Thurl Ravenscroft

Thurl Arthur Ravenscroft (/ˈθɜːrl ˈreɪvənzkrɒft/; February 6, 1914 – May 22, 2005) was an American actor and bass singer. He was well known as one of the booming voices behind Kellogg's Frosted Flakes animated spokesman Tony the Tiger for more than five decades. He was also the uncredited vocalist for the song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" from the classic Christmas television special Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

Ravenscroft did voice-over work and singing for Disney in various films and Disneyland attractions (which were later featured at Walt Disney World), the best known including The Haunted Mansion, Country Bear Jamboree, Mark Twain Riverboat, Pirates of the Caribbean, Disneyland Railroad, and Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room.

His voice-acting career began in 1939 and lasted until his death in 2005 at age 91.

Ravenscroft left his native Norfolk, Nebraska, in 1933 for California, where he studied at Otis Art Institute. In 1939, he joined a singing group formed by tenor Bill Days called The Sportsmen: Days, Johnny Rarig, Max Smith, and Ravenscroft. They served as backup singers to vocalist Marie Greene on the Okeh record label (credited as "Marie Greene and Her Merry Men"). The quartet also contributed to a Disney feature, Pinocchio (1940), singing "Honest John". This was deleted from the film, but can still be heard in the supplements on the 2009 DVD.

The group, billed as The Four Merry Men, appeared in three-minute musical films, produced in 1941 by the Featurettes company, for coin-operated jukeboxes. That same year the Four Merry Men left Featurettes for the more successful Soundies company, and made more jukebox musicals; they were now billing themselves as "The Four Sportsmen". They were also very popular on radio and in live nightclub appearances.

In 1942, Thurl Ravenscroft left the Sportsmen quartet to serve in the armed forces. He served as a keeper navigator contracted to the U.S. Air Transport Command, spending five years flying courier missions across the north and south Atlantic. Among the notables carried on board his flights were Winston Churchill and Bob Hope. As he told an interviewer: "I flew Winston Churchill to a conference in Algiers and flew Bob Hope to the troops a couple of times. So it was fun."

When he returned from the service, he found that his place in The Sportsmen had been taken by bass singer Gurney Bell, and Bell was unwilling to relinquish the job to Ravenscroft. Undaunted, Ravenscroft formed his own quartet, The Mellomen, which contributed to other Disney films, such as Alice in Wonderland and Lady and the Tramp. The group appeared on camera in a few episodes of the Disney anthology television series; in one instance recording a canine chorus for Lady and the Tramp and in another as a barbershop quartet that reminds Walt Disney of the name of the young newspaper reporter Gallagher. Ravenscroft sang bass on Rosemary Clooney's "This Ole House", which went to No. 1 in both the United States and Britain in 1954, as well as Stuart Hamblen's original version of that same song. He sang on the soundtrack for Ken Clark as "Stewpot" in South Pacific, one of the top-selling albums of the 1950s. He also backed The DeCastro Sisters on their 1955 top 20 hit, "Boom Boom Boomerang." He sang "King of the River," as the character Mike Fink, on a Golden Record released in 1956. Singing with the Johnny Mann Singers, his distinctive bass can also be heard as part of the chorus on 28 of their albums that were released during the 1960s and 1970s. He was also the bass singer on Bobby Vee's 1960 Liberty hit record "Devil or Angel". Andy Williams' recording of "The 12 Days of Christmas" features him as well. His work with Spike Jones included singing "(I Was a) Teenage Brain Surgeon" for the 1959 album Spike Jones in Stereo.

He sang the opening songs for the two Disney serials used on The Mickey Mouse Club, Boys of the Western Sea and The Hardy Boys: Mystery of the Applegate Treasure.