Sometimes, what you really need from a voice performer is the same thing you got last time. Not every performer needs to be June Foray or Mel Blanc. And if you recognize the voice, well, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not as though live action movies suffer just because you can see that it’s the same actor who was in something else, after all. It’s the nature of having actors. For some reason, though, we put more responsibility on animated movies to use different voices every time, and there’s no good reason for that.
Not, obviously, that Verna Felton started out as a voice actress. In 1890, she was born as a doctor’s daughter. However, in 1897, her father died, and even though his practice was large, he left no money and no record of payment. The family was destitute, which is why her mother allowed her to join a road show company as a singer and dancer. By the age of seventeen, she was a leading lady. By the ’30s, she made the jump to radio. She was a regular on The Jack Benny Show, The Abbot and Costello Show, and The Great Gildersleeve.
She was also a character actress in movies and TV, though to be honest, I don’t really remember seeing her in much of anything. I’ve probably seen the episodes of I Love Lucy that she appeared in, since I’ve seen many, many episodes from the years when it was regularly in syndication—but I haven’t seen it since then, so maybe not? I’ve also definitely seen Belles on Their Toes, the sequel to the original Cheaper by the Dozen, but only once, I think, and I don’t remember her character at all. Honestly, none of her live action work feels familiar to me.
On the other hand, about a quarter of her movies were voice work for Walt Disney. Her first was as the Elephant Matriarch (and Mrs. Jumbo, for one line) in Dumbo; her last, indeed her last role of any kind, was as an elephant in The Jungle Book. In between, she voiced Cinderella’s fairy godmother, the Queen of Hearts, Aunt Sarah, and both Flora and Queen Leah in Sleeping Beauty. While there are a few voice actors in the Disney pantheon with even more iconic roles, there aren’t many, Disney not really going in for the Mel Blanc sort of thing except when, you know, they hired Mel Blanc.
I will say that I didn’t realize she’d done Mrs. Jumbo, the Queen of Hearts, or Queen Leah. Okay, two of those characters don’t have many lines, but still. Both of those characters are quiet, mellow women, defined more by their caring nature than by the sharpness of most of her other voices. And of course the Queen of Hearts is primarily defined by her out-of-control rage. Even when Aunt Sarah is convinced that Lady has attacked the baby, she’s not out of control. So there was more than one voice to her after all?
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