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Believed
to be the earliest known photograph
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of
Burt West, about age 11. (sans
bucket)
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| Photo
courtesy
the Kansas City |
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Temperance
League |
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The Untold Burt
West Biography - Chapter 1
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| Long
before Burt even conceived of becoming a voice-over artist,
through an act of God or fate, he caught a brief
glimpse of his future profession. |
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| As
a boy, from the ages of 9 to 12, Burt worked as a bucket
boy in a Kansas City Honky-Tonk. Bucket boys were commonly employed during the dog days of the summer in
nightclubs, saloons, bars and burlesque houses. These young men
and boys were armed with a bucket of sawdust always prepared
to dash out into the audience dispensing sawdust immediately
after a patron had, according to Burt, "erroneously ejected the
questionable and likely volatile and corrosive contents of their stomach through their
mouths onto the floor or thereabouts." ) Burt excelled at
this job,
both in physical speed and brevity of word...speaking and
responding only when spoken to...remaining ever-tight lipped
and quiet. His normal place during an evening was just
off the small stage behind a makeshift curtain,
usually sitting silently on his bucket of sawdust, always at
the ready. |
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| One
evening he broke
his notorious silence when a fire broke out on the other
side of the house, near the bar. While the bartender dealt
with the fire, the roused and rowdy audience began to erupt
in panic |
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"I
rushed onstage, jumped up on the piano," he
recalls, "and I delivered Lincoln's
Gettysburg Address. It caught them off guard, I
think. It quieted the audience until the
fire was put out. I think it was the authoritative, confident
and believable
nature of my delivery that enthralled them and had such
a calming effect." |
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