May 19 - Alan Young

Image courtesy discogs.com

On this day, in 2016, Angus Young passed away in Woodland Hills, California. Alan, as he became known, was born in North Shields, Northumberland, England on November 19, 1919 (as he got older he tried to move his birth date up to 1924, but the official record didn't fall for that trick). As a toddler, his Scottish parents briefly moved the family to Edinburgh, finally relocating to British Columbia, Canada when he was six. Alan suffered from severe asthma as a child and was stuck in bed a good deal of the time because of it. During those long bedridden hours, he listened to massive amounts of radio programs and fell in love with all of them. When he hit high school, he managed to get his own radio show with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation doing comedy sketches. When World War II came along, he gave it all up, joining the Royal Canadian Navy to prove himself. Unfortunately, the RCN planned to use him as a writer for their radio programming, not as a fighter on the front. When Alan found out, he resigned the Navy, intending to join the Canadian Army instead. The Army said no thanks, your asthma isn't something we want to deal with (which given the prevalence of gas based warfare, was the right decision) and Alan's patriotic fervor would go unfulfilled.  He moved to Toronto and restarted his radio career.

Image courtesy imdb.com

In 1944, Alan was noticed by an American agent who enticed him to move to New York. He started with appearances on the Philco Radio Hall of Fame, but quickly got his own program, The Alan Young Show, which ran off and on for six years before making the leap to television for three more seasons. On the small screen, The Alan Young Show would pick up two Emmy Awards, one for Best Variety Show and one for Lead Comedy Actor.

Alan debuted on the silver screen in 1946 as Roy Hornsdale in the romantic comedy Margie. Throughout the rest of the Forties and Fifties, he regularly appeared in films, mostly comedies, starring alongside the likes of Jane Russell in Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, William Frawley (of I Love Lucy fame) in Chicken Every Sunday, Peter Sellers in Tom Thumb and as the title character in George Bernard Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion.

Image courtesy looppng.com

In 1961, Alan began his run in his most famous live action role, Wilbur Post, on the hit CBS comedy Mister Ed. Most television shows have their initial runs on a network and then live beyond their cancellations (sometimes for decades) in syndication, the process by which all the episodes of a show are made available to local channels to buy and use to fill in gaps in national programming. Often times, early episodes of a show will enter syndication before it gets cancelled, which is how you might see season seven of something once a week on NBC but seasons one through five on your local Fox station every afternoon during the same time period. Some programs, like game shows, might spend their entire lives in syndication, never having prime time runs on a network. Mister Ed is a rare show that started out in syndication, became popular and was picked up by a network, CBS in this case. It might be fairly corny by today’s standards, but the thought of a talking horse in the early Sixties was pretty novel and having a pro comedian like Alan along for the ride gave the premise enough legs to last six seasons. It turns out that Bamboo Harvest, the horse that played Mr. Ed, was a pro as well. The crew only had to manually move his lips for a short time before he did it himself when prompted with a touch and eventually moved them when Alan stopped talking, like any other actor.

Image copyright Disney

Following the end of Mister Ed’s run in 1966, Alan filmed another pilot episode for a show called Mr. Terrific but declined to star in it when CBS decided to pick it up. Instead, he semi-retired from acting for several years. Actively involved with the Christian Science Church, he helped them set up a broadcasting division during this period.

By the early Seventies Alan was looking to get back into acting and started a new career as a voice over artist. His first project for Disney was the 1974 Disneyland Records album An Adaptation of Dicken's Christmas Carol, Performed by the Walt Disney Players (yes that mouthful is the full title). Alan co-wrote the script for it and performed several voices for it. He played Mickey Mouse (the one and only time he ever did) as Bob Cratchit, Morty Fieldmouse as Tiny Tim, Merlin as the Ghost of Christmas Past and, for the first time, Scrooge McDuck as Ebenezer Scrooge. Alan's portrayal of Scrooge marked the first time the wealthy duck had ever had a true Scottish accent. He said that he modeled the voice after his own Scottish father. Alan was so good at bringing Scrooge to life, he would portray McDuck for the next four decades.

Image copyright Disney

Eight years later, Alan reprised the role of Scrooge as Ebenezer for a reissue of the 1974 record in anticipation of a big screen adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Next of course, came Mickey's Christmas Carol (Alan only did Scrooge for that one), which was followed by every episode of DuckTales. That spawned several read along books, a DuckTales movie, more Disneyland Records, a Disney on Ice show, theme park shows and parades, Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas, House of Mouse episodes, Kingdom Hearts video games and Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas. You name it, Alan did it, from that 1974 record right up to the recent new Mickey shorts, making him one of the longest continuous voices of a Disney character ever.

Image courtesy twitter.com

And Scrooge isn't the only thing Alan did for Disney. He was also the voice of Hiram Flaversham in The Great Mouse Detective and played Doctor Winger in the1978 comedy The Cat From Outer Space with Ken Berry and Sandy Duncan.



Outside of Disney, Alan returned to television, making guest appearances on dozens of shows from The Love Boat to ER to Sabrina the Teenage Witch. He ramped up the Scottishness for Ren and Stimpy as Haggis McHaggis and for the video game The Curse of Monkey Island as Haggis McMutton (is that really the only name writers can come up with for a tartan wearing character). His voice was heard on Batman: The Animated Series, Spiderman and His Amazing Friends, Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Smurfs, Scooby and Scrappy Doo and A Flintstone Family Christmas. Even though he was well into his nineties, Alan showed no signs of wanting to slow down. He was all set to record stuff for the reboot of DuckTales. Scrooge had been recast (Dr. Who fans were tickled to know it was now David Tennant's character) but Alan was going to play someone different. It didn't come to be however. Before he could get into the recording booth, the man TV Guide once called the Charlie Chaplin of television passed away in his sleep at his assisted living home in Woodland Hills, California in May 2016. He was 96 years Young.