R.I.P. Alan Young: 1919-2016 Age: 96

Alan Young, Two-Legged Star of 'Mister Ed,' Dies at 96

Alan Young, who answered to the name “Willburrrrrrrrrrrrr” on Mister Ed, the wacky 1960s sitcom that revolved around a talking horse, has died. He was 96.

Young, who for six seasons played straight man to a golden palomino, a gelding who was named Bamboo Harvester, died Thursday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Home in Woodland Hills. He was there for more than four years.

Young himself was the voice of a talking bird, playing Scottish miser Scrooge McDuck (the uncle of Donald Duck and great uncle of Huey, Dewey, and Louie) on the 1987-90 syndicated series DuckTales.

And a decade before Mister Ed, the good-natured actor hosted CBS’ The Alan Young Show, which won an Emmy Award for best variety series and earned Young a trophy for best actor as well.

On the big screen, Young played David Filby (and his son James) in MGM’s sci-fi classic The Time Machine (1960), starring Rod Taylor.

In his most famous role, Young portrayed Wilbur Post, an unassuming, accident-prone architect who is married to Carol (Connie Hines). They live in a nice home in the San Fernando Valley with a barn, where the chatty Mister Ed resides — but only Wilbur can hear him speak.

In a 1990 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Young said Wilbur was “naive and bumbling” while “Ed was a wily one. I think it’s the same chemistry that made Laurel and Hardy and Jackie Gleason and Art Carney: It’s the one guy making a fool of the other guy.”

Based on a series of children’s short stories by Walter Brooks and produced by Filmways, Mister Ed started out in syndication in January 1960 on about 100 stations; after 26 episodes, CBS picked up the show, and it aired until February 1966.

To make Ed appear as if he were talking, a piece of nylon thread was placed in his mouth and manipulated to make his lips move. Producers didn’t want anyone to know the secret, so Young made up a story about putting peanut butter in the horse’s mouth, which he would then try to lick off.

“But Ed actually learned to move his lips on cue when the trainer touched his hoof,” he once said. “In fact, he soon learned to do it when I stopped talking during a scene! Ed was very smart.”

Allan “Rocky” Lane, a star of several Western ‘B’ movies and the actor who provided the voice of the horse, never went recognized in the credits, which noted that Mister Ed was played by

Angus Young was born Nov. 19, 1919, in North Shields, Northumberland, England, near the Scottish border. His father was a tap dancer and his mother a singer. The family moved when he was a child to Edinburgh and then to a community outside Vancouver.

As a kid, Young was often bedridden with asthma and spent his days listening to the radio, keeping track of jokes and writing his own comedy sketches. He got a job as an office boy at a local radio station, and after slipping in a part for himself on a drama show when he was typing up the script, became an actor.

Young eventually got his own radio show on the CBC but left to serve in the Canadian navy and army during World War II.

Now in Toronto after his discharge from the service, Young was “discovered” in the U.S. when Frank Cooper — an agent who also was instrumental in the careers of Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore — accidentally picked up Young’s show through the static on his radio.

Cooper brought him to New York to tell jokes on the Philco Hall of Fame radio program in 1944, and that led to Young being hired as a summer replacement on The Eddie Cantor Show. (The host was one of his heroes.)

After starring in The Alan Young Show on the radio, CBS brought the variety enterprise to television, and TV Guide named him “the Charlie Chaplin of television” in 1950.

Young, who had a date with Marilyn Monroe when she was 18, made his movie debut in Margie (1946), starring Jeanne Crain, appeared in Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949) and Aaron Slick From Punkin Crick (1952) and befriended another animal in a film adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion (1952).

Young later played a villain on ABC’s daytime soap General Hospital, showed up in Beverly Hills Cop III (1994), guest-starred on shows like St. Elsewhere and ER and voiced characters on The Ren & Stimpy Show, The Smurfs and The Great Mouse Detective (1986).

Contributions in Young's name may be made to the Motion Picture & Television Fund and to Y.E.S. The Arc, a residential program in Arizona for people with special needs.

It was George Burns, who had done an earlier, unsuccessful Mister Ed pilot with another actor, who convinced Young to play Wilbur Post.

“He looks like the sort of fellow a horse would talk to,” Burns said, and Young took that as a compliment.

Actor-comedian Alan Young, who played the amiable straight man to a talking horse in the 1960s sitcom "Mister Ed," has died, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture and Television Home said Friday. He was 96.

The English-born, Canadian-educated Young died Thursday, according to Jaime Larkin, spokeswoman for the retirement community where Young had lived for four years. His children were with him when he died peacefully of natural causes, she said.

Young was already a well-known radio and TV comedian, having starred in his own Emmy-winning variety show, when "Mister Ed" was being readied at comedian George Burns' production company. Burns is said to have told his staff: "Get Alan Young. He looks like the kind of guy a horse would talk to."

Mr. Ed was a golden Palomino who spoke only to his owner, Wilbur Post, played by Young. Fans enjoyed the horse's deep, droll voice ("WIL-bur-r-r-r-r") and the goofy theme song lyrics ("A horse is a horse, of course, of course ... "). Cowboy star Allan "Rocky" Lane supplied Mr. Ed's voice.

An eclectic group of celebrities including Clint Eastwood, Mae West and baseball great Sandy Koufax made guest appearances on the show.

"Mister Ed" was one of a number of situation comedies during the early to mid-'60s that added elements of fantasy. Others were "My Mother the Car," in which a man's dead mother spoke to him through an old car; "My Favorite Martian" in which a Martian took up residence on Earth disguised as the uncle of an earthling; and "Bewitched" in which a witch married a mortal.

A loose variation on the "Francis the Talking Mule" movies of the 1950s, "Mister Ed" was one of the few network series to begin in syndication. After six months, it moved to ABC in October 1961 and lasted four seasons.

When the cameras weren't rolling, the human and four-legged co-stars were friends, according to Young. If Ed was reprimanded by his trainer, Young said, "He would come over to me, like, 'Look what he said to me.'"

Like many series of its vintage, "Mister Ed" won new fans in later decades through near-constant cable TV syndication and video releases.

Young also appeared in a number of films, including "Gentlemen Marry Brunettes," ''Tom Thumb," ''The Cat from Outer Space" and "The Time Machine," the latter the 1960 classic in which, speaking in a Scottish brogue, he played time traveler Rod Taylor's friend. Young had a small role in the 2002 "Time Machine" remake.

In later years, Young found a new career writing for and voicing cartoons. He portrayed Scrooge McDuck in 65 episodes for Disney's TV series "Duck Tales" and did voice-overs for "The Great Mouse Detective."

Young's sly, low-key style first attracted a wide U.S. audience in 1944 with "The Alan Young Show" on ABC radio. He also drew attention from Hollywood, but early films such as "Margie" and "Mr. Belvedere Goes to College" did poorly and in 1950 he turned to the growing new medium of TV and moved "The Alan YoungShow" to the small screen, where it offered a contrast to the slapstick and old vaudeville of other variety shows.

His gentle comedy caused TV Guide to hail him as "the Charlie Chaplin of television," and the fledgling Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded Emmys to Young as best actor and to the show as best variety series.

Howard Hughes, who had seen Young on TV, hired him for the lead in a film version of "Androcles and the Lion," a comedy based on the George Bernard Shaw play. When it opened in theaters, however, nobody laughed, so Hughes withdrew the movie and shot two weeks of new sequences.

"He put in girls with gauze and a real lion, and it became a blood-and-guts film," Young recalled in 1987.

Angus Young was born Nov. 19, 1919, of Scottish parents in the north England town of North Shields. (In his later years he claimed he was born in 1924.)

The family moved to Canada when he was a child, and he began entertaining in Vancouver when he was 13. He had his own radio program, "Stag Party," on the CBC network by the time he graduated from high school. After two years in the Canadian navy, he moved to New York City.

Young was a Christian Scientist from his teen years. In the early 1970s, he left his career to work for the Mother Church in Boston. He spent three years establishing a film and broadcasting center, then toured the country for two years as a Christian Science lecturer. Disillusioned by the church bureaucracy, he returned to Hollywood in 1976.

In 1940, Young married Mary Anne Grimes and they had a daughter, Alana, and a son, Alan Jr. The marriage ended in 1947.

In 1948 he married singer Virginia McCurdy, and they had a son, Cameron Angus, and a daughter, Wendy.

There was no information on survivors.

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2016/05/20/alan-young-star-1960s-sitcom-mr-ed-dies-at-96.html

Thanks for the memorable contributions to the entertainment industry. May You Rest in Peace...

Alan Young, Two-Legged Star of 'Mister Ed,' Dies at 96

Alan Young, who answered to the name “Willburrrrrrrrrrrrr” on Mister Ed, the wacky 1960s sitcom that revolved around a talking horse, has died. He was 96.

Young, who for six seasons played straight man to a golden palomino, a gelding who was named Bamboo Harvester, died Thursday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Home in Woodland Hills. He was there for more than four years.

Young himself was the voice of a talking bird, playing Scottish miser Scrooge McDuck (the uncle of Donald Duck and great uncle of Huey, Dewey, and Louie) on the 1987-90 syndicated series DuckTales.

And a decade before Mister Ed, the good-natured actor hosted CBS’ The Alan Young Show, which won an Emmy Award for best variety series and earned Young a trophy for best actor as well.

On the big screen, Young played David Filby (and his son James) in MGM’s sci-fi classic The Time Machine (1960), starring Rod Taylor.

In his most famous role, Young portrayed Wilbur Post, an unassuming, accident-prone architect who is married to Carol (Connie Hines). They live in a nice home in the San Fernando Valley with a barn, where the chatty Mister Ed resides — but only Wilbur can hear him speak.

In a 1990 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Young said Wilbur was “naive and bumbling” while “Ed was a wily one. I think it’s the same chemistry that made Laurel and Hardy and Jackie Gleason and Art Carney: It’s the one guy making a fool of the other guy.”

Based on a series of children’s short stories by Walter Brooks and produced by Filmways, Mister Ed started out in syndication in January 1960 on about 100 stations; after 26 episodes, CBS picked up the show, and it aired until February 1966.

To make Ed appear as if he were talking, a piece of nylon thread was placed in his mouth and manipulated to make his lips move. Producers didn’t want anyone to know the secret, so Young made up a story about putting peanut butter in the horse’s mouth, which he would then try to lick off.

“But Ed actually learned to move his lips on cue when the trainer touched his hoof,” he once said. “In fact, he soon learned to do it when I stopped talking during a scene! Ed was very smart.”

Allan “Rocky” Lane, a star of several Western ‘B’ movies and the actor who provided the voice of the horse, never went recognized in the credits, which noted that Mister Ed was played by

Angus Young was born Nov. 19, 1919, in North Shields, Northumberland, England, near the Scottish border. His father was a tap dancer and his mother a singer. The family moved when he was a child to Edinburgh and then to a community outside Vancouver.

As a kid, Young was often bedridden with asthma and spent his days listening to the radio, keeping track of jokes and writing his own comedy sketches. He got a job as an office boy at a local radio station, and after slipping in a part for himself on a drama show when he was typing up the script, became an actor.

Young eventually got his own radio show on the CBC but left to serve in the Canadian navy and army during World War II.

Now in Toronto after his discharge from the service, Young was “discovered” in the U.S. when Frank Cooper — an agent who also was instrumental in the careers of Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore — accidentally picked up Young’s show through the static on his radio.

Cooper brought him to New York to tell jokes on the Philco Hall of Fame radio program in 1944, and that led to Young being hired as a summer replacement on The Eddie Cantor Show. (The host was one of his heroes.)

After starring in The Alan Young Show on the radio, CBS brought the variety enterprise to television, and TV Guide named him “the Charlie Chaplin of television” in 1950.

Young, who had a date with Marilyn Monroe when she was 18, made his movie debut in Margie (1946), starring Jeanne Crain, appeared in Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949) and Aaron Slick From Punkin Crick (1952) and befriended another animal in a film adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion (1952).

Young later played a villain on ABC’s daytime soap General Hospital, showed up in Beverly Hills Cop III (1994), guest-starred on shows like St. Elsewhere and ER and voiced characters on The Ren & Stimpy Show, The Smurfs and The Great Mouse Detective (1986).

Contributions in Young's name may be made to the Motion Picture & Television Fund and to Y.E.S. The Arc, a residential program in Arizona for people with special needs.

It was George Burns, who had done an earlier, unsuccessful Mister Ed pilot with another actor, who convinced Young to play Wilbur Post.

“He looks like the sort of fellow a horse would talk to,” Burns said, and Young took that as a compliment.

(CNN)Alan Young, who played the hapless yet protective owner of a talking horse on the popular television comedy "Mister Ed," has died at age 96, according to officials at the Motion Picture & Television Home in Woodland Hills, California.
He died Thursday of natural causes with his children at his side, the organization said.
Young also was a well-received voice actor, with appearances as Scrooge McDuck in many Disney productions and also as Farmer Smurf and other characters in the 1980s-era cartoon.

Young appeared on several shows before being cast as Wilbur Post on "Mister Ed," which became one of the most popular shows in the early 1960s. One of his previous shows, "The Alan Young Show," won a prime-time Emmy.
According to a 1990 story in the Los Angeles Times, famed comedian George Burns financed "Mister Ed" and told his co-owner they should cast Young because "he looks like the kind of guy a horse would talk to."
Young told the newspaper that Wilbur Post was bumbling while Mister Ed was wily.
"I think it's the same chemistry that made Laurel and Hardy, and Jackie Gleason and Art Carney," he said. "It's the one guy making a fool of the other guy." The show, which ran weekly from 1961 until 1966, featured a horse who talked (with help from a never-seen human voice actor) but Mister Ed spoke only to his owner, much to Wilbur Post's frustration.
Young had 101 acting credits, according to the Internet Movie Database, including the 1960 science fiction film "The Time Machine." He made many guest appearances on television after taking a long break after the end of "Mister Ed."
Young was born in England in 1919 as Angus Young and grew up in Scotland and Canada. He began his entertainment career on the radio at age 13. He had his own show when he was 17.
He was married three times -- to Mary Anne Grimes, Virginia McCurdy and Mary Chipman -- and had four children.


http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/20/entertainment/alan-young-obit/index.html

Alan Young, a comedian and veteran supporting actor who found wide fame as an unlikely sort of second fiddle — the hapless straight man to a talking horse in the 1960s sitcom “Mister Ed” — died on Thursday in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 96.

His publicist, Jaime Larkin, said he died at the Motion Picture & Television Home, where he had been living for four years.

Mr. Young had been a popular radio and television personality and had appeared in several films, including “Tom Thumb” (1958) and “The Time Machine” (1960), when, in his early 40s, he landed the role of Wilbur Post, the bumbling, well-meaning architect who owned a loquacious, fun-loving horse named Mr. Ed.

“Mister Ed” became a hit, running from 1961 to 1966 on CBS. The episodes usually revolved around Wilbur’s clumsy attempts to undo Ed’s mischief, situations made more difficult by the fact that Ed would speak only to Wilbur.

Mr. Young had a mischievous streak himself: Many years after the fact, he said he had started the rumor that the crew got Ed to “talk” by coating his mouth with peanut butter. Actually, the crew would place a piece of nylon in Ed’s mouth; the horse would then try to remove it by moving his lips, giving the illusion that he was talking when the voice of Allan Lane, a star of B westerns, was added. (Mr. Lane died in 1973).

Mr. Young made his movie debut in “Margie,” a 1946 high school comedy set in the flapper era. He played the village piper in “Tom Thumb,” and in the 1960 film adaptation of H. G. Wells’s “The Time Machine” he played both David Filby, a friend of the time traveler (Rod Taylor), and Filby’s son as a grown man. Mr. Young also had a cameo role, again as Filby, in the 2002 remake of the film.

Early in his film career Mr. Young, a native of England, was often cast in what he called “all-American” supporting roles, for which he had to lose his accent. One of his few leading roles was as the title character in the 1952 musical “Aaron Slick From Punkin Crick," opposite Dinah Shore.

He was born Angus Young in North Shields, England, on Nov. 19, 1919. His family moved to Edinburgh when he was a toddler and then to Canada when he was about 6. He made his radio debut at 13, and by the time he was 17 he was both a writer and a performer on a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation show.

Mr. Young’s radio career took off in 1944 with “The Alan Young Show”; originally a summer replacement for Eddie Cantor, it proved so popular that it remained on the air for five years. After the show was canceled in 1949, he hit the theater circuit, playing the bagpipes and doing stand-up comedy.

In 1950 he brought “The Alan Young Show” to TV. It remained on the air until 1953. In 1951 it won the Emmy Award for best variety show, and Mr. Young won for best actor. (Sketch actors were included in that category at the time.)

Throughout the ’50s he appeared in numerous TV roles and on the variety shows of Steve Allen, Ed Sullivan, Dinah Shore and others. In later decades he made guest appearances on dozens of series, including “Death Valley Days,” “The Love Boat,” “Coach” and “ER.”

His last film was “Em & Me” (2004), an independent feature in which he played an elderly man traveling cross-country to visit his ex-wife’s grave.

Mr. Young was also a frequently heard voice in animated movies like “The Great Mouse Detective” and television cartoon series like “The Ren & Stimpy Show” and “The Smurfs.” He was the voice of Scrooge McDuck in several Disney projects.

He published two autobiographies: “Mister Ed and Me” (with Bill Burt) in 1995 and “There’s No Business Like Show Business ... Was” (2006), an account of his career and life in Hollywood.

Mr. Young’s first marriage, to Mary Ann Grimes, with whom he had two children, ended in divorce. He married Virginia McCurdy, a singer, in 1948 and had two children with her; she died in 2011. His family declined to release information about survivors, his publicist said.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/21/arts/television/alan-young-the-affable-owner-on-mister-ed-dies-at-96.html?_r=0

Another Hollywood veteran gone. Alan Young, who starred as Wilbur Post on the 1960s sitcom Mister Ed, died on Thursday, May 19. He was 96.


The actor died of natural causes at the Motion Picture and Television Home in Woodland Hills, California, a spokesperson for the retirement community told the Associated Press.

Young was best known for his role alongside the iconic talking horse on the hit CBS series, which aired from 1961 to 1966. He also played the voice of Scrooge McDuck in several Disney films and TV series, including DuckTales and Mickey’s Christmas Carol.

In 1951, he earned a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor for his role on The Alan Young Show. The self-titled series started as a radio show, but eventually moved to television as a variety show in 1950. It aired until 1953 and also took home the Emmy Award for Best Variety Series in 1951.

Young was a regular guest on many other TV shows over the years. He appeared on The Love Boat, Murder, She Wrote, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and ER. He also provided the voices for multiple characters on The Smurfs and played Hiram Flaversham in The Great Mouse Detective.


The legendary actor passed away at the Motion Picture and Television Fund’s Villa on Vitas Hospice with his children by his side.


http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/alan-young-dead-star-of-mister-ed-dies-at-96-w207366

Actor and comedian Alan Young - who starred alongside a talking horse in the popular sitcom Mr Ed in the 1960s - has died in Los Angeles, aged 96.
He died of natural causes on Thursday at a film and TV retirement facility in the city, his manager said.
Young played the amiable architect Wilbur Post, with Mr Ed - a talkative palomino - stabled in his barn.
Young, who was born in the UK, educated in Canada and later became a US citizen, was buried at sea.
Mr Ed ran for six seasons from 1960-1966.
Young reputedly got the part when the comedian George Burns, whose TV production company was launching the series, said: "Get Alan Young. He looks like the kind of guy a horse would talk to."
His four-legged co-star was Bamboo Harvester, who communicated with Wilbur in a deep, rolling voice provided by the cowboy star Allan "Rocky'' Lane.
Young was frequently asked how they made the horse's lips move.
The production team didn't want to give their secret away, so Young said they put peanut butter in the horse's mouth.
"I made up the peanut butter story, and everyone bought it," he recalled in a 2009 interview.
In fact, a piece of nylon thread was used to manipulate Mr Ed's lips in the early episodes.
"But Ed actually learned to move his lips on cue when the trainer touched his hoof," said Young.
"In fact, he soon learned to do it when I stopped talking during a scene. Ed was very smart."
During his career, Young also appeared in several films, including The Time Machine.
In 1951, he won a Primetime Emmy award as best actor in The Alan Young Show.
In later years, Young wrote for cartoons and voiced some of the characters.
He was the voice of Scrooge McDuck in Disney's TV series Duck Tales.
"He was an honest, decent man, a pleasure to work with and never a problem," his manager of more 30 years, Gene Yusem, told the Reuters news agency.


http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36348905