Kraft Foods, who sponsored "The Great Gildersleeve" and owned the intellectual properties, refused to move the program to CBS. "Gildersleeve" remained on NBC with Willard Waterman, whose voice strongly resembled Peary's and who had known Peary since their radio days in Chicago, replaced Peary in the title role. Waterman refused to appropriate the famous Gildersleeve laugh however, believing Peary alone should have rights to that trademark, but otherwise slipped easily into the role; Peary himself approved of Waterman's approach, at least on radio. When the series briefly moved to television in 1955, Peary remarked that Waterman, who was much taller than Peary, was too large to pull off the role (Peary imagined Gildersleeve as a small man with delusions of grandeur) successfully on-screen.