Henry Corden - Life and Career

Life and Career

Born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Corden moved to New York as a child and arrived in Hollywood in the 1940s.

Corden gave his voice to a number of other Hanna-Barbera productions, including The Jetsons, Josie and the Pussycats, The Atom Ant Show, The New Tom & Jerry Show and Jonny Quest. Corden also gave voice to the wizard Gemini and Ookla the Mokk in Ruby-Spears Productions' Thundarr the Barbarian as well as the Gorilla General Urko in DePatie-Freleng Enterprises' Return to the Planet of the Apes. He voiced Arnie Barkley, the Archie Bunker-inspired patriarch of DePatie-Freleng's The Barkleys, in 1972.

With his deep voice, jet-black hair and ethnic looks, Corden was frequently tapped to play heavies in films and on television. He can be seen in such live-action films as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Black Castle and The Ten Commandments. He also appeared in dozens of TV shows, including Dragnet, Perry Mason, Hogan's Heroes, Gunsmoke, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and was a usual regular on The Jerry Lewis Show. Corden also played landlord Henry Babbitt on The Monkees.

Corden had one enduring role for which he was never credited. He was called upon to impersonate Jackie Gleason for the "television edit" of Smokey and the Bandit The repeated broadcasts of this version, the liberal use of the nonsense phrase "scum bum" to replace profanity, and the fact that it obviously was not Gleason speaking have given the performance a sort of cult status.