Voices of Experience

Voices of Experience
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Rob Paulsen (Pinky).

Maurice LaMarche (The Brain).

The 1990s
Series tended to come and go with amazing speed during the 1990s, and few lasted for very long. Voice artists became traveling free agents, stopping long enough to do memorable star turns for whoever was fortunate enough to hire them. Among the more memorable nomads were talents like Jim Cummings and Kath Soucie. Tress McNeille’s coo-coo cooing as sweetly destructive Dot Warner was a high point of Steven Spielberg’s Animaniacs. The same show brought us the spectacular team-up of Rob Paulsen and Maurice LaMarche as Pinky and the Brain. Charlie Adler put on the best one-man show of the decade for Cartoon Network when he joined David Feiss’ series Cow and Chicken. Adler’s testy chicken, whiny cow and unctuous "Red Guy" comprise a clinic for aspiring voice artists.

Nancy Cartwright. Courtesy of Nancy Cartwright.

Dan Castellanetta (Homer), Julie Kavner (Marge), Nancy Cartwright (Bart) and Yeardley Smith (Lisa) were well worth the money paid to keep them on The Simpsons, one of the last great voice ensembles to date. Robin Williams’ performance as the genie in Disney’s Aladdin (1992) made one wish that the popular comic had chosen voice work as a full-time career. Nickelodeon’s Rugrats boasts a stellar vocal cast, among them Cheryl Chase as cousin Angelica, the gang’s harridan-in-training. To end this review, a tribute: The late Mary Kay Bergman provided no less than nineteen different voices for Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s South Park. Each voice was different in tone, timbre and inflection, a virtuoso performance that serves as Bergman’s legacy to her art.

Voice artists today are expected to develop a wide range of characters without repeating themselves, making their craft a challenging one indeed. Theirs is a specialized field, but of late there has been a trend by producers of animated shows to hire increasing numbers of TV and movie celebrities to supply voices; the goal is to build a show’s "appeal." This is not objectionable if done on occasion, but in the long run it is a questionable practice. As delightful as it may be to hear, say, Tom Cruise’s voice issue forth from a cartoon pig, the art of voice work belongs -- and should belong -- to the professionals. Voice artists devote their lives and careers to a single goal: The art of turning an imaginary character into a true actor. Whatever rewards may come in the form of fame and money are richly deserved, and perhaps we should add "turf" as well. The poet Robert Frost once observed, "All the fun’s in how you say a thing." His quote surely applies to these playful professionals we call voice artists. Our fun lies in simply listening to them.

Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman is a longtime student and fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.