Dick Wilson

 Dick Wilson (July 30, 1916 – November 18, 2007)

He was a British-born Canadian character actor who played the role of finicky grocery store manager Mr. George Whipple in more than 500 Charmin toilet paper television commercials (1965–1989, 1999–2000). Wilson graduated from the Ontario College of Art & Design and then became a comic dancer in vaudeville. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and served as a pilot in World War II. After the war he moved to the United States and became an American citizen in 1954. He then worked as an acrobatic dancer in New York before heading to California in 1954 for film and television work. Wilson made numerous appearances as several characters on the television sitcom Bewitched, usually as "various drunks." He reprised his roles as "various drunks" on the Bewitched spin-off Tabitha and McHale's Navy. Sometimes on the latter he portrayed a neighbor or other stock character in various episodes between 33 and 247. He played a similar drunk character in Disney's The World's Greatest Athlete in 1973. Wilson also appeared on The Donna Reed Show, Hogan's Heroes, and The Bob Newhart Show. Wilson was quoted as saying, "I've done thirty-eight pictures and nobody remembers any of them, but they all remember me selling toilet paper." He described acting in commercials as "the hardest thing to do in the entire acting realm. You've got 24 seconds to introduce yourself, introduce the product, say something nice about it and get off gracefully." Wilson died November 18, 2007, at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California at age 91. He is interred at Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills.