Alan Young, Actor – Obituary

Alan Young, who has died aged 96, was a British-born actor who became famous as the human sidekick of Mister Ed, the talking horse, in the eponymous 1960s CBS sit-com.

When he was first approached to play the role of Wilbur Post, Mister Ed’s hapless owner, in the early 1950s, Young, an Emmy-winning star of his own comedy revue, replied that he “didn’t want to work with anybody who doesn’t clean up after themselves”.

In the meantime the actor George Burns had financed an unsuccessful Mister Ed pilot with another actor and in 1959 he again approached Young, saying that he looked “like the kind of guy a horse would talk to”.

“Seven years later,” Young recalled, “nobody was knocking on my door and I was willing to talk to anyone, including a horse.” The Best of Mister Ed ... Best Price: $9.03 Buy New $131.94 (as of 08:40 UTC - Details)

The star of the show was a palomino gelding called Bamboo Harvester, whose gravelly voice was provided by Allen “Rocky” Lane, a star of 1930s low-budget Westerns. From 1961 to 1965 the mischievous Mister Ed and his less intelligent owner entertained viewers with plot lines that revolved around the horse’s skills as a troublemaker and Wilbur’s efforts to conceal their conversations.

Wilbur, Young recalled, was “naive and bumbling”, while “Ed was a wily one. I think it’s the same chemistry that made Laurel and Hardy and Jackie Gleason and Art Carney: it’s the one guy making a fool of the other guy.”

Each show began with Mister Ed whinnying: “Hello, I’m Mister Ed,” followed by the theme song: “A horse is a horse, of course, of course…” Star guests included one one occasion, Zsa Zsa Gabor who, Young recalled, tried to drive off with a $10,000 mink coat that she wore for the show. Stopped by security guards as she left the studio, she was unrepentant. “I’m sorry, darling,” Young recalled her saying, “but most of the studios give me coats like this as gifts.”

The show spawned all sorts of stories about Mister Ed. Claims that he was really a trained zebra, which had been brought in at the last minute as a replacement for a recalcitrant horse to save the show from being cancelled, were denied – as was a story put about by two Ohio fundamentalist preachers that the “Mister Ed” theme song played backwards referred to the devil.

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