The Emmy-winning thespian-for-animation Maurice LaMarche just wrote me about a list that's online called 20 Greatest Voice Actors compiled by a gentleman named Bill Treadway. I assume this is the same Bill Treadway who writes some smart political commentaries on the web so I'll just say as politely as I can that more than half the selections on his list don't make any sense to me. I'm not saying I disagree with his selections. It's that I don't see what his logic or reasoning is…oh, and some of those folks haven't done anywhere near as much as he apparently thinks they have.
Okay, so there's his opinion. Mine is that a list of great voice actors that omits Daws Butler, Don Messick and Frank Welker is like a list of great silent comedians that overlooks Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. Moe — that's what we call Maurice — wrote to me, "Mark, I think it's time for you to write a list that has some credibility." And it does say something about the list that a guy who was named on it as one of the 20 Greatest thinks it's lacking in credibility. I mean, put me on a list of the 20 Greatest Anything and I'll say you're a genius even if the other 19 choices are infectious diseases, human eyesores or Robert Durst.
So I'm going to whip up a list of some arbitrary number of Great Voice Actors…not today but within the next week or three. Or four or nine. Don't — repeat: don't — send me any suggestions because I want to do this myself and because I'm already wading through nominations here for the Bill Finger Award.
Also, before I even start coming up with names, I'm going to draw up some ground rules and criteria for myself…like I know I'm not going to include folks like Jim Henson and Frank Oz because I won't be doing a list of the 20 Greatest Puppeteers. Both men were brilliant but it's a different skill and if you're going to include them, why not Edgar Bergen and Shari Lewis and Paul Winchell and so on? I may just break it up into two lists — a golden age one and a modern one with 1968 as the dividing point. (There's a reason why 1968 and I'll explain it. The challenge of the job changed a lot that year.) Or the "current" list may take a different form so as to minimize the number of friends I lose. Watch this space.