Dead Celebrity Alert

Paul Winchell, the voice of Tigger in Winnie the Pooh features for more than three decades and a versatile ventriloquist who became a fixture in early children’s television along with his dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff, has died. He was 82.

Mr. Winchell died early Friday in his sleep at his home in Moorpark, Calif., Burt Du Brow, a television producer and close family friend, said Saturday.

Although he was a legendary ventriloquist and built a career attractin legions on followers on that dwindling art, Mr. Winchell’s most durable legacy might be his rich voice as Tigger and other animated characters on television and in motion pictures. …

Mr. Winchell was also an inventor who held 30 patents, including one for an early artificial heart he built in 1963 and then donated to the University of Utah for research. Dr. Robert Jarvik and other University of Utah researchers later became well-known for the Jarvik-7 which was implanted into patients after 1982.

Among Winchell’s other inventions were an early disposable razor, a flameless cigarette lighter, an invisible garter belt and an indicator to show when frozen food had gone bad after a power outage. … Read full obituary

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