“This character, they said, ‘What do you think he would sound like?’ I said, ‘Well, he’s got all that cool meat hanging off of his face, so his speech is [unintelligible].’ I kept thinking of a vaudevillian — before there was television, the master of ceremonies, his name was George Jessel, and he was a comic and he was an actor. He’d have jokes like, ‘You know the definition of a smart***? A fella that can sit on an ice cream cone and tell you what flavor it is.’ Then there was Lou Jacobi from the ‘Arthur’ movies where he leans into Arthur and goes, ‘What’s it like to have all that money?’ So I used the two of them, cold-fused them to get Zoidberg.”
Here is the influence:
https://www.slashfilm.com/1128946/futuramas-billy-west-combined-some-classic-voices-to-find-dr-zoidbergs-sound/
https://youtu.be/9YtjevK2SW0?si=1w2LSddLNpCNzk1L
Billy West? What is that, some kind of old fake cowboy name
I suppose. What a stupid, phony, made-up name.