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Wallace Wimple
Wallace Wimple, an expansion of Thompsons Breakfast Club role, would prove to be his most enduring character, however. Wimple was a timid birdwatcher, appropriately nicknamed "Wimp" by McGee, who lived in constant terror of his "big old horrid wife," ironically named "Sweetie Face," who was often mentioned but never heard. (The term "wimp" for an unmanly character was in common usage already, as with the cartoon character J. Wellington Wimpy). The character, whose greeting was a mild "Hello, folks," became very popular, and inspired animation director Tex Avery to build a dog character around the voice. This character, eventually named Droopy Dog, was also voiced by Thompson in most of his appearances. Thompson also played the title role, an Adolf Hitler take-off, in Avery's Academy Award nominated short The Blitz Wolf.
WWII
Around 1943, however, Thompson's thriving career was interrupted when he joined the US Navy during World War II, and all of his radio characters were temporarily dropped. He returned to Fibber McGee full-time in 1946, however, and also became a semi-regular on Edgar Bergen's radio series as lecturer "Professor" Thompson, and continued to work on radio until the late 1950s, notably in several episodes of CBS Radio Workshop. Upon his return to civilian life, Thompson's animation voice-over career also began to build steam. At MGM, he returned as Droopy and also played Droopy's recurring bulldog nemesies Spike, known as Butch in his appearances that were produced after Avery's departure from MGM, and many other characters in the studio's cartoon shorts (he used the Wimple/Droopy voice for the titular Native American caricature in Big Heel-Watha (1944) and for Tom's look-a-like cousin George in a 1957 Tom and Jerry entry Timid Tabby, for two examples).
Disney
For Walt Disney, he was heard in many shorts and features, often in either dialect parts or a variation of his Wimple/Droopy voice. His animated feature film credits included the parts of the White Rabbit and the Dodo in Alice in Wonderland, Mr. Smee (and the other pirates) in Peter Pan (reprising his roles in radio adaptations for Lux Radio Theater), and King Hubert in Sleeping Beauty. His best showcase may well have been in Lady and the Tramp (1955), where he was heard in no less than five dialect parts, as Jock the friendly Scottish terrier, Bull the Cockney bulldog, Dachsie the German dachshund, Joe the Italian cook, and the Irish policeman in the park. In shorts, he was heard as Ranger J. Audobon Woodlore in several Donald Duck and Humphrey the Bear entries and as Professor Owl in two music related shorts, including the Academy Award winning Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom (directed by Ward Kimball), amongst many others. He reprised both of these roles in Disney's various television series, and was the first actor to voice the comic book character Scrooge McDuck (the theatrical featurette Scrooge McDuck and Money).
Union Oil
In 1957, Thompson joined the Los Angeles branch of Union Oil as an executive, working in community relations and occasionally reprising his radio characters. He remained sporadically active in animation, however, going on to play King Hubert in Disney's Sleeping Beauty, and as Touché Turtle for Hanna-Barbera's Touché Turtle and Dum Dum (plus a guest role in an early episode of The Flintstones).
His final role was as Uncle Waldo in The Aristocats, released shortly before his death from a heart attack. Thompson was 58.
Sources
Dunning, John. On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-19-507678-8
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