Stirling Holloway

 

Sterling Price Holloway Jr. (January 4, 1905 – November 22, 1992) was an American actor and voice artist, who appeared in over 100 films and 40 television shows.^[2] He did voice acting for The Walt Disney Company, playing Mr. Stork in Dumbo, Adult Flower in Bambi, the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, Kaa in The Jungle Book, Roquefort the Mouse in The Aristocats, and the title character in Winnie the Pooh, among many others.  

In his late teens, Holloway toured with the stock company of The Shepherd of the Hills,^[4] performing in one-nighters across much of the American West before returning to New York where he accepted small walk-on parts from the Theatre Guild, and appeared in the Rodgers and Hart revue The Garrick Gaieties in the mid-1920s. A talented singer, he introduced "Manhattan" in 1925, and the following year sang "Mountain Greenery".^[3]

He moved to Hollywood in 1926 to begin a film career that lasted almost 50 years. His bushy red hair and foggy distinctive voice meant that he almost always appeared in comedies. His first film was The Battling Kangaroo (1926), a silent picture. Over the following decades, Holloway would appear with Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Lon Chaney Jr., Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Bing Crosby, and John Carradine. In 1942, during World War II, Holloway enlisted in the United States Army at the age of 37 and was assigned to the Special Services. He helped develop a show called "Hey Rookie", which ran for nine months and raised $350,000 for the Army Relief Fund. In 1945, Holloway played the role of a medic assigned to an infantry platoon in the critically acclaimed film A Walk in the Sun. Between 1946 and 1947, he played the comic sidekick in five Gene Autry Westerns.

Walt Disney originally considered Holloway for the voice of Sleepy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), but chose Pinto Colvig instead. Holloway's voice work in animated films began with Dumbo (1941), as the voice of Mr. Stork. Holloway was the voice of the adult Flower in Bambi (1942), the narrator of the Antarctic penguin sequence in The Three Caballeros (1944) and the narrator in the Peter and the Wolf sequence of Make Mine Music (1946). He was the voice of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland (1951); the narrator in The Little House (1952), Susie the Little Blue Coupe (1952), Lambert the Sheepish Lion (1952), and Goliath II (1960); Kaa the snake in The Jungle Book (1967); and Roquefort in The Aristocats (1970). He is perhaps best remembered as the voice of Winnie the Pooh in Disney's Winnie the Pooh featurettes through 1977. He was honored as a Disney Legend in 1991, the first person to receive the award in the voice category. His final role was Hobe Carpenter, a friendly moonshiner who helps Harley Thomas (David Carradine) in Thunder and Lightning (1977). A majority of his roles were inherited by voice actor Jim Cummings following his death.  Wikipedia