Alan Young is most famous for his role as Wilbur, confidante to Mr. Ed, television's most famous talking horse. Young had a successful career in radio before moving into TV in 1950 for The Alan Young Show, a blend of skits and songs that highlighted his nice-guy persona and ran until 1953. He showed his dramatic skills on TV and films (notably 1960's The Time Machine), and was a regular on TV shows such as The Steve Allen Show, then had his own hit with Mr. Ed in 1961. Since that show left the air in 1965, Young has continued to work, mostly in television as a voice actor (he was Scrooge McDuck in DuckTales, 1987-90).
Career Highlights: Mickey's Christmas Carol, The Time Machine, Tom Thumb
First Major Screen Credit: Chicken Every Sunday (1948)
Biography
Born in England, Alan Young was raised in Canada, where his precocious talents won him work on network radio while he was still a teenager. Already quite popular in his adopted country, Young was given an ABC network radio program in the States in 1944, which confined his wide-ranging talent for music and mimicry in a standard sitcom format. Still youthful looking enough to pass for a high school kid, Young's screen debut was in the teen romance Margie (1946), which led to several years of collegiate roles (he was a college senior in Mr. Belvedere Goes to College, even though he was 30 at the time). In 1950, the actor headlined a comedy-variety TV series, CBS' The Alan Young Show, which spotlighted his pantomime skills; unfortunately, the series degenerated into yet another situation comedy when it returned to CBS in 1953 after an 11-month hiatus. In the mid-'50s, Young was offered the lead in a comedy series about a talking horse, but turned it down cold; after several years of relative inactivity, Young was more responsive to the offer, and in 1961 began a five-year run on Mister Ed as the horse's bemused master, Wilbur Post. Upon Ed's cancellation in 1965, Young turned his back on show business to devote himself to the Christian Science movement. By 1980, the actor and the Movement had come to a parting of the ways, and he was free to accept performing work again. Very little happened until Young was hired to provide the voice of Scrooge McDuck in the 1983 Disney cartoon short Mickey's Christmas Carol. He did so well with this assignment that he became the permanent voice of Scrooge in the TV cartoon series Duck Tales, which ran from 1987 through 1990 and yielded 100 episodes. In 1988, Alan Young could be seen as well as heard in Coming of Age, a CBS sitcom set in an Arizona retirement community -- the closest Young has ever come to true and full retirement. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Alan Young (born November 19, 1919) is an English-born character actor, best known for his television role opposite a talking horse, Mister Ed and as the voice of Scrooge McDuck. During the 1940s and 1950s he starred in his own shows on radio and television.
Young was featured in the film Chicken Every Sunday in 1949, and the television version of The Alan Young Show began the following year. After its cancellation, Young appeared in films, including Androcles and the Lion (1952) and The Time Machine. He appeared in the episode "Thin Ice" of the NBCespionage drama Five Fingers, starring David Hedison. He is best known, however, for Mister Ed, a CBS television show which ran from 1961 to 1966. He played the owner of a talking horse that would talk to no one but him.
In 1993, Young recreated his role as Filby for the mini-sequel to George Pal's classic The Time Machine reuniting him with Rod Taylor, who played George, the Time Traveller. It was called Time Machine: The Journey Back, directed by Clyde Lucas. In 1994, Young co-starred in the Eddie Murphy film Beverly Hills Cop III. He played the role of Uncle Dave Thornton, the Walt Disney-esque founder of the fictional California theme park Wonderworld. In 2000, he read H. G. Wells's The Time Machine for 7th Voyage Productions, Inc. In 2002, he had a cameo as the flower store worker in Simon Wells' remake of The Time Machine.
