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Rise to Fame
Jim Backus was doing radio and Broadway for years before a 1949 UPA cartoon made his voice one of the most recognizable in America. Mr. Magoo, the stubbornly near-sighted old man who blundered through disasters without realizing it, won two Academy Awards for animated shorts ("When Magoo Flew" in 1954 and "Magoo's Puddle Jumper" in 1956). Then in 1964 he compounded the identification problem by landing Thurston Howell III on Gilligan's Island, one of those rare cases where an actor's voice and face both became permanent cultural fixtures.
In the Spotlight
Both his signature creations have complicated legacies. Mr. Magoo's cultural standing eroded through the late 1970s, and disability advocates later pushed back hard on the character's premise. Thurston Howell III held up better, running endlessly in syndication and producing three reunion TV movies between 1978 and 1981. His 1955 performance as James Dean's ineffectual, apron-wearing father in "Rebel Without a Cause" tends to get overlooked entirely. It's the role that showed he could act when nobody expected him to.
Side Notes
The Mr. Magoo voice came from Backus's own father. He'd been watching the man long enough to turn him into a decades-long career. On the set of "Rebel Without a Cause," he reportedly taught James Dean the voice, and Dean used it for a throwaway line in the film. The Thurston Howell prototype existed years before Gilligan's Island: Backus had played a character called Hubert Updike III on radio with the same strangled patrician diction. He'd spent a decade perfecting it. Gilligan's Island just put a face to the character.
Final Chapter
Parkinson's disease slowed him steadily after a 1978 diagnosis. By the 1981 Gilligan's Island reunion film, his role shrank to a cameo; by 1987 he had to be carried into a birthday party for creator Sherwood Schwartz because he couldn't manage the steps. He died July 3, 1989 in Los Angeles. His wife Henny afterward wrote "Care for the Caretaker," a practical guide for families caring for seriously ill relatives.