Paul Winchell with Jerry Mahoney.
Paul Winchell (born Paul Wilchinsky; December 21, 1922 – June 24, 2005) was an American ventriloquist, voice actor and inventor from New York City.
His best-known animation voice roles include Tigger of Disney's Winnie the Pooh films, Dick Dastardly of Wacky Races, and Gargamel and Baby Smurf of The Smurfs (1981). Winchell also invented the artificial heart and, in his later years, produced museum-quality paintings.
His daughter, April Winchell, is a well-known voice actress in her own right, and used to run the now-discontinued comedy blog Regretsy.com.
Tropes relating to Paul Winchell:
- Compilation Movie: Winchell starred in the 1960 film Stop! Look! And Laugh! with both Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff. The movie though is better known from multiple clips from various shorts of The Three Stooges.
- Game Show Host: He worked with his puppet, Jerry Mahoney, on the NBC children's game show Runaround (produced by Heatter-Quigley, which also co-produced Wacky Races {which was originally planned to have a live-action game show segment}) in 1968.
- Man of a Thousand Voices: Two of which can easily fall into Hey, It's That Voice! His Tigger voice was used on The Banana Splits and The Robonic Stooges, while his Gargamel voice was previously used for Dick Dastardly.
- Missing Episode: Tragically, all the surviving episodes of the show Winchell/Mahoney Time were lost when the studio, Metromedia (which later evolved into Fox), vindictively destroyed all the tapes during a syndication dispute.
- Sad Clown: Winchell had a troubled life off the stage, as revealed in his autobiography. He suffered through an abusive childhood, was involved in multiple strained marriages, and battled depression throughout his life (culminating in a breakdown which saw him briefly institutionalized), while his relationship with his own children was so strained that they were not immediately notified of his death in 2005.
- Tenor Boy: Paul Winchell is known for using his high tenor voice as the characters.
- Ventriloquism: Winchell was regarded as a master of the form, with his dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff.
