Saddened to hear just now of the passing of the great Chuck McCann (b. 1934). McCann’s is one of those faces and voices that have made up part of the fabric of your life, whether you know his name or not. Once you get all the various pieces below, you’ll find yourself saying “Oh that guy!” repeatedly until it adds up to a mighty impressive picture.
A third generation performer, McCann was first on radio as a child, and performed stand-up as a teenager. What I didn’t know until recently (because I didn’t grow up in New York) was his extensive career as a children’s entertainer and puppeteer with an impressive list of local NYC television credits from 1950 through 1967. (I learned this by following the career of my ventriloquist friend Carla Rhodes, who knew McCann). He most definitely was one of the handful who kept the vaudeville thing going after it had properly passed from the scene.
But gradually in the late 50s and early 60s McCann began to accrue a national profile as a character actor, comedian, impressionist and voice-over actor, starting with guest shots on Steve Allen’s and Gary Moore’s variety shows. Starting in 1962 he supplied the voices of Sonny the Cuckoo Bird and Gramps in the Cocoa Puffs commercials “”I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs! I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!” He was a cast member on Cool McCool (1966-69). He was in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968). He was the guy who said “Hi, Guy!” in the 1970s Right Guard commercials. He was in the Disney Love Bug sequel Herbie Rides Again in 1974, co-starred with Bob Denver in Far Out Space Nuts (which we wrote about here), co-starred with Tim Conway in He Went That-a-way and That-a-way in 1978, starred in Buster Crabbe’s last film The Comeback Trail in 1982, played W.C. Fields in the 1982 tv movie about Mae West starring Ann Jillian, and guest starred in too many tv shows, and did so many cartoon voice-overs we could never list them all here. (A notable recent credit was a semi-regular part as a judge on Boston Legal). Check out his IMDB page — he worked ’til the end.
Here’s a ventriloquism routine from back in the day:
(Travalanche) 
He certainly did a ton of voice acting–even a few video games! Millennial readers might remember him best either from DuckTales on TV or King’s Quest VI, one of the first computer games to feature voice acting (which was a big deal at the time). McCann showed versatility by playing several characters, including what sounded like an Ed Wynn impression!
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