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Dear NetFlix:

Your page for the 1960 movie "Stop, Look and Laugh" says it stars "ventriloquist Joe Winchell."

It was PAUL Winchell!!! He played the voice of Tigger, and (believe it or not) designed the first artificial heart! (Which works alot like the mouth on a ventriloquist's dummy.) It even says "Paul Winchell" on the picture your page is showing of the movie's cover!

He died this weekend at the age of 82. On this day when we're remembering PAUL Winchell, your movie page should probably identify him AS Paul Winchell.

Sincerely,

NetFlix subscriber #100012


The Associated Press found a good quote from Paul Winchell from a 1988 interview.
"I first met Walt Disney 25 or 30 years ago. He said, 'We're both in the same business. I use cartoons and you use dummies and we both entertain children.' That was long before I started working here. Walt gave me a VIP tour of the studio. I remember people doing voices.

"I said, 'Gee, that must be fun.' And here I am."


Mark Evanier remembers the time they worked together on an episode of the Saturday Morning cartoon Garfield. Evanier includes as one of the stupidest things he's ever said in his life the time he said to the ventriloquist:

"I'm sorry, Paul, but I've got you talking to yourself here on page three. You think you can handle it?"

"I always felt a little in awe of Paul, and unable to properly communicate to him what his presence on TV had meant to me as a child. I told him how I'd treasured my Jerry Mahoney ventriloquist figure and practiced endlessly to try and do what he did...

"I'm not sure he understood how valuable his example had been to so many in my generation, even though most of us Winchell fans hadn't grown up to become voice-tossers or even performers."


Read Paul Winchell's amazing story about his rough childhood on the lower East Side that led him into ventriloquism...


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