When you think of the voice masters of your favorite cartoon characters two people immediately come to mind, the late, great Mel Blanc and actor Sid Raymond. Another actor rising in that rank is Robin Williams, but even Robin has a way to go to measure up to the two greats of Blanc and Raymond.

Sid died this month after developing complications from a recent stroke. He was a grand old man at 97 years of age.

Even nearing 100 and after suffering a stroke Sid kept busy in the work he loved the best, voice acting. His agent was setting him up for some commerical work when the call came of his death.

Sid was famous for doing the voice of the obese cartoon duck Baby Huey, the comical bartender of 1960s beer commercials for Schlitz and a familiar face on television from “The Ed Sullivan Show” to “The O.C.,” Raymond was a show business fixture for six decades. But decades of brief, sometimes uncredited appearances on Broadway, in movies such as “The Hustler” and “Big Trouble” and on the small screen made him a familiar face.

“Having the job was not the hard work,” he once said. His wife Cynthia remembers how “getting the job was the work because he had to go to these auditions and they would have all these character actors together,” Cynthia Raymond said.

Born Raymond Silverstein in Manhattan on January 21, 1909, Sid Raymond began his career as recreation director at a Catskills resort after dropping out of New York University. He went on to lead the traveling version of the radio show “Major Bowess Original Amateur Hour,” which scoured America for talent.

During World War II, Raymond led a small troupe that performed at the front lines, sometimes under fire. He took over the role of Finnegan, the bartender on the radio show “Duffy’s Tavern,” in 1950.

Throughout the 1950s, Raymond appeared in televised dramas such as “Kraft Theater” and episodes of “The Honeymooners.”

Raymond also lent his voice to Katnip, the cartoon cat that appeared in the “Herman and Katnip” series of animated film shorts in the 1940s and 1950s, and those two mischievous cartoon magpies “Heckle and Jeckle.”

Documentary filmmaker Howard Weinberg profiled Raymond in a 27-minute film short in 2002 titled “Sid at 90.”

“An inspiration for anyone who has ever clung to a passion, Sid Raymond concedes that, as an actor, he was never a star,” Weinberg writes on the documentary’s Web site. “But in the context of an enduring spirit, fame seems somehow beside the point.”

[AP contributed to parts of this story]