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Paul Winchell

Genres: Children

Biography

The premier ventriloquist of the baby-boom era, Paul Winchell was a pioneering force in children's television and music most fondly remembered as the voice of Tigger in Walt Disney's animated Winnie the Pooh features and TV series. Born Paul Wilchen in Manhattan's Lower East Side on December 21, 1922, he contracted polio at age six and was also subject to physical abuse at the hands of his mother. He sought refuge in the radio comedy of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and later constructed his own dummy as a grade school art project, overcoming a speech impediment to master ventriloquism by his early teens. In 1936 Winchell appeared on radio's Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour with his dummy Terry in tow. His impersonation of Bergen's Charlie McCarthy character was so uncanny that he won the talent contest and spent the next decade playing vaudeville revues, eventually introducing a new dummy character, Jerry Mahoney, who served as his foil for years to follow. Winchell's television career began in 1946, when he hosted his own program broadcast via closed-circuit in retail store chain John Wannamaker's locations. In 1948, he teamed with mentalist Joseph Dunninger to co-host The Bigelow Show, which aired on the fledgling CBS network in its first year of weekday broadcasting. As the decade drew to a close Winchell introduced his other most enduring creation: the dummy Knucklehead Smiff, whose patented absurdity made rival Mahoney seem a straight man by comparison.

With the 1950 launch of his NBC network Saturday morning program The Paul Winchell-Jerry Mahoney Show, the ventriloquist became a nationwide superstar. Featuring bandleader Milton DeLugg as well as a then-unknown Carol Burnett, the series' emphasis on music and comedy ultimately led to a series of Winchell-headlined LPs including Chips of Wood, When You Come to the End of the Lollipop, and Jerry Mahoney Club Songs. Personal issues resulting from the death of his mother forced Winchell to leave the series shortly after the release of his 1954 book Ventriloquism for Fun and Profit, and he did not resurface until two years later with the ABC program Circus Time. Later retitled The Paul Winchell Show, it aired until 1960. While hosting the series, Winchell resumed his education, studying pre-med at Columbia University and later receiving his certification to practice acupuncture and hypnotherapy. An amateur inventor, Winchell also introduced the first disposable razor -- an idea he discarded on the basis of poor financial advice -- and in 1963 teamed with Henry J. Heimlich, inventor of the choking rescue maneuver that bears his name, to patent a prototype artificial heart that Dr. Robert Jarvik later cited as the template for his own device, successfully implanted in a human in 1982.

Winchell returned to television in 1963 with Cartoonies. The syndicated Winchell-Mahoney Time debuted two years later and ran until 1968. He also guested on prime time series including The Lucy Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, and The Dick Van Dyke Show, and contributed voice-over work to such animated programs as The Jetsons, Wacky Races, and The Banana Splits Adventure Hour. Winchell is nevertheless best known for his portrayal of Tigger in Disney's myriad Winnie the Pooh animated productions. At the suggestion of third wife Jean, a British native, he ad libbed Tigger's catch phrase "Ta-ta for now," and despite the objections of Disney execs, the line made it to screen and remains forever identified with the character. Winchell also shared a Best Recording for Children Grammy Award in 1974 for his work on the soundtrack album Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too! Voice-over work continued to dominate Winchell's career in the years to follow, as he worked on programs including The Smurfs, Heathcliff, and Garfield and Friends. Although no footage of the original Paul Winchell-Jerry Mahoney Show existed, he entered negotiations to license the Winchell-Mahoney Time tapes for home video, but producer Metromedia Inc. balked at the deal and erased all of their master copies; in 1989 a jury ruled that Metromedia was to pay him 17.8 million dollars in damages. Winchell published a dark confessional memoir, Winch, in 2004; he died at his Moorpark, CA, home on June 24, 2005. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi