Margaret Kerry (née Lynch; born May 11, 1929)[1][2][3] is an American screen actress, dancer, voice artist, camera double, radio producer, director and host and media personality, best known for her work as a model for Walt Disney Pictures, where she served as the inspiration and pantomimed the Peter Pan character of Tinker Bell.[4]
Kerry served as a camera double for Elizabeth Taylor in film National Velvet at MGM.[8][9] She attracted the attention of Eddie Cantor, who cast her in the role of his teenage daughter in the film If You Knew Susie. Cantor thought Lynch needed a more theatrical-sounding name to be more noticeable as an actor, so she officially became Margaret Kerry.[1] She graduated from high school with honors while working on the film and would later graduate cum laude from Los Angeles City College.
Career
Television work/voice artistry
Kerry as a teenager played the role of "Sharon" in the first network sitcom, The Ruggles, on ABC-TV. The show's farewell episode at the end of its three-year run featured Sharon's wedding and honeymoon. Kerry also appeared in two episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, and in 1950 as 'Jane Carter' in The Squire episode of The Lone Ranger.[10] A voiceover performer with twenty-one dialects and forty-eight character voices, Kerry provided voices on 52 episodes of the groundbreaking children's television show, Clutch Cargo, including characters "Paddlefoot" and "Spinner". She provided numerous voices and live-action lead-ins for The New Three Stooges and Space Angel animated series for Cambria Productions.[10]
Work with Disney
Kerry answered an audition call during the planning stages of the animated feature film Peter Pan. The audition, supervised by animator Marc Davis, required her to pantomime the motions that would be used as live-action reference for the animation of Tinker Bell. As Tinker Bell was to be non verbal, her movements would be integral, and Davis sought a dancer that could help embody the character. Kerry won the part and spent six months at the Disney Studios on a mostly empty sound stage pantomiming the part.[1] The studios provided props, notably a giant keyhole mounted on a stand as well as a pair of giant scissors, used in the scene where Tinker Bell became trapped in a jewelry box.[4] Kerry also provided the voice and reference movements of the red-haired mermaid in the Neverland lagoon scene.[11]
Radio
Kerry was a producer, writer and host of What's Up Weekly - Ministry Loves Company on KKLA-FM, Los Angeles, from 1992 and 2004, a Christian radio station. Also serving as the station's community services director, she headed an outreach program that connected to more than 200 non-profit service agencies.[12]
Kerry is a certified seminar leader by the American Seminar Leaders Association and co-author and facilitator of the FUNdamentals of Speaking Seminars.[13][14] She continues to meet fans and attends many conventions, events and seminars throughout the country.[15] As a supporter and contributor within the animation community, Kerry served as a board member of ASIFA-Hollywood for a number of years.[3]
Kerry has been married 3 times. She was married to Dick Brown from 1951 to 1984 and John Wilcox from 1987 to his death in 1999.[22] She reconnected after 70 years with former boyfriend, WWII veteran Robert Boeke, age 94.[23] The two were married on Valentine's Day, February 14, 2020 in a ceremony at the Little Brown Church in the Valley in Studio City, California.[24][25] Kerry suffers from prosopagnosia and has spoken and written about coping with it.[21]
_(cropped).jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.svg){kind=small}
