Alan Young Biography

Alan Young was most famous for his role as Wilbur Post, the frazzled owner of a talking horse on the 1960s sitcom Mister Ed. The show’s nutty premise was that Mister Ed would talk only to Wilbur, an architect who worked from a studio in a barn he shared with the horse. Many strange and comical complications resulted. The show was a hit, running from 1961-65; Connie Hines played Wilbur’s wife Carol.

Alan Young had already had a successful career in radio in the 1940s; his Alan Young Radio Show ran in various forms on ABC Radio and NBC Radio from 1944-49. He then moved to TV in 1950 for The Alan Young Show, a blend of skits and songs that highlighted his nice-guy persona and ran until 1953.

Alan Young also showed his dramatic skills on TV and films (notably 1960’s The Time Machine), and was a regular on TV shows such as The Steve Allen Show before landing his own hit with Mister Ed in 1961. After that show left the air in 1965, Young continued to work, mostly in television as a voice actor; he was Scrooge McDuck in DuckTales from 1987-90.

He published an autobiography, Mr. Ed and Me, in 1995. Alan Young lived to be 96 years old, dying at the Motion Picture and Television Home in 2016.