May 25 - Barbara Luddy

Image courtesy mubi.com

On this day, in 1908, Barbara Luddy was born in Great Falls, Montana. Information about Barbara's early life is scarce, but we do know that she did some singing on the vaudeville circuit as a child and was educated at the Ursuline Convent there in Great Falls. She broke into silent movies in 1925 as Janet in Columbia Pictures' An Enemy of Men. She would appear in several more films over the next few years before becoming a world traveler as part of the cast of an Australian production of Lombardi, Ltd in 1929.

Barbara began a prolific career in radio upon her return to the United States. Her longest running role was as lead female for seventeen years on The First Nighter Program, a show generally credited with being the first to run a different, complete story each week. She starred opposite Les Tremayne from 1936 until 1943 and then opposite Olan Soule until the program went off the air in 1953. Barbara was also part of the cast of the more dramatic Chicago Theater of the Air, played Veronica Gunn in the comedic Great Gunns and appeared on several soap operas, including Lonely Women, The Road of Life and Woman in White. As radio began to give way to television, she had a handful of appearances on early shows like Hazel and Dragnet, but nothing much beyond that.

Image copyright Disney

Barbara joined the Disney family in 1955 when as the original voice of Lady in Lady and the Tramp. She returned four years later as Merryweather, the blue fairy, in Sleeping Beauty. For 1961's One Hundred and One Dalmatians she brought Rover to life and played the dual roles of Mother Rabbit and Mother Sexton in 1973's Robin Hood. Her longest running role for Disney started in 1966. Debuting in Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, Barbara brought the mother figure of the Hundred Acre Wood, Kanga, to life for the next eleven years, including the shorts Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, Too and the combined feature The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in 1977.

Barbara passed away on April 1, 1979 in Los Angeles, California from complications brought on by lung cancer. She was 70 years old.