Moosie Drier

Last updated
Moosie Drier
Born (1964-08-06) August 6, 1964 (age 59)
OccupationDirector/ Voice Artist
Years active1971present
Children1
Drier Attending Television Academy Event Honoring Lily Tomlin Drier Television Academy Event.jpg
Drier Attending Television Academy Event Honoring Lily Tomlin

Moosie Drier (born August 6, 1964) is an American television and film actor. He is best known for his roles as Adam Landers in Oh, God! and Riley on Kids Incorporated . Drier had regular appearances on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and The Bob Newhart Show . He has also worked as a voice actor and as a director.

Contents

Life and career

Drier was born in Chicago but raised in California. He was named after former New York Yankee Bill "Moose" Skowron, who was a friend of Drier's father. He attended U.S. Grant High School, Van Nuys, California. Drier began his television career as a recurring performer on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In from the middle of season three to the final season in 1973, hosting a "Kid News for Kids" segment. His first dramatic role was as a deaf boy in two 1972 episodes of Lassie . During this period, Drier had movie roles in the 1972 Jack Lemmon comedy, The War Between Men and Women , the 1972 Barbra Streisand comedy Up the Sandbox , and the made-for-TV comedies Roll, Freddy, Roll! (1974) and All Together Now (1975). In 1977 he was cast in Oh, God! starring John Denver and George Burns. He followed this with a prominent role in the Alan Freed screen biography American Hot Wax (1978), in which the adolescent Drier recounts his reaction to Buddy Holly's death in a broken voice.

At the age of ten, Drier began voice acting as a regular character on ABC’s 1974 These Are the Days . Other recurring television roles included Howie Borden, the son of series regular Howard (Bill Daily) on The Bob Newhart Show, and on CBS’s short-lived series Executive Suite as B.J. Koslo. He made appearances on The Waltons (1973), Adam-12 (1973), Apple's Way (1974), Police Story (3 episodes, 1974–75), Emergency! (2 episodes; 1975), Doc (1975), and Little House on the Prairie (1976), CHiPs (1980), Family Ties (1983), Kids Incorporated (1984), Diff'rent Strokes (1986), The A-Team (1986), Highway to Heaven (1986), Blacke's Magic (1986), Cagney & Lacey (1986), Hunter (1986), Just the Ten of Us (1988), The Munsters Today (1990), and Jack & Jill (2000).

During his early acting career, Drier also appeared in three ABC Afterschool Specials, in one of which, Hewitt's Just Different, Drier had a lead role as Willie Arthur, the friend of the developmentally disabled title character. His late 1970s and early 1980s roles included When Every Day Was the Fourth of July (1978) and Peter Benchley's thriller Hunters of the Reef (1978). Other teen roles consist primarily of biographical dramas; most notably, Drier played a young Mickey Rooney in the 1978 Judy Garland biography Rainbow . The year 1978 also saw the filming of the made-for TV Jack Albertson vehicle Charlie and the Great Balloon Chase, which was not released until three years later. In the 1980s made-for-TV movie Homeward Bound, he played a terminally ill young man, Bobby Seaton, who spends a last summer vacation repairing his relationship with his father, Jake, played by David Soul.

During the late 1990s, Drier accepted minor roles in the sci-fi space-ship hijack thriller Velocity Trap (1997) and Storm (1999), a thriller about a secret military weather control machine gone awry. Since 2000, he has specialized in voice-over work in such films as Teaching Mrs. Tingle (1999), American Beauty (1999), What Lies Beneath (2000) Shrek (2001), 40 Days and 40 Nights (2002), The Shape of Things (2003), Jungle Book 2 (2003), the Lion King 1½ (2004), The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), Hauru no ugoku shiro (Eng: Howl's Moving Castle) in 2004, and Madagascar (2005).

Drier directed episodes of such series as Reba (2005) and Too Late with Adam Carolla (2005). He directed a well-received children's musical, Precious Piglet and Her Pals at the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks as well as the critically acclaimed Love Like Blue in 2007, also at the Whitefire Theatre.

Personal life

Selected filmography

Television

Filmography (actor)

Filmography (director)

Theater (director/producer)

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scatman Crothers</span> American entertainer (1910–1986)

Benjamin Sherman “Scatman” Crothers was an American actor and musician. He is known for playing Louie the Garbage Man on the TV show Chico and the Man, and Dick Hallorann in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). He was also a prolific voice-over actor who provided the voices of Meadowlark Lemon in the Harlem Globetrotters animated TV series, Jazz the Autobot in The Transformers and The Transformers: The Movie (1986), the title character in Hong Kong Phooey, and Scat Cat in the animated film The Aristocats (1970).

<i>The Bob Newhart Show</i> American TV sitcom (1972–1978)

The Bob Newhart Show is an American sitcom television series produced by MTM Enterprises that aired on CBS from September 16, 1972, to April 1, 1978, with a total of 142 half-hour episodes over six seasons. Comedian Bob Newhart portrays a psychologist whose interactions with his wife, friends, patients, and colleagues lead to humorous situations and dialogue. The show was filmed before a live audience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sorrell Booke</span> American actor (1930–1994)

Sorrell Booke was an American actor who performed on stage, screen, and television. He acted in more than 100 plays and 150 television shows, and is best known for his role as corrupt politician Jefferson Davis "Boss" Hogg in the television show The Dukes of Hazzard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Vander Pyl</span> American voice actress (1919–1999)

Jean Thurston Vander Pyl was an American voice actress. Although her career spanned many decades, she is best known as the voice of Wilma Flintstone for the Hanna-Barbera cartoon The Flintstones. In addition to Wilma Flintstone, she also provided the voices of Pebbles Flintstone; Rosie the robot maid on The Jetsons; Goldie, Lola Glamour, Nurse LaRue, and other characters in Top Cat; Winsome Witch on The Secret Squirrel Show; and Ogee on The Magilla Gorilla Show.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Riley (actor)</span> American actor (1935–2016)

John Albert Riley Jr. was an American actor, comedian and writer. He was known for playing Elliot Carlin, a chronic psychology client of the main character on The Bob Newhart Show, and for voicing Stu Pickles, one of the parents in the animated Rugrats franchise.

Richard Douglas Hurst is an American actor who portrayed Deputy Cletus Hogg, Boss Hogg's cousin, in the 1980 to 1983 seasons of The Dukes of Hazzard as well as The Dukes of Hazzard: Reunion! in 1997 and The Dukes of Hazzard: Hazzard in Hollywood in 2000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Stephenson (actor)</span> American actor (1923–2015)

John Winfield Stephenson was an American actor who worked primarily in voice-over roles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Fiedler</span> American actor (1925–2005)

John Donald Fiedler, was an American actor. His career lasted more than 55 years in stage, film, television, and radio. Fiedler's high, flutey voice was instantly recognizable. He was typecast beginning early in his career for delicate, quiet, nerdy characters, although he also played sneaky villains. His roles included the meek Juror #2 in 12 Angry Men (1957); the benign-seeming gentleman who tries to prevent the Younger family from moving into a whites-only neighbourhood in A Raisin in the Sun (1961); the voice of Piglet in Disney's Winnie the Pooh productions; Vinnie, one of Oscar's poker cronies in the film The Odd Couple (1968); and Emil Peterson, the hen-pecked milquetoast husband on The Bob Newhart Show.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Huddleston</span> American film and television actor (1930–2016)

David William Huddleston was an American actor. An Emmy Award nominee, Huddleston had a prolific television career, and appeared in many films, including Rio Lobo, Blazing Saddles, Crime Busters, Santa Claus: The Movie, and The Big Lebowski.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeff Corey</span> American actor (1914–2002)

Jeff Corey was an American stage and screen actor who became a well-respected acting teacher after being blacklisted in the 1950s.

Felton Perry is an American actor. He is most notable for his roles as Deputy Obrah Eaker in the 1973 movie Walking Tall, and as Inspector Early Smith in the 1973 movie Magnum Force, the second film in the Dirty Harry series. Felton's other well-known role is in the 1987 science fiction movie RoboCop as Donald Johnson, an executive at the corporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP). He reprised his role as Johnson in the sequels RoboCop 2 (1990) and RoboCop 3 (1993).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bob Holt (actor)</span> American actor

Robert John Holthaus, better known as Bob Holt, was an American actor, best known for his voice work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Bonerz</span> American actor and director (b. 1938)

Peter Baldwin Bonerz is an American actor and director.

Joel Fabiani is an American film, television and theater actor. Known for his leading role in the British TV series Department S, Fabiani has guest starred in The FBI, Barnaby Jones, The Streets of San Francisco, Banacek, Cannon, The Rockford Files and Starsky and Hutch.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roger Carel</span> French actor (1927–2020)

Roger Carel was a French actor, known for his recurring film roles as Asterix, the French voice of Star Wars' C-3PO, and the French voice of Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, and Rabbit in Winnie the Pooh. He dubbed David Suchet as Hercule Poirot on Agatha Christie's Poirot. He also voiced Wally Gator, Mickey Mouse, Yogi Bear, Fred Flintstone, Kermit the Frog, Heathcliff, Danger Mouse, Foghorn Leghorn, ALF, Fat Albert and many other famous characters in French.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Walker Edmiston</span> American radio, television actor (1926–2007)

Walker Edmiston was an American actor and puppeteer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Thurman</span> American screenwriter

James Frederick Thurman was an American actor, voice actor, writer, director, cartoonist, and producer. He is best known for the writings of TV gags for the likes of Bob Hope, Bob Newhart, Carol Burnett, Bill Cosby, and Dean Martin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Mendelsohn</span> American screenwriter

Jack Mendelsohn was an American writer-artist who worked in animation, comic strips and comic books. An Emmy-nominated television comedy writer and story editor, he had numerous credits as a TV scripter, including Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, Three's Company, The Carol Burnett Show and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Among his work for feature films, he was a co-screenwriter of Yellow Submarine (1968). In 2004, the Animation Writers Caucus of the Writers Guild gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Hobbs (actor)</span> American actor

Peter Hobbs was a French-born American actor, known for roles on Broadway, television and film.