Arnold Stang

The voice that didn't fit his body

Arnold Stang didn't need you to see him to know who he was. His squeaky voice and that nasal New York tone gave him away before he entered the frame. He stood just over five foot six and wore horn-rimmed glasses that seemed to weigh more than his own body.

He was the eternal loser who always got the last word.

He started in radio when he was still a teenager. By age nine, he was already hanging around New York studios looking for a spot in children's programs, and it wasn't long before he was working with Milton Berle. There he polished the image of a scrawny but cheeky guy that would stay with him forever.

And the gamble paid off.

Because Stang quickly understood that his physique was a limitation only if he allowed it to be. In an industry of square-jawed leading men, he chose to be the guy who took the hits but got back up with a joke. So he carved out a place in 1950s television working alongside stars who towered over him.

Frank Sinatra's Sparrow

In 1955 he made the leap nobody expected. Otto Preminger cast him in The Man with the Golden Arm. He played Sparrow, the loyal friend of a Frank Sinatra hooked on heroin. It was a risky choice, since Stang had been known for making audiences laugh in nightclubs across the country.

**Sparrow was the most serious role of his career** and helped critics stop seeing him as just a comic supporting player. He conveyed real vulnerability in a dark, gritty film. Yet fate had a place for him in the collective imagination through animated cartoons.

In 1961 he lent his voice to Top Cat.

That street-smart cat with a hat and vest was a classic hustler. Stang gave him a personality that blended the cunning of Brooklyn streets with a put-on sophistication. And although the original series only ran for one season, its impact stretched across decades thanks to reruns.

But his strangest movie encounter happened in 1970.

He shared the bill with an Austrian bodybuilder who barely spoke English in Hercules in New York. Arnold Schwarzenegger was making his big-screen debut, and Stang was his comic foil in a production that bordered on amateurish. It was a bizarre experience that the actor himself recalled with some bewilderment years later.

Advertising and retirement in Massachusetts

His face became even more famous thanks to chocolate bar commercials. For years, he was the face of the Chunky brand, and that contract gave him a financial stability many of his generation envied. Stang never stopped working, even when film roles began to dry up.

In 1963 he took part in the massive It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

He was part of a cast full of comedy legends and starred in one of the most destructive fight scenes in movie history, at a gas station. The shoot was a chaos of logistics and heat, but **Stang earned a six-figure salary** for just a few weeks of intense physical work.

And he never complained about being typecast.

He accepted that the public wanted to see him as the short, nervous guy. In 1993, he had one of his last notable film appearances in Dennis the Menace, playing a photographer. He still wore the same wide-eyed look behind his glasses.

He died in December 2009 at a hospital in Newton. Pneumonia took his life at age 91. His bow tie collection was kept in the closet of his home in Massachusetts.