Television
Von Zell worked in the earliest days of television in 1931, describing boxing matches on experimental television boxing broadcasts.
Nearly 20 years later, in early 1950, he had his first major television exposure as announcer and spokesman for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer on Jackie Gleason's The Life of Riley.
In September 1951, at the beginning of the second television season of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, he replaced the first season's announcer, Bill Goodwin, who had also announced the Burns & Allen radio show for many years. Appearing under his name (as Goodwin had), Harry Von Zell continued to play the befuddled friend of the Burns family, and the show-within-a-show's announcer, until 1958, the year of Gracie Allen's retirement and the conclusion of the series. Though ostensibly playing himself, the Von Zell character on the show was single; in real life, Von Zell was married with two children.
During the 1958–59 television season, Von Zell continued working with George Burns on his short-lived 25-week NBC sitcom, The George Burns Show. That same year, he wrote the teleplays for four episodes of NBC's Wagon Train, appearing in one of them. In 1959, he joined comedian George Gobel, announcing his single-season half-hour program on CBS. During 1960–61, he appeared in five episodes of the television series Bachelor Father as Frank Curtis, a good friend of Bentley Gregg (played by John Forsythe).
Von Zell appeared in the Perry Mason episodes "The Case of the Ancient Romeo" (1962), and as the murderer Sidney Hawes in "The Case of the Libelous Locket" (1963). He was cast in an episode of NBC's western series, The Tall Man, and appeared in an episode of McHale's Navy as Admiral Parker, the uncle of Tim Conway's character Ensign Parker. Von Zell's last appearance was on an episode of Ellery Queen in 1975.
Von Zell delivered the commentary on Celebrity Golf, a series of half-hour, nine-hole golf matches made in 1960 with Sam Snead taking on such Hollywood celebrities as Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, and Bob Hope at Los Angeles golf courses such as Woodland Hills and Lakeside Country Club. Those matches were rerun in recent years on the Golf Channel.
In his later years, Von Zell was a commercial spokesman for Los Angeles-based savings and loan association Home Savings of America. In 1976 he was one of the many leading radio announcers who participated in a television special, The Good Old Days of Radio.
