Sunday, January 29, 2012

Dick Tufeld, who supplied the voice...

...for the robot in the 1960s television series "Lost in Space," died at age 85. The show, which ran from 1965 to 1968, was a futuristic reimagination of “Swiss Family Robinson” (my emphasis):

In "Lost in Space" a clean-cut, space-traveling clan (the Robinsons), along with a pilot and a talking robot (physically, a hulking ancestor of R2D2 from “Star Wars,” played by Bob May but voiced by Mr. Tufeld), is sent careening around the galaxy by the machinations of a conniving villain, who is somehow marooned on the spacecraft himself. Alighting on various planets, they have campy, semi-threatening adventures.

The cast included Mark Goddard as the pilot, Maj. Don West; Jonathan Harris as the villain, Dr. Zachary Smith; and Guy Williams, June Lockhart, Marta Kristen, Angela Cartwright and Billy Mumy as the Robinsons. Billy was the family’s youngest child, Will, the focus of one of the robot’s most frequent and most famous declarations: “Danger, Will Robinson!”

The show took place in the far-off year of 1997.

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