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Thurl Arthur Ravenscroft (/ˈθɜːrl ˈreɪvənzkrɒft/; February 6, 1914 – May 22, 2005) was an American actor and bass singer. He was known as one of the booming voices behind Kellogg's Frosted Flakes animated spokesman Tony the Tiger for more than five decades. He was also the uncredited vocalist for the song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" from the classic Christmas television special, Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas![1]

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Thurl Ravenscroft
Ravenscroft in 1967
Born	Thurl Arthur Ravenscroft (1914-02-06)February 6, 1914 Norfolk, Nebraska, U.S.
Died	May 22, 2005(2005-05-22) (aged 91) Fullerton, California, U.S.
Resting place	Crystal Cathedral Memorial Gardens, Garden Grove, California
Alma mater	Otis College of Art and Design
Occupation	Actor singer
Years active	1939–2005
Spouse	June Seamans ​ ​ (m. 1946; died 1999)​
Children	2

Ravenscroft did some voice-over work and singing for Disney in both the films and the attractions at Disneyland (which were later featured at Walt Disney World). The best known of these attractions are Haunted Mansion as a singing bust, Country Bear Jamboree, Mark Twain Riverboat, Pirates of the Caribbean, Disneyland Railroad, and Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room as "Fritz".

His voice acting career began in 1940 and lasted until his death in 2005 at age 91.[2]

Early life and career

Ravenscroft left his native Norfolk, Nebraska, in 1933 for California, where he studied at Otis Art Institute. He achieved early success as part of a singing group called The Mellomen. The Mellomen can be heard on many popular recordings of the Big Band Era, including backup for Bing Crosby, Frankie Laine, Spike Jones, Jo Stafford, and Rosemary Clooney. Their earliest contribution to a Disney film was for Pinocchio (1940), to which they contributed the song "Honest John". This was deleted from the film, but can still be heard in the supplements on the 2009 DVD. Ravenscroft also voiced Monstro the Whale in Pinocchio. The Mellomen contributed to other Disney films, such as Alice in Wonderland and Lady and the Tramp. The group appeared on camera in a few episodes of the Disney anthology television series; in one instance recording a canine chorus for Lady and the Tramp and in another as a barbershop quartet that reminds Walt Disney of the name of the young newspaper reporter Gallegher.

Ravenscroft is also heard with the quartet on some of the Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes with Mel Blanc at Warner Bros. as well as on radio "driving Jack Benny crazy" on The Jack Benny Program as part of The Sportsmen Quartet.

During World War II, Ravenscroft served as a civilian navigator contracted to the U.S. Air Transport Command, spending five years flying courier missions across the north and south Atlantic. Among the notables carried on board his flights were Winston Churchill and Bob Hope. As he told an interviewer: "I flew Winston Churchill to a conference in Algiers and flew Bob Hope to the troops a couple of times. So it was fun."[3]

Ravenscroft sang bass on Rosemary Clooney's "This Ole House", which went to No. 1 in both the United States and Britain in 1954, as well as Stuart Hamblen's original version of that same song. He sang on the soundtrack for Ken Clark as "Stewpot" in South Pacific, one of the top-selling albums of the 1950s. He also backed The DeCastro Sisters on their 1955 top 20 hit, "Boom Boom Boomerang."[4] Singing with the Johnny Mann Singers,[5] his distinctive bass can also be heard as part of the chorus on 28 of their albums that were released during the 1960s and 1970s. He was also the bass singer on Bobby Vee's 1960 Liberty hit record "Devil or Angel". Andy Williams' recording of "The 12 Days of Christmas" features him as well. In the 1980s and 1990s, Ravenscroft was narrator for the annual Pageant of the Masters art show at the Laguna Beach, California, Festival of the Arts.

He sang the opening songs for the two Disney serials used on The Mickey Mouse Club, Boys of the Western Sea and The Hardy Boys: Mystery of the Applegate Treasure.

He sang the "Twitterpatter Song" and "Thumper's Song" on the Disneyland record Peter Cottontail and other Funny Bunnies.

On the Disneyland record All About Dragons, he both provided the narration and sang the songs "The Reluctant Dragon" and "The Loch Ness Monster".[6]

His voice was heard during the Pirates of the Caribbean ride as well as the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland as Uncle Theodore, the lead vocalist of the singing busts in the cemetery near the end of the ride.[7] He also played the Narrator in The Story and Song From the Haunted Mansion. Ravenscroft is also heard in the Enchanted Tiki Room as the voice of Fritz the Animatronics parrot, as well as the tree-like Tangaroa tiki god in the pre-show outside the attraction. He was also the voice of the Disneyland Railroad in the 1990s. Further roles include that of The First Mate on The Mark Twain Riverboat and of the American bison head named Buff at The Country Bear Jamboree.[8]

Later career

One of Ravenscroft's best-known uncredited works is as the vocalist for the song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch." His name was accidentally omitted from the credits, leading many to believe that the cartoon's narrator, Boris Karloff, sang the song, while others cited Tennessee Ernie Ford as the song's signature voice.[9] The song, now credited to Ravenscroft, peaked on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart at number 32 for the week ending January 2, 2021. Thanks to You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch, Thurl Ravenscroft has officially hit the Top 40 as a solo artist.[10]

Ravenscroft also sang "No Dogs Allowed" in the Peanuts animated motion picture Snoopy, Come Home and I Was a Teenaged Brain Surgeon for Spike Jones.

For more than 50 years, he was the uncredited voice of Tony the Tiger for Kellogg's Frosted Flakes. His booming bass gave the cereal's tiger mascot a voice with the catchphrase "They're g-r-r-r-eat!!!!".[11]

Various record companies, such as Abbott, Coral, Brunswick, and "X" (a division of RCA) also released singles by Ravenscroft, often in duets with little-known female vocalists, in an attempt to turn the bass-voiced veteran into a pop singer. These efforts were commercially unsuccessful, if often quite interesting. He was also teamed up with the Andrews Sisters (on the Dot Records album The Andrews Sisters Present) on the cover of Johnny Cymbal's "Mr. Bass Man". The Mellomen released some doo-wop records under the name Big John & the Buzzards, a name apparently given to them by the rock-and-roll-hating Mitch Miller.

A devoted Christian, he appeared on many religious television shows such as The Hour of Power. In 1970, he recorded an album called Great Hymns in Story and Song, which featured him singing 10 hymns, each prefaced with the stories of how each hymn came to be, with the background vocals and instrumentals arranged and conducted by Ralph Carmichael.

He said his lifelong dream was to record the entire Bible on tape, but James Earl Jones "beat him out".^{[citation needed]} On an episode of the TV variety series Donny & Marie featuring guest stars from the first Star Wars movie, Ravenscroft provided the voice for Darth Vader, voiced in the movie by Jones.^{[citation needed]}

Later life and death

Ravenscroft married June Seamans in 1946 and they had two children. June died in 1999 from unknown causes. Ravenscroft semi-retired and did not work at any other studio, but continued to voice Tony the Tiger through 2004 (with limo transportation provided by Kellogg's) and was also interviewed that year by the Disney "Extinct Attractions Club" website. He died in his home on May 22, 2005, from prostate cancer, and was buried at the Memorial Gardens at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California.[2]

In the June 6, 2005, issue of the advertising industry journal Advertising Age, Kellogg's ran an advertisement commemorating Ravenscroft, the headline reading: "Behind every great character is an even greater man." After his death, Lee Marshall replaced him as the voice of Tony the Tiger in the Kellogg's commercials, but some commercials still recycle clips of Ravenscroft.^{[citation needed]}

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1939	Sioux Me	Singer	Voice, Uncredited
1940	Pinocchio	Monstro the Whale	Voice
	Isle of Destiny	Sportsman Quartet Member
	Little Blabbermouse	Bad Tobacco Face	Voice
	Prehistoric Porky	Bass Lizard	Voice
1941	Dumbo	Singer of "Look Out For Mr. Stork" and "Pink Elephants on Parade"	Voice
	The Nifty Nineties	Singer	Voice
1942	Wacky Blackout	Carrier Pigeon singing	Voice
	Saludos Amigos	Singer of the main title theme	Voice
	Lost Canyon	Singer	Uncredited
1948	Melody Time	Singer	Voice
1951	Alice in Wonderland	Card Painter	Voice
1952	Jack and the Beanstalk	Singing voices of two villagers
1953	Peter Pan	Singer / Pirates	Voice
	Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom	Singer
1954	Rose Marie	Medicine Man
1955	Daddy Long Legs	Daydream Sequence Song	Short, Voice
	Lady and the Tramp	Al the Alligator / Singing Pound Dogs	Voice
1956	Design for Dreaming	(singer)	Voice
	Hardy Boys	Theme Song	Voice
1958	Paul Bunyan	Paul Bunyan	Short, Voice
1959	Sleeping Beauty	Singer
1961	One Hundred and One Dalmatians	Captain the Horse	Voice
1962	Gay Purr-ee	Hench Cat	Voice
1963	The Sword in the Stone	Sir Bart	Voice
1964	Mary Poppins	Andrew the dog's whimper / Banker / Pig / Animal Sounds	Voice
1965	The Man from Button Willow	Singer / Reverend / Saloon Man	Voice
1966	How the Grinch Stole Christmas	Singer of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch"
1967	The Jungle Book	Colonel Hathi's crew
	The War Wagon	Backup singer on main theme
1968/1977	Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day/The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh	Singer/Black Honeypot
1969	Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid	Singing Voice	performed "South American Getaway"
	The Trouble with Girls	Bass Singer	with the Bible Singers Quartet (The Mellomen)
1970	Horton Hears a Who!	Wickersham Brother
	The Phantom Tollbooth	Lethargians
	The Aristocats	Billy Bass - Russian Cat	Voice
1971	The Cat in the Hat	Thing One	Voice
	Bedknobs and Broomsticks	Singing voice of Russian vendor / Various cartoon animal voices
1972	Snoopy, Come Home	Singer of "No Dogs Allowed"	Voice
	The Lorax	Singer	Voice
1977	The Hobbit	Goblins/Chorus	Voice
	Halloween Is Grinch Night	Singer / Monsters	Voice
	Donny & Marie	Darth Vader / Narrator	Star Wars Segment
1978	The Small One	Potter	Voice, Uncredited
1979	Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July	The Genie of the Ice Scepter	Voice
1987	The Brave Little Toaster	Kirby	Voice
1990	Disney Sing Along Songs: Disneyland Fun – It's a Small World	Singer of "Grim Grinning Ghosts"
1992	Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers	The Black Hole	Voice; Uncredited
1996	Superior Duck	The Narrator	Voice
1997	The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue	Kirby	Voice;
1998	The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars
1999	I.M. Weasel	I.M. Weasel (Singing voice)	Voice; Uncredited, Final role

Commercials

Year	Title	Role
late 1970s-early 1980s	Toys R Us	Geoffrey the Giraffe
1953–2005	Kellogg's Frosted Flakes	Tony the Tiger

Television series

Year	Title	Role
1969-1984	Sesame Street	John the Cow

Partial solo discography

References

External links

• All Things Thurl (an authorized fan site, to which Ravenscroft contributed; includes discography)
• Thurl Ravenscroft at IMDb
• Thurl Ravenscroft at the TCM Movie Database
• Thurl Ravenscroft at Find a Grave
• THURL'S GRRRRRRR-EAT! A Conversation With Thurl Ravenscroft
• All About Dragons - Part 1 (the first side of the LP)
• All About Dragons - Part 2 (the second side of the LP)

На других языках

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[de] Thurl Ravenscroft

Thurl Arthur Ravenscroft (* 6. Februar 1914 in Norfolk, Nebraska; † 22. Mai 2005 in Fullerton, Kalifornien) war ein US-amerikanischer Basssänger, Synchronsprecher und Schauspieler. Große Bekanntheit erlangte er in seinem Heimatland als jahrzehntelange Stimme des Kellogg’s-Maskottchens Tony the Tiger sowie als Sprecher zahlreicher Figuren in Filmen und Themenparks des Walt-Disney-Universums.

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- [en] Thurl Ravenscroft

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[es] Thurl Ravenscroft

Thurl Arthur Ravenscroft (Norfolk, Nebraska; 6 de febrero de 1914 - Fullerton, California; 22 de mayo de 2005) fue un actor de doblaje y cantante estadounidense conocido por su voz profunda. Durante 53 años fue la voz de «Tony, el Tigre» en más de 500 comerciales de televisión de Zucaritas de Kellogg's. Participó, además, en decenas de películas animadas de Walt Disney Pictures.

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