Winstead Sheffield "Doodles" Weaver (May 11, 1911 – January 17, 1983) was an American comedian on radio and television. He was the brother of NBC-TV executive Sylvester "Pat" Weaver and the uncle of actress Sigourney Weaver.
Born in Los Angeles, Weaver attended Stanford University, where he was a contributor to the Stanford Chaparral humor magazine. After he signed on as a member of Spike Jones's band, the City Slickers, in 1946, he was heard on Jones's 1946-49 radio shows. He toured the country with the Spike Jones Music Depreciation Revue until 1951. The radio programs were often broadcast from cities where the Revue was staged.
His satire of horse race announcers (William Tell Overture) received continual airplay ("It's Girdle in the stretch! Locomotive is on the rail! Apartment House is second with plenty of room! It's Cabbage by a head!"), segueing into an impression of the gravelly-voiced Clem McCarthy, who forgets whether he's covering a horse race or a boxing match. The race features an apparent nag called "Feetlebaum", who begins at long odds, runs almost the entire race a distant last--and yet suddenly emerges as the winner. Weaver also portrayed a character in the Jones troupe called Professor Feetlebaum. Part of the Professor's schtick was mixing up words and sentences in various songs and recitations, as if he were suffering from myopia and/or dyslexia.
He took his own life on January 17, 1983 with a gun. Rudy Vallee delivered the eulogy.
Weaver was a contributor to the early Mad, as described by Time's Richard Corliss:
Among the funny stuff: Doodles Weaver's strict copyediting of the Gettysburg Address, advising Lincoln to change "fourscore and seven" to eighty-seven ("Be specific"), noting that there are six "dedicates" ("Study your Roget"), wondering if "proposition" isn't misspelled and, finally exasperated, urging the writer to omit "of the people, by the people, and for the people" as "superfluous."
Appearing on The Colgate Comedy Hour, Weaver did an Ajax cleanser commercial with a pig, and the audience reaction prompted the network to give him his own series. In 1951, The Doodles Weaver Show was NBC's summer replacement for Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, telecast from June to September with Weaver, his wife Lois, vocalist Marion Colby and the comedy team of Dick Dana and Peanuts Mann. The show's premise involved Doodles dealing with an assignment to stage a no-budget television series using only the discarded costumes, sets and props left behind by more popular network TV shows off for the summer.
He also hosted several children's television shows. In 1965, he starred in A Day with Doodles, a series of six-minute shorts sold as alternative fare to cartoons for locally hosted kiddie television programs. Each episode featured Weaver in a first-person plural adventure (e.g., "Today we are a movie actor"), portraying himself and, behind false mustaches and costume hats, all the other characters in slapstick comedy situations with a voiceover narration and minimal sets.
He portrayed eccentric characters in guest appearances on such TV shows as Batman, Land of the Giants, Dragnet 1967 and The Monkees. He appeared in more than 90 films, including The Great Imposter (1961), Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) and Jerry Lewis' The Nutty Professor (1963). His last movie was Under the Rainbow (1981).
In 1966, Weaver recorded a novelty version of "Eleanor Rigby" -- singing, mixing up the words, insulting and interrupting, while playing the piano, injuring his hand and getting booed.
Weaver's book, Golden Spike, remains unpublished.
The four DVD collector's boxed set, Spike Jones: The Legend, was released October 30, 2007. It features Weaver's appearances on 1951-52 Spike Jones TV specials.
