Paul Winchell (December 21, 1922 – June 24, 2005), born Paul Wilchin in New York City, was an American ventriloquist and voice actor whose fame flourished in the 1950s and 1960s. He was also an amateur inventor and he patented an artificial human heart which he donated to the University of Utah.

The ventriloquist figures for which he was best known include Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff. Both figures were carved by Chicago-based figure maker Frank Marshall. His first series as a ventriloquist was actually on radio with Mahoney in 1943; the program was short-lived, as he was overshadowed by Edgar Bergen, though radio historian John Dunning, in his 1998 tome On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old Time Radio, felt Winchell was the better ventriloquist.

His later career included a great deal of voice-over acting for animated cartoons, notably for Disney and Hanna-Barbera. For the latter, he played the character Dick Dastardly in several series (notably Wacky Races and Dastardly and Muttley), Fleagle Beagle on The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, and Gargamel on The Smurfs. For Disney, he was best known for voicing the character of Tigger from Disney's Winnie the Pooh films, and won a Grammy for his performance in Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too. Beginning with the television series The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, he alternated in the role with Jim Cummings, the current voice of Pooh. In a somewhat controversial move, Cummings took over permanently beginning with The Tigger Movie in 2000 (though Winchell played Tigger one last time in a Walt Disney World Pooh attraction). Other Disney roles included parts in The Aristocats as a Chinese cat and The Fox and the Hound as Boomer the woodpecker. On TV, he played Zummi Gummi on The Gummi Bears, and in commercials, voiced the Scrubbing Bubbles for Dow Chemicals. He also did the voice of Fearless Freddy the Shark Hunter on the Pink Panther cartoon spin-off Misterjaw in 1976.

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Here's some nice early morning entertainment, The Paul Winchell Show from 1954..one of the best ventriloquists ever http://ow.ly/Q8ZE
steve_hurst (Steve Hurst) Sun, 27 Dec 2009 13:26:37 -0000
Here's some nice early morning entertainment, The Paul Winchell Show from 1954..one of the best ventriloquists ever http://ow.ly/Q8ZE
Anyone remember Paul Winchell the ventriloquist?
zeitz (Leigh Zeitz (@zeitz)) Sun, 27 Dec 2009 00:00:48 -0000
Anyone remember Paul Winchell the ventriloquist?
.Today is ventriloquist Paul Winchell's birthday... It isn't really, but I'm celebrating his birth anyway.
johnkensil (John Kensil) Sat, 26 Dec 2009 16:25:16 -0000
.Today is ventriloquist Paul Winchell's birthday... It isn't really, but I'm celebrating his birth anyway.

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