10 Hollywood Legends You've Probably Never Heard Of
9. The Voice Artist
Legendary voice actor and vocal effects artist Frank Welker has nearly fifty years of credits to his name, and has been involved with over a hundred feature films totalling nearly fifteen billion dollars in box office revenue.
That’s not to mention the vast numbers of television and video game roles he’s perfected over the years: the former won him an Emmy Lifetime Achievement award this year. Welker’s been performing the voice of Fred from Scooby-Doo since 1969, and Scooby himself from 2002. He’s played Transformers and Ghostbusters, Smurfs and Snorks; Muppet babies, curious monkeys and lazy ginger cats. And that’s only the very uppermost tip of the iceberg.
He’s the voice of Nibbler in Futurama, Abu the monkey in Disney’s Aladdin movies and Uni the baby unicorn in the classic Dungeons & Dragons show... but he’s also Doctor Claw in Inspector Gadget, Darkseid in the eighties DC superhero cartoons and five-headed god-dragon Tiamat in the classic Dungeons & Dragons show.
Heroes and villains, monsters and ghosts, children and animals: Welker doesn’t just do voices - he provides effects and noises as well. Hundreds and hundreds of them. There may be more iconic voice actors - Mel Blanc, for example, or Peter Cullen or Don Messick - but none as versatile, with such a broad and varied career across the length and breadth of the industry.
Frank Welker has been in high - the highest - demand over six decades precisely because he can deliver exactly the voice required on time and with minimal fuss. That’s made him one of the unsung MVPs of Hollywood for longer than most of you reading this have been alive.