Profile: Sterling Holloway

[tv star collector]

His voice is one of the most instantly recognizable voices in the world--once
it is heard, it is indelibly etched on the mind of the listener. While aficionados
of older films may recognize Sterling Holloway as the tall, lanky, red-
headed soda jerk, messenger, and country bumpkin of the films of the 1930s
and '40s; more than a decade after his passing, millions of viewers continue to
be charmed by his distinctive velvety rasp that graces both Disney cartoon
heroes and villains. In his voice lies the elusive Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, the quiet menace of Kaa, the snake from The Jungle Book, as well as the wistful "Oh, bother" of the beloved Winnie the Pooh.

The actor, born January 14, 1905, in Cedartown, Georgia, was the son of a
prominent businessman. Holloway claimed that his show business career began at fifteen when he subsequently enrolled in the American Academy of
Dramatic Arts in New York.

After graduation, the actor spent much of his early career shuffling between
the coasts, first touring the West with a stock company called the Shepherd
of the Hills. Upon his return to New York, he signed with the Theater Guild to
gain notoriety in the first Broadway production of Rodgers and Hart's
Garrick's Gaieties for famed director David Garrick.

Ironically, for an actor whose legacy is his vocal characterizations, it was the
advent of sound that initially hampered his efforts at a film career. In a
biographical article published on a Disney-affiliated web site, author Jim
Fanning quotes Holloway as commenting, "I came to Hollywood at a bad time.
The movies were in a state of turmoil. ... Sound was coming in and silents
were going out. I made a silent two-reel comedy called The Fighting
Kangaroo. Then I did a silent feature, Casey at the Bat, with
Wallace Beery for Paramount, and all of a sudden I was a has-been. Nobody
thought I was suitable for talkies ... So I returned to New York." Despite
success in the various revues, vaudeville, night clubs, and radio jobs,
Holloway decided that he was more interested in the innovations being made
in film and returned to Los Angeles. This time, he said, he was "determined to
make it."

Holloway made an attempt to be noticed by agents and motion picture
producers by appearing at the Pasadena Playhouse; patronized by film executives, it was considered a showcase for actors wishing to make the move into motion pictures. Holloway said it was exposure there that prompted
Frank Capra to offer him a part in his 1932 film American Madness.
Fanning quoted Holloway as concluding, "I guess they liked me in it because
they then cast me in Blonde Venus with Marlene Dietrich. I played this
student walking through the woods and I find Marlene in the nude taking a
bath. I wrote my mother about it and she wanted to know what they were
doing to me out here."

However, Holloway's image could not have been more wholesome when he began a
forty-year-long association with Walt Disney in 1942. Evidently, Disney was
an admirer of the actor and wanted him for the studio's breakthrough first
feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Disney was known to
designate voice talent not just for vocal quality or acting ability, but to aid in
the development of the characterizations. According to a memo from 1934,
Holloway was his initial choice for the voice of Sleepy, although ultimately the
part went to studio musician and gagman Pinto Colvig, who performed Grumpy
as well. It was not until eight years later that the actor made his vocal debut
--with even his bumbling image used as an animation model--for the bumbling
stork who delivers baby Dumbo.

However, it was not only Holloway's expressive inflections but the experienced
actor's ability to use subtle shadings and nuances to convey any emotion that
were instrumental in the creation of his extraordinary characters.

In The Disney Villains, two of Disney's famed veteran "nine old men"
animators and authors Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas directly attribute the
success of Alice in Wonderland's Cheshire Cat character to Holloway as
a welcome contrast to the "all-out, wild gyrations" of the other frenetic
characters. Thomas and Johnston also give Holloway much of the credit for
envisioning Kaa in 1967's The Jungle Book as the magnetic and affecting
villain of the final version. At first, the production team was having difficulty
with casting, as eight different voices had been tested and then rejected,
until an anxious Disney then personally approached him with a request to
audition during a session for Winnie the Pooh.

In the role, Holloway then not only delivered Kaa's lines with an inspired menace and arrogance, but also ad-libbed dialogue that further inspired the
animators.

But even with such major characterizations in feature films and the occasional
live-action television parts on shows like The Life of Riley program of the
early 1960s, Holloway's all-time favorite part remained Disney's beloved
Winnie the Pooh. While he may have not been an obvious choice, it is now
difficult to imagine any other voice to convey the childlike innocence of A.A.
Milne's "bear of very little brain."

By his later years, the actor had won numerous awards and achieved gold
records for several children's albums and had become an avid collector of
contemporary art. Although he had retired from the business in the 1970s,
aside from the occasional children's theatrical production, he counted among
his fans Amy Carter, who reportedly once asked that her father, President
Jimmy Carter, call to wish the actor a happy birthday. Honored on October 22,
1991, as a Disney legend, the 87-year-old Holloway passed away a little more
than a year later on November 22, 1992, at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. With a Cedartown street named for him, a bronze marker in front of
his birthplace, and a local museum exhibit devoted to his achievements,
Cedartown's favorite son is memoralized, if not in his hometown, then in his
many animated classics for generations of future fans to come.

[Excerpted from The Magic Behind the Voices, by Tim Lawson & Alisa
Persons (2004)]

[Steve Carras]

Ah...Janet Waldo and Sterling Holloway, two of my ALL time favorite (Hans Cionreid, Franik Nelson, Jim Backus, and Edward Everett Horton are among the others) "doing their own voice" (As Janet put it, according to your quote from the "Magic behind the voices" in her thread) performers...Holloway was born not on the 14th but on the 4th.Great post.Speaking of Post..CEREALS..he was involved with its commericlas for a while as Lovebale B.Truly and allegedly as an ealry Sugar Bear.

[Schmoopie]

Thanks for that wonderful profile! I love Sterling Holloway, and to me he is the only Winnie the Pooh! He's great as the Cheshire Cat as well! I don't like some of the newer Winnie The Pooh shows because without Sterling to do his voice, it just doesn't sound right!

Andrea