Dick Orkin, an award-winning radio advertising creator for close to a half-century, was perhaps best known for his syndicated “Chickenman” spoof, which aired initially on Chicago’s WCFL-AM and later on WLUP-FM.
The serial of 2½-minute-long episodes chronicled the adventures of “the most fantastic crime fighter the world has ever known,” an intrepid if incompetent crime fighter out to save the denizens of the fictitious Midland City (pop. 7,043).
First aired in 1966, “Chickenman” was created in the wake of the success of the 1960s live-action “Batman” TV series, and “Chickenman’s” more than 250 episodes remain popular to this day, continuing to air and be available for downloads.
“There was no one else like Dick,” said Ken Draper, who hired Orkin at two different radio stations and gave the green light to “Chickenman.” “He had his own sense of humor and his own perspective on humor, and it was wonderful and he was a wonderful success, as everybody knows, as a result of that.”
Orkin voiced all of the male characters in the serial, and his voice was well-known in radio ads airing to this day.
“He had this sorrowful, sourpuss voice, and he sounded like this put-upon guy, and most people in those days in advertising agencies wanted their heroes in commercials to be upstanding Flash Gordon guys, and we were the opposite,” said Bert Berdis, who worked with Orkin in the 1970s and ’80s on commercials and on “Chickenman.” “Our voices fit terrific together. I was always the straight guy (character) and he was the sorrowful schmo, so we went through life doing that for as long as we could.”
Orkin, 84, died of a hemorrhagic stroke Sunday at Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, Calif., said his daughter, Lisa. He had been a resident of Los Angeles’ Van Nuys area and had lived in Southern California since moving there from Mount Prospect in the late 1970s.
Born in Williamsport, Pa., Orkin started his radio career as a fill-in on-air personality at WKOK-AM in Sunbury, Pa. He then earned a bachelor’s degree from Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.
Thinking he’d be an actor, Orkin earned a graduate degree from the Yale School of Drama and moved to New York City for a time. However, domestic concerns caused him to abandon acting as a career.
“He loved family and loved children and realized that if he wanted that, he was going to have to have a regular job as well,” Lisa Orkin said.
Orkin worked for a time as a news director at WLAN radio in Lancaster, where he also worked as a farm reporter. Draper, who previously had tried to hire Orkin to work for him at a station in Portland, Ore., later joined KYW-AM — now WTAM-AM — in Cleveland as its program director, and Draper again reached out to Orkin to try to hire him. This time, he was successful, and Orkin joined KYW, working in its public affairs department.
In 1965, Draper moved to Chicago to take the helm at WCFL-AM. He hired Orkin as the station’s production director. With ABC-owned WLS-AM as WCFL’s chief rival and the “Batman” TV series airing on ABC, Draper sought a sendup of “Batman.”
“I called Dick, who was my production director, and I said, ‘I want six humorous characters that you can create,’ and he came back and gave me six. I looked at the second one, and it was ‘Chickenman,’ and I said, ‘Forget the other five. We’ll just do Chickenman.’ It was a wonderful idea,” Draper said.
While the segment was short-lived on WCFL — it only aired for a handful of months at the outset — “Chickenman” would prove to have a long tail, as it was picked up for broad distribution in syndication in 1969, including being heard by U.S. servicemen during the Vietnam War. It also was resurrected on Chicago radio in 1977 on WLUP-FM. Ultimately, it aired in 326 markets and in six countries, Draper said.
Orkin left WCFL in 1968 and started Dick Orkin Creative Services. He continued making radio series, and in 1973 paired up with Berdis. One of Orkin’s memorable characters was the bicentennial-themed Masked Minute Man character, whose foibles began appearing on Roy Leonard’s program on WGN Radio in 1975.
Other radio series that Orkin was behind include “The Secret Adventures of the Tooth Fairy” and “The Ace Trucking Company News Cavalcade of the Airwaves.” He and Berdis also appeared on TV on the short-lived variety and sketch comedy show “The Tim Conway Show,” which ran from 1980 until 1981.
However, Orkin’s bread and butter wound up being radio commercials, and Orkin and Berdis sought primarily to provoke laughs from listeners.
“As far as style is concerned, the guys who probably influenced us the most were Jack Benny’s writers,” Orkin told the Tribune in 1975. “They made their big star subject to the same foibles as everyone else, and I also liked what they did with sound. Our commercials have a lot of footsteps and doors opening and closing as well as long Benny-type pauses — which some agencies regard as ‘dead air.’ I think where we succeed and most agencies don’t — few would acknowledge this — is that, frankly, we’re out to entertain people.”
In 1975, Orkin and Berdis began making entertaining commercials for Time magazine, which was looking to shed its stodgy image.
“When that hit the airwaves, the floodgates opened up,” Berdis recalled. “No one ever thought about doing humor for such a prestigious organization. Time took us all over the country and paraded us around and gave us a lot of press, so we got calls from all sorts of institutions. We just grew and grew.”
Orkin and Berdis moved to Los Angeles in 1978 but eventually parted ways. Orkin started his own ad production company called the Famous Radio Ranch. In the Chicago area, Orkin’s voice was frequently heard as the character of Dickie who would spar with his grandmother in radio spots for First American Bank.
“There’s very little entertainment on radio, unless you regard news and information day in and day out, or the same songs played 40 times a day, as entertainment,” Orkin told the Tribune in 1981.
Orkin never really retired, his daughter said, and although she now runs his company, she noted that he continued to record radio commercials. “He just did a commercial two weeks ago,” she said.
Orkin’s first wife, Bunny, died in 2007 after 53 years of marriage. In addition to his daughter, Orkin is survived by his second wife, Diane Lantz Orkin, two sons, Haris and Mike; another daughter, Lynne Fischer; eight grandchildren; and a brother, Sandy.
A funeral service is set for Thursday in Los Angeles.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
