Smokey and the Bandit

Smokey and the Bandit was a 1977 movie starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jackie Gleason, Jerry Reed, Paul Williams, and Mike Henry. It would inspire several other trucking films including two sequels, Smokey and the Bandit II, and Smokey and the Bandit Part 3. Also, a television movie was loosely based on the film called Bandit. The 3 movies introduced three generations of the Pontiac Trans Am (unlike the television movie version which the other Bandit drives the Dodge Stealth R/T Twin Turbo). The film was the second highest grossing film of 1977, beaten only by Star Wars.

Television censorship

When Smokey and the Bandit first aired on American network television in the early 1980s, censors were faced with the challenge of toning down the raw language of the original film. For this purpose, they overdubbed dialogue deemed offensive. Unfortunately, the original actors were unavailable, therefore substitutes were used. In the case of Jackie Gleason's character, a voice actor with a noticeably higher voice was used and in some scenes in both this film and the TV version of Part II, a considerable amount of Gleason's dialogue was re-recorded by this uncredited actor. The most noted change made for network broadcast was the replacing of Buford's often-spoken phrase "sumbitch" (a contraction of "son-of-a-bitch"; usually in reference to his son) with the nonsense phrase "scum bum". This phrase achieved a level of popularity with children. The TV prints of the first two Bandit films are still shown regularly on television.

Related Topics:
American - Censors

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It is believed the uncredited voice actor is Henry Corden.

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