Kenneth Mars

Kenneth Mars (April 4, 1935 – February 12, 2011) was an American actor born in Chicago, Illinois, whose career spanned stage, film, television, and voice acting over several decades. His father, Bernard "Sonny" Mars, worked as a radio and television personality. Mars studied fine arts and acting at Northwestern University before embarking on a professional career.

Mars appeared on Broadway between 1961 and 1966, with credits including The Sound of Music, Any Wednesday, The Best Laid Plans, and The Affair. His stage work also extended to Off-Broadway, where he played Sir Evelyn Oakleigh in a 1962 revival of the Cole Porter musical Anything Goes. That production marked his first performance in a broadly accented character role, a type he would return to throughout his career.

His film work brought him widespread recognition, particularly through two collaborations with director Mel Brooks. In The Producers (1967), he portrayed Franz Liebkind, a deranged Nazi playwright, and in Young Frankenstein (1974), he played Police Inspector Hans Wilhelm Friedrich Kemp. Both roles featured exaggerated German accents. Mars also appeared in Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc? (1972) as Hugh Simon, a Croatian musicologist, and had a small but memorable role in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) as a marshal attempting to raise a posse. Additional film credits include Woody Allen's Radio Days (1987) and Shadows and Fog (1991), as well as a dramatic role as Will Turner, a former FBI agent, in Warren Beatty's The Parallax View.

Television work occupied a significant portion of Mars's career. He made his acting debut on the series Car 54, Where Are You? in 1962, playing a book publisher. He subsequently appeared on Gunsmoke, Get Smart, McMillan & Wife, Columbo, Harry O, Police Woman, and The Bob Crane Show, among others. In 1967, he played Harry Zarakartos on the CBS sitcom He & She, starring Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss. He guest starred five times on Love, American Style between 1970 and 1974. In 1973, he appeared opposite Bette Davis in the NBC television pilot Hello Mother, Goodbye!, which was not picked up as a series. Mars became a series regular in 1977 on both the Sha Na Na variety series and Norman Lear's talk show parody Fernwood 2-Night, playing eccentric William W.D. "Bud" Prize from the Fernwood Chamber of Commerce, a role he reprised on America 2-Night in 1978. He also appeared in the pilot episode of Misfits of Science and the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Shadowplay." In 2001, he played a washed-up photographer on Just Shoot Me. Later television work included two seasons on Fox's Malcolm in the Middle as Otto Mannkusser, a German immigrant who owns a dude ranch, and an appearance on Disney Channel's Hannah Montana.

Mars built a substantial parallel career in voice acting. He voiced King Triton, the father of Ariel, in Disney's The Little Mermaid (1989) and its sequel, as well as the companion television series and the Kingdom Hearts video game series. In the Land Before Time franchise, he voiced Littlefoot's grandfather Longneck beginning in 1994, a role he continued through the series' television adaptation. Additional animated film roles included Professor Screweyes in We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993), King Colbert in Thumbelina (1994), and Sweet William in Fievel's American Tails. On television, he voiced Tuskernini in Darkwing Duck (1991–1992) and Ludwig van Beethoven in an Animaniacs sketch, and appeared in The Smurfs, The Biskitts, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, and TaleSpin, among others. He also voiced the Vault 13 Overseer in the video game Fallout and had roles on the radio program Adventures in Odyssey.

In 1975, ABC/Dunhill released a comedy LP titled Henry the First, produced by Earl Doud, on which Mars performed several comedy bits portraying Henry Kissinger, including a cover of the Bachman-Turner Overdrive song "Takin' Care of Business."

Mars married Barbara Newborn in 1977. They had two daughters, and the marriage continued until his death. In 2006, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that had already spread beyond his pancreas, and he retired from acting in 2008. His final performance was as Longneck in The Land Before Time television series. Mars died on February 12, 2011, at the age of 75.