Arthur Anderson, Voice of Lucky Charms Cereal’s Leprechaun, Dies at 93
He was not on the list.
Arthur Anderson, who performed on radio as a teenager with Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater and appeared on Broadway, in films and on television, but whose most enduring role was as the voice of Lucky Charms cereal’s leprechaun, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 93.
A friend, Craig Wichman, confirmed the death.
Mr. Anderson was the voice of Lucky the Leprechaun, a mischievous cartoon redhead in a green coat, from 1963 to 1992. “Frosted Lucky Charms,” he’d sing, “they’re magically delicious.”
“I never got free cereal,” he told ABC News in 2005. “But they gave me lots of green money. And it was a fun character to play. Hardly a day goes by when somebody doesn’t ask me to sing the Lucky Charms jingle, and I’m proud of that.”
The versatility of his voice — his Irish brogue was bogus;
he was the Staten Island-born son of immigrants from Denmark and England — had
been paying off since his first professional radio role, as a ukulele-playing
orphan on a show called “Tony and Gus” on NBC in 1935 when he was only 12.
After acting in “The Mercury Theater on the Air,” Mr. Anderson was cast in 1937 as Lucius, the herald to the 22-year-old Welles’s Brutus, in a Broadway production of “Julius Caesar” set in Fascist Italy. Arthur sang, accompanying himself on a ukulele camouflaged as a lute.
His most memorable moment during the show occurred offstage. After heeding an order to stop hurling light bulbs at a brick wall, he decided to light matches to test the melting point of the sprinkler heads. Besides setting off a fire alarm, he triggered a deluge just as Brutus ascended the pulpit above the body of Caesar on the stage below.
Appalled at what he had done, young Arthur beat a hasty retreat, according to John Houseman, Welles’s collaborator, in his 1972 memoir, “Run-Through.” But before he did, Arthur paused to call his mother from a pay phone and announced, “Hey, Mom, I’ll be home early.”
(In the 2009 film “Me and Orson Welles,” a composite
character based partly on Mr. Anderson was played by Zac Efron.)
Arthur John Miles Anderson was born on Aug. 29, 1922, the son of George Christian Anderson (his name had been changed from Andersen when he immigrated to the United States), an electrical engineer, and the former Violet Brookfield.
He attended the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan and was heard on “Uncle Nick Kenny’s Radio Kindergarten” and on “Let’s Pretend,” a radio show that re-enacted fairy tales, from 1936 to 1954.
In 1963, Mr. Anderson successfully auditioned for the
Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample advertising agency, which was seeking a voice for an
animated leprechaun to promote the toasted oats and marshmallow bits — pink
hearts, yellow moons, orange stars and green clovers — that General Mills sold
collectively as Lucky Charms.
He considered the part a wedding present. He married Alice Middleton, a casting director, who died last year. He is survived by their daughter, Amy Anderson.
Mr. Anderson also appeared in the Woody Allen film “Zelig” (1983) and John Schlesinger’s “Midnight Cowboy” (1969) and on television in “Car 54, Where Are You?” and “Law & Order.” He was the voice of Ducky Drake, the mascot for the Drake’s Cakes brand; appeared in performances at the Metropolitan Opera; filled in for the puppeteer on “The Rootie Kazootie Club”; published two memoirs; and was a regular at annual conventions of the organization Friends of Old Time Radio.
“His range was incredible,” said Sean Dougherty, an
organizer of the conventions. “He made himself famous playing a leprechaun,
though he wasn’t in any way Irish. On ‘Let’s Pretend,’ he played a troll, a
parrot, a giant in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk.’ He was always the oddball voice.
Arthur said: ‘I never got the girl, not in 19 seasons. I was never starred, I
was never featured. But I always worked.’”
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