YAKKY DOODLE DEADDY
Ventriloquist and voice actor Jimmy Weldon’s main claim to fame was voicing Yakky Doodle, a motherless Donald Duck soundalike on The Yogi Bear Show who outsmarted a fox that parodied Shelley Berman and an alligator that parodied Alfred Hitchcock (both voiced by Daws Butler). Indeed, Weldon’s career largely existed because he could do a good impersonation of everyone’s favourite irate sailor waterfowl.
Weldon, who previously helped liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp, was working as a DJ in the late 40s when he developed a radio sidekick – Webster Webfoot – based off the voice. The character proved popular enough that Weldon hosted children’s TV shows alongside a Webster puppet, including an elegantly aged kiddy version of Truth or Consequences called Funny Boners. His success then gave way to the Hanna-Barbera gig. With his death aged 99, there are no surviving cast members of The Yogi Bear Show, and Elliot Field, briefly part of the Quick Draw McGraw Show entourage, becomes the last surviving voice actor of the early Hanna-Barbera stable. Theme team MST3K Massacre gets quacking.
Jimmy Weldon
23 September 1923 – 6 July 2023, aged 99
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