User blog:ARTaylor/RIP Chuck McCann

Chuck McCann has passed away. He died Sunday of congestive heart failure in a medical center in Los Angeles. He was eighty-three years-old. He is survived by his wife of forty years Betty Fanning, and three children from a previous marriage.



McCann was well-known as a television host, voiceover work, and commercials as well as a fondly remembered Oliver Hardy impersonation. He did work on television, film, as a puppeteer, and nightclub comic. He and actor Orson Bean started an international fan club dedicated to the comic duo Laurel and Hardy. He even managed to find Laurel and strike up a friendship that lasted until the comedian died in 1965. He was the original voice of General Mills' Cuckoo Bird famous for saying "I'm cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs."

In a 2007 interview he said, "I did everything. I never closed doors. If you look at my career, if I had one, I never think of it as a career, I just look at it as things I love to do. I have just as much fun doing a thirty-second commercial as I do making a movie."



He was born in New York City on September 2nd, 1934. His grandfather had performed in Buffalo Bill's famous Wild West Show while his father was a big band leader serving at the New York's Roxy Theatre. At the age of seven he got a job doing voiceovers for CBS Radio and work steadily into his teenage years. He eventually got his own show with The Chuck McCann Show that aired Monday through Friday in 1963. He appeared in films such as The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, The Projectionist, Herbie Rides Again, Silent Movie, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and Dracula: Dead and Loving It as well as television series Bonanza, The Bob Newhart Show, Little House on the Praire, and Mad About You. He is perhaps best remembered for his voice works that include Pac-Man, G. I. Joe, The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, DuckTales, and Animaniacs. He is remembered by Marvel fans as the voice of Thing on Fantastic Four and The Incredible Hulk as well as Blizzard on Iron Man.