Paul Winchell was the voice of Tigger in "Winnie the Pooh" features for more than three decades and a versatile ventriloquist who became a fixture in early children's television along with his dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff.The entertainer also has been heard as Gargamel in "The Smurfs," as Dick Dastardly in Hanna Barbera cartoons, including "Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines," and as Boomer in Disney's "The Fox and the Hound," among many others.
The Paul Winchell-Jerry Mahoney Show" featured a smart-mouthed puppet he had invented in his early teens. The budding ventriloquist had introduced Jerry in 1936 on radio's "Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour," earning first prize.
He created the dimwitted Knucklehead Smiff in 1950 and introduced him on "The Spiedel Show," which was quickly renamed "What's My Name?" In those early days of television, Winchell also hosted "The Bigelow Show" and a program called "Circus Time."
His string of children's shows through the 1950s and 1960s welcomed top guest entertainers, including Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball and Angela Lansbury.
Something of a renaissance man, Winchell was also an inventor who held 30 patents, including one for an early artificial heart he built in 1963 and then donated to the University of Utah for research. Dr. Robert Jarvik and other University of Utah researchers later became well-known for the Jarvik-7, which was implanted into patients after 1982.
Among Winchell's other inventions were an early disposable razor, a flameless cigarette lighter, an invisible garter belt and an indicator to show when frozen food had gone bad after a power outage.
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