foghorn Leghorn was him, period. When WALKY TALKY HAWKY came along in 1946, Claghorn was a raging craze the way Anne Robinson on THE WEAKEST LINK is now, and the "I say...", the "..that is..." and the similes ("Sharp as a sack o' wet mice") are all straight from Kenny Delmar's characterization of Claghorn. This is ESPECIALLY the case in Foghorn's earlier appearances, when he is somewhat more bumptious and loud than he became in the 1950s. Blanc seems to me to have been doing, typically of his brilliance, a practically dead-on imitation of Senator Claghorn.

Delmar did that character in a B-movie called IT'S A JOKE, SON; I'm not sure if it's on video, but it used to pop up on AMC and was part of one of the MATINEE AT THE BIJOU packages (which was also where I first caught a lot of the stone-age WB cartoons of the early 30s). Unfortunately Fred Allen was one of the few top radio comics who did not make it to early TV with his own successful show, and so there are no early-TV renditions of Claghorn to take a look at.