From 1947-1953, Mighty Mouse, Pearl Pureheart, and Oil Can Harry co-starred in a series of operatic “mellerdramas” with Mighty as the hero, Harry as the villain, and Pearl as the damsel in distress. Many of these now-famous shorts were performed in song from beginning to end. We know that Royal (Roy) Halee Sr., who sang in a hearty tenor voice, played Mighty Mouse.
Betty Jaynes
Pearl Pureheart’s soprano singing is completely uncredited. The female voice artist remains a mystery to this day. There are two possibilities. The first is a singer/actress named Betty Jaynes. She has the requisite soprano voice and previously portrayed Pearl Pureheart in the 1945 Mighty Mouse Ocsar-nominated short Mighty Mouse in the Gypsy Life. Jaynes is uncredited in that cartoon (and who knows how many others). Since the “mellerdramas” began in 1947, it is very possible that Jaynes continued as Pearl Pureheart.
The second, equally likely possibility can be found in an interview with Terrytoons storyhead Tom Morrison conducted by Harvey Deneroff. Author W. Gerald Hamonic references the June 15, 1970 interview in his 2018 book Terry-Toons: The Story of Paul Terry and His Classic Cartoon Factory. Morrison recalled that Roy Halee was a member of a singing quartet called The Rondoliers. Halee was no stranger to cartoons; he began his voice work at the J.R. Bray studio. Paul Terry later hired Halee to voice Farmer Al Falfa. Halee also occasionally voiced both Heckle and Jeckle.
The Rondoliers started with four males but soon expanded to include a female performer. The Rondoliers enjoyed some popularity and even made a few “soundies” shown on the film jukeboxes that were popular during the 1940s (These were short films featuring footage of singers, bands, and musicians; Soundies could be considered a precursor to the music videos of the 1980s).
Pearl – in a Terrytoon comic book drawn by Jim Tyer
To give Morrison’s story a bit more credence, Ken Schoen, also a Rondolier, is also credited (or uncredited, as it went at Terry) with the singing voice of Oil Can Harry in a number of the operatic cartoons.
Included in The Rondoliers lineup was a female performer named Mimi Walthers (not to be confused with singer/actress Mimi Walters). If, as Morrison remembers, the group recorded the voices for the Mighty Mouse operatic shorts, could it be possible that Mimi Walthers might be the long-uncredited singing voice of Pearl Pureheart? Walthers had three Broadway appearances to her career credits, although there is not much further information about her.
The case for Jaynes is strong, considering that she sang Pearl Pureheart’s voice parts in 1945, even if uncredited. But considering that Morrison recalling that The Rondoliers recorded the vocals for the operettas, the fact that Both Halee and Schoen were members of that group, and the presence of Mimi Walthers in The Rondoliers make Walthers a stronger candidate as the “lost voice” of Pearl Pureheart. Add in Terry’s capricious assigning (or not) of credits, and that may be enough to close the case.
Martin Goodman is a veteran writer specializing in stories about animation. He has written for AWN and Animation Scoop – and lives in Anderson, Indiana.
If my keen ears remember correctly, I don’t remember the voice of Pearl, pure heart changing from cartoon to cartoon, so it has to be only one specific vocal person. Also, the way we always saw Paul Terry cartoons on television was with a generic title card, meaning that I don’t recall ever seeing the original titles sequences to any of these cartoons. Is it possible that if these cartoons were restored, we would find out who the voices were? Or did they just not ever credit the voices in Paul Terry cartoons? What a shame, because there was always great talent behind those cartoons vocally.
Cartoons of that period never had voice credits, except for Mel Blanc’s “vocal characterizations” credit on some Warner Bros. shorts. And occasionally, singer or narrator credits on some of Walter Lantz’s Swing Symphonies.
Not to mention, before Gene Deitch’s arrival, Terrytoons basically only had three credits: storyman (John Foster and later Tom Morrison), director (Connie Rasinski, Mannie Davis, Eddie Donnelly, and on a few occasions, Volney White and Bill Tytla) and musician (Phil Schieb). Terrytoons in that period didn’t even give animators (like Jim Tyer, Carlo Vinci, Paul Sommer, Reuben Timmins) credits, let alone voices
Betty Jaynes was married for over fifty years to Bill Roberts, the baritone featured in “One Froggy Evening”.
If Betty Jaynes was in “Gypsy Life”, then she was also the soprano in the 1944 Terrytoon “Carmen’s Veranda”, in which Roy Halee provides the singing voice of Gandy Goose. I’m not convinced that the voice of Pearl Pureheart, whoever she was, is the same person who sang in those earlier cartoons. But we’ll probably never know for certain unless Terry’s payroll records turn up somewhere — and we all know that’s never going to happen.
When I was a little kid, parked in front of the “electric babysitter” (TV), there was NOTHING that would make me change the channel faster than when one of these Mighty Mouse “operettas” came on. I thought that this cornball music was awful, and I still do. The operetta as a musical form reached the height of its popularity around 1900, and was eventually “pushed offstage” first by ragtime, and then by jazz. Deservedly so!
Paul Terry apparently thought that the ragtime and jazz eras had never happened, and the music of his own youth was what he liked (the elderly Thomas Edison suffered from the same syndrome, and his record label suffered from it, too).
Meantime, Warner Brothers, Walter Lantz, and MGM were serving up plenty of swing on their cartoon soundtracks— in other words, they were living in the present rather than in an increasingly distant past.
The Mighty Mouse musicals were completely dated, right from the moment of their release. To put it succinctly, I’ll just say, “Yecchh!”
She also most likely provided the singing voice of the woman in distress by fire in “Better Late Than Never” with one-shot character Victor the Volunteer.
Many Terrytoons voices have always been a mystery to me. Credits are pretty sketchy with that company. I still would like to know who performed all the different Mighty Heroes villains. I know each one was either Lionel Wilson or Hershel Bernardi but assume most were Lionel. At least most SOUND like him. I also suspect Wilson played Tornado Man and Strong Man in spite of some sources saying Bernardi did those two. Different books and web pages say both Bob McFadden and Dayton Allen played the Astronut. Silly Sidney had 3 distinct voices but I’m not sure if Wilson did all 3, or if Dayton Allen was in there too. Anyway, it’s fun to listen and try to figure them out.
For my money, those mini operetta Mighty Mouse/Pearl/Oil Can triangles were the very best in the series. The cliffhanger intros, the dramatic narration, the animation (especially by Jim Tyer), and the sung dialog got my attention every time!
They got my attention, too— I’d immediately change the channel when one of them came on. If there was some kind of award for “worst cartoon musical scores ever,” Paul Terry and Phil Scheib should have gotten it for these totally dated sonic atrocities. The schmaltz factor is right off the scale here!
I’d rather have a root canal than sit through one of these miserable things, ever again. The only Terrytoons that I like at all are Heckle and Jeckle.
As the old saying goes, “Even a stopped clock is right, twice a day,”
Terry was a real-life Ebenezer Scrooge to his employees, and the only difference was that Scrooge was eventually reformed, but Terry was beyond any reforming. When he sold his cartoon inventory to CBS for millions, even his most long-standing and employees didn’t get one cent— he kept it all.
What a schmuck!
I appreciate the above article as a first stab at researching some of the Terry voices. I hadn’t learned enough to have included Famous and Terry in my 2022 book CARTOON VOICES OF THE GOLDEN AGE, and I didn’t want to just repeat guesses. The simple fact is that voices were not credited in the ANY 1930s cartoon. In the 1940s, out of the thousands of short cartoons produced in that decade, Lantz had one cartoon with voice credits, MGM, George Pal and Columbia had almost none, Republic had one, and as we all know, WB listed only Mel Blanc (starting in 1944, intermittently, and from 1946 onwards, since when his name appears on virtually every Warner cartoon). Stan Freberg was credited just once in the 1940s on that lone Republic entry, Frank Graham just once on a short for Oscar Productions, and Freberg again one time in the 50s, on a cartoon. Fleischer only had voice credits on their final feature, MR. BUG. Famous listed Eddie Lawrence once as a voice and in their hundreds of cartoons virtually never had voice credits. Terry-Toons ditto. Disney finally started crediting some voices in features from 1943, but not in shorts until 1959. By the mid-50s, UPA & Lantz finally listed some voices. The really, the only way to discover actual voice credits that are reliable (and I exclude imdb and other internet sources) is by locating music department payroll sheets, which indicate production numbers, recording dates, and the vocal talents hired and fees paid to each. But 90% of that paperwork has either disappeared or simply been junked over the many decades. I live in hope. In my projected revision to CARTOON VOICES I will be adding a Famous Studios filmography, and I will note more Terry voices, although that studio and Van Beuren will most likely never have substantial voice credits found. I never say never, but to tell the truth it seems doubtful. To the above article, I will note that Ken Schoen may well be one of the the bass singers who narrates the many Mighty Mouse sagas of the 40s. I also found reference to a soprano who sang in the 1930s Terry melodramas, named Hazel Dudley, and another bass baritone named Hubert Hendrie who also sang alongside Roy Halee. I question Betty Jaynes as she was, I believe, a West Coast based soprano, as was her partner Bill Roberts. Of course both those fine singers could have hopped the transcontinental train for occasional East Coast gigs but so far I doubt that. There were excellent singers aplenty on both coasts. So you can see that it’s a researcher’s minefield of incomplete if tantalizing information. The search goes on….
To nitpick my own comment above, I should be truly geeky and note that Disney listed Jerry Colonna on a 1950 short, and Sterling Holloway on a couple, Lantz listed three narrators in 1939-40, Columbia noted the newscaster Raymond Gram Swing in 1941, and Pal listed Victor Jory and a couple of others on Puppetoons. Still, a tiny drop in the animation bucket when it came to voice credits, which only appeared en masse in the mid to late 60s, just as the theatricals were dying out. I am no doubt forgetting a handful more????
Looks like I wrote a detailed comment then did something stupid I’m unaware of, because it was deleted and disappeared into the abyss while “awaiting moderation.” Oh well, to recap…it was firstly about my appreciation for this article, a first good stab at the difficult area of long-ago Terry-Toons voices and singers. Throughout the article there was a vague feeling the author hoped there might be voice credits on original (non-TV) prints….but alas, it ain’t so. Particularly in the 1930s, including the original operettas from Van Beuren and Terry. In that decade NO cartoon from 1928-40 had a voice credited…until in 1939, when Lantz gave screen credit to a couple of narrators. Throughout the 1940s, there were no voice credits of note until Mel Blanc’s timely credit for “Voice Characterization” beginning in 1944, intermittently for a couple of years, then he was credited on virtually every WB cartoon from 1946 onwards. But otherwise, in the 1940s, only a few Disney features gave selected voice credits from 1945 on….however, no Disney shorts, only one short from Lantz, one short from Republic, maybe three Puppetoons, no MGM, Famous, Columbia or UPA cartoons, Fleischer only once on the MR. BUG feature…. out of the thousands of cartoons produced in that great decade, it simply wasn’t the policy to give credit to what were called “casual hire” actors. And as much as I hate to say it, since my book CARTOON VOICES OF THE GOLDEN AGE appeared in 2022, I still haven’t added much to the limited knowledge of Terry-Toons and Famous Studios voices. The expanded book to come will note various new finds, and a Famous Studios filmography of voice credits is in the works for the revision……but to be brutally honest, most internet sources are still pretty iffy, and the ONLY way to do it correctly is to locate original movie studio documents in research libraries…voices are found in music department payroll records, where cartoons, like live action shorts and features, have paperwork listing production numbers, recording dates and times, and all the voice artists hired for each production, and the fees they were paid. The ongoing problem for historians like yours truly is that 90% of that valuable paperwork is either junked over the decades, or hidden away and misfiled. I am still learning new facts all the time, and it seems like a topic that will never be solved fully…at least until the mid-50s when Lantz and UPA start listing voice talents regularly in the short cartoons. Once TV cartoons were established, voices finally began to get the recognition for their overall importance to animation, and theatricals were listing all the voices by 1962, ironically just as the theatre shorts began to expire…and Famous-Paramount hardly ever listed a voice to the end of their days. The search goes on, but it is a real slow process….by the way, a couple of points about the Terry article. A soprano I found listed for the 1930s Terry melodrama cartoons was Hazel Dudley. Roy Halee’s wonderful tenor voice sang alongside her, and a couple more baritone-basso singers like Hubert Hendrie and John Gurney. One bass singer in Mr. Goodman’s article was Ken Schoen, and I believe he was the most frequent 1940s bass voice who spoke opening narration in many Mighty Mouse and other Terry cartoons of the mid to late 40s. Terry and Famous are still my most wanted for any voice-recording paperwork if it survives, and I never say never but, also, I don’t hold out much hope. If any of you have a talent for digging in old newspapers I will credit any person who locates authentic information I can add to the updated Voices book, to make it as accurate as I can. (PS: I do question Betty Jaynes, partner of singer Bill Roberts, She was based on the West Coast, and it seems unlikely she was called back East for Mighty Mouse assignments, but…I am always willing to be proven wrong.)