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Walker Edmiston was a talented, prolific, and versatile voice and character actor whose impressive career in radio, film, and television spanned more than five decades. Born on February 6, 1926, in St. Louis, Missouri, Edmiston discovered early on his ability to perfectly mimic voices, delighting his family with impressions like that of Lionel Barrymore. After World War II, he moved to Los Angeles to study acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. While performing in a play, he met animation producer Walter Lantz, which led to his first steady role voicing various characters on the children's show "Time for Beany."
During the 1950s and 60s, Edmiston hosted "The Walker Edmiston Show," a Los Angeles-based children's TV program featuring puppets he created, such as Kingsley the Lion and Ravenswood the Buzzard. He frequently collaborated with Saturday morning TV creators Sid and Marty Krofft, providing voices for characters like Sparky the Firefly on "The Bugaloos," Dr. Blinkey and Orson the Vulture on "H.R. Pufnstuf," and Big Daddy Ooze on "Sigmund and the Sea Monsters." Edmiston also portrayed a quirky Civil War prospector and the wise Sleestak Enik on "Land of the Lost."
He lent his voice to the terrifying Zuni fetish doll in the chilling final segment of the TV horror anthology "Trilogy of Terror," and voiced Inferno in the "Transformers" animated series. For two decades, Edmiston voiced both the kind-hearted Tom Riley and the villainous Bart Rathbone on the popular radio drama "Adventures in Odyssey." Additionally, he was the voice of Ernie the Keebler Elf in numerous TV commercials over ten years.
His guest appearances spanned many well-known TV shows, including "Maverick," "Thriller," "The Virginian," "Green Acres," "Get Smart," "Star Trek," "The Wild, Wild West," "Bonanza," "Mission: Impossible," "Gunsmoke," "Fantasy Island," "The Waltons," "Little House on the Prairie," "The Dukes of Hazzard," "Falcon Crest," and "Knots Landing." Edmiston also collaborated on several records with Spike Jones, provided looped dialogue for various films—including off-camera lines for Orson Welles in "Start the Revolution Without Me"—and supplied numerous voices across all five "Planet of the Apes" movies, notably voicing the talking baby chimp in "Escape from the Planet of the Apes."
Walker Edmiston passed away from cancer complications at the age of 81 on February 15, 2007.
