Angus "Alan" Young (19 November 1919 – 19 May 2016) was a British-American actor. His voice roles for Hanna-Barbera included Mr. Gravelberry in A Flintstone Family Christmas and Farmer Smurf in Smurfs.
Biography
Alan Young was born in Northern England, but his Scots father moved the family to Edinburgh, Scotland, when Young was a toddler, and then to Canada when he was about six years old. By age thirteen, Young had become a radio performer, and by age seventeen, he was writing and performing in his own radio show for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The show was broadcast in the United States and led to an invitation to New York, initiating Young's career as an "All-American boy", despite his British origins and vestigial Scots accent.
He became popular on American radio from 1944 to 1949 with his "Alan Young Radio Show", but when radio began to lose its popularity and his show was canceled, Young decided to put together a comedy act and tour the U.S. theater circuit. After this experience, he wrote a television pilot for CBS in 1950, which resulted in The Alan Young Show (1950).
In the early 1960s, Young landed his best-known role, Wilbur Post, in the popular television series Mister Ed (1961), which ran for five years on CBS. Since then, Young made a number of television and film appearances but is known primarily for his voice characterizations in cartoons, especially as Scrooge McDuck in DuckTales (1987).
Young died at the Motion Picture and Television Home in Woodland Hills, California.
External Links
- Alan Young at the Internet Movie Database
- Alan Young obituary at Variety.com
