February 18 - Pat Fraley

On this day, in 1949, Patrick Howard Fraley was born in Seattle, Washington. In 1979, the same year he married his wife of 40 years, Renee, Pat began his career as a voice actor. His inauspicious debut was for a Scooby Doo animated movie, Scooby Goes Hollywood, and his credits are for Brother, Guard and Announcer (although they probably never met, Mel Blanc was in the same production as Man at Roller Rink, so Pat can at least say they did something together). Over the next several years, Pat continued doing various voices until his first recurring role in 1985 as Ace on G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. That same year, he landed a gig as Hillbilly Jim on Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling, where he first met Brad Garrett, the voice of Hulk Hogan, who would become a lifelong friend.

Image courtesy of superheroes.fandom.com

Two years later, Pat would become something of a phenom in the voice over world. Anyone who was a fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series (and pretty much everyone who was of a certain age in 1987 is) needs to pull out a piece of paper and prepare for a pop quiz: name all 64 characters that Pat voiced on that series. I'll give you two to start, Fourth Goon and Third Goon, but you have one minute to name the rest.... and, pencils down. I'm not going to actually list all 62 of the rest but I will give you this impressive list: Krang, Casey Jones, Baxter Stockman, Slash, Napoleon Bonafrog, Zak (one of the Neutrinos), Sergeant Granitor and, in one season 3 episode, Shredder.

If you weren't a fan of TMNT (I'll just assume you weren't born yet) but have watched other Saturday morning cartoon fare, I can still pretty much guarantee that you've heard Pat's voice (and probably more than once). A short list of shows he did over the years: Garfield and Friends, The Tick, Ghostbusters, Bobby's World, The Mask: The Animated Series, Batman: The Animated Series, The Addams Family (Cousin Itt), Rainbow Brite (On-X and Evil Force), The Tom and Jerry Kids Show (Kyle the Cat), The Smurfs (Tuffy Smurf) and The Centurions (Max Ray). A long list of shows would practically be a catalog of every show from the Eighties through the early Aughts.

Image copyright Disney

Pat is no stranger to the Disney family either. He voiced a young Scrooge McDuck and Sir Guy Standforth on DuckTales, Gwumpki in Quack Pack, and Wildcat for TaleSpin. He provided various voices for Goof Troop, The Little Mermaid, Gargoyles, and Bonkers. On the big screen for Disney Pat's appeared in Tangled, Chicken Little, Monsters, Inc. and Toy Story 2 as all the additional Buzz Lightyears. He also filled in for Tim Allen on Buzz Lightyear duty on several video games, most of the talking Buzz merchandise and all of the Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin attractions currently at Disney parks around the world.

These days, Pat has mostly retired from doing active voice work (he is an septuagenarian now after all) and instead teaches up and coming new hopefuls how to channel their inner voices to become the next Mel Blanc or... well, or the next Pat Fraley for that matter.