Pat Carroll

Patricia Ann Carroll (May 5, 1927 – July 30, 2022) was an American actress and comedian. Her most memorable role is as the voice of Ursula in The Little Mermaid. She made guest appearances in many popular television series including The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Laverne & Shirley, and ER; she also had a regular role on The Danny Thomas Show as Bunny Halper. Carroll was an Emmy, Drama Desk, and Grammy Award winner, as well as a Tony Award nominee.

Early life

Carroll was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, on May 5, 1927, to Maurice Clifton Carroll (d. 1963) and Kathryn Angela (née Meagher). Carroll's family moved to Los Angeles when she was five years old, and she soon began acting in local productions. She graduated from Immaculate Heart High School and attended Catholic University of America after enlisting in the United States Army as a civilian actress technician.

Career

Carroll began her acting career in 1947. She got her first acting credit as Lorelei Crawford in the 1948 film Hometown Girl. In 1952, she made her television debut in The Red Buttons Show. In 1955, her Broadway debut in Catch a Star! garnered her a nomination for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. In 1956, Carroll won an Emmy Award for her work on Caesar's Hour. From 1961–1964, she was a regular on the sitcom Make Room for Daddy . She guest-starred in the drama anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson. She co-starred in the 1965 television production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella as "Prunella", one of the wicked stepsisters. Carroll also appeared on many variety shows of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, such as The Steve Allen Show, The Danny Kaye Show, The Red Skelton Show, and The Carol Burnett Show.

In the late 1970s, Carroll's successful one-woman show, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, by playwright Marty Martin, won several major theater awards; her recorded version won a 1980 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word, Documentary or Drama.

In early 1976, Carroll was cast as Lily, the mother of Shirley Feeney, on the hit ABC situation comedy, Laverne & Shirley, in the episode "Mother Knows Worst" . She portrayed Pearl Markowitz, the mother of Adam Arkin's character Lenny Markowitz, in the 1977 CBS situation comedy Busting Loose. In 1978, she made a guest appearance on The Love Boat. Her television roles in the 1980s included newspaper owner Hope Stinson on the syndicated The Ted Knight Show (formerly Too Close for Comfort) during its final season in 1986, and Gussie Holt, the mother of Suzanne Somers's lead character in the syndicated sitcom She's the Sheriff (1987–1989).

Starting in the late 1980s, Carroll took several voice-over roles for cartoons, including A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, Galaxy High, Foofur, and the film A Goofy Movie. On the series Pound Puppies, she had a regular role voicing Katrina Stoneheart. On two Garfield television specials (A Garfield Christmas and Garfield's Thanksgiving), she portrayed Jon's feisty grandmother. She also voiced the character of Granny in the 2005 re-release of Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro.

In 1989, Carroll portrayed the sea witch Ursula in Disney's The Little Mermaid and sang "Poor Unfortunate Souls". In interviews, Carroll referred to the role, her first as a villain, as one of the favorites of her career. She later reprised the role in other forms of media, including the Kingdom Hearts series of video games, the Little Mermaid television series, the Disney+ series The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse, and various Disney theme parks attractions and shows, as well as voicing Ursula's sister Morgana in the direct-to-video sequel The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea.

Carroll also appeared on a variety of game shows including You Don't Say, To Tell the Truth, Match Game 73, Password All-Stars, I've Got a Secret, and The $10,000 Pyramid.

A member of the Actors Studio, she also enjoyed a successful career in the theater, appearing in numerous plays including productions of Our Town and Sophocles's Electra. In 1990, she starred in The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Shakespeare Theatre at the Folger in the role of Sir John Falstaff, a balding knight with whiskers.

When drama critic Frank Rich of The New York Times reviewed her performance in "Merry Wives", he wrote, "Her performance is a triumph from start to finish, and, I think, a particularly brave and moving one, with implications that go beyond this one production. Ms. Carroll and Mr. Kahn help revivify the argument that the right actresses can perform some of the great classic roles traditionally denied to women and make them their own. It's not a new argument, to be sure; female Hamlets stretch back into history. But what separates Ms. Carroll's Falstaff from some other similar casting experiments of late is that her performance exists to investigate a character rather than merely as ideological window dressing for a gimmicky production."

Personal life

Carroll married Lee Karsian in 1955 and they had three children, including actress Tara Karsian. The marriage ended in a divorce in 1976. In 1991, Carroll received an honorary doctorate from Siena College in Albany, New York. Carroll, a practicing Roman Catholic, cited that her religious views helped her to determine what projects to accept. She was a lifelong Republican as of 1992.

In 1963, Carroll filed a $12,000 lawsuit against Hanna-Barbera for breach of contract, claiming that she had been cast and signed on to the role of Jane Jetson on The Jetsons. Morey Amsterdam, who alleged that he had been cast as George, was also a plaintiff in the same suit. Although her contracts stipulated she would be paid US$500 an episode with a guarantee of twenty-four episodes (i.e., a full season), she recorded only one episode before being replaced. Several sources claimed the change had occurred as a result of sponsor conflict with Carroll's work on Make Room for Daddy. The case had been closed by early 1965. Carroll stated in an interview in 2013 that the court had ruled in favor of Hanna-Barbera.

Death

Carroll died of pneumonia at her home in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on July 30, 2022, at the age of 95.

Filmography

• Source:

• Fantasmic! - Ursula (voice)