Dec 21 2014

Who Sang You’re A Mean One Mr. Grinch? Thurl Ravenscroft

I was wondering who sang You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch. A quick bit o’ Googling and I had my answer — Thurl Ravenscroft.

Who, pray tell, was Thurl Ravenscroft? Well, he sang You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch. But he also, according to Wikipedia, was the original voice of Tony The Tiger on the old Frosted Flakes ads, declaring the sugar cereal to be “grrrreat!”

Here’s video of a Frosted Flakes ad from the 1950’s. Listen and you can really hear that it’s the same guy who declared that Mr. Grinch was a mean one.

Ravenscroft (what a great name) also had a long association with Disney, with his voice-over work being used at Disneyland and Disney World — “The most well known of these attractions are The Haunted Mansion, The Country Bear Jamboree, The Mark Twain Riverboat, The Pirates of the Caribbean and Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room”, according to Wikipedpia.

He was also Thing One in the animated version of Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat, the Goblins in the Rankin-Bass animated version of The Hobbit (which we recently praised here), among numerous other credits. (Seriously, he did a lot.) Here’s my favorite, by which I mean the silliest sounding:
“Donny & Marie – Darth Vader/Narrator (Star Wars Segment)”

I’m not 100% certain but I think this is that bit.

Hey, work is work, right?

So if you, like me, were curious who sang You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinchnow you know!

Thurl Ravenscroft – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Let Me Call You Sweetheart (featuring Thurl Ravenscroft)

Barbershop Melodies, Volume 2 (featuring Thurl Ravenscroft)

Thurl Ravenscroft at Amazon.com