Don Messick: Voice of Scooby Doo

Few voice-over actors had the range of Don Messick (1926-1997), who could go from straight parts to character roles to non-humans (a specialty) often in the same cartoon, without the audience ever being aware that the same guy was playing all those characters.

Messick was a Hanna-Barbera man for decades, playing some of their most famous characters. His best known creation is probably Scooby Doo, who he voiced from 1969 until his death. Some of his other non-human parts included Hoppy on The Flintstones, Astro on The Jetsons, Bandit on Jonny Quest, and Toto in the movie Journey Back to Oz. Messick was also the guy who did all those animal sidekicks with wheezy laughs for Hanna-Barbera, like Muttley on Dastardly and Muttley, Sebastian on Josie and the Pussycats, and Fumbles on Where’s Huddles?

Messick’s character parts included Yogi Bear’s sidekick Boo-Boo, Bamm-Bamm on The Flintstones, and the title characters in Ricochet Rabbit and Jabberjaw. He was Papa Smurf on The Smurfs. Straight parts included Dr. Quest on Jonny Quest, and the narrator and Ranger Smith in the Yogi Bear cartoons. You can also hear his voice in the animated films of The Hobbit (1977) and The Return of the King (1980), even in some live action films like The Andromeda Strain and Diamonds Are Forever, both 1971. .

Messick originally started out as a ventriloquist in the 1940s, and gained his first national roles in radio, the most notable being the part of Raggedy Andy on The Raggedy Ann Show (1946-47). He was originally from Buffalo, New York.