Lucky Charms Cereal’s Leprechaun Voice Arthur Anderson Dies at 93

Voice actor Arthur Anderson, perhaps best known for voicing Lucky the Leprechaun in Lucky Charms cereal commercials, has died at the age of 93. The New York Times reports his friend, Craig Wichman, confirmed Mr. Anderson’s passing. According to the report, Anderson voiced Lucky from 1963 to 1992. He was often asked to sing the “They’re magically delicious,” jingle, which he would do, with pride.

Although primarily a voice actor, who starting working in radio during his childhood, Anderson clocked some time on TV series, too. For his last TV gig, he voiced the character Eustace Bagge in Cartoon Network‘s animated Courage the Cowardly Dog TV series, in 2002. His IMDb profile credits Anderson on 18 episodes of the now-cancelled cartoon. He assumed the role from Lionel G. Wilson, in the show’s final season.

Anderson’s other TV work includes spots on Law & Order between 1996 and 2002. Early on, he appeared on shows including Route 66 (1963), and Car 54, Where Are You? (1961 and 1962).

Here is more from NYT:

The versatility of his voice — his Irish brogue was bogus; he was the Staten Island-born son of immigrants from Denmark and England — had been paying off since his first professional radio role, as a ukulele-playing orphan on a show called “Tony and Gus” on NBC in 1935 when he was only 12.

After acting in “The Mercury Theater on the Air,” Mr. Anderson was cast in 1937 as Lucius, the herald to the 22-year-old [Orson] Welles’s Brutus, in a Broadway production of “Julius Caesar” set in Fascist Italy. Arthur sang, accompanying himself on a ukulele camouflaged as a lute.

[…]

Arthur John Miles Anderson was born on Aug. 29, 1922, the son of George Christian Anderson (his name had been changed from Andersen when he immigrated to the United States), an electrical engineer, and the former Violet Brookfield.

He attended the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan and was heard on “Uncle Nick Kenny’s Radio Kindergarten” and on “Let’s Pretend,” a radio show that re-enacted fairy tales, from 1936 to 1954.

In 1963, Mr. Anderson successfully auditioned for the Dancer-Fitzgerald-Sample advertising agency, which was seeking a voice for an animated leprechaun to promote the toasted oats and marshmallow bits — pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars and green clovers — that General Mills sold collectively as Lucky Charms.

He considered the part a wedding present. He married Alice Middleton, a casting director, who died last year. He is survived by their daughter, Amy Anderson.

 

Watch this Lucky Charms TV ad from the 1990s.

 

 

Anderson also worked in film and had parts in movies including Midnight Cowboy, Dead of Night, Zelig, Daddy’s Boys, Green Card, and I’m Not Rappaport. He also wrote two books, An Actor’s Odyssey: Orson Welles to Lucky the Leprechaun (2010), and as pictured above, Let’s Play Pretend and the Golden Age of Radio (2004), both from BearManor Media.

We invite you to share you memories of Arthur Anderson and his work, below.