Harry von Zell

Harry von Zell (July 11, 1906 - November 21, 1981) was a U.S. radio announcer and a film and television actor, best remembered for a verbal slip he made as a young announcer, when he referred to U.S. President Herbert Hoover as "Hoobert Heever".

This Spoonerism was made in 1931, as part of a live tribute on Hoover's birthday. It came at the end of a long reading of Hoover's career, during which von Zell had correctly pronounced the president's name several times. The accident did not occur during a broadcast at Hoover's presidential inauguration, as is often believed: That version was fabricated by Kermit Schaefer for an album titled Pardon My Blooper.

His greatest fame came on the George Burns and Gracie Allen sitcom of the 1950s, wherein he played the befuddled friend of the Burns family, and their show within a show's announcer.

In his later years he was a commercial spokesperson for Los Angeles based savings & loan Home Savings of America.

He died of cancer at the age of 75 in Los Angeles.