Before he became the voice of Tigger in Winnie the Pooh, Paul Winchell had impressed audiences with decades of work as a ventriloquist, inventor, and children’s TV host.
New interviews on Nostalgia Tonight with Joe Sibilia shed light on Winchell’s final years, including an estrangement with his daughter, voice actress April Winchell.
On the May 25 broadcast, TV host Marc Summers recounted how he ended up delivering the news of Winchell’s passing to April. Winchell died on June 24, 2005, at the age of 82.
“A friend of mine said, ‘I don’t want his daughter to find out [in] the media,’” Summers recalled. “So would you feel comfortable enough calling her? And I did. I called her, and I said, ‘I have some bad news for you.’ And she said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘Your dad just passed away.’”
Summers added: “There was silence on the phone. And you know, it's not like normal people who would break down and cry, because that was not the relationship that they had.”
“He never believed that his daughter was his daughter,” he continued. “And apparently they did not have a relationship in any way, shape, or form, and had not talked in years.”
A separate interview, aired July 6, featured longtime friend and TV producer Burt Dubrow, who was with Winchell just hours before he died in June 2005.
“The night before he died, I mean, I was with him because I just happened to be with him,” Dubrow told Sibilia. “He wasn’t sick or anything like that… We were sitting in the backyard and we were hanging out, having fun.”
Dubrow continued, “I said goodbye. He leaned over and kissed me, as he always did. And I gave him a kiss right back and went home. And the next morning, his wife Jean called me and told me he had passed away.”
It was Dubrow who would go on to inform the public.
“His wife, Jean, sort of turned it to me,” he said. “She was British and really had no interest or connection to the entertainment business. And she knew I did… so I think I was sort of a natural person to just sort of help her out and do what needed to be done.”
As Dubrow explained, Winchell was far more than his cheerful stage persona. He was an inventor and humanitarian who wrestled with serious inner turmoil.
“He was a pretty serious man. He was obsessed with religion. He wrote two or three different books about religion,” said Dubrow. “If he wasn’t diagnosed bipolar, I think he certainly had those tendencies.”
Dubrow also recalled a rare moment of softness, when he caught a glimpse of Winchell teaching Dubrow’s daughter the art of ventriloquism.
“I sort of thought I heard something upstairs,” he recalled. “He was in there with her, with that little dummy, teaching her ventriloquism. And I am now watching my idol as a little kid, watching my daughter be taught by Paul Winchell.”
Dubrow, who has lectured on Winchell’s life and legacy at the Vent Haven Museum, said he remains committed to sharing the full scope of Winchell’s impact.
“Anybody that asks me to come and speak about Paul, it’s my pleasure, and I feel like I owe it to him,” Dubrow said. “He was an amazing man.”
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