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Paul Winchell
(named Paul Wilchin) was born on December 21, 1922 in New York City,
New York (on the lower East Side) to Clara and Sol Wilchin. He
family included an older sister, Ruth and a younger sister Rita. He
grew up in a strict home where he had childhood polio, had a speech
impediment (he stuttered) and a verbally abusive mother. His family
moved to Coney Island, Brooklyn when he was still very young.
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He began doing
voices as a young child and began to perfect a whole array of
different characters. After listening to the famed ventriloquist
Edgar Bergen (and dummy Charlie McCarthy) on the radio. Because
this was radio, he did not know at first that this was one man
talking to a puppet.
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As a young
teenager, he enjoyed making voices and practicing his ventriloquism,
but he was on a path to become a commercial artist and attended the
School of Industrial Art in Manhattan. It was there that he was
able to make a ventriloquist dummy in one of his classes for class
credit. Although he only made the head, it only took him a few
weeks to learn ventriloquism. When this shy young boy began to show
his classmates what he could do, they realized that he was very good
and he soon became the most popular kid in the school. His
principal was so impressed with his skills that he called up a
friend at the radio station and got Paul an appearance on a radio
show. He was soon appearing on the radio show Major Bowes
Original Amateur Hour in 1936. [Note: This is also the time his
name was changed from Wilchin to Winchell when a friend at the radio
station intentionally gave them the wrong info because he thought it
would be a better stage name.] He was won as the best act of the
evening. A few days later the station called him up and asked him
if he would like to go around the country with his act – which he
agreed to for the whopping salary of $35 a week.
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In 1948, he began
to be noticed by the networks and became a regular ventriloquist on
The Bigelow Show (a variety show). This opened up more eyes
and landed him his own show in 1950 called the Spiedel Show
(more commonly known as The Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Show).
The show stayed on the air for almost five years. Although he was
the star of the program in which he showcased his skills as a
ventriloquist, he shared the spotlight with his longtime associate,
a wisecracking puppet named Jerry Mahoney. Another “dummy” (created
in 1950) that also shared the spotlight at times was Knucklehead
Smiff.
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He also took his
act to other adult venues such as the Ed Sullivan Show. This also
allowed him (and Mahoney) to make guest appearances over the next
two decades on shows such as The Lucy Show, What’s My Line,
The Dean Martin Show, Laugh-In, The Beverly
Hillbillies and Perry Mason. In fact, he was named
“Television’s Most Diverse Performer” by Look magazine in
1952 and 1953.
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The 1950s saw the
height of his fame as a ventriloquist and in 1954 he wrote a book
entitled Ventriloquism for Fun and Profit so that he can
share his methods with all of his fans.
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In 1954, he was on
the air again with his wooden sidekicks in the Winchell and
Mahoney Show, which ran until 1956. In 1956, he hosted the TV
series Circus Time. Circus time did not last very long and
he went back to a show with his old format called the Paul
Winchell Show from 1957-1960. In 1963, he hosted the short lived
Cartoonies, but made headway again when he appeared on
Saturday mornings from 1965 to 1968 in the nationally syndicated
children’s variety show Winchell-Mahoney Time (where a young
Carol Burnett debuted playing a farm animal). The team of Winchell
and Mahoney made one last stand together in their own show with
Runaround in 1972, which only lasted one season.
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The 1960’s brought
Winchell into the world of animation. He began doing voices for
some of Hanna Barbera’s animated television shows and full length
animated features. In 1962, he took on several voices in the well
known animated television series The Jetsons. A few years
later, in 1968, he voiced several characters in the animated series
Wacky Races, including the first time he voiced the infamous
role of Dick Dastardly.
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Paul Winchell also
enjoyed learning and pursuing science. In 1959 he attended Columbia
University for a short while taking Pre-Med classes. He eventually
graduated from the Acupuncture Research College of Los Angeles in
1974 and became a Doctor of Acupuntrure. He also studied hypnotism
and worked at the Gibbs Institute in Hollywood developing ground
breaking theories and treatments in the field of hypnotherapy.
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He still worked at
his first love during the 1960s – ventriloquism, and performed on
the Winchell Mahoney Time from 1964 to 1968. If you were
wondering what ever happened to Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff,
Winchell donated them to the Smithsonian Institute where they are on
display.
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In 1968 he was
asked to do the voice of one of his most remembered characters –
Tigger (“That’s T-I-Double G- errr.”) for the Academy Award winning
(for the short film category) Disney animated movie Winnie the
Pooh and the Blustery Day. This was the first of many movies and
videos in which Winchell voiced the Tigger character over the next
three decades. [Note: Jim Cummings has “filled in” for the voice of
Tigger over the last few years.]
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Another amazing
aspect of the person who is Paul Winchell is his inventive great
mind. In his private life he was also an inventor. He patented
thirty different inventions during his lifetime. This included a
patent for a disposable razor, invisible garter belt, frozen food
measurement device and a flameless cigarette lighter. In 1963, he
even invented and held a patent for an artificial heart. As to the
heart, he donated his designs to the University of Utah who used it
in their own research. It was Dr. Robert Jarvick ad other members
of the University of Utah staff that created the Jarvik-7 artificial
heart that was actually implanted in several persons beginning in
1982. His work on the artificial heart was well received and he was
given an honorary doctorate in science fro the Nation ional
Christian University. At one point he even came up with an idea to
solve the hunger problems in Africa, and got a lot of well known
celebrities to back him, however, in the long run, the African
leaders rejected his ideas.
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In 1974, he was
awarded a Grammy Award for The Best Children’s Recording for his
recording of The Most Wonderful Things About Tiggers. This
record included parts of the movie Winnie The Pooh and Tigger Too
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1974 was a good
year for Winchell and he married his true love, actress Jean Freeman
in Tiajuana, Mexico. This was actually his third marriage. He was
first married to Dorothy (Dottie) Morse and they had two children (a
son, Stacy and a daughter Stephani) before they were divorced. His
second wife was Nina Russel and they had one daughter April Winchell
who has followed in her dad’s footsteps and does voice over as well
as being a talk show host and owning her own production company.
Jean and Paul did not have any children of their own, but she had
two sons, Larry & Keith Freeman from a previous marriage.
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He continued to
perform the voices of several animated characters during the 1970s
and 1980s besides Tigger and Dick Dastardly including: The Chineese
Cat in the Aristocats (1970), various voices on Hong-Kong
Phooey (1974), Boomer in The Fox and The Hound (1981),
Gargamel in The Smurfs (1981-1989) and Zummi in The Gummi
Bears (1985-1989).
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After hearing that
most of his live recordings as a ventriloquist were erased by
Metromedia, Inc. he the company. Although he won a 17.8 million
dollar verdict in 1986, most of the recordings (288 tapes of the
show from 1965-1968) of his live work were gone forever.
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He was awarded an
Annie award in 1998 for his voice work (as Tigger) in the animated
movie Pooh’s Grand Adventur: The Search for Christopher Robin.
The following year after lending his voice once again as Tigger in
the movie Winnie the Pooh: Seasons of Giving, he “retired”
from doing voice overs.
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Winchell was also
a writer, and wrote an autobiography called Winch, published
in 2004, which told all about the good and bad things that have
happed during his lifetime. He was also a deeply religious person
and wrote many essays on theology. He even had a website
ProtectGod.com where he would publish some of his writings (no
longer active).
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Mr. Winchell was
working even up to the time of his death. He was involved in a
project that was transferring old children’s television shows (from
the 50s & 60s) onto streaming video that would be free to the
public. He first began by doing this for the shows he was involved
with on the Paul Winchell Kids Network, but had opened up this
project to all shows from those eras. [Note: the project slowed down
a bit in recent years due to issues with broadband (being too narrow
for most users) and licensing.
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Paul Winchell
passed away on June 24, 2005 at the young age of 82 while sleeping
in his home in Moorpark, California.