Alan Young, star of 1960s sitcom ‘Mr. Ed,’ dies at 96

Actor-comedian Alan Young, who played the straight man to a talking horse in the 1960s sitcom “Mister Ed,” has died, died Thursday, according to Jaime Larkin, spokeswoman for the Motion Picture and Television Home retirement community in Woodland Hills, California where Young had lived for four years. His children were with him when he died peacefully of natural causes. He was 96.

Alan Young was an English-Canadian-American actor, voice artist, comedian, radio host, television host and personality best known for his role as Wilbur Post in the television comedy series Mister Ed and as the voice of Scrooge McDuck in Disney films, TV series and video games. During the 1940s and 1950s, he starred in his own shows on radio and television. He also appeared in a number of feature films, including The Time Machine.

Young was born (as Angus Young) on 19 November 1919 in North Shields, Northumberland, England to Scottish parents. (In his later years he claimed he had been born in 1924.) His father was a mine worker and a tap dancer, and his mother was a singer. The family moved to Edinburgh, Scotland when Young was a toddler, and to West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada when he was six years old. Young came to love radio when bedridden as a child because of severe asthma.

By the time he was in high school, Young had his own comedy radio series on the CBC network, but left during World War II to serve in the Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Army.

In 1944, Young moved to American radio with The Alan Young Show, NBC’s summer replacement for Eddie Cantor’s series. He switched to ABC two years later, then returned to NBC.

Young’s film debut was in Margie (1946), and he was featured in Chicken Every Sunday (1949).

In 1950, the television version of The Alan Young Show began. By 1951, the series had received not only praise but also several Primetime Emmy awards, including “Outstanding Lead Actor” for Alan Young.

After its cancellation, Young continued to act in films, among which Androcles and the Lion (1952) and Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955), and two George Pal films, tom thumb (1958) and The Time Machine (1960). He appeared in the NBC espionage drama Five Fingers (“Thin Ice”, 1959), starring David Hedison.

Young was best known, however, for Mister Ed (1961–66), a CBS television show, in which he starred as Wilbur Post, the owner of Mr. Ed, a talking horse that would talk to no one but him, thus causing comic situations for Wilbur Post with his wife, neighbors and acquaintances.

He also starred as Stanley Beamish in the unaired 1966 pilot episode of Mr. Terrific, but apparently declined to appear in the broadcast series in 1967 that followed. In the late 1960s, he retired from acting for several years. During that time, he founded a broadcast division for the Christian Science Church.

Young’s television guest roles include Gibbsville, The Love Boat, Murder, She Wrote, St. Elsewhere, Coach, Party of Five, The Wayans Bros., USA High, Hang Time, ER, Maybe It’s Me and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (“Sweet Charity”, 1997) in which he played Zelda’s love interest.

After 1974, he voiced Scrooge McDuck in numerous Disney films and in the popular series DuckTales (1987-1990). In Mickey’s Christmas Carol, he portrayed the character’s miserly namesake. He also played Scrooge in video games such as the Kingdom Hearts series, DuckTales: Remastered in 2013, and the Mickey Mouse cartoon “Goofy’s First Love” released in 2015.

During the 1980s, Young became active in voice acting. Apart from Scrooge McDuck, his other prominent roles were Farmer Smurf on The Smurfs, 7-Zark-7 and Keyop in Battle of the Planets and Hiram Flaversham in The Great Mouse Detective. He also guest starred on The Incredible Hulk, The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show and Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.

In 1991, Alan Young returned to the stage, starring as Cap’n Andy Hawkes in The California Music Theatre’s adaptation of Show Boat. He had been called for the role after Van Johnson, who was initially cast in the part, was hospitalized. He had also appeared in the plays A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and The Girl With the Freudian Slip.

In 1993, he recreated his role as Filby for the mini-sequel to George Pal’s The Time Machine, reuniting him with Rod Taylor, who had played George, the Time Traveller. It was called Time Machine: The Journey Back, directed by Clyde Lucas. In 2002, he had a cameo as the flower store worker in Simon Wells’ remake of The Time Machine and in 2010, he read H.G. Wells’s original novel for 7th Voyage Productions, Inc.

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, and in that same year, Young played the role of Charlie in the television movie, Hart to Hart: Home Is Where the Hart Is.

After 1994, he played at least eight characters, including antique dealer Jack Allen on the radio drama Adventures in Odyssey. In 1997, he did the voice of Haggis McMutton in the PC game The Curse of Monkey Island. His later guest roles in animated series included Megas XLR, Static Shock, House of Mouse, The Ren & Stimpy Show, Duckman, Batman: The Animated Series and TaleSpin.

Young was married three times. He and Mary Anne Grimes were married from 1941 to 1947 and had two children. He married Virginia McCurdy in 1948, and they had two children. They divorced in 1995, with Young marrying Mary Chipman the following year, but Young and Chipman then divorced in 1997.  Young later lived in Woodland Hills, California where he died on May 19, 2016 at the age of 96.

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