Dallas Raymond McKennon, who would have been 105 on July 19th, was a genuine original, a character actor in the literal sense. Few who met him could ever forget him. Few left such a rich legacy of entertainment in so many forms.
He was as colorful and animated as the cartoons for which he lent his voice – sometimes more so, as his animation work runs the gamut from Disney classics to Sam Singer kitsch. No one could deny he gave equal intensity to all of them regardless of their scope. As he grew closer to his departure from the world – which he truly saw as his stage – his eccentricities increased, as did his passion for performing, whether it was for a revival of Gumby or storytelling to a group of children (and their nostalgic parents).
Dal was one of the pioneers of early television. He played “Captain Jet” on a local Los Angeles TV children’s show and was heard on countless radio shows and commercials. He and Daws Butler tag-teamed at the Walter Lantz studio. Like Daws, his knack for multiple voices made him especially effective in cartoons and children’s records with limited budgets—though that did not preclude him from being cast in “A”-list projects for Walt Disney, like Lady and the Tramp (“Tell us about it, Peg!”). In Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Dal was the fishing bear (“People? What scurvy luck!”). During the animated sequence in Mary Poppins, his voices included the carousel driver, fox, and one of the reporters (“How does it feel, Mary Poppins, winning the race?”)
His friends Art Clokey (for whom he voiced Gumby), Walter Lantz (Buzz Buzzard), and George Pal, did their best to find roles for him for almost as long as they were in business. Pal cast him in tom thumb and alongside Stan Freberg as the elves in The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm:
As Lantz’s Inspector Willoughby, Dal recorded this for Golden Records:
Dal loved to work. When a studio had a limited budget but needed lots of voices, he came running. Sam Singer hired Dal for several series, including the pre-Hanna-Barbera version of Sinbad, Jr. and the better-regarded Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse.
Dal was also the lead voice on one of TV’s highest-rated cartoon series, The Archie Show, initiating several years of work with Filmation, which also kept costs down by using a small but versatile cast to do a variety of voices.
Dal often appeared on camera, most prominently with Fess Parker on the long-running NBC series Daniel Boone as shopkeeper Cincinnatus. George Pal cast him as one of the dysfunctional townsfolk in The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. In Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, he played the diner cook who stood next to Tippi Hedren as they tried to stop a man from bursting into flames.
Tippi and Dal
Dal was a fixture at both Walt Disney Animation and Disneyland Records. He amassed such an exhaustive number of accomplishments that he is among several deserving artists long overdue for Disney Legend status. Dal was the first voice of Uncle Scrooge McDuck, on the 1960 record album Donald Duck and His Friends. His “Rocket to the Moon” segment was also released on singles by Disneyland and Golden. Six years later, Bill Thompson would become the second Scrooge for the animated short, Scrooge McDuck and Money.
In addition to off and on-screen roles for films and TV, Dal enjoyed a prolific recording career for Disney, appearing on over two dozen albums, including best-selling story albums for Mary Poppins and The Jungle Book. Others include 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Lady and the Tramp, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Swiss Family Robinson, The Wizard of Oz, The Love Bug, and The Sword in the Stone. The Jungle Book storyteller was such a big hit, that Disneyland Records brought back Phil Harris, Louis Prima, and Dal (as Bagheera) to do an original album written by Disney story artist Larry Clemmons.
Disneyland and Walt Disney World guests heard Dal on the Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, The Hall of Presidents, Country Bear Jamboree, and others. He was especially proud of his major voice role as Benjamin Franklin, co-hosting The American Adventure Audio-Animatronics stage spectacular at Epcot (John Anderson voiced Mark Twain).
Because Dal was based on the West Coast, Dal didn’t see The American Adventure until over 20 years after it opened. Through the teamwork of Mouse Tracks co-author, Tim Hollis, Disney historian Jim Hollifield, and my wife and kids, Dal was brought to Florida for a grand tour of the East Coast theme park wonders of his career.
He was moved to tears as he watched The American Adventure. A highly dedicated AA cast member, Lonnie Hicks, found a bit of costuming for Dal, and that afternoon guests were treated to a live appearance by Dal as Franklin. Later, he participated in the Shakespearean improv troupe at The United Kingdom Pavilion, after which he did a few lines as Franklin, Gumby, and Archie. He even spoke to Cast Members at Disney University. What a joy it was to see him soak up the long-earned love and admiration.
Though Dal passed away eleven years shy of 100, his son Steve created a 100th birthday montage of just a few memories. As Steve says on the page, it’s “a little somethin’ to honor my dad, ‘Pops.’” Among the clips is “Skinny Bones Jones,” a 1969 children’s story written and told by Dal, with illustrations by his longtime friend from his Lantz days, LaVerne Harding.
GREG EHRBAR is a freelance writer/producer for television, advertising, books, theme parks and stage. Greg has worked on content for such studios as Disney, Warner and Universal, with some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. His numerous books include Mouse Tracks: The Story of Walt Disney Records (with Tim Hollis). Visit 
To me, his greatest achievement on television was voicing every character in “QT hush“, a cartoon you don’t see at all anymore. Hopefully someday this will be changed, and we can all get a look at one of his greatest achievements. Believe me, he is finally remembered here!
Love the shout out to Q.T. Hush, one of my favorites.
Thanks for your remembering that old qt hush. I remember such view times he allowed us kids to see him working in progress. This one show and how he displays voice characters. Seeing that cats eyes after the knife hits the wall.
Of course I have absolutely no say in who becomes a Disney Legend and who doesn’t, but you make a good case that Dallas McKennon deserves to be recognised as one. I’ve noticed in recent years that many of the new inductees are honoured for their contributions to companies that Disney now owns, like Marvel and ABC, before they became part of the Disney conglomerate. It doesn’t make sense to me that people like Jack Kirby and Roone Arledge should be Disney legends when Dallas McKennon isn’t, but then again, as I say, it’s not my decision to make. Might as well induct Charles Perrault and Hans Christian Andersen while they’re at it.
Is it possible to nominate people for Disney Legend? I nominate Jim Korkis!
What is the title of that black-and-white film with the out-of-control lawnmower? That clip is hilarious, and I’d love to see the whole thing.
And did McKennon do the yodeling in that Puppetoon sequence?
The mower film is “Lawn Party”, a B&W film Art Clokey made in the early 60s, and later featured as a short with “animated people” Gumby and Pokey watch in one of the later 60s Gumby cartoons.
One of Dallas McKennon’s talents was his imitative ability. For years I assumed that the voice of Bagheera that narrated the Disneyland Storyteller album of the Jungle Book was Sebastian Cabot, as in the movie, and it was only when I was looking over my old albums as an adult that I discovered the credit on the label, that in fact McKennon had provided the voice. Similarly on the Uncle Remus album he seemed to be imitating James Baskett quite effectively. (Though of course this latter type of imitation would never fly today, along with some of the stereotypical Chinese or Mexican impersonations that McKennon made for other albums. Still, to his credit, his voice is hard to detect unless one knows.) I feel that he and Ginny Tyler had rather “unique” voice capabilities–occasionally a little hard to take when rasping or shrill–and they seemed to play off each other well, which they did frequently on a variety of albums.
… Filmation…also kept costs down by using a small but versatile cast to do a variety of voices.
Corralling amateurish family members to provide free voicework likewise proved beneficial to the budget over the years.
One of which was Lou Scheimer himself who was either uncredited or credited under a pseudonym.
And Norm Prescott, a former DJ, did much of the announcing.
I’m currently watching all 6 seasons of Daniel Boone on DVD and Dal is the only actor who did the entire series besides the core family of Fess Parker, Rebecca Blair and Darby Hinton. As a kid, I enjoyed his cartoon voice work versatility, never realizing that store keeper Cincinattus was Archie Andrews and other stars.
Greg, is there documentation that McKennon worked for Sam Singer, or is this just an internet guess?
The Singer version of Salty was not McKennon. It’s clearly Johnny Coons. There was a film on-line with Coons credited where he’s using the same voice as he did for Salty.
https://tralfaz.blogspot.com/2019/03/uncle-johnny.html
I’ll see your Sinbad Jr. and raise you a Bucky and Pepito.
He was alse credited for Jerry Mouse’s singing in “Cat and Duplicat”.
One of the Disney attractions projects Dal was involved with was the unrealized “Western River Expedition”, a “Pirates of the Carribean” type ride that Marc Davis was developing for “Walt Disney World”. Dal was going to voice the ride’s narrator, an owl name Hoots Gibson (named after the western character actor of the same name). For numerous reasons (including guests demands for “Pirates” to be at Walt Disney World”), the attraction never quite happened.
However, when the attraction was still being planned, a preview display for “Western” was part of the post show area of “The Walt Disney Story” attraction at WDW’s Main Street U.S.A. when it opened in 1973. Part of the display featured a button activated section where Hoots Gibson give a lecture on audio-animatronics (with the help of self-opening book) and how he was made. He teases guests about the attraction at the end of the demonstration. When this attraction became a preview center for Epcot and later Disney-MGM Studios, the owl was repurposed as guide to talk about the for the then upcoming parks’ audio-animatronics and attractions, respectingly. Both times, the owl was a totally different character and for the Epcot spiel, he was voiced by another versatile character actor (and coincidently, another Art Clokey regular), Hal Smith. While the owl’s original and Epcot audio spiels are on Youtube, the Disney-MGM Studios one is not, and I unfortunately don’t know who voiced the owl for that.
Steven “Booksteve” Thompson wrote that Filmation originally wanted Bob Hastings to portray Archie (as he did on the Archie Andrews radio show in the ’40s), but Hastings was mad at them for not paying him extra for performing additional voices on the Superboy cartoon, so he told Lou and Norm to take a hike, and they hired Dal instead.
He played the Crooked Man on “Wee Sing at King Cole’s Party”.
I remember Dallas very well from when he lived in Cannon Beach, OR where I grew up. We were all Daniel Boone fans so it was pretty darn exciting to have him there! He was a very kind, loving person, an excellent example for kids. Grateful to have had the times we did!