Alan Young
British actor (1919–2016)

Alan Young (born Angus Young; 19 November 1919 – 19 May 2016) was a British actor. Young is best known for portraying Wilbur Post in the television comedy Mister Ed (1961–1966) and voicing Disney's Scrooge McDuck for over 40 years, beginning in the 1974 Disneyland Records album An Adaptation of Dickens' Christmas Carol, Performed by The Walt Disney Players. He again voiced Scrooge in the Academy Award-nominated short film Mickey's Christmas Carol (1983) and continued in the role in various other films, television series and video games up until his death. He was considered by TV Guide to be "the Charlie Chaplin of television".
During the 1940s and 1950s, Young starred in his own variety-comedy sketch shows The Alan Young Show on radio and television, the latter gaining him two Emmy Awards in 1951. He also appeared in a number of feature films, starting from 1946, including the 1960 film The Time Machine and from the 1980s gaining a new generation of viewers appearing in numerous Walt Disney Productions films as an actor.
Early life and education
Young was born as Angus Young on 19 November 1919, in North Shields, Northumberland, England, to Scottish parents. In his later years, he claimed he had been born in 1924. His father was a mine worker and a tap dancer, and his mother was a singer. The family moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, when Young was a toddler and to West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, when he was six years old.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Alan Young” is british actor (1919–2016). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Alan, Young and British, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q555246. VIAF identifies the subject as 195047326. The Library of Congress control number is n94114350. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 2016, 1961 and 1966.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alan Young” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.