Duck Man Part 5 - Voice Actor Vridays Edition

For today's Voice Actor Vriday, we salute one of my very favorite voice actors of all time Paul Frees. There is no chance that you have never heard Paul Frees' voice. In a career of over 40 years, Frees worked on more than 250 projects providing voices for some of the most memorable characters of all time. As film historian Hal Erickson says, "The voice of actor Paul Frees was not so much ubiquitous as inescapable. It was literally impossible during the 1960's and most of the 1970's to turn on the TV on any given night and not hear the ineluctable Mr. Frees." You would remember him as from characters as widely diverse as Bullwinkle and Rocky's nemesis Boris Badenov to the Little Green Sprout on the Jolly Green Giant commercials. Visitors to Disneyland know him as a third of the pirates on Pirates of the Caribbean, the narrator on Adventures Through Inner Space, and most notably as the ominous Ghost Host on the Haunted Mansion.

Not only was Frees is one of the most gifted voice actors of all time, he also had quite an interesting life outside of his acting career. Many of those stories are chronicled in the book Welcome...Foolish Mortals. While the book is a little light on entertainment value, it certainly packs in a lot of info.


While Frees deserves to be saluted on a Voice Actors Vriday for numerous reasons, he is here today because he has a connection to the Duckiverse. Frees provided the voice of my second favorite Duckiverse Denizen--second only to Darkwing Duck--Professor Ludwig von Drake.

Until Darkwing came along in the early nineties, von Drake was my favorite cartoon character as a kid. I remember watching reruns of the Wonderful World of Disney, and every time it was a von Drake episode, I would record it. I loved the character of this daffy philosopher/scientist/world traveler. Von Drake always seems to know a little bit about everything, but also is easily distracted or mistaken, kind of an Il Dottore for those who know their Commedia. (If you don't think a Commedia dell'Arte in the Duckiverse post is coming soon, you don't know me very well.)

Von Drake--oh, who am I kidding, Ludwig--appeared first in Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color in 1961 performing the Spectrum Song, but would eventually go on to be a popular character and often host of the show.



He became so popular that he moved into the Donald Duck Comics, where it was discovered that he was an uncle of Donald's. According To Don Rosa, he married a sister of Scrooge McDuck's. Ludwig even went on to have his own--very short lived--comic book. Recently, Ludwig has received a resurgence having made many appearances on Disney's House of Mouse and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, where his voice is now performed--as many of Frees' characters are--by brilliant voice actor Corey Burton, who is due his own Voice Actor Vriday soon.

So we wrap up this week-long introduction to the Duckiverse by saluting Paul Frees an Ludwig von Drake, two of it's most funny and charming citizens. Now that I have this intro out here I look forward to more discussions of Duckburg, St. Canard, and and the crazy characters of Disney's Duckiverse.