<Archive Obituaries> Sterling Holloway (November 22nd 1992)
Bill Schenley
Actor Who Made Winnie The Pooh Speak Also Played
Country Bumpkins In Comedy Films In The 1930s And 40s.
He Was 87
Photo: http://www.disneypov.com/images/holoway.jpg
FROM: The Los Angeles Times (November 24th 1992) ~
By Burt A. Folkart, Staff Writer
Sterling Holloway, whose gangly manner made him the quintessential
country bumpkin in a series of comedy films and whose reedy voice
proved ideal for several of Walt Disney's most enduring animal
characters, especially Winnie the Pooh, has died.
His agent, Kingsley Colton, said Monday his longtime client was 87
when he died Sunday of heart failure at Hospital of the Good Samaritan
in Los Angeles.
Holloway had remained active until shortly before his death, Colton
said, and several of his commercial voice-overs are still being heard
on television.
Holloway, whose laconic vocabulary made for lengthy dialogue, was the
clumsy soda jerk or village handyman in many movies of the 1930s and
'40s. And he carried those mannerisms into TV as the co-star of "The
Baileys of Balboa," a 1964-65 cop comedy.
He also appeared regularly on "Hollywood Premiere," "The Life of
Riley" (as Waldo), the 1954-55 legal drama "Willy" and "Your Story
Theatre."
His film acting career had begun in the silent era with a series of
short comedies.
The advent of talking pictures in 1928 left many featured players out
of work, but not Holloway. Instead, his distinctive voice -- which
sounded as if he had chronic tonsillitis -- brought him prosperity.
In the 1930s and '40s the lanky redhead was featured in "Gold Diggers
of 1933," "The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend," "Alice in
Wonderland" (as the frog in the 1933 all-star version), "Maid of
Salem," "Of Human Hearts," "The Blue Bird," "Remember the Night" and
many more.
In 1951 he was the Cheshire Cat in Disney's animated version of
"Alice" and more recently he was seen in "Batman" and "The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn."
He also made several children's recordings, including such perennial
favorites as "Peter and the Wolf" and "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."
For one of his most memorable roles, that of the eternally
honey-seeking bear Pooh, Holloway created a sweet and innocent
childlike voice in four short films. Three of those were combined in
the 1983 movie "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh." He also did
the voice for Messenger Stork in "Dumbo."
"Sterling just had a unique voice," said Rick Dempsey, director of
Disney animated voices. "It was a high-tenor, raspy voice unlike
anything you heard. He was the first spoken teddy bear. That was a
contradiction, unlike the ferocious bears out in nature."
Holloway's voice was also featured prominently in 1967's "The Jungle
Book," the classic Disney animated musical. In that film, his snake
character sang the memorable song "Trust in Me" as he hypnotized wolf
boy Mowgli.
Holloway came from a distinguished theatrical background.
He graduated from Georgia Military Academy, studied at New York's
American Academy of Dramatic Arts and starred in the hugely successful
"Garrick Gaieties," musical revues that ran on Broadway during the
late 1920s.
Richard Rodgers was in the pit conducting the songs he and Lorenz Hart
had written. Holloway, also a successful dancer, introduced two of
them: "Manhattan" in 1925 and "Mountain Greenery" in 1926.
Holloway next went to Hollywood where he succeeded commercially but
grew weary of being typecast.
Richard Lamparski, in his series of "Whatever Became Of . . . ?"
books, quotes him as saying: "I delivered so many telegrams and jerked
so many sodas I got tired of it."
When he was unable to land the parts he wanted, he went back on stage
with the Pasadena Playhouse and Los Angeles Civic Light Opera before
the Disney work revitalized his career.
He amassed a collection of contemporary art, much of which was
considered of museum quality. During the 1960s and '70s when he lived
in Laguna Beach, he spoke often on art and how to interest children in
it.
In 1986, as he prepared to narrate yet another "Peter and the Wolf,"
this one with the Garden Grove Symphony, he dismissed his career as
"coming too easy."
He was fortunate, he said, to have been been born with a boyish voice
that never changed. But his dancing, he said, was another matter.
"Years ago when I started out in the theater, the critics would
comment about my eccentric dancing. Actually all they were focusing on
was my constantly blowing my hair out of my eyes. It took attention
away from my feet. I still can't do a time step."
He is survived by his adopted son, Richard. Funeral arrangements are
pending.
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Photo:
http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/images/purchase/sterling-holloway_disney-voice-artist_1937.jpg
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FROM: The Independent (November 26th 1992) ~
By Denis Gifford
Sterling Holloway, actor, born Cedartown Georgia 4 January 1905, died
Los Angeles 22 November 1992.
Sterling Holloway was Hollywood's classic country bumpkin and the
voice of Winnie the Pooh in the Walt Disney cartoons.
Holloway was the scrawny, skinny hayseed with a scruffy thatch of fair
hair that looked like an unkempt haystack. His voice was unkempt, too,
a scratchy drawl that ranged about like an adolescent at breaking
point, crossing the gap between high- pitched tenor and throaty rasp,
guaranteeing laughs at his every film appearance. Never a star,
Holloway was one of Hollywood's veteran character comedians, giving
Golden Age picture-goers that delightful thrill of recognition every
time he turned up.
Holloway was born in Cedartown, Georgia, in 1905, and his tall (5ft
11in) slim frame seemed an asset to his army education at the Georgia
Military Academy. However, the stage soon lured and he transferred
himself to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. His acting career
began as a walk-on player in Theatre Guild productions in the
Twenties. His original ambition to become a straight actor was soon
dashed, and together with some of his Guild contemporaries he wrote
and performed in a series of burlesques of plays currently running on
Broadway under the title Garrick Gaieties (1925). These
Sunday-afternoon shows were a great success and ran for four years,
but after the first two seasons Holloway decided to try his luck in
the movies.
Holloway's first film appearance was in the silent baseball comedy,
Casey at the Bat (1927), which starred Wallace Beery as the hero of
Ernest Thayer's classic poem. He also made a few two- reel comedies,
but his career as a character needed sound to make the most of his
extraordinary voice. Beginning with Blondie Johnson (1933) he would
play virtually the same part in a hundred films, not to mention a good
number of animated cartoons which were made all the funnier by his
voice alone.
Walt Disney first used Holloway's special vocal talents in the
economically produced feature cartoon Dumbo (1941). ''Look out for
Mister Stork!'' sang the chorus, and into view fluttered an awkward
stork, instantly recognisable as Sterling Holloway, even before he
began to mutter and mumble. Behind schedule, he finally flaps his way
to Florida and Casey Junior, the circus train, where he delivers his
bulging bundle to the enceinte and overdue Mrs Jumbo. Once settled in
the carriage he reaches for his pitch-pipe and croaks out ''Happy
Birthday to You'' to the newborn Dumbo, before flapping farewell into
the clouds once again.
Dumbo's great success led to further engagements with the Disney
Studio, and Holloway was next heard narrating the story of ''Pablo the
Penguin'' in the Pan-American omnibus The Three Caballeros (1945).
Next year he was narrator again in Make Mine Music, telling the tale
of ''Pete and the Wolf'' to Prokofiev's musical setting. His first
attempt at a classic characterisation from English literary sources
was the Cheshire Cat, in Disney's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland
(1951). As the voice behind the big wide smile he told Alice the story
of ''Jabberwocky''. Interestingly, Holloway had earlier appeared in a
live- action film of the Lewis Carroll fantasy, the all-star Paramount
picture of 1933 which featured everyone from Gary Cooper as the White
Knight to W.C. Fields as Humpty Dumpty. Holloway played a frog. In Ben
and Me (1954) Holloway characterised Amos the Mouse, ''ideas man''
behind the great inventor Benjamin Franklin, quite the opposite type
to the sly, slithery snake in Jungle Book (1967). Here, as Kipling's
Kaa, he hissed a sinister song, ''Trust in Me'', as he hypnotised
Mowgli the Wolf Boy.
Holloway's last great characterisation, to the American audience at
least, was A.A. Milne's immortal teddy bear with no brain. Although
his Winnie the Pooh passed muster, most listeners to Children's Hour
would swap him for Norman Shelley any day. Beginning with Winnie the
Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), Holloway went on to make four of these
featurettes, three of which were later combined into the full-length
cartoon The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1983).
Although Holloway was a favourite in early American television sitcoms
- he was Waldo in The Life of Riley (1953) and a regular in The
Baileys of Balboa (1964) - and in 1974 won a Grammy Award for his many
children's records - in the UK he will be fondly remembered for his
unique appearance (in films) and equally unique voice (in cartoons).
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Photo: http://www.cinema24.ch/images/casts/SterlingHolloway.jpg
Sterling Holloway in art:
http://www.filmbuffonline.com/images/WinniePooh.jpg