I had no knowledge of Paul Winchell's voice in Disney movies, as is being reported, but I sure remember his best friends, Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smith (or was it Smiff?). I always was a sucker for ventriloquists. You feel like a dummy yourself each time you realize you are accepting the dummy as a real character. I also read a witty statement that Jerry and Knucklehead were probably more important inventions than his artificial heart. I gotta read a bio somewhere about him. How could an entertainer/ventriloquist also be a artificial heart inventor? Bet it is a great story.


Update: I did go to the Vent Haven Museum of Ventriloquists that Leah suggested in the comments. By coincidence, their 2005 convention is going on as we speak. One thing that I got straight finally was that Edger Bergen had Charlie McCarthy, Mortimer Snerd et. al., easy to confuse with the Winchel/Mahoney/Smiff team.

RE: The inventor Winchell: from this web site:
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.