Thurl Ravenscroft Passes On

Well, yet another celebrity has passed on. Indeed, it was another voice man who died (the previous two being Henry Corden and Howard Morris). He had a name that sounded like that of a horror actor, but Thurl Ravenscroft made his living doing voice overs and voices for cartoons. He died Sunday at age 91 from prostrate cancer.

Ravenscroft is probably best known as the voice of Tony the Tiger since that character's creation in the Fifties. Ravenscroft's career went well beyond Tony, however, as his career stretched back to the Thirties. He started out providing his bass voice to various singing groups on radio at that time. Eventually he would provide voices on various Warner Brothers cartoons.

While he first provided voices for Warner Brothers shorts, it would be at Disney that Ravenscroft would do much of his work. He provided voices for various Disney shorts. Eventually his voice would appear in many Disney features, from Dumbo to Cinderella to The Jungle Book. He even provided voices for many of the rides at Disneyland, including the Haunted Mansion and the Pirates of the Caribbean.

Of course, Ravenscroft started out as a singer and he still sang after his career in providing voices for cartoons had begun. Among others, he provided back up singing for such performers as The Andrew Sisters, Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby and Elvis Presley. As might be expected, perhaps his most famous singing performance came in a cartoon. He sang the song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" for the TV animated adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christimas.

I can't say that Thurl Ravenscroft had an enormous impact on my life, but, like nearly every other American, he provided much of the background noise of my life. For literally decades he could be heard in every single Kellogg's Frosted Flakes commercial. And then there were the many cartoons for which he provided voices, often uncredited. It does sadden me that he will no longer be around to provide his voice to so many different projects. Quite simply, he was one of the greatest voice men around.