 Not only did the two men become longtime friends, but Waterman—who actually looked as though he could have been Peary's sibling, and whose voice was a near-match for Peary's—refused to appropriate the half-leering, half-embarrassed laugh Peary had made a Gildersleeve trademark.He stayed with "The Great Gildersleeve" from 1950 to 1957 on radio and in a short-lived television series syndicated in 1955.During World War II, Waterman worked in war production in the Nash-Kelvinator plant in Kenosha, Wisconsin.