Rowlf hoping he resembles David Niven
Rough Cut on the bottom of a London cinema marquee in The Great Muppet Caper
David Niven (1910-1983) was an Academy Award-winning British actor best known for his starring roles in Hollywood films. These include Separate Tables (for which he won Best Actor) and Around the World in 80 Days (as Phileas Fogg). He was the top billed star in The Pink Panther as gentleman thief Sir Charles Lytton, but his role would be overshadowed by the debut of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau.
Niven began acting on screen in the 1930s. While he was already receiving dashing leading man parts by 1939, he left to enlist in the British army during World War II. Postwar, he returned to movies, including the remake of My Man Godfrey, Please Don't Eat the Daisies (with Doris Day), The Guns of Navarone and other war movies, and Bedtime Story, opposite Marlon Brando as competing con artists (remade by Frank Oz as Dirty Rotten Scoundrels). By the late 1960s and onward, he was leaning mostly towards comedy, playing James Bond in the spoof Casino Royale, appearing in two Disney movies, parodying the vampire count in Old Dracula, and as part of the all-star cast of spoofed sleuths in the Neil Simon movie Murder by Death. He followed it with a more genuine whodunit, Death on the Nile.
References[]
- Rowlf the Dog, anxious to impress Lassie in the December 26, 1963 broadcast of The Jimmy Dean Show, asks Jimmy Dean if it's true what his friends say about him: "Do I really look like David Niven?"
- Two seasons later, Rowlf, dressed as a stereotypical movie star in the December 10, 1965 broadcast, disavows any resemblance to Rock Hudson. "I'm more on the David Niven type."
Notes[]
- One of Niven's later movies, Rough Cut (1980, with Burt Reynolds) appears on a movie marquee in The Great Muppet Caper. It's one of several (along with Airplane) passed by the Happiness Hotel courtesy car during "Night Life."