Phil Harris

Phil Harris was a bandleader first. He led an orchestra, he could sing, and he became one of the pioneers of radio situation comedy, first on The Jack Benny Program and then in The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, which he co-starred in with his wife, the singer and actress Alice Faye, for eight years. He recorded novelty songs on the side, of which "The Thing" in 1950 was the hit.

Disney then found the best use anyone ever found for him. Between 1967 and 1973 he voiced Baloo in The Jungle Book, Thomas O'Malley in The Aristocats and Little John in Robin Hood, and all three are essentially the same performance, which is meant as a compliment. Harris brought bandstand timing into animation: the loose phrasing, the trailing laugh, the sense of a man half-improvising in a room full of friends. You can hear the films moving to accommodate him rather than the other way round, and the songs he sings in The Jungle Book do not sound like film songs at all. They sound like a set.

He kept going. Rock-A-Doodle in 1991 gave him Patou and a narrator's job, nearly twenty years after Robin Hood, and The High and the Mighty from 1954 is the live-action credit for anyone completing the list. Harris died in 1995. Three of the most-loved characters Disney ever animated still talk in his voice, and most of the people who can do the impression have no idea whose it was.