Billy Bletcher

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Billy Bletcher was an American actor, born on 24 September 1894 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and died on 5 January 1979 in Los Angeles. He appeared in films from the 1910s and later on television, including in comedies of Our Gang and The Three Stooges. Even so, most people know him not by his face but by his voice: a deep, powerful, booming baritone.

Music and breakthrough

In the golden age of American animation he voiced a great many cartoon characters. For Walt Disney he was Pete in the Mickey Mouse films and the Big Bad Wolf in Three Little Pigs. For MGM he voiced Spike the bulldog in Tom and Jerry, and for Warner Bros. the father Bear in Chuck Jones's The Three Bears and the wolf in Little Red Riding Rabbit from 1944. In 1939 he was hired, together with Pinto Colvig, to dub the voices of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. He also voiced the Gas Cloud in the training film Gas for Private Snafu in 1944 and played roles in The Lone Ranger. For the dwarfs in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs he was not allowed to audition for Disney, for fear that the public would recognise his voice from the shorts.

Influence

Bletcher is an example of a voice actor whose work often lies in musical cartoons and film musicals. He supplied the menace and the comic, booming voice on which the cartoons of that era rested.

Listening

In School of Rock

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