Jackie Vernon, voice of Frosty in the 1969 holiday classic Frosty the Snowman, may have been leading a double or even triple life, according to his son. David Vernon, son of Jackie and his wife Hazel, spoke about his father’s alleged other families on the radio show Nostalgia Tonight with Joe Sibilia.
A topic of the early December episode was remembering Jackie Vernon for his lasting role in holiday pop culture, but also for his potentially scandalous personal life. David claimed his father had at least three other marriages before his mother, Hazel, that no one in their family knew about. He recalled meeting one of those previous wives by accident as a child when she showed up at their home in Los Angeles.
“There was a woman there with a kid who was older than I was,” David said. “He was probably in his late teens and a little rough around the edges looking. And the woman asked to speak to my dad, and I said, you know, ‘My dad’s on the road, and he’s not home.’ Then, I remember she was very firm, she was like, ‘Well then, I want to speak to your mother then.’”
David said that he was told to go upstairs, but listened in on his mother’s conversation with the strange woman. After she left, he asked his mother to spill the beans.
Son of ‘Frosty The Snowman’ Voice Actor Reveals His Father Had Multiple Secret Families
“And it finally kind of came out that before our family, my dad had been married at least three other times, which I was kind of shocked to find out,” said David Vernon. Previous families aren’t so uncommon. But to keep them all a secret from each other is a bold move. However, it gets weirder.
According to David, his father had multiple children with each of these prior secret wives. But he went the extra mile and gave all the boys the same name.
“From these marriages, he had sons, and he named them all Ralph after himself—after his original name, Ralph Verrone,” David revealed. “But he also abandoned all these families, moved on.”
David Vernon and his sisters, Lisa and Tracey, lucked out in the name department, though. Apparently, Hazel made a deal with her husband before their children were born. This allowed her to name any sons they had, while he had to name the daughters. You can’t really get away with calling a girl Ralph, can you?
While David did a bit of spilling his dad’s tea, he also shared some bright spots in his life. One of those was his role in Frosty the Snowman. Despite mental health struggles and substance abuse in his later years, Jackie Vernon remained proud of the work he did as Frosty.
“One of the last Christmases that my dad was around,” said David, “We all watched it together, and he was so proud of it. He enjoyed it, he laughed at it. He was so happy he had done it, and it became a very warm spot in his heart that I loved seeing that for him.”
Photo by CBS/Courtesy of Getty Images
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