Paul Winchell Dead At Age 82

Voice Of Many Cartoon Characters, Ventriloquist And Inventor

(CBS/AP)  Paul Winchell - a man of many talents, but best known first for his talents as a ventriloquist, and later for his work as a voiceover artist in cartoons including "Winnie the Pooh" - has died at the age of 82.

TV producer Burt Du Brow, a close friend of the family, told the Los Angeles Times that Winchell died Friday morning in his sleep at his home in Moorpark, California.

Winchell first rose to fame as master ventriloquist, whose dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff were a favorite of 1950s television.

He was also an inventor who held 30 patents, including one for an artificial heart, which he built in 1963.

To a younger generation, he is better known for his work as the lispy voice of Tigger in animated versions of A.A. Milne's "Winnie the Pooh" - punctuating the amiable tiger's voice with his trademark "T-I-double grrrr-R."

Winchell first voiced Tigger in 1968 for Disney's "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day," which won an Academy Award for best animated short film, and continued to do so through 1999's "Winnie the Pooh: Seasons of Giving."

"I first met Walt Disney 25 or 30 years ago," Winchell recalled in a 1988 interview with The Associated Press. "He said, 'We're both in the same business. I use cartoons and you use dummies and we both entertain children.' That was long before I started working here. Walt gave me a VIP tour of the studio. I remember people doing voices. I said, 'Gee, that must be fun.' And here I am."

Winchell voiced memorable characters in numerous animated features over the years for Disney and Hanna Barbera. He was Gargamel in "The Smurfs," and Boomer in "The Fox and the Hound."

Winchell's resume reads like a history of television, appearing or doing voiceovers on top shows from the 1950s right on through the 1990s. According to IMDB.com, he was on "Toast of the Town" (the predecessor to the "Ed Sullivan Show"), "Your Show of Shows," "What's My Line?", "The Beverly Hillbillies," "The Jetsons," "77 Sunset Strip," "Perry Mason," "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "The Lucy Show," "The Dean Martin Show," "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In," "The Virginian," "The Perils of Penelope Pitstop," "Love, American Style," "Dr. Seuss on the Loose," "Fred Flintstone and Friends," "Yogi's Treasure Hunt," "Spider-Man," "The Brady Bunch," "McMillan and Wife," "Garfield and Friends," "Heathcliff," and many more.

Winchell said he always tried to look for characteristics and idiosyncrasies in the voices he created. For Tigger, he created a slight lisp and a laugh. He credited his wife, who is British, for giving him the inspiration for Tigger's signature phrase: TTFN. TA-TA for now.