Arte Johnson

Arthur Stanton Eric Johnson was born on January 20, 1929, in Benton Harbor, Michigan, to Abraham Lincoln Johnson, an attorney, and Edythe Mackenzie Johnson. He graduated from Austin High School and earned a bachelor's degree in radio journalism from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1949, where he worked at the campus radio station and participated in the University of Illinois Theater Guild alongside his brother Coslough Johnson. After brief military service in Korea, from which he was discharged due to a duodenal ulcer he had suffered since childhood, Johnson attempted to find work at Chicago advertising agencies without success and relocated to New York City, where he took a position at Viking Press.

Johnson's entry into show business came about by chance when he stepped into an audition line on impulse and was cast in the Broadway musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. That accidental audition launched a Broadway career that spanned from 1951 to 1997 and also included the musical Candide and the comedy No Time for Sergeants. In early 1954, he performed at several New York nightclubs, among them Le Ruban Bleu and the Village Vanguard. He also appeared in Ben Bagley's The Shoestring Revue, which opened off-Broadway on February 28, 1955, at the President Theater in New York.

On television, Johnson accumulated a wide range of credits throughout the 1950s and 1960s. He appeared three times on the CBS sitcom It's Always Jan during its 1955–1956 run and in a 1956 episode of Make Room for Daddy in which he sang and danced. In 1958 he joined the cast of the short-lived NBC sitcom Sally, playing Bascomb Bleacher, Jr., the son of a department store co-owner portrayed by Gale Gordon. He appeared in three episodes of the CBS military series Hennesey in 1960 and 1961, and in a 1961 episode of The Twilight Zone titled "The Whole Truth." In 1962 he played Mr. Bates in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "A Secret Life" and took on the role of Corporal Lefkowitz as a series regular on the sitcom Don't Call Me Charlie!, which ran from 1962 to 1963. That same year he appeared as a hotel clerk in The Andy Griffith Show episode "Andy and Barney in the Big City" and played a bumbling navy cameraman on an episode of McHale's Navy. On October 2, 1964, he appeared on The Jack Benny Program as Charlie, a boom-microphone operator who demonstrates to Jack Benny how to tell a joke, performing the "ugly baby" story later associated with Flip Wilson. On June 2, 1965, he guest-starred on Bewitched as Samantha's Cousin Edgar in the final episode of the first season.

In film, Johnson played Ariel Lavalerra in the 1960 adaptation of Jack Kerouac's novel The Subterraneans and took a dramatic supporting role in the 1965 film The Third Day as Lester Aldrich. He was cast in the satirical James Coburn film The President's Analyst in 1967, playing a federal agent with a blindly obedient disposition toward orders.

Johnson became most widely recognized for his work on the NBC sketch comedy series Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, on which he appeared from 1968 to 1973. Among his recurring characters was Wolfgang, a cigarette-smoking German soldier who remained unaware that World War II had ended, skulking behind a potted plant and responding to preceding gags with the catchphrase "Very interesting..." Johnson stated that the line was inspired by a Nazi character who delivered it during an interrogation scene in the 1942 film Desperate Journey. His other prominent Laugh-In character was Tyrone F. Horneigh, a white-haired, trench coat-wearing figure who repeatedly attempted to seduce Ruth Buzzi's character Gladys Ormphby on a park bench, turning her responses into double entendres until she struck him with her purse. To boost ratings in the third season, the two characters were written into an on-air wedding on the March 16, 1970, episode, with Tiny Tim as best man, Carol Channing as bridesmaid, and Henry Gibson officiating, though both characters walked out before the vows were spoken. Johnson and his brother Coslough received Emmy Awards for their work on the series. Johnson later reprised the Wolfgang character briefly on Sesame Street in the early 1970s and voiced the Nazi-inspired character Virman Vundabar on an episode of Justice League Unlimited. The Tyrone and Gladys characters were subsequently adapted into the animated Saturday-morning children's series Baggy Pants and the Nitwits.

In 1976, Johnson voiced Misterjaw, a blue, German-accented shark, in The Pink Panther Show, and also voiced the character Rhubarb on The Houndcats. He was cast as Renfield, the comic sidekick to George Hamilton's Dracula, in the 1979 film Love at First Bite, and appeared in the television film Condominium in 1980. He voiced Weerd in The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo in 1985 and provided voices for additional animated series including DuckTales, The Smurfs, Yo Yogi!, and Animaniacs. Johnson guest-starred in the Murder, She Wrote episode "No Laughing Murder" in 1987 and continued performing on Broadway through 1997. He died on July 3, 2019.