This is an entry to Mark Evanier's list of the twenty top voice actors in American animated cartoons between 1928 and 1968. For more on this list, read this. To see all the listings posted to date, click here.
Most Famous Role: Goofy
Other Notable Roles: Bozo the Clown (on records), Sleepy and Grumpy in Snow White, Practical Pig in The Three Little Pigs, Gabby in Gulliver's Travels and later shorts, Oswald the Rabbit. At times, he provided the voice of Bluto in the Popeye cartoons and the sounds of Pluto in Disney cartoons.
What He Did Besides Cartoon Voices: Vance DeBar "Pinto" Colvig was a cartoonist for newspapers and animation, a gag man and briefly a circus clown, plus he worked in front of and behind the camera for Mack Sennett comedies and dubbed Munchkin voices for The Wizard of Oz. He did the voice of Bozo for Capitol Records and played Bozo on-camera for the character's first live TV show but never voiced the clown for animation.
Why He's On This List: The guy had some real funny, memorable voices and he livened up whatever he was in.
Fun Fact: His son Vance Colvig, Jr. followed in Dad's clown-sized footprints and played Bozo on television in Los Angeles in the sixties. Junior also did cartoon voices, including the gravelly sounds of Chopper the Bulldog in the Yakky Doodle cartoons for Hanna-Barbera.