Norma MacMillan (15 September 1921 – 16 March 2001) was a Canadian actress. She did supporting voices on Smurfs.
Biography[]
Norma MacMillan was a native of Vancouver, British Columbia. It was there that she met, worked with and married her producer/manager, Thor Arngrim. Arngrim had started the now-legendary but short-lived Totem Theatre company in 1951. Upon its demise in 1954, Arngrim, his partner Stuart Baker, and MacMillan set out for Toronto, where she landed children-voice roles for CBC.
MacMillan's versatility in doing a variety of children's voices manifested itself in the roles she played. On the morning radio, she played the more saccharine roles while in the evening her talents were employed for playing, as she described them, the "disturbed children" roles. Later, after she and her husband moved to New York, MacMillan culled from the cartoon industry the voice of Casper the Friendly Ghost. She also lent her voice to characters on the Gumby and Underdog shows. In addition to these famous roles, MacMillan was the voice of John-John and Caroline Kennedy in the perhaps infamous recordings of the "First Family" records in the early 1960s. Perhaps her most visible acting role was the part she played in the 1980s as the sweet, demure, naïve Aunt Martha opposite Ruth Manning's Aunt Harriet for Kraft mayonnaise commercials.
MacMillan continued working until her death at the age of 79. Even upon returning to Vancouver with her husband in the mid-1990s, MacMillan joined the Co-Op's Radio's Sunday show for senior citizens and was a board member of the local 411 Seniors Centre. Interestingly, both her children enjoyed the limelight as children: Her daughter, Alison Arngrim, played Nellie in Little House on the Prairie (1974), and her son, Stefan Arngrim, played Barry Lockridge on Land of the Giants (1968).
External Links[]
- Norma MacMillan at the Internet Movie Database