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: Snidely Whiplash in the Dudley Do-Right cartoons.
Other Notable Roles: Captain Hook in Disney's Peter Pan, Professor Waldo Wigglesworth on Hoppity Hooper, parts in The Phantom Tollbooth and several animated Dr. Seuss specials and a few others.
What He Did Besides Cartoon Voices: Conried was a very prolific actor logging hundreds of radio, film and TV appearances, often appearing as himself on talk shows and game show panels. His most notable film appearance is probably his starring role in The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T and his most famous TV presence was the recurring part of Uncle Tonoose on The Danny Thomas Show (aka Make Room for Daddy) or maybe as the host of Jay Ward's Fractured Flickers. He can reportedly be seen briefly in Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator.
Why He's On This List: Hans Conried was one of those voice actors who basically had one voice but it was a great one, developed on stage and radio, including his stint as a member of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre Company. He usually played villains and had a way of making the bad guys uncommonly human and funny. That was one of the reasons he worked so much. Another was that everyone seemed to love having him around.
Fun Fact: There's a theatrical tradition in productions of Peter Pan for Captain Hook and the father (Mr. Darling) to be played by the same actor, thereby suggesting a parallel between the two characters. In Disney's 1953 animated version, the tradition continued with Conried voicing both — which probably went unnoticed by moviegoers, especially since the characters had such different designs. Some sources claim Conried was the first actor to play both roles but that's not true. The tradition dates back to the first stage productions of Sir James Barrie's work. (Just two years earlier in 1951, Boris Karloff played both in a Broadway production starring Jean Arthur as Peter.)