Sterling Holloway Spotlight : Winnie The Pooh

Hello & welcome to A Look at Disney and welcome to the Sterling Holloway Spotlight. Today, we are closing in our last character as I take a look at Winnie The Pooh.  Most of the categories will remain the same save for the last one, it'll be  First Appearance, Personality Favorite Moment,  & Legacy.  I'm cutting out role as he has been in multiple shorts and the only reason he is last is because of the release date for The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh coming  after everything else.  With that out of the way, let's begin.

First Appearance

Pooh made his first appearance in the Winnie The Pooh and the Honey Tree back in 1966. Interesting note, this was the only Pooh featurette to be finished before Walt's death. As he would 10 months later of lung cancer.   Pooh would return in '68 in Winnie The Pooh and the Blusterly Day and this was released in front of The Horse in The Gray Flannel Suit.  Sterling would voice Pooh in one last short,  Winnie The Pooh and Tigger Too!   In  1977 all three of these would be packaged together to bring us The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh.

Something interesting I learned while doing my research for this article is that this was Sterling's favorite character.

Which  I can see,  Pooh is just so lovable and he never gets angry or upset with his friends.   He tries to keep his cool.

Personality

Pooh is always described as a bear of very little brain but I would counter that with he has a very big heart and cares for his friends and  go beyond that, they are his family.   Let's further this a bit.  It is widely known and accepted that all of Christopher Robin's toys aka his friends represent his different emotions and Pooh in that sense is heart,  his love and caring nature.  However even when we do not see Christopher Robin in the shorts or other material, Pooh's good natured attitude still shines through.  

Favorite Moment

Hmm,  it is so hard to choose a favorite moment and I feel kinda bad because when I did my Top 6 Pooh Bear Moments,  all but one where Jim Cummings moments.  To be fair, he is the voice of Pooh, I grew up with.   But in the end, I had to go with Pooh trying to get the hunny in Honey Tree.

Legacy

Winnie The Pooh is one of the most popular and most enduring and endearing characters from Disney. In some countries, he is more popular then Mickey Mouse and all these years after Sterling first voiced him, he is still around with Jim Cummings providing the voice for over 20 years now.   I mean for goodness sake, I won't get into all of it here but he has probably the most TV shows of any Disney character at 5 separate TV shows one of which spawned 4 Holiday specials.  Because there was Welcome To Pooh Corner,  The New Adventures of Winnie The Pooh, The Book of Pooh,  My Friends Tigger and Pooh, and now Tales of Friendship with Winnie The Pooh

   

And do I even need to mention how big New Adventures was back in the day. It remains alongside Many Adventures as one of the most popular things that Pooh ever starred in while My Friends Tigger and Pooh and Too Smart For Strangers are two of the worst things that he was in. And besides that he has also appeared in 5 films since The Many Adventures came out. In order, they are Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search For Christopher Robin, The Tigger Movie, Piglet's Big Movie, Pooh's Heffalump Movie,  Winnie The Pooh (2011)  and not to mention that he also appears in Kingdom Hearts.  I may be incorrect but I believe that he is the only character from this retrospective that does so.

 

And just a few years back, Pooh received his very own ride in the parks and when I went on it at the Magic Kingdom for the first time,  I felt like a child again because it perfectly captured the youthful innocence that one would associate with this character and this franchise.

And also, he is the only one of Sterling's characters to ever receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Anybody else feel the urge to hug Pooh Bear?   Ahem, back on topic, this is a testament to his popularity.   While some of the other characters I've covered during this event may have faded away, Pooh will remain for a very long time to come because is just so lovable and we need more characters like him.   He along with most of the 100 Acres Wood can just brighten your day by just looking at them.  Well now, we've looked at every animated character that Sterling has played but we still aren't done as we have two more articles to go.   Join me next time, when I take a look at his narration work by looking at his narration from three of my favorite shorts and explain why I place his narration work above any of his character work.