April Winchell

April Terri Winchell (born on January 4, 1960 in New York City) is an American actress, writer, voice actor, talk radio host, and commentator. She is the daughter of Paul Winchell.

Acting
As a voice actress, she has been heard in hundreds of animated television programs, such as King of The Hill, The Simpsons, Phineas & Ferb, Pucca, Kim Possible, Recess (as Miss Muriel Finster), Goof Troop (as Peg Pete), Disney's House of Mouse and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (as Clarabelle Cow), Pepper Ann (as Lydia Pearson), The Legend of Tarzan (taking over for Rosie O'Donnell as Terk) and 101 Dalmatians: The Series, (as Cruella De Vil), SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron (as Molly Mange). She has also voiced roles in numerous films, including Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Toy Story 2, Antz, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and Rob Zombie's The Haunted World of El Superbeasto. Winchell portrayed the "Glendale Federal Bank" lady - a cranky, cynical customer mollified by the service at her new bank - in a series of highly successful radio commercials, which Winchell wrote and directed herself. She was also considered for the part of Regan in the Exorcist until she fell ill and was taken out of consideration.

Radio
Besides her many contributions to radio advertising as a performer, writer and director, Winchell also hosted a radio talk show program on KFI, a Los Angeles radio station. This weekend program aired for three years, and enjoyed the fastest growing audience in the history of the station. Subsequent to the end of this program in November 2002, she appeared semi-regularly on the Ask Mr. KABC program, on KABC, an AM station also in Los Angeles - until the show ended in February 2007.

In 2005, Winchell signed a deal with U.S. pay-TV service HBO to develop and host a show on Sirius Satellite Radio. However on her official website on May 3, 2006, she announced that negotiations had stalled out between HBO and Sirius, leaving her program in limbo.

On March 16, 2007, she returned to semi-regular radio appearances on The Marc "Mr. K" Germain Show on KTLK-AM (the new show hosted by the former Mr. KABC) and is expected to be on twice a month. (Her appearances on Germain's show are available at her website in addition to KTLK's website.) During March, Winchell was "banned for life" from KABC (AM) in Los Angeles at the behest of ABC radio host Bill O'Reilly, over a retelling of an occurrence she dubbed "Croissantgate" (KABC provided Bill O'Reilly with croissants that were not fresh enough for his taste, causing a commotion at the station).

Her Glendale Federal radio commercials were critical of the recent bank mergers, and were instrumental in increasing Glendale Federal's recognition. (Glendale Federal would ultimately be purchased by California Federal, which in turn was acquired by Citibank.)

Theater
As a musical theatre actress, she starred as Ado Annie in the Columbia Artists revival of Oklahoma, and also appeared opposite Kevin Spacey in Gypsy.

Additionally, Winchell performed her one-woman show as "Sheila Sands" at the Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles to sold out crowds. The show was produced by Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner, who discovered her at Cafe Largo in Hollywood.

She has also been a frequent panelist on the live-stage version of What's My Line at the Acme Comedy Theatre in Hollywood.

Advertising
In 1992, Winchell and her then-husband Mick Kuisel formed Radio Savant Productions, a radio advertising production company. Since that time, Winchell has won every award for advertising excellence, including Cannes, Clio, The $100,000 Mercury Award and The International Grand Andy (it was the only time the Andy was given for radio).

Internet
Winchell's official website chronicles the actress' activities, including her professional, personal and romantic life. Her success at attracting visitors to the site was reflected by the thousands of dollars raised when she solicited donations from visitors to pay bandwidth bills generated by the site during a period of unemployment.

April also owns and operates the site Regretsy under the pseudonym of "Helen Killer". The site launched in October 2009, and with 4 days had almost 90,000,000 hits. The huge viral success caught the attention of Random House, who won a bidding war to publish Regretsy on April 6, 2010. Based on the Regretsy web site, the book features humorous and bizarre crafts and artwork from several different artists including Kelly Hutchison, as well as essays about Winchell's personal life, childhood and own crafting failures.

Personal life
Winchell is the daughter of American ventriloquist Paul Winchell. In her weblog writings and appearances on radio, she describes her childhood with many references to the great talent of her father as well as the many disturbing incidents owing to his mental health issues. Ms. Winchell did not speak publicly about his mental illness and drug use for many years, due to the "tremendous responsibility" she felt to his fans, and the people who had fond childhood memories of his work from the 1960s through the late 1980s. But her silence ended in March 2004 after her father published his autobiography Winch, in which he openly criticized his ex-wife, Nina Russel, and other family members.

In broadcasts of her KFI show, on her web diary and several other websites, April Winchell revealed that she and Kevin Spacey dated for a while after high school, during the run of the Gypsy musical, and went to New York together. She and Spacey remained friends ever since.

On August 19, 2005 she announced on her website that she was diagnosed with cancer and underwent successful surgery and radiation treatment. To promote solidarity during her radiation treatment, she issued her own rubber wristbands. Where Lance Armstrong's wrist bands were yellow, April's were "Glow in the Dark" so one could "glow along" with April.

Winchell is also widely known as a supporter of various charity causes, including Project Angel Food, a Los Angeles-based service providing meals for homebound people living with AIDS.

Winchell has provided the award winning radio and television advertising for Big Bear Mountain Resorts since the early 1990s. In 2007, she began appearing in their television ads as a reporter-on-the-scene dealing with a hapless studio anchorman.