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: Boris Badenov.
Other Notable Roles: Professor Ludwig Von Drake, Capt. Peter "Wrong Way" Peachfuzz, Inspector Fenwick, Squiddly Diddly, Toucan Sam, Poppin Fresh the Pillsbury Doughboy and hundreds of others.
What He Did Besides Cartoon Voices: Frees had occasional on-camera roles but was simply in too much demand for the off-camera ones (like the unseen philanthropist character in the TV series, The Millionaire. He was a superstar of radio dramas, a frequent re-dubber of on-camera actors, a voice in thousands of commercials, a narrator, a recording artist and even a stand-by when someone hired Orson Welles to narrate something and needed to have someone impersonate Orson. The most famous Frees voice job may be his voiceover as the "Ghost Host" in the Haunted Mansion attraction at Disneyland and he is still heard in other rides at the Disney theme parks.
Why He's On This List: Paul may have been the most versatile voice actor ever and his peers still marvel at some of his vocal feats. In the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, bad guy spy Boris Badenov often adopted disguises and fake dialects…so Frees was called on to do a Russian feigning a Texas accent. And as producer/co-star Bill Scott once remarked, "We could never stump Paul with that kind of stuff. He always got it in one take."
Fun Fact: There are hundreds of examples of Paul replacing the voices of other actors in movies and TV shows. Near the beginning of the Academy Award-winning motion picture Gigi, star Louis Jordan walks into a mansion and has a conversation with three servants. All three actors were redubbed by Paul Frees.