JoBe Cerny

JoBe Cerny died on Friday, 30 October 2026, aged 78. His obituary from Strang Funeral Chapel and Crematorium gave his home as Grayslake, Illinois. His son Tim told TMZ, which reported the death on 10 November 2026, that his father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease around 2020 and had stepped away from voicing the Pillsbury Doughboy as his health declined.

A private service was held for his immediate family.

JoBe Cerny was born on 5 December 1947 in Cicero, Illinois, a town on the western edge of Chicago. His parents, Joe and Bea Cerny, combined their first names to give him his distinctive name, which was sometimes also credited as Jo Be Cerny.

He attended Morton East High School in Cicero. He went on to earn a bachelor's degree in speech and drama at Valparaiso University in Indiana and a master's degree in theater at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

In the 1970s Cerny joined The Second City, performing with both the Chicago Mainstage and the National Touring Company. From there he built a career that spanned more than five decades and thousands of roles in commercials, films, television and theatre.

He became best known in advertising. He provided the voice and the famous giggle of the Pillsbury Doughboy, following Paul Frees and Jeff Bergman in the role, and he appeared on camera as the Silent Demonstrator, the wordless spokesman for Procter and Gamble's Cheer detergent.

His film credits included Dreamer (1979), Somewhere in Time (1980), Rent-a-Cop (1987), Prelude to a Kiss and Mo' Money (both 1992), My Best Friend's Wedding (1997), Novocaine (2001), Road to Perdition (2002) and Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde (2003). On television he appeared in Early Edition and Chicago Hope, and he was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show. He was also one of the more than 600 actors who took part in a large audio Bible recording project.

For more than 30 years he owned and operated Cerny/American Creative, a recording studio and production company in the River North neighbourhood of Chicago that completed thousands of projects, from commercials and audiobooks to feature films. He wrote a weekly column for Screen Magazine and received The American Scene Award.

Cerny was married to Eileen Cerny for 56 years. They had two sons, Tim and Patrick, and two grandchildren, Archer and Cleo. In his later years he lived in Grayslake, Illinois.

He was an avid racing fan who drove go-karts well into his sixties, and an enthusiastic collector of model trains. His family remembered his friendly and gregarious personality, and his remarkable knack for running into someone he knew almost everywhere he went.

For decades Cerny's voice was part of American kitchens and television breaks, giving the Pillsbury Doughboy the giggle that answered every poke in the belly. His long career in Chicago, from The Second City stage to his own River North studio, made him a fixture of the city's advertising and production community.

He summed up his working life in a line his family shared: "I'm lucky, I get to be somebody different every day and in the end, I'm glad I stuck with my irresponsible decision to have fun. It allows me to live happily ever after... every day."