Chutzpah!

About the Book

Chutzpah! Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee, An Actor’s Life for Me is a portrait of the most fascinating individual you are likely to meet. You will be swept up in his incredible lives – actor, comedian, magician, painter and writer. Allen Swift is all of them and “The Man of A Thousand Voices.”

A nation of baby boomers grew up on his cartoon characters from Howdy Doody and his friends, Mr. Bluster, Dilly Dally and the Flub-a-Dub, to the voices of Popeye, Mighty Mouse, Tom & Jerry, and hundreds more. For forty years there was never an hour of the day or night that his voices were not heard on over fifty thousand commercials.

Chutzpah! Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee, An Actor’s Life for Me takes the reader from the streetwise childhood of a dreamer through the hilarious ride of making that dream come true. No one ever made it in show business that way before. No one but he could have pulled it off. This is an amazing adventure, replete with con games, the police and the Mafia, and a master storyteller tells it.

The above was written in all humility by the author of this memoir.

About the Author

Actor, comedian, magician, playwright Allen Swift is best known for the 50 voices and live characters he played on television’s “Howdy Doody”; as Captain Allen Swift, host of “The Popeye Show”; and as “The Man of A Thousand Voices” on television and radio commercials and animated films. He wrote and starred in “Checking Out” on Broadway and played many other roles on and off-Broadway, in regional theatres, TV and films.