Ben Wright Biography

Benjamin Huntington Wright was an English actor best known for his role as Eir Zehler in the Sound of Music and as the voices of Roger Radcliffe and 101 Dalmatians and Sir Grimsby in The Little Mermaid.

Wright was born May 15th, 1915 in London, the United Kingdom, to an American father and an English mother. He entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts at the age of 16 and upon graduation began appearing in several West End theatrical productions.

He would serve in the Kingsborough Rifle Corps during World War II. In 1946 Wright came to the United States to attend a cousins wedding and he decided to move to California. He started his American acting career in radio quickly becoming in demand for his talent in performing accents and dialects.

During his many roles, he was the final actor to play Sherlock Holmes on the radio from 1949 to 1950, the Indian servant Telku on the Green Lama in 1949, he was Inspector Peter Black on pursuit from 1951 to 1952, the Chinese bellhop Hayboy on the radio version of Have gun will travel from 1958 to 1960, and various roles on series such as Escape, Nightbeat,

Gunsmoke, Crime Classics, and Suspense. Along with his famous role as Erzeller in the Sound of Music in 1965, he also had minor roles in Judgment of Nuremberg in 1961, My Fair Lady in 1964 and the fortune cook in 1966. He also regularly guest starred in television appearing in My Three Sons, Hogan's Heroes, McHales Navy, Combat, Get Smart, Bananza,

and many more. He had reoccurring roles on Gunsmoke as the Billier Parler owner Dan Binnie and the town barber, Burjal Ingdahl, along with several other one-off roles throughout the course of the series. Wright also worked as a voice actor in film and television. He often provided alien voices for the television series The Outer