Disney Voice Actors: A Biographical Dictionary PDF
Preview Disney Voice Actors: A Biographical Dictionary
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
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