R.I.P.: Actor, Broadcaster Alan Young Has Died

Alan Young, Mister Ed

Emmy award-winning actor Alan Young, who rode to enduring TV fame alongside a talking horse on the popular 1960s sitcom "Mister Ed" and co-starred in the classic sci-fi film "The Time Machine," has died at age 96, his manager said on Friday.

Young, who also provided the voice of cartoon characters including Disney's Scrooge McDuck, died from natural causes this week at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital, a Los Angeles retirement facility for those in the movie and TV industry, according to his manager, Gene Yusem.

The English-born actor was best known for his role as Wilbur Post, an amiable architect with a loquacious palomino living in his backyard barn, during six seasons on "Mister Ed," which still airs in reruns a half century after its original run on CBS ended.

Fans of the show also fondly remember its theme song, starting with the lyrics: "A horse is a horse, of course, of course. And no one can talk to a horse, of course. That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mister Ed."

Young won an Emmy Award, honoring the best in U.S. television, in 1951 as best actor for "The Alan Young Show," beating out Sid Caesar, one of the biggest names in television at the time. "The Alan Young Show" won an Emmy for best variety show that year and ran from 1950 to 1953.

Young appeared in films as well, most notably director George Pal's "The Time Machine," a 1960 adaptation of the novel by H.G. Wells, starring a time-traveling Rod Taylor.

Young's other films included "Chicken Every Sunday" (1949) with a young Natalie Wood, "Mr. Belvedere Goes to College" (1949) with Shirley Temple and "Androcles and the Lion" (1952) with another animal co-star.

As a voice actor, Young performed as the grumpy Scrooge McDuck and worked on such programs as "The Smurfs" and "Scooby-Doo."

He was born as Angus Young in England on Nov. 19, 1919, and his family moved to Canada when he was 6. He worked in radio in Canada before moving to Los Angeles and changing his name to Alan. He was a naturalized American citizen.

Young came to love radio when bedridden as a child because of severe asthma.

By the time he was in high school, Young had his own comedy radio series on the CBC network, but left during World War II to serve in the Royal Canadian Navy. After leaving the service, Young moved to Toronto and resumed his Canadian radio career, where he was discovered by an American agent who brought him to New York City in 1944 to appear on American radio.

Young's first American radio appearances were on the Philco Radio Hall of Fame. This led to his own show, The Alan Young Show, NBC's summer replacement for Eddie Cantor's series. He switched to ABC two years later, then returned to NBC.

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