Paul Winchell Autograph Index Card

Paul Winchell was a stage ventriloquist and actor whose career started in 1943. His ventriloquist act was best known for two characters, Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff. The Jerry Mahoney dummy was made by Chicago-based figure maker Frank Marshall and was used by many professional and amateur ventriloquists over the years - under different names, of course. Baby boomers may remember the old Nestle Quik TV commercials with Farfel the dog and his pal Danny O'Day - who's the spitting image of Jerry Mahoney.

Winchell's acting career consisted mostly of small roles in television series like Perry Mason, The Beverly Hillbillies, Love American Style, and The Brady Bunch. He was far more prolific as a voice actor for animation. His most famous role was that of Tigger in Disney's many Winnie The Pooh featurettes until he retired in 1999. He did several other voices for Disney, and other studios. He was the voice of Dick Dastardly in "The Wacky Racers" and "Dastardly and Mutley", Sam-I-Am in "Green Eggs and Ham", Goober in "Goober and the Ghost Chasers", and many others.

Winchell was also something of a Rennaisance Man who was very interested in medicine, and worked professionally as both an acupuncturist and a hypnotherapist. He was one of the first people to patent a design for an artificial heart, which was, in part, relied on by the University of Utah in their design. He obtained several other medical patents as well. He was also active in humanitarian causes, especially hunger in Africa.

Sadly, we lost Winch (as he was known on stage) in 2005. We obtained this fairly rare Paul Winchell autograph on an index card directly from him by mail in 1993.