Chuck McCann, voice actor who hosted 1960s childrens TV shows, dies at 83

Chuck McCann, a zany comic who hosted a popular children’s television show in New York in the 1960s, branched out as a barrel-chested character actor in movies and TV, and voiced the bird who cries “I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!” in long-running cereal commercials, died April 8 at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 83.

The cause was congestive heart failure, said his publicist, Edward Lozzi.

A tall, 260-pound entertainer, Mr. McCann became a household name in New York as the host of several variety programs, including “The Chuck McCann Show,” which amused a generation of children with lighthearted humor and puppets.

He also guest-starred in the children’s shows “The Rootie Kazootie Club” and “Captain Kangaroo” before making a rare dramatic appearance in “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” (1968), an adaptation of the Carson McCullers novel, where he played a deaf and mute friend of star Alan Arkin.

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Mr. McCann starred in “The Projectionist” (1971) as a daydreaming movie projectionist who imagines himself inside the films he screens, and also had played small roles on shows including “Bonanza,” “Columbo” and “Little House on the Prairie,” where he played a deaf-mute coppersmith who helps fashion a church bell.

At the same time, he expanded his work into animation acting and created the voice of Sonny the Cuckoo Bird, who appeared in Cocoa Puffs commercials for General Mills, and voiced Mayor Grafton on “The Garfield Show,” Scrooge McDuck’s butler Duckworth in “DuckTales,” and Heff Heffalump in Disney’s “The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.”

Charles McCann was born in Brooklyn on Sept. 2, 1934. His father was a singer and bandleader. He was married several times and had children, but a complete list of survivors was not immediately available.

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Mr. McCann once said he never thought of himself as having “a career,” per se. “I just look at it as things I love to do,” he said. “I have just as much fun doing a 30-second commercial as I do making a movie.”

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