Keith Scott is an Australian voice actor, comedian, impressionist and animation historian. He is internationally best known as the official voice of Bullwinkle J. Moose since 1992 and in the 2000 film The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, the narrator in George of the Jungle and George of the Jungle 2, and the official licensed voice of the Hanna-Barbera and Looney Tunes characters in Australian commercials and theme park attractions. He also provided voices for Australian animated films and television series by Yoram Gross Film Studios, including the Dot films, The Magic Riddle, Blinky Bill, Tabaluga, Skippy: Adventures in Bushtown and Flipper & Lopaka, and starred on the radio program How Green Was My Cactus.
In addition to voice acting, Scott authored two books, The Moose That Roared: The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel, and a Talking Moose and Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age, Vol. 1–2, and has also studied the work of early, uncredited voice actors in cartoons.
Contents
Career
At a young age, Scott was always enchanted by the mimics and impressionists on The Ed Sullivan Show. He began developing his ability to impersonate voices at The Forest High School, doing cartoon characters (the first of which being Mr. Jinks) and teacher's voices. In October 1972, just after leaving school at age 18, Scott was hired by William Hanna, the head of Hanna-Barbera, which had established a large animation studio in Sydney, Australia. He got the gig when he brought in some letters that he had received from Daws Butler (voice of Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, etc.) in December 1970. Scott worked at the H-B office as a xerographer. Hanna gave him a letter of recommendation when he was retrenched from the H-B office, and his name was such a credible one that it got Scott an instant agent, and his voice-over career began. In 1974, Scott began doing either impersonations or original character voices in many anonymous radio and television commercials, and was promoted at Sydney clubs as "the Voice of 1000 Commercials". He was also approved by Hanna-Barbera to do the voices of Fred Flintstone, Yogi Bear and others for Australian commercials, and later live shows at Wonderland Sydney (then known as Australia's Wonderland) for 15 years.