Dallas McKennon


Dallas Raymond McKennon, sometimes credited as Dal McKennon, was an American actor and voice actor, in a career lasting over 50 years.

Career

Born near La Grande, Oregon, McKennon's best-known voice roles were that of Gumby for Art Clokey, Archie Andrews in several different Archie series for Filmation, and the primary voice of Buzz Buzzard in the Woody Woodpecker cartoons. In the early 1950s, McKennon created and hosted his own daily kids TV wraparound show, Space Funnies/Capt. Jet, which was seen weekday mornings on KNXT TV Ch. 2 in Los Angeles. Space Funnies was the first Los Angeles-based kids show to air reruns of The Little Rascals and Laurel & Hardy shorts. He was also the primary voice actor for the 1960 cartoon series Q.T. Hush. McKennon was also the voice of Hardy Boys sidekick Chet Morton in the 1969 animated mystery series.
McKennon also sang, and provided many character voices, mainly for Disney. His distinctive voice can be heard in movies such as Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Mary Poppins, and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. He also provided the voices for many Disney Attractions such as the famous Big Thunder Mountain Railroad safety spiel, a pair of laughing hyenas in the Africa Room portion of It's a Small World, Benjamin Franklin's voice in Epcot's The American Adventure, EPCOT's WorldKey information kiosks and the voice of Zeke in the Country Bear Jamboree.
McKennon's best-known live action role is that of the innkeeper, Cincinnatus, in the 1964-70 Daniel Boone TV series starring Fess Parker. He also had a bit part as a diner cook in the Alfred Hitchcock film classic The Birds and as a gas station attendant in the Elvis Presley film Clambake. His final movie was ', under the pseudonym of Charles Farrington, voicing Gumby, Fatbuckle, Lucky Claybert and Professor Kapp.
McKennon was an avid Oregon Trail historian. He visited schools around the Northwest lecturing children about Oregon history and worked at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center giving instructional speeches and put together plays, skits, songs, stories and informational documents leading up the Oregon Trail's sesquicentennial.
He also worked with Oregon Public Broadcasting creating The Pappenheimers, an instructional video series to help teach children German. His character lived in a Volkswagen Bus and would tell stories about relatives in Germany. Many of the episodes had clips of Germany as well as cartoons.
He is also known for his recording of the sound of a crazy laugh, used for the Hyena in Disney's Lady and the Tramp, and later in a horror film called Tourist Trap. His laugh was also used in three Crash Bandicoot games Crash Bandicoot, ' and Crash Team Racing as a sound effect for a boss in the game called Ripper Roo, and then in the Christmas film Elf.

Personal life

McKennon married his childhood love interest, Betty Warner, in Portland, Oregon in 1942, the marriage lasted until his death in 2009, The couple had six daughters and two sons. They lived in California until 1968, when they moved to Cannon Beach, Oregon, from where Dallas commuted for acting and voiceover roles.

Death

McKennon died from natural causes on July 14, 2009 at the age of 89, at the Willapa Harbor Care Center in Raymond, Washington, five days shy of his 90th birthday.

Filmography

Live-action