Here’s a concept test for an upcoming animated film, Animal Crackers. It tells the story of a family who comes across a magical box of animal crackers, and the results are…well, just watch the video.
Or better yet, follow the link to the Animation Recalibration Tumblr to read the full article!
The Raisin Bran grapes, the Sugar Smacks’ jingle singer, the narrator and singer of dozens of Disney children’s records…these are just a few of the roles that Robie Lester made memorable, entering the homes of millions and touching the lives of many children daily with her voice and talent. Being interested in voice over and the great VO artists in history, I always love discovering names and learning how they’ve impacted my life without my knowledge. I thought it fitting to start an ongoing series of these people, entitled “Voice Actors You Didn’t Know You Loved.”
I discovered Robie Lester when researching cartoon cereal mascots for Cereal Day on March 7th, and was quite pleased to see her large and impressive resume. I also love seeing a woman breaking ground in the industry. I will say, it is very important to note the success of many female voice over artists, both from the past and in our present. Many of the most successful female artists provide voices for male characters. Still, to see a lesser-known actor pair up with names such as Mel Blanc, as Lester did, allows for me to raise up that lesser-known actor in my mind, not letting history forget her, or push her aside.
Now let’s begin a lookback at some of Robie Lester’s most memorable career roles!
Lester was an extremely busy voice actor in the 60s with her Kellogg’s commercial work. The work she did alongside Mel Blanc was voicing Toucan Sam’s infant nephews. Blanc voiced Toucan Sam. Lester was a great singer and found that she could get work best if she paired her singing voice with her ability to do character voices, which is how she found work voicing one of the battling Smackin’ Brothers for Sugar Smacks on top of singing the cereal’s commercial jingle. And before the claymated California Raisins of the 80s, Lester voiced the grapes of Raisin Bran’s commercials in the 60s. Listen below for one of her credits:
Delighting kids and parents alike with her success in cereal commercials was just the beginning of Lester’s career entertaining children. Her next chapter was memorable not in the advertising world, but in the what we today call the audiobook industry.
After her cereal years, Lester was brought to the attention of Disney’s in-house record label by Richard and Robert Sherman (The Sherman Brothers of Mary Poppins fame, among others). It was then that she got the role that welcomed her into the homes of many in a different way than television commercials. Recording songs and narration as the “Disneyland Story Reader” granted her a resume of dozens of works, for which she both narrated and sang to children on tape.
The Haunted Mansion brought Lester’s talent to another popular voice actor of the time, Thurl Ravenscroft, who sang “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” for the animated Dr. Seuss Christmas special. Speaking of cereal, he also was the original voice of Frosted Flakes’ Tony the Tiger. Lester also held her own in The Haunted Mansion story alongside Ron Howard, who played Richie Cunningham on Happy Days and the became the Oscar-winning director of many films, such as Apollo 13, The Da Vinci Code, and A Beautiful Mind (for which he earned the award).
Lester earned a famous phrase during her time with Disney, telling children to turn the page “when Tinker Bell rings her little bells,” after which children would hear windchimes. Lester’s success with this project continued to bring her praise in the form of a Grammy nomination in 1970 for The Aristocats album.
Lastly, some of the most notable work that Robie Lester did was for films and television. Showing us that even live-action film sometime needs voice over, Lester provided the singing voice to Vera Ralston in Accused of Murder. Back to her Disney ties, Lester continued to provide the singing voice to the characters Duchess the Cat in The Aristocats and Bianca the Mouse in The Rescuers. For both Duchess and Bianca, Lester sang for Eva Gabor’s speaking role.
On television, Lester’s roles in The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo helped make the show memorable, though short-lived. And perhaps one of her most notable roles is her work as Miss Jessica in the timeless TV special, Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town. Again, this role gave Lester the opportunity to hold her own against Mickey Rooney as Kris Kringle and the film’s narrator, Fred Astaire. For the film, Lester wrote and performed “My World is Beginning Today” for her character, the woman who goes on to become Mrs. Claus.
In 2005, Robie Lester died of cancer in Burbank, California at the age of 80. Lester led a life that provided so much joy for so many people, especially children, many of whom may have never known who she even was. While her early work for commercials may no longer be in circulation, Lester’s voice will always be available in her Disney narrations and on the DVDs of the beloved shows and movies (or perhaps even on a worn-out VHS tape). This woman is important for her work and should be viewed as a great, just like her costars have been. I recognize and admire Robie Lester for her accomplishments and her legacy.
The idea of watching The Little Prince felt like a weird but welcomed trip back to French class. I felt like the film was fairly hyped by Netflix (or at least by my Netflix account) but I never got around to watching it. So, last night at 3 in the morning, I thought what better time than the present!
I felt that there was a smart structure to most of the film. We go along with the Aviator (Jeff Bridges) telling the Little Prince’s story to the unnamed Little Girl (Makenzie Foy). I felt like the incorporation of the Little Girl’s story with her busy and extremely “grown-up” mother (Rachel McAdams) was a great pairing to the Aviator’s story, complimenting the nature of the Little Prince and the idea that “growing up isn’t the problem, forgetting is.”
Another great pairing is that of the styles of animation. The stop motion used to handle the book’s narration is charming and simplistic, just like the character of the book itself. The beauty in the almost cellophane-like texture to the fox’s tail is just a small example of how it made those parts of the movie feel like a magical animated storybook.
I felt like the film was amazing up until the point of the Aviator’s time in the hospital. When the Little Girl runs away with his plane and finds the real Little Prince, now Mr. Prince (Paul Rudd) on a new planet of skyscrapers, suddenly we were in a different story. I continued to think that this was a dream sequence of some sort, which ultimately proved false. While it was cool to see her have her own adventure similar to the style of the Aviator’s, there was something forced about it that felt equivalent to why people get upset when new material is added to their favorite book’s movie adaptation: while the balance of the Little Girl’s story worked for the purpose of a film, it started to feel like they were trying to improve upon the book.
The thing with the Little Girl’s solo (with stuffed fox) journey was that it felt like the point was to show her (or us as the audience?) that the Aviator’s stories of the Little Prince were real. But “it is only with heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Why did we need to see any of this? Why make it take up such a significant portion of the movie’s close? I think if the idea was to show there was truth to the stories, a smaller and more powerful cameo could have been made to keep in line with Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s simplistic style.
If the idea was to show that even the Little Prince himself was susceptible to growing up, well then I suppose I appreciate the sentiment, but not so much the execution.
What I really wanted to see was some sort of Little Prince magic worked on the mother. The scene with her and her daughter looking through the telescope was something like that, but just not nearly enough for me. There was a missed plotline in not allowing for the mother, overworked and overstressed, to discover the same lessons as her daughter. I think that a more poignant message would have shown, one appealing to any “adult” viewers who might have seen some of themselves in her character.
So overall, I felt like this movie was imaginative, touching, but needed to focus on the mom in a way that didn’t make her appear to be only a supporting character.
Aaaand the stuffed fox was super cute. I need to get me one of those.
Hi friends,
I’ve been wanting to do more with my love for animation for a while now, more than just a Tumblr that is, and I think this blog may hold some answers.
My hope is that I can use Animation Recalibration to do just that: calibrate. Of course, this means determining figures with a set of tools, but for this site, I’m going to use my tools to analyze movies, television, new media, whatever, reviewing what went right and maybe what could have gone in a different direction, all with the intention to recalibrate your love for animation (okay maybe I’m not using that right, but the intention still stands).
I am first and foremost an actor, so voice acting is a strong interest of mine, as well as writing and simply the spectacle of animation in general. I’m going to talk about new material as well as the old stuff I dig up at my local Goodwill, the things I find on the Internet and the material I helped create for the web.
And, I’m starting to make a podcast that wraps this stuff all together.
I appreciate your readership and hope you will enjoy this journey I’m about to take.
That’s all, folks!
–April of Animation Recalibration
