May 10 - Paige O'Hara

On this day, in 1956, Donna Paige Helmintoller was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She began taking acting classes at the ripe old age of four and performed in shows with the Fort Lauderdale Children's Theater throughout her childhood. Interestingly, it wasn't until she was almost twelve that she developed a need to add singing to her repertoire, choosing to go to Parkway Middle School of the Arts to further that goal. Paige also began drawing and painting at an early age. One of her first voice coaches, perhaps in an attempt to politely give their opinion of their new student, actually encouraged her to forget acting and take up painting. Luckily, Paige ignored that coach's advice and soldiered on as a performing artist. Not that she ever abandoned canvas and brushes, she just made visual arts her fallback position. She supported herself in the lean early years of her career by selling art pieces on the streets of New York.

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Paige's Broadway career (using the stage name Paige O'Hara, Helmintoller being a bit of a mouthful) began in 1983 in a revival of Jerome Kern’s classic musical, Showboat. She played Ellie May Chipley, a performer on the eponymous boat, under the watchful eye of Cap’n Andy, played in this production by the late, great Donald O’Connor. The revival lasted for 73 performances, but Paige’s relationship with Ellie continued on. She reprised the role for a 1989 production for Houston’s Grand Opera. At the same time, she was invited to sing Ellie for a 1988 studio cast album, which, for the first time, contained the show’s entire score and uncensored 1927 lyrics (the recording was nominated for a Grammy Award). After the Houston show closed, it travelled overseas to Cairo, Egypt and Paige went with it, becoming an international star in the process.

Shortly after returning the states, Paige read about a new animated film the Walt Disney Company was making based on the French fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast. As a longtime fan of Disney movies, she decided to audition for it. Because of the success of The Little Mermaid and the full onslaught of the beginning of the Disney Renaissance, so did 500 other women. Paige credits her casting with the fact that lyricist Howard Ashman loved her in the recent Showboat recording. Beast co-director Kirk Wise says it was because she sounded a little like Judy Garland (whom they had loosely modeled Belle after) and would be able to make their heroine sound like a woman instead of a girl. Either way, Paige was chosen over everyone else (including Mermaid’s Jodi Benson, who was briefly considered) and began the role she would do almost continuously for the next two decades.

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With each passing year, Paige became more and more closely associated with the intelligent, quirky heroine who manages to tame a beast. She played Belle in several direct-to-video movies, including The Enchanted Christmas, which sold over 7.6 million copies when it was released. Add in at least five video games, all sorts of television shows, theme park attractions and parades and it’s no wonder Paige doesn’t mind the fact that so many fans only know her as the voice of Belle. In 2011, citing the fact that her voice had changed over the years more than the company would have liked, Disney replaced Paige as the woman behind the Beauty. They did soften the blow by declaring her an official Disney Legend at the same time, but it isn’t a pain free process to lose out on a role like Belle to someone twenty years your junior, no matter how talented they may be. The good news is that Paige doesn’t harbor any grudges. Not only has she joined the Disney Fine Art group, creating a series of paintings known as Belles by Belle, but she got to reprise the role itself for last year’s Ralph Breaks the Internet. There has also been exactly one time that you might have actually seen Paige in a Disney movie. She is one of three Disney Princesses (Mermaid’s Jodi Benson and Pocahontas’ Judy Kuhn are the other two) who make cameo’s in 2007’s Enchanted. Paige is the overly dramatic actress on a soap opera Prince Edward watches in his hotel room when he first gets to New York City.

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Outside of Disney and Showboat, Paige has made all sorts of appearances. She replaced Donna Murphy as Miss Alice Nutmeg in the 1985 Broadway production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood and played Alice in the 1988 touring company. She played Ado Annie in a 1986 tour of Oklahoma!, did another stint on Broadway as Fantine in Les Miserables in 1995 and wowed audiences in Las Vegas in Menopause the Musical. She again went international as Nellie in an Australian production of South Pacific. In 2011, her career came full circle (so to speak) when she actually played Judy Garland in a biographical musical of the late legend in Tempe, Arizona. And she was reunited with Robby Benson, her Beast co-star, when she fell in love with him again during the second season of the animated series The Legend of Prince Valiant, which ran on the Family Channel in the early Nineties (prior to being owned by Disney).

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These days, Paige travels around the world making appearances that sometimes showcase her art (she was at the Epcot Festival of the Arts for several days recently), sometimes showcase her singing (she’s done concerts at Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl), and sometimes are just to meet her fans (she’ll be at GALAXYCON in Richmond, Virginia in a couple of weeks). No matter what she’s doing, we’re glad she developed all of her talents and look forward to seeing where she’ll pop up as our favorite braniac Princess next. Happy 63^rd birthday, Paige!

April 19 - Tim Curry

On this day, in 1946, Timothy James Curry was born in Grappenhall, Warrington, Cheshire, England. When he was just 12, his father, a chaplain with the Royal Navy, died from pneumonia. His family moved to South London and Tim began attending a boarding school, where he became a noted boy soprano. When he went to the University of Birmingham, he concentrated on his acting, graduating in 1968 with a double degree in English and Drama. Later that year he began his professional career as part of the original London cast of Hair. It was during this production that he met a young man named Richard O'Brien who changed the course of his career.

One day, Tim saw Richard on the street near his apartment. Richard mentioned he'd been to the gym looking for a bodybuilder that could sing. Tim asked why in the world anyone would need that. Richard handed him a script with the title The Rocky Horror Show on the front and the number of the guy who was going to direct the show, Jim Sharman. Tim read the script and immediately gave Jim a call.

Image courtesy rockyhorror.fandom.com

The Rocky Horror Show opened on June 19, 1973 on London's West End with Tim leading the cast as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a mad scientist who speaks the Queen's English (and is a queen himself). The show was a hit and won the Evening Standard Award for Best Musical. It would run for over 2,900 performances before closing in 1980. Tim didn’t do most of the run but only because he followed the show when it came to the United States. He opened as the good Doctor in Los Angeles in 1974 and on Broadway in 1975. Sadly, The Great White Way wasn’t quite ready for Rocky Horror. Tim earned a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical, but the show only lasted forty-five performances. It’s okay though as the slightly retooled film version (called The Rocky Horror Picture Show for those who can’t tell the difference between the stage and the screen) came out the same year and featured performers from the Broadway show (including Tim, Richard and Meatloaf) as well as more folks from the original London cast (Patricia Quinn, Nell Campbell and Jonathan Adams).

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Tim took almost no time at all to return to Broadway, taking over the role of Tristan Tzara in Tom Stoppard’s Tony award winning play Travesties in 1975. When that show ended in 1976, he spent a few years taking supporting roles in films like the 1978 British horror film The Shout and starring on television as the title character in a miniseries about William Shakespeare. He returned to the stage in 1980 as part of the original Broadway cast of Amadeus, again playing the title role. Both Tim and co-star Ian McKellen were nominated for Tony Awards (Ian edged Tim out for the win, but I can think of a lot worse people to lose to).

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From 1981 on, Tim has remained a busy, in-demand actor. Whether he was hosting Saturday Night Live (with musical guest Meatloaf, of course) or earning an Emmy nomination for an episode of Tales from the Crypt, Tim brings a level of professionalism and, yes I’m going to say it, camp to everything he does. Highlights from his career include Wadsworth in Clue (another cult classic and one of my personal favorites), Darkness in Ridley Scott’s Legend and Pennywise the Clown in the television adaptation of Stephen King’s It. But Tim shows up all over the place, like as the hotel manager in Home Alone 2, on an episode of Will and Grace or in his own (albeit short lived) show, Over the Top (see what I mean about camp; even his sitcom knows who he is).

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One of the arenas that Tim has shined in the most has been the world of voice acting. He spent five seasons playing intrepid documentarian Nigel Thornberry on Nickelodeon’s The Wild Thornberrys. He spent another three seasons playing Captain Hook on the Fox series Peter Pan and the Pirates, for which he finally got some bling for his mantel in the form of a Daytime Emmy Award. Tim has also done extensive work recording audio books. For anyone who needs a few hour fix of his distinctive voice, they can search out his versions of A Series of Unfortunate Events, A Christmas Carol and even the book about the original Transylvanian, Dracula.

Image copyright Disney

Tim is a robust part of the Disney family. He first joined in 1993 as Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers. Three years later he sunk his teeth into Long John Silver for Muppet Treasure Island (he is arguably the best part of that film). The following year he gave voice to Forte, the villain in Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas (there is something awfully fitting about Dr. Frank-N-Furter telling the Beast “don’t fall in love”). He’s also done television roles on TaleSpin (Thaddeos E. Klang), Darkwing Duck (Taurus Bulba), Dinosaurs, Disney’s The Little Mermaid (Evil Manta), Aladdin, Gargoyles (Dr. Anton Sevarius), Mighty Ducks, Quack Pack (Moltoc), Recess, Teacher’s Pet, Higglytown Heroes, Phineas and Ferb and he took over the role of Emperor Palpatine on Star Wars: Clone Wars when the original actor passed away. He even has a somewhat bizarre rendition of The Ballad of Davy Crockett that was released on an album called Disney’s Music from the Park (as much as I like Tim, this recording is just phenomenally bad; I’m really not sure how it made it onto the cd).

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In 2007, Tim experienced another triumphant return to Broadway as King Arthur in Spamalot, a stage adaptation of another cult classic from 1975, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He was again nominated for a Tony award and, after moving with the production to London’s West End, earned a Laurence Olivier Award nomination back in his home town. Unfortunately, Spamalot would be something of a last hurrah for Tim. While I've very deliberately talked about Tim and his career in the present tense for this post, as many of his fans know, he's enjoyed better health than of late. In mid 2012, he dropped off the face of the earth, leaving many to wonder what was going on. Later it was revealed that he suffered a massive stroke in July of that year, leaving him wheelchair bound, and for a time, speechless. Since then he's made remarkable progress. He still requires a motorized chair to get around, but was able to play the part of the Criminologist in the live production of Rocky Horror on Fox in 2016. He now frequently makes the rounds of conventions, greeting legions of fans and displaying his unconventional (if now a bit subdued) humor. Will he ever recover enough to return to the stage? Only time will tell. But I can tell you this:even if he had to spend the whole time on a souped up Hover-round, it would be so delightfully campy that you'd forget why he was in it in the first place. And that's why I wish Tim all the best and look forward to whatever comes next. Happy birthday to our favorite Transylvanian!