Ruth Clifford

It took decades before Disney started crediting voice actors. The narrator of The Three Caballeros was credited, but not anyone else providing voices. Of course, part of that was Walt’s need for control over people; he didn’t want it to get out who the actors were in case they were lured to other studios to recreate the voices there. But it wasn’t just Walt, of course; the standards for credits in the industry were very different in those days. There are a lot of people we write about wherein ninety percent of their roles are uncredited. It’s worse with animation; I was able to find an uncredited Mel Blanc performance as late as 1988.

So it’s no surprise, really, if you haven’t heard of Ruth Clifford. Ironically enough, her career actually stretches back to silent film, with her debut in Behind the Lines in 1916. I grant you I haven’t heard of most of her movies, though she was one of the ballerinas (uncredited, of course) in the Cheney Phantom of the Opera. She made the switch over to sound films I mostly haven’t heard of (with notable exceptions such as How Green Was My Valley), still in mostly uncredited roles. She was working steadily, with seven roles in 1942 alone.

Amazingly, it isn’t Holiday Inn, a rare movie I’ve heard of, that was her most noteworthy appearance in 1942, though. It’s “The Sleep Walker,” a Pluto short. You might not think so, but it’s the first appearance IMDb lists for a Disney production. She is (uncredited) the voice of Dinah the Dachshund. In 1944, she was the voice of Minnie Mouse in “First Aiders.” 1945’s “Cured Duck” added Daisy Duck. She didn’t stop working in live action—including the odd film I’ve heard of such as My Darling Clementine—but she worked for Disney until 1952.

Though her last appearance was a 1977 episode of Police Story, leaving aside a Daisy Duck compilation from the ‘80s that I don’t think should count because I don’t think it involved any new work, she was actually still alive when I started college. She died in 1998. Apparently she would talk to film historians, and she was quite a valuable resource for them. I do wonder if anyone talked to her about how “orphan sent to a convent school” was a ‘20s lie to get away from shadier backgrounds, to the point that I don’t know if it was actually true of her.

The other thing I’m curious about is that she used to play bridge with John Ford but seldom appeared in his movies and pretty much never in prominent roles. It’s a bit odd. For all his many failings, Ford was a man who was faithful to his stable of actors, and you’d think he would have put a friend into them since he was busily making friends with his actors. I’d hope it wasn’t snobbishness about the fact that she had voiced cartoon animals.