- Born
- Died
- Birth namePaul Wilchinsky
- Nicknames
- Winch
- Paulie
- Height6′ 1½″ (1.87 m)
- Born Paul Wilchinsky on December 21, 1922, the son of Sol and Clara Wilchinsky, Paul Winchell grew up to be the most beloved ventriloquist of American children. Ironically, as famous as Paul was, his dummy, Jerry Mahoney, was probably more famous. Not since Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy in the previous two decades had a ventriloquist and his dummy known equal celebrity.
Entering the spotlight on the Edward Bowes
"Original Amateur Hour" (1948), he began working soon after in a review
show in which Major Bowes would showcase the winners of his radio
program. He started his television career on the CBS program
The Bigelow Show (1948) in
1948;
The Paul Winchell Show (1950),
originally called "The Spiedel Show," in 1950; and, finally, the
best-known of his shows
Winchell-Mahoney Time (1965).
With a clubhouse premise, his dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead
Smiff--another of Paul's characters--as the clubhouse leaders, and the
music of the bandleader Milton Delugg. A
new innovation of Winchell's was to replace the dummy's hands with
those of puppeteers who were hidden behind the dummies in a crate.
Winch also played many serous dramatic roles on television without his
dummy sidekicks.
What may be even more famous is that he created the voice of Tigger for
the Walt Disney Company's "Winnie The Pooh" motion-picture series,
based on the famous books by A.A. Milne. He
played the role behind the scenes until 1999, when he was replaced by
Jim Cummings, who also voiced Pooh
from the time that Sterling Holloway
died. He was also the voice of many other world-famous cartoon
characters.
A little-known fact about Winchell is that he was one of the original
inventors of an artificial heart--years before the first successful
transplant with such of a device--an automobile that runs on battery
power, a method for breeding tilapia, and many other inventions that
are still around today.- IMDb Mini Biography By: MeanDean
- SpousesJean Freeman(1974 - June 24, 2005) (his death, 2 children)Nina Russell(October 5, 1961 - 1973) (divorced, 1 child)Dorothy (Dottie) Gertrude Movitz(May 15, 1944 - November 19, 1960) (divorced, 2 children)
- ChildrenStephanie WinchellStacy Paul WinchellKeith WinchellLarry Winchell
- ParentsSol WilchinskyClara Wilchinsky
- Exuberant voice
- Voice of Tigger
- Distinct high-pitched, whooping laugh
- Voice of Gargamel from The Smurfs (1981)
- Voice of Dick Dastardly
- He won a $17.8-million jury verdict in his lawsuit against Metromedia
Inc. over Metromedia's destruction of the only remaining tapes of his
Winchell-Mahoney Time (1965) children's television series. Metromedia, which produced the
show from 1964 to 1968, erased the 288 tapes in a dispute with Winchell
over the syndication rights. - Held patents on over 30 devices, a flameless cigarette lighter, an
invisible garter belt, a method of breeding Tilapia fish so that poorer
countries could feed their citizens, and an indicator to show when
frozen food had gone bad after a power outage. As for his major
achievement, the artificial heart, which he built in 1963, was donated
to the University of Utah for research. The first transplant into a human
happened on December 3, 1967. Paul Winchell invented the disposable razor which he
neglected to get a patent on. when friends told him "Who would buy a
razor just to throw it away?" Paul abandoned the idea, later to Winch's
dismay, a major razor company proved Paul was right. - His puppet side-kicks, Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff, are now in
the Smithsonian Institution. - Winchell worked for years developing his ideas for artificial hearts and
was mentioned in news stories about the Utah man who got the first
artificial heart and later when the Jarvik heart came to the fore. He
held several patents in artificial organ development. - Winchell was an inventor who patented the first artificial
human heart. He then donated the patent to the University of Utah Medical School.
- Television and its use of computers can make everything talk, so there's no need for the art of ventriloquism anymore. I don't think young kids today would even understand it.
- Ventriloquism is closely related to magic. It's all about misdirection. You practice speaking from your diaphragm and low in your throat. You substitute letters for 'B' and 'P' that allow you to speak without moving your lips.
- I first met Walt Disney 25 or 30 years ago.
- Children are so used to seeing puppets that when they see a real ventriloquist they don't understand it.
- on Walt Disney: Walt gave me a VIP tour of the studio. I remember people doing voices.
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