Little Mortie Cooper

He is doing his Little Mortie Cooper Voice, which is a cross between Woody Allen and Bugs Bunny. The tone is nasal thin, the accent Brooklyn.

“This is the way I used to talk,” he says, wheeling his swivel chair toward where I am sitting. He stays in the chair and propels it forward like he is on a scooter.

“You understand what I’m saying? I thought I sounded like Charles Boyer but I talked like this instead. “

He is almost nose to nose with me now, peering out through thick, black-rimmed glasses. I can smell the coffee on his breath. His bald dome glows under a fluorescent light.

“I was thought to be the worst speaker the Brooklyn College debate team ever had,” he says, speaking normally now through a smile so fixed it seems painted on porcelain. “In addition to everything else, I stared at the ceiling when I spoke.”

He gazes at the ceiling to illustrate, smiling upward like a saint or a nun.

“They told me to forget debating and take up wrestling instead.”

He laughs loudly, amused by the ignorance of those who did not know (how could they?) that someday this Little Mortie Cooper with the Woody Allen Voice would grow up to be Dr. Morton Cooper, speech therapist and king of the voice seminars?

“Four years later,” he says, “I was voted best speaker on the debating team. Then I became a disc jockey in Indiana.” He pauses and stares at me. “You understand what I’m saying?”

He says that several times. You know what I mean? You understand what I’m saying? You get my drift?

Were I a psychologist, which I am not, I would analyze that to mean he is a person of low self-esteem who is sure no one is listening.

So in order to validate himself, he scoots his chair forward, jumps into your face and says, “You understand what I’m saying?”

Normally, I do not have the patience to suffer people their flaws, but then we get into Little Mortie Cooper’s impoverished background on the streets of New York and I would look like a rotten pig just to get up and walk out.

How can you reject a guy who was raised in a tenement in a room shared with rats? Little Mortie Cooper didn’t say that exactly, but the implication was there. No one suffers like a New Yorker.

As I mentioned, he is a speech therapist, dealing with such unromantic ailments as spastic dysphonia, which is a kind of strangled voice pattern.

I don’t think it’s one of the world’s more threatening maladies, but I am sure someday Little Mortie Cooper will turn it into a pathology of magnificent proportions. The man’s a dynamo. Even his smile is megawattage.

Because of his own voice problems, he went on to study speech therapy and ultimately received his Ph.D. from UCLA.

Then he wrote books, gave seminars and went on talk shows. Little Mortie is the best of the breed.

I was visiting Cooper in his Westwood office at the behest of his publicist, Irwin (Promotion in Motion) Zucker. Why, I hear you ask, does a speech guy need a press agent?

Well, because, Little Mortie calls himself “Voice Coach to the Stars” and boasts such clients as Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda. I’m sure, were they alive, they would endorse him enthusiastically.

Also, L.A. is a show biz town and you never know when you will be called upon to perform. Everyone seeks the spotlight. The other day I met a homeless man who did bird calls. He takes a mouthful of water and does a kind of liquid trill.

You never know.

Cooper is 59. I like to leave everyone with at least one fact. They remain suspicious of whimsy on Spring Street. Give us meat, they cry. Give us data.

How’s this:

Mortie believes at least 50% of everyone in America sounds like Woody Allen and 25% like Henry Kissinger. While that has not done Woody or Henry much damage, it isn’t the way we should sound.

I ask him to analyze my voice. He puts a finger against my abdomen. He has me hum and say, “Uh,” and “Uh-one,” and some other things.

“Talk on the hum or your voice,” he says. “You know what I mean? Talk through your mask.”

I sound a little like a Puerto Rican troll, but Little Mortie says my voice is beautiful and melodious, like the seven sirens of mythology who lured sailors to their deaths.

Then he does some imitations to indicate good and bad voices. Mr. Rogers is a wimp. James Bond is terrific. He does Kissinger again.

“Henry lives in his lower throat,” Little Mortie Cooper says. “His battery sounds low.”

He leans forward. “We’ve got to be better than our voice,” he says. “You understand what I’m saying?”

Uh, yeah, man, I think so.