Does it count if the person they’re parodying does the voice? Their was a great episode of Futurama where Katey Sagel makes fun of her own character on Married With Children.
Strange. I could tell instantly Garfield was Carlton the doorman, from Rhoda. I never thought it was Murray until Murray did the voice.
I remember they did a callback to that in one cartoon. Garfield said, “Hi, this is Garfield, your doorman.”
I don’t think actual celebrities, regardless of the talent performing them, would be in the purview of the thread. It’s more about characters based upon celebrities. Extra interesting might be characters who have long outlived the fame of who they were imitating, such as Senator Claghorn.No one knows who he is today, but everyone knows Foghorn Leghorn.
Female voices are a casualty of old time Hollywood sexism. There were several voice actresses in the 30s but less in the 40s and after and they tended to do original characters. There’s a lot of the aforementioned radio catch phrase punchlines that Warner used to do a lot. Kate Hepburn’s “Reaaaally I dooo.” was popular.
Bea Benaderet really didn’t do celebrities, nor did June Foray, although she did use Zsa Zsa Gabor’s habit of calling everyone “Dahlink” for Natasha Fatale.
Even the TV Tropes page for Western Animation "No Celebrities were harmed"mentions very few female voices. Just a handful of one offs and actual celebs doing their voices.
Not really. More about characters based upon celebs than the actual actors performing the role or presentations of celebrities directly as characters.
In that case, we have Zapp Brannigan as a parody of Captain Kirk/William Shatner, but he’s a step farther, I think. If all you had seen was a comedian’s exaggerated version of Kirk, and you parodied that, you’d have Brannigan.
Heck, I’d say it’s Billy West as Phil Hartman as William Shatner as Captain Kirk.
Indeed, far from people assuming Murray was doing the voices, I have always heard the opposite. Specifically, that Bill Murray asked, about The Real Ghostbusters cartoon, “Why doesn’t Venkman sound anything like me?” Which resulted in Lorenzo Music being replaced by Dave Coulier, who did a much closer Bill Murray impersonation.
I don’t imagine that Murray was actually angling to get Music fired–that would be quite petty, considering that none of the Real Ghostbusters characters either looked or sounded like their movie counterparts–but that’s what happened.
Yep. I mentioned that phenomena in a few posts. Most impressions of Nixon were actually of Rich Little shaking his jowls doing Nixon. Most impressions of George HW Bush were imitations of Dana Carvey’s impression.
A more obscure one is Gabriel Dell, who did a spoken word album called “Famous Monsters Speak” for the eponymous magazine, is the source for most imitations of Bela Lugosi. When someone does that really arch, “I VANT to SUCK your BLOOD, blah blah…” they are unknowingly doing an imitation of HIS impression of Bela. The album itself is not as exaggerated, but he was pretty famous in the 50s for his Dracula. Here’s an appearance on Steve Allen and you can see what I’m talking about.
Zapp Brannigan’s character is based upon William Shatner, but his voice is actually Billy West’s tribute to Phil Hartman doing an old-time announcer voice. In his words: “Phil Hartman was supposed to do that character, and I was imitating Phil Hartman. I knew Phil Hartman; when I came to work with him on some commercials and stuff out here in Hollywood, we both had this real fascination and love for these big, old-time dumb announcers. You know, the guys who have their balls in a wheelbarrow and think that every word is so precious that it’s hard to give birth to it, like everything comes out in four syllables instead of one. Guys who think far and away that of everything else in this universe, he loves his voice. So that’s what was going on with him. He’s modeled after a couple of big dumb announcers I knew.” He never did that pause thing that Shatner is famous for doing.
Simon Bar Sinister is said to have been patterned after Lionel Barrymore’s radio version of Ebenezer Scrooge. I don’t know if it’s true, but I buy it! I can just hear Simon Bar Sinister saying
The one-shot Merrie Melodies cartoon Little Blabbermouse has a character imitating W. C. Fields. There was also a sequel, Shop, Look, and Listen. Both had the Fields character giving a tour for mice after stores were closed, with visual puns on the product names.
Speaking of which, “Kiddin’ the Kitten” (1952) and “A Peck o’ Trouble” (1953) had a cat named Dodsworth, who resembled an obese Sylvester and was voiced in loose imitation of W.C. Fields.
Ahem… Dr. Girlfriend is supposed to be based off of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis…
Not so much the voice, though…
“Who the hell is Jacqueline Onassis?!” -Dr Grilfriend in The Venture Brothers.
Is it her grace? 
The zombie thread on parodies that have outlived the original made me think of this thread. I mentioned earlier that my favorite of this thread’s subjects was cartoon voices based upon relatively obscure actors or those who have since gone into obscurity since the voice was done (That is, people at the time might have known who was being imitated but now the cartoon has outlived the inspiration’s fame). I was watching Turner Classic Movies and came across one that surprised me. Popeye’s girlfriend Olive Oyl is an imitation of Zasu Pitts. She even has the catchphrase of a nervous, “Oh, dear.”
Not a cartoon, but in the Twilight Zone episode Living Doll an uncredited June Foray provided the voice of Talky Tina. She had also recorded the voice of the Mattel Chatty Cathy doll.
Here’s a commercial withChatty Cathy.
Here’s Talky Tina. Any similarity is, of course, purely coincidental.
I don’t think she was basing the performance on a celebrity. Casting an actor to do his or her own voice as another character is a bit off the topic.
“Mr Pettigrew” on The Simpsons (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) is obviously Frank Nelson, the “Yeeeesssss?” guy on old sitcoms like Jack Benny’s and Lucille Ball’s.