Disney Voice Actors: A Biographical Dictionary

291 Pages·2011·2.75 MB·English

by  Thomas S. Hischak

Disney
Voice Actors
ALSO BY THOMASS. HISCHAK
Broadway Plays and Musicals: Descriptions and
Essential Facts of More Than 14,000 Shows through 2007
(McFarland, 2009)
American Plays and Musicals on Screen: 650 Stage
Productions and Their Film and Television Adaptations
(McFarland, 2005)
Disney
Voice Actors
A Biographical Dictionary
T S. H
HOMAS ISCHAK
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA
Hischak, Thomas S.
Disney voice actors : a biographical dictionary / Thomas S. Hischak.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7864-6271-1
softcover : 50# alkaline paper
1. Voice actors and actresses—Biography—Dictionaries.
2. Walt Disney Company. I. Title.
PN1998.2.H594 2011 791.4092'2—dc23 [B] 2011035289
BRITISHLIBRARYCATALOGUINGDATAAREAVAILABLE
© 2011Thomas S. Hischak. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, i ncluding photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without p ermission in writing from the p ublisher.
Front cover: foreground Dory; leftEllen DeGeneres (recording voice of Dory)
and co-director Andrew Stanton in Finding Nemo, 2003 (both from Photofest);
background © 20¡¡ Shutterstock
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
For Cathy,
still my favorite voice
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Mark Robinson, Robert Bro, Tony Butala,
Walden Hughes, Stuffy Singer, and Cathy Hischak for their help, as well
as Ron Mandelbaum at Photofest.
vi
T C
ABLE OF ONTENTS
Acknowledgments
vi
Preface
1
Voice Actors
3
Voice Guide to Disney Animated Films and Characters
235
Voice Guide to Favorite Disney Characters
266
Bibliography
274
Index
275
vii
This page intentionally left blank
P
REFACE
Walt Disney had been making animated gressed from squeaking sounds to dialogue.
short films for six years before Steamboat Willie Using his thin falsetto voice, Disney was sim-
opened at the Colony Theatre in New York ply providing one minor production element
City on November 18, 1928. Those previous needed to turn out cartoons. After all, action
shorts had been silent, of course, and were supported by music and sound effects was
based on familiar fairy tales such as Little Red everything; talking was unimportant. This at-
Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, Cinderella, and Jack titude continued through the Silly Symphony
and the Beanstalk. After making a short version shorts and other innovative Disney movies that
of Alice in Wonderland,Disney created his own experimented with music and motion, many
Alice character and made a series of shorts of them not requiring any speech at all. But
with a live-action Alice, played by Virginia audiences fell in love with Mickey Mouse and
Davis, who inhabited an animated world. No wanted him and his friends to talk. Like it or
one expected Alice to talk, just as it was not, actors were going to be more and more
natural that the animated characters she met necessary. For two decades Disney insisted that
were silent. When talking pictures burst onto the actors who voiced his characters be un-
the scene in 1927, Disney was not interested knowns. He did not want audiences to iden-
in having his characters speak. After all, most tify a particular voice outside of the animated
of them were animals and inanimate objects character. But that changed with Alice in Won-
and they did not talk in real life. What inter- derland(1951) when the familiar voices of stars
ested Disney about the new sound technology Ed Wynn and Jerry Colonna were easily rec-
was the ability to use music and sound effects. ognized by moviegoers. Furthermore, the an-
This wish to synchronize animated action and imation artists were inspired by the facial as-
sound is what inspired Steamboat Willie. There pects and the physical gestures of the actor
is no dialogue in the eight-minute film but when animating the cartoon character. Today
there is a series of sound effects and a musical the actors who voice animated movies are
soundtrack with a fifteen-piece orchestra play- often filmed in the sound studio and the artists
ing throughout. Mickey’s squeaks, Minnie’s use the footage to help connect such move-
squeals, Captain Pete’s growls, and the parrot’s ments with the actors’ voices. How far anima-
squawks are the only sounds made by the tion acting has come since Mickey’s squeaks
characters and for those characters you needed over eighty years ago!
performers. The film animation actor was This book is about the 943 actors over
born. the period of those eighty years who have
Disney himself provided the voice of voiced characters for Disney animated films.
Mickey in the early years as the character pro- Some of these performers were rarely if ever
1