42 Facts About Paul Frees

Solomon Hersh "Paul" Frees was an American actor, comedian, impressionist, and vaudevillian.

Voice actor Mel Blanc said Frees was known as "The Man of a Thousand Voices", though the appellation was more commonly bestowed on Blanc himself.

Solomon Hersh Paul Frees was born to a Jewish family in Chicago, Illinois, on June 22,1920.

Paul Frees grew up in the Albany Park neighborhood and attended Von Steuben Junior High School.

Paul Frees had an unusually wide four-octave voice range that enabled him to voice a scale from the thundering basso profundo of the unseen "Ghost Host" in the Haunted Mansion attraction at Disneyland in California and at Walt Disney World in Florida to the voice of the farmer who educates the Little Green Sprout about vegetable products of the Jolly Green Giant in the Green Giant vegetable commercials.

Paul Frees began his career on radio in 1942 and remained active for more than 40 years.

Paul Frees was wounded in action and was returned to the United States for a year of recuperation.

Paul Frees appeared frequently on Hollywood radio series, including Escape, playing lead roles and alternating with William Conrad as the opening announcer of Suspense in the late 1940s, and parts on Gunsmoke, and Crime Classics.

Paul Frees was often called upon in the 1950s and 1960s to "reloop" the dialogue of other actors, often to correct for foreign accents, lack of English proficiency, or poor line readings by nonprofessionals.

Paul Frees dubbed Humphrey Bogart in his final film The Harder They Fall.

Paul Frees voiced the cars in the comedy The Great Race.

Unlike many voice actors who did most of their work for one studio, Paul Frees worked extensively with at least nine of the major animation production companies of the 20th century: Walt Disney Productions, Warner Bros.

Paul Frees voiced Disney's Professor Ludwig Von Drake in 18 episodes of the Disney anthology television series, beginning with the first episode of the newly renamed Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color on September 24,1961.

Paul Frees voiced the unseen "Ghost Host", or narrator, at both the Haunted Mansion Attraction and Adventure Thru Innerspace at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

Paul Frees provided narration for the Tomorrowland attraction Adventure Thru Inner Space and the original Great Moments with Mr Lincoln.

Paul Frees had a small live-action role for Disney in the 1959 film The Shaggy Dog, playing Dr Galvin, a military psychiatrist who attempts to understand why Mr Daniels believes a shaggy dog can uncover a spy ring and spoke the film's opening narration.

Paul Frees was a regular presence in Jay Ward cartoons, providing the voices of Boris Badenov, Inspector Fenwick, Ape, District Commissioner Alistair and Weevil Plumtree in George of the Jungle, Baron Otto Matic in Tom Slick, Fred in Super Chicken, and the Hoppity Hooper narrator, among numerous others.

Paul Frees was Hocus Pocus, the traffic cop, the ticket-taker, and Santa Claus in Frosty the Snowman in 1969 and played the central villain, Burgermeister Meisterburger, and his assistant Grimsley in Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town in 1970.

Paul Frees provided several voices, including Aeon the Terrible, for Rudolph's Shiny New Year in 1976.

Paul Frees voiced King Haggard's wizard Mabruk and the Cat in The Last Unicorn and provided several voices for the Jackson Five cartoon series between 1971 and 1973.

Paul Frees portrayed the Orson Welles sound-alike radio reporter in George Pal's film The War of the Worlds, where he is seen dictating into a tape recorder as the military prepares the atomic bomb for use against the invading Martians.

Paul Frees provided the film's dramatic opening narration, prior to Sir Cedric Hardwicke's voice-over tour of the solar system.

Paul Frees subsequently provided the apocalyptic voice for the "talking rings" in Pal's later film The Time Machine, in which he explains the ultimate fate of humanity from which the time traveler realizes the origin of the Morlocks and Eloi.

Paul Frees did the narration for the George Pal documentary The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal, written, produced, and directed by Arnold Leibovit.

Two years later, Paul Frees provided the voice for Arnie the Dinosaur and the Pillsbury Doughboy in The Puppetoon Movie, produced and directed by Leibovit.

Paul Frees had done work for Hanna-Barbera in their Tom and Jerry shorts at MGM.

From October 1961 through September 1962, Paul Frees provided the voice for the shady lawyer named Judge Oliver Wendell Clutch, a weasel on the animated program Calvin and the Colonel starring the voices of Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, the series was an animated television remake of their radio series Amos 'n Andy.

Paul Frees subsequently provided numerous voices for further cartoons in the series that followed, The Famous Adventures of Mr Magoo.

Paul Frees provided the voices of both John Lennon and George Harrison in the 1965 The Beatles cartoon series, the narrator, Big D and Fluid Man in the 1966 cartoon series, Frankenstein Jr.

Paul Frees provided the voice-over for the trailer to the 1971 Clint Eastwood thriller, Play Misty for Me.

Paul Frees narrated many live action films and television series, including Naked City.

Paul Frees provided the voice of the eccentric billionaire John Beresford Tipton, always seated in his chair with his back to the viewer while talking to his employee Michael Anthony, on the dramatic series The Millionaire.

Paul Frees was the narrator at the beginning of the film The Disorderly Orderly starring Jerry Lewis.

Paul Frees "looped" an actor's voice in the film The Ladies Man, starring Jerry Lewis.

Paul Frees had a wide range of other roles, usually heard but not seen, and frequently without screen credit.

On rare occasions, Paul Frees appeared on-camera, usually in minor roles.

Paul Frees played a scientist in The Thing from Another World, a death-row priest in A Place in the Sun, and French fur trader McMasters in The Big Sky.

In Jet Pilot, Paul Frees plays a menacing Soviet officer whose job is to watchdog pilot Janet Leigh, but instead manages to eject himself from a parked jet, enabling Leigh to rescue John Wayne and fly back to the West.

Paul Frees then married Kleda June Hansen in 1947, but they divorced three years later in 1950.

Paul Frees died at his home in Tiburon, California on November 2,1986, at the age of 66, from a self-administered overdose of pain medication.

Paul Frees was survived by his son and daughter, and by Marlow, who had moved to Mesa, Arizona.

Paul Frees's body was cremated and his ashes scattered over the Pacific Ocean.