English-born actor and comedian Alan Young, who played the sidekick of Mister Ed, the talking horse in the popular sixties TV comedy, has died aged 96.
Young passed away of natural causes, with his children at his bedside in Beverly Hills. Young was born in Northumberland in 1919 and spent his early years in England before his parents emigrated to Canada.
A much-respected and popular voice actor, he performed as the grouchy Scrooge McDuck and did voice work on The Smurfs, The Great Mouse Detective and Scooby-Doo and many other Disney productions.
The late Alan Young pictured with Mister Ed memorabilia
Decades before the cartoon voicing, he starred with Natalie Wood in the 1949 film Chicken Every Sunday, and with Shirley Temple in Mr Belvedere Goes to College. He later secured his own television show, The Alan Young Show, with which he won a Primetime Emmy.
He starred alongside Rod Taylor in The Time Machine, a 1960 adaptation of the novel by HG Wells.
Comedian George Burns, wearing his producer's hat, was casting for the show Mr Ed when he is reported to have told his staff: "Get Alan Young. He looks like the kind of guy a horse would talk to."
Young took on the role of Wilbur Post, a credulous Wooster figure to Mr Ed’s wry Jeeves-like talking horse. On paper it seemed ludicrous - a horse who talked by way of an unseen human voice actor, but the series ran for five seasons.
Mister Ed spoke only to his owner, the occasion of obvious frustration on Wilbur Post's part when he was in some kind of scrape and explanations were needed.
Young once explained the charm of the series which wed Post the bumbler to Mister Ed's wily horse sense. "I think it's the same chemistry that made Laurel and Hardy, and Jackie Gleason and Art Carney. It's the one guy making a fool of the other guy."
The show ran weekly from 1961 until 1966, and was a popular series for many younger Teilifís Éireann viewers in the days of black and white and one channel TV in Ireland.
