You know the Voice. Now know the Name.
Seven classic Disney voice legends... and what they still teach every voice actor dreaming of animation.
Quick test. Hum a few bars of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch." Now picture Winnie the Pooh with his head stuck in a honey pot. Now hear a voice in the dark purring, "Welcome, foolish mortals..."
You heard every one of those instantly, right? Now name the three men behind them.
(I'll wait.)
That's the magic of this job, and the tiny heartbreak of it too. The voice outlives the name. You carry these performances around your whole life without ever reading the credit... and in a couple of cases, there wasn't even a credit to read.
As a kid I was obsessed with old radio shows on cassette, hanging on every word the announcers said. These voices were the wallpaper of my childhood long before I knew who they were. Now, 25+ years into talking funny for money, they're something more. They're my comfort. They're my proof. And a few of them are still clocking in every day. I spent three years performing for Disney in the parks, and some of these gentlemen are STILL welcoming foolish mortals and telling guests to hang onto their hats. (Talk about job security.)
Before we go one step further, a massive tip of the fedora to Dennis West and his YouTube channel West of Neverland. Every section below started as one of his deep dives. He gets a proper thank-you at the end, because he's earned it.
Seven voices. Seven lessons. And one thread that ties them all together... especially if you're the voice actor reading this who wants animation more than anything.
1. THURL RAVENSCROFT: You've Been Singing Along With Him Every December
If you've ever sung along to the Grinch song, or heard a cartoon tiger announce that the cereal is GRRREAT, you've heard Thurl Ravenscroft. And you're in good company not knowing his name. When How the Grinch Stole Christmas! first aired in 1966, his credit got left off entirely, and Dr. Seuss himself wrote to newspaper columnists to set the record straight.
Thurl came up as a singer. He was the deep bass in The Mellomen, one of those vocal groups that seems to turn up on every mid-century soundtrack. In 1958 Disney made Paul Bunyan, a 17-minute featurette directed by Les Clark, one of Walt's Nine Old Men. It looked like nothing Disney had made before... flat, bold and graphic, with styling by Eyvind Earle and Tom Oreb, the same artists steering toward Sleeping Beauty. A look that stylized needed a voice that could make a giant feel REAL. So they turned to the bass already standing in the room. (The short even earned an Oscar nomination and lost to a Bugs Bunny cartoon. No shame in that.)
What gets me is how many ways Disney used him:
The featured voice: Paul Bunyan, Captain the horse in 101 Dalmatians, and Buff the Buffalo in the Country Bear Jamboree.
One voice in a group: the singing busts in the Haunted Mansion graveyard.
Pure texture you'd never clock: the vocal effects for Monstro the whale, Fritz in the Enchanted Tiki Room, and Billy Boss in The Aristocats jazz band.
On the 1966 Pirates of the Caribbean album, he narrated AND sang. Disney named him a Disney Legend in 1995.
Steal this: BIG is a feeling, not a volume. Thurl never made Paul Bunyan huge by yelling. He did it with warmth, musicality and presence. As a kid who grew up singing standards and show tunes, I love that he walked in through the MUSIC door. Every skill you have (singing, accents, creature sounds, that weird thing you do with your throat) is another way a studio can use you.
Watch Dennis's deep dive: "The Disney Voice as BIG as Paul Bunyan"
2. DAL McKENNON: The Patron Saint of "That Guy"
Dennis calls him "the Disney voice you never knew you knew," and he's dead right. If Thurl is the voice you KNOW you know, Dal McKennon is the one who slipped into your life without ever showing ID.
Dal was born in 1919 in La Grande, Oregon, and his childhood was HARD:
His family lived at a slaughterhouse.
He lost his mother when he was seven.
His father struggled with alcohol.
As a kid, he fell hands first into a wood stove and burned them so badly he never had their full use again.
So he did the thing he COULD do. He listened, and he imitated every animal around him until he had them down cold.
As a puppeteer, my hands are half my instrument. Dal lost much of his, and he turned his EARS into the instrument instead. That one stops me in my tracks.
Walt was chasing believability, and Dal could give you a sound that never reminded you it was a performance. Here's a sampling:
In Lady and the Tramp alone: Pedro, Toughy, the professor at the zoo, AND the frantic hyena laugh.
Across other films: the barking for the dogs of 101 Dalmatians, and in Mary Poppins, the penguin, the Irish fox, the huntsman's horse and the carousel attendant.
On camera: Daniel Boone, and the saloon in Hot Lead and Cold Feet.
In the parks: for decades, his prospector has warned riders before Big Thunder Mountain that this here's the wildest ride in the wilderness.
That hyena laugh: it turns up in It's a Small World, and it resurfaced as the jack-in-the-box cackle in Elf.
Outside Disney: Archie Andrews, Gumby, and Buzz Buzzard.
Much of his Disney work? Uncredited.
I say it all the time: I prefer to be behind the mic, or below the frame. The great "that guys" are my heroes, and Dal is their patron saint. When I got to play both Crow T. Robot AND Tom Servo on MST3K, I got a small taste of the job Dal did every day. Every character has to be unmistakably ITSELF, never a copy of the last one.
Steal this: Range isn't built by "doing voices." It's built by LISTENING. As Dennis puts it, Dal was memorable without being recognizable. In puppetry, seeing is believing. In voice acting, hearing is believing... and nobody made you believe quite like Dal.
Watch: "The Disney Voice You Never Knew You Knew"
3. PAUL FREES: A Thousand Voices... and Walt Picked the Real One
They called Paul Frees the Man of a Thousand Voices, and Hollywood used every one of them:
Boris Badenov, trading barbs with June Foray's Natasha.
The Burgermeister Meisterburger.
Toucan Sam telling you to follow your nose, AND the giggle of the Pillsbury Doughboy.
John and George in the 1960s Beatles cartoon.
He even quietly dubbed some of Humphrey Bogart's lines in Bogart's final film, after illness weakened Bogie's voice.
Here's the part I love. Walt heard something the rest of town mostly overlooked: the authority in Frees's NATURAL voice. In Donald in Mathmagic Land (1959), Frees is the True Spirit of Adventure. He's the calm, unshakable guide leading a very skeptical duck past square-root trees and the golden ratio. The whole short works because Donald gets to be us (confused, cranky, suspicious) while Frees gets to be wonder itself.
Disney kept going back to that voice:
Its space and science specials.
Noah AND God in Noah's Ark.
The narration introducing Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.
The hypnotic guide of Adventure Thru Inner Space.
A good chunk of the pirate population in Pirates of the Caribbean.
And, of course, the Ghost Host of the Haunted Mansion.
(Walt let him cut loose too. Frees originated Professor Ludwig Von Drake for the very first episode of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color in 1961. In Goliath II he played the giant elephant father AND the tiny mouse who terrifies him.)
A little full-circle moment for me: I got to open The Muppets Present... Great Moments in American History at Walt Disney World. Its very title can't help but echo the Lincoln show Frees introduced. And his final film was The Puppetoon Movie, a love letter to George Pal's puppet animation, released after he passed in 1986. A puppeteer notices these things.
Steal this: Don't bury your real voice under your characters. Your natural voice IS a character, and it might be the one that books you. Frees could be anyone. The gig of a lifetime just needed him to be himself.
Watch: "The Unseen Voice That Made Donald Duck a Genius"
4. STERLING HOLLOWAY: He Never Once Hid
Composer Sergei Prokofiev wrote Peter and the Wolf in 1936. It's a musical fairy tale where every character is an instrument: strings for Peter, flute for the bird, oboe for the duck, clarinet for the cat, bassoon for Grandpa, French horns for the wolf.
On a 1938 visit to the Disney studio, Prokofiev played it for Walt and reportedly said he'd hoped Walt would animate it one day. Walt eventually did, in Make Mine Music (1946), and it became his favorite segment of the film. To guide audiences through it, he trusted exactly one voice: Sterling Holloway, who had performed the piece on radio before Disney ever called. Listen to that narration and you'll hear what Dennis heard. Holloway doesn't sit on top of the music. He weaves through it like one more instrument in the orchestra.
Now here's the part every working actor needs tattooed somewhere. Early in his film career, one director told Sterling Holloway he had no future in talking pictures... his VOICE wasn't suited for them. Another told him his looks were repulsive.
That voice went on to give us Mr. Stork in Dumbo, grown-up Flower in Bambi, the Cheshire Cat, Kaa, Roquefort, and the one and only Winnie the Pooh. He never once disguised it. Unlike the Dal McKennons of the world, Holloway never disappeared into a role. His gentle cadence simply BECAME the character.
He also brought ideas to the table. Walt had gone through a long line of voices for Kaa before Holloway came in and started playing. It was Holloway who came up with the gag that Kaa has a bad back (because there's so much of it). He knew what he didn't want, too. He disliked playing mice because he felt pushed into a high falsetto, and he passed on one in Robin Hood. And he was proudest of a dramatic role in A Walk in the Sun, because he finally got his death scene.
This one is personal for me. I'm pretty loud about coaches who hand newer actors a verdict instead of a next step. Somebody handed Sterling Holloway a verdict once. Pooh Bear says hi.
Steal this: You don't have to vanish to be a legend. The specific, unrepeatable YOU is a character all by itself. Bring your ideas into the session, know your boundaries, and never let one person's verdict become your destiny.
Watch: "How Sterling Holloway Gave Disney's Peter and the Wolf Its Charm"
5. JERRY COLONNA: Go Big... When the Story Is Big
Remember Make Mine Music? The same film that gave us Holloway's gentle Peter and the Wolf also gave us Casey at the Bat. That one was narrated by a bug-eyed, walrus-mustached radio comic named Jerry Colonna. Two narrators. One movie. Completely opposite energies. Both exactly right.
Colonna came out of radio, where the voice had to carry the whole show. He was most famous as Bob Hope's wild-card sidekick, known for those gloriously long, held-out notes.
Disney brought him back in 1950 for The Brave Engineer, their take on the legend of Casey Jones. The real story is a tragedy. On April 30, 1900, Casey stayed at the throttle of a speeding passenger train, told his fireman to jump, and slowed the train enough that he was the only one killed in the crash. The ballads came fast after that. Disney turned it into a madcap race to deliver the mail where nobody dies: floods, a cow, bandits, a damsel tied to the tracks. Colonna doesn't just narrate it. He DRIVES it, shoving the tempo forward and tossing jokes right into the action.
A year later, Disney cast him as the March Hare in Alice in Wonderland... and drew the March Hare as a caricature of Colonna himself. The wild eyes, the frantic energy, all him.
As an old radio comedy nerd, I adore this guy. I've always said Groucho never SOLD the joke, so you might think Colonna is the exception. Look closer. He isn't selling, he's MATCHING. A tall tale needs a tall teller.
That March Hare design is the same lesson I wrote about in my Ollie Johnston post, where Terry-Thomas's gap teeth ended up drawn into Sir Hiss. The voice came first. Your read is SOURCE MATERIAL.
(One more lovely footnote: in 2023, animator Andrew Chesworth released an indie short called The Brave Locomotive, where the train stops at a town called Colonnaville. Legends leave breadcrumbs.)
Steal this: Size is a choice the STORY makes, not you. Big isn't wrong... unmotivated is wrong. Match the scale of the material, then commit all the way.
Watch: "The Forgotten Disney Voice Who Made a Folk Legend Unforgettable"
6. SEBASTIAN CABOT: Somebody Has To Be the Grown-Up
Look at Sebastian Cabot on screen and you'd swear he grew up on the lawns of Cambridge. Not even close. He was born in London in 1918 and followed a very unglamorous path in:
He left school at 14 to work as a garage mechanic (he loved classic cars his whole life).
He became a chauffeur, driving actors to and from the West End.
Listening to them talk shop pulled him backstage, where he started at the very bottom as a stagehand.
When the film parts started coming, he hit a wall. The industry wanted sleek young leading men, and he wasn't built like one. So in his twenties he grew a thick, well-groomed beard and LEANED IN. Suddenly casting directors didn't see a young guy who didn't fit. They saw a diplomat, a count, a scholar.
I relate to this one hard. As a kid doing live theater, I was told I had a "face for radio," and I was always cast as the quirky side character. Turns out I preferred it.
Walt made Cabot a studio regular in Westward Ho the Wagons!, Johnny Tremain and Zorro, then discovered his dual threat. In The Sword in the Stone, he narrates the legend with total gravitas AND plays the blustery, thick-headed Sir Ector. For the Winnie the Pooh films, he became a narrator who actually TALKS to Pooh, reading the pages while the characters climb across them. He wasn't hovering above the story. He was in it.
Then came The Jungle Book. In Kipling's originals, Baloo was the strict teacher and Bagheera was the softie who would have spoiled Mowgli if he could. But once Phil Harris turned Baloo into a carefree jungle bum (more on him in a second), somebody had to live in reality. So Disney flipped them, and Bagheera became the worrier.
As Dennis points out, the part is a tightrope. Bagheera has to be a disciplinarian without sounding like a tyrant, and anxious without sounding weak. Cabot made the exasperated grown-up the emotional anchor of the whole film.
(Fun aside: during my Disney years I was a Sebastian too... the crab, in Voyage of the Little Mermaid. Different accent, same job description: exasperated guardian of a kid who will NOT listen.)
He went on to The Time Machine, a chilling turn on The Twilight Zone, and his signature role as Mr. French on Family Affair. He was so convincing as the cultured gentleman that people kept a respectful distance until he proved he was just a regular guy. He passed in 1977, just 59.
Steal this: The straight man is a LEAD skill. Playing reason is harder than playing chaos, because all you've got is listening and reacting. And whatever makes you "not fit the mold"? Grow the beard. Lean in.
Watch: "The Dignified Legend Who Tamed The Jungle Book"
7. PHIL HARRIS: "I Can't Do It Like a Bear"
In 1964, The Jungle Book was a mess:
Story legend Bill Peet had built a dark, faithful Kipling adaptation. In his version, Mowgli ends the film by shooting Shere Khan with a rifle.
Walt and director Woolie Reitherman wanted what Walt called a "fun picture." Woolie wrote Peet a memo warning they'd never get one on screen "if we don't all have fun" making it.
After a final blowup with Walt, Peet walked out for good.
Walt brought in radio writer Larry Clemmons, handed him Kipling's book and told him, basically, don't read it. Let the characters drive the movie. For Baloo, the studio was considering Jim Backus and... Thurl Ravenscroft. (See? Everybody's connected.) Then Walt saw Phil Harris perform at a benefit, and he knew.
Harris wasn't a voice actor. He was a big band leader and a jazz man. For years he was the brash, fast-talking bandleader on Jack Benny's radio show, and he'd starred in an Oscar-winning musical short back in 1933. When he walked into his first test session, the notes told him to play the lines like a bear.
He couldn't. He said so. Then he asked if he could just do it the way HE would do it.
They said yes. He started ad-libbing, dropping in his own easy slang, playing Mowgli like a kid he was looking out for. Animator Milt Kahl later said that when Harris came in, Kipling went out the window... and Walt loved it. When Walt heard the test tracks, he got up and started acting out the bear's walk for the animators. Baloo had been a minor character who'd pop in for some advice and disappear. He became the co-lead of the movie.
From there the studio kept going back to the well: Thomas O'Malley in The Aristocats, Little John in Robin Hood. Harris even steered the story of the 1969 sequel record More Jungle Book, with Louis Prima back as King Louie and Dal McKennon as Bagheera. He insisted Baloo would miss the kid terribly, and that became the plot.
When Harris saw the first test animation of Baloo, he turned to the animators and said, "This will make me immortal."
He wasn't wrong.
Steal this: GIVE THEM YOU. I teach that the voice comes LAST. First comes who you are, where you are, what's happening, what you're thinking and what you're feeling. Phil Harris is the ultimate proof, because the voice never came at all. He brought HIM, and the story rebuilt itself around it.
And that Woolie memo? Serious craft. Serious passion. Serious FUN. Disney figured out my mantra about sixty years before I did.
Watch: "The Reluctant Voice That Saved The Jungle Book"
Yes. I know. Seven is A list. It is not THE list.
I could have written this entire post about Verna Felton, or Eleanor Audley, or Bill Thompson, or Pinto Colvig, or Clarence Nash, or Cliff Edwards, or Hans Conried, or Ed Wynn, or Paul Winchell, or Barbara Luddy, or Ginny Tyler, or J. Pat O'Malley, and I'd have had just as much to say. (And that's before we get to June Foray, who belongs on everybody's list, Disney or otherwise. Peter Cullen already got his own post around here.)
The lessons don't stop at the castle gates, either. Daws Butler built a huge chunk of Hanna-Barbera pretty much by himself (Yogi, Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss, Quick Draw McGraw) and then spent years TEACHING the next generation, which is honestly the part of his legacy I think about most. Don Messick. Mel Blanc. Bea Benaderet. Janet Waldo. Jean Vander Pyl. Same craft, different lot.
So consider this Volume One. Tell me who I owe you, and I'll go dig.
THE THREAD: It Was Never About the Voice
Every first session with a new actor, I say the same thing: voice acting is not about your voice. Look at these seven and tell me I'm wrong.
Walt cast a FEELING, not a sound. Thurl was awe. Dal was belief. Frees was authority and wonder. Holloway was comfort. Colonna was pure momentum. Cabot was reason. Harris was freedom. Put Holloway and Colonna in the same movie and they sound NOTHING alike... and both are perfect, because each one matched what the story needed us to feel.
They brought THEMSELVES. Not one of them walked in through a "cartoon voice" door:
A harmony-group bass singer.
A kid on a slaughterhouse lot who couldn't use his hands like other kids could, so he listened.
A mimic who could be anyone.
A stage actor told his voice was wrong for talkies.
A radio comic.
A garage mechanic turned stagehand.
A jazz bandleader.
And the animators drew what they brought: Harris's swagger, Colonna's face. Your read is source material.
They served the STORY, so Walt kept calling. This was basically a repertory company:
Thurl was up for Baloo, and Dal is the first storyteller you hear in Paul Bunyan.
Dal played Bagheera on record.
Holloway and Colonna shared Make Mine Music and Alice in Wonderland.
Holloway narrated Goliath II while Frees played the dad and the mouse.
Frees and Cabot are both in The Time Machine.
Harris, Holloway and Thurl are all in The Aristocats.
Tony the Tiger and Toucan Sam share a cereal aisle.
Reliable, generous, in service. Names forgotten. Voices immortal.
So to the actor reading this who wants animation more than anything: stop trying to sound like a cartoon. The animators will handle the cartoon. Your job is to bring the HUMAN. My youth students who've booked shows like Paw Patrol and Batwheels didn't beat out hundreds of similar-sounding kids because of their sound. They won because they understood the moment and told the truth inside it.
And here's why these guys are comfort for me, not just inspiration. They got told no. Holloway got told his voice was wrong. Cabot didn't fit the mold. Dal's hands didn't work like everyone else's.
Me? "Face for radio." Then in the early 2000s in New York, I was told flat out that if I wanted animation, I'd have to move to LA. I couldn't. So I stayed and did the work... and now I've got Nickelodeon, DreamWorks and The Jim Henson Company on the résumé. A verdict is not a destiny. PROGRESS NOT PERFECTION.
On the days the booth feels small, go put on one of these guys. It's the cheapest masterclass in town. Jim Henson said it best: "The only way the magic works is through hard work. But hard work can be fun." Somewhere, Woolie Reitherman is nodding.
A Tip of the Fedora to Dennis West
I can't say this loudly enough: go subscribe to West of Neverland.
Dennis West makes weekly deep dives into classic Disney animation. He has a real gift for spotlighting the forgotten names behind the characters, shorts and park experiences we all grew up with. These aren't quick clip compilations:
He spends 10 to 15 hours EDITING each video.
He digs into his sources, and he links them.
For the Dal McKennon episode, he tracked down Dal's son and grandson to hear their memories firsthand.
That's love for the work. It's the same itch I scratch on my own podcast, The Poster Says..., and I'm genuinely grateful someone is doing it for these voices.
Thank you, Dennis, for the research, the craft, and the spark for this whole post. Everybody else: every one of his videos is linked in its section above. Like, subscribe, and if you can swing it, become a channel member. Work like this deserves to keep going.
WANT MORE JUICY HELPFUL INFO?
If this lit a fire under your animation dreams, my Approaching Animation Characters guide is waiting for you at natebegle.com/voice-acting-resources. And if you want to dig into finding YOUR voice (the real one, the Phil Harris one), book a 1:1 Character Coaching session at calendly.com/begleboothstudios/vo-coaching... the guide comes FREE when you book.
Now tell me: which of these seven is YOUR guy?
Serious craft. Serious passion. Serious FUN.
Nate Begle is a voice actor, audio producer, writer, director, puppeteer and VO coach.
