Hal Smith started off as a DJ in upstate New York. He soon was tapped to be “The Pancake Man” on a morning kids’ show on local Los Angeles television sponsored by International House of Pancakes. Dressed in a classic chef’s uniform, she showed cartoons and told jokes to the amusement of his juvenile audience. He began taking small roles in sitcoms and dramas in the early days of TV. He guested on The Donna Reed Show, Perry Mason, Dennis the Menace, I Married Joan and many others. In 1960, he landed his most recognizable role, that of Mayberry town drunk “Otis Campbell” on The Andy Griffith Show. He appeared in 32 episodes of the folksy comedy until network executives — guided by censors — decided that humor at the expense of an alcoholic was really funny. In the 1986 Andy Griffith Show reunion movie, Hal’s character had sobered up and operated town’s ice cream truck.
In addition to being a prolific character actor, with roles in dozens and dozens of TV series and commercials, Hal was an in-demand voice actor. He provided vocal services for all of the major cartoon studios, including a variety of characters for Hanna-Barbera on The Flintstones, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw and many others, as well as served as the long-time voice of “Owl” in a number of Winnie the Pooh cartoons for Disney. He even voiced Pooh himself after the death of Sterling Holloway until Jim Cummings was hired as a permanent replacement. In a similar situation, Hal took over as the voice of “Goofy” after original actor Pinto Colvig passed away. In the late 80s, he returned to Disney to provide voices on the Duck Tales series.
One of Hal’s more unusual and out-of-character roles was that of “Mother Goose” in a 1976 partly-animated, soft-core pornographic film called Once Upon a Girl. He worked on this at the same time he was giving voice to a number of Saturday morning cartoon characters.
Hal’s health began to decline in the early 1990s, but that didn’t stop his determination. Just a short while before his death in 1994 at the age of 77, Hal recorded some voice work for several episodes of Garfield and Friends.