Margaret Kerry, the perky actress and dancer who served because the mannequin and inspiration for the Disney animators creating the pixie Tinker Bell for the 1953 traditional Peter Pan, has died. She was 97.
“It is with profound sadness that we share news of the passing of Margaret Kerry (Boeke), our beloved Tinker Bell,” stated a household assertion on Kerry’s Facebook page. “Margaret passed peacefully into the arms of Jesus on June 11, 2026, in Wilmington, North Carolina. Her three adoring children, Ellen, Christina and Eric, were with her as she lost her courageous battle with lung cancer at the age of ninety-seven.”
The assertion continued, “And remember, on any given night, look up into the night sky and search for that “Second Star to the Right”. Upon nearer look, you may simply discover that star shining a little bit brighter in Margaret’s honor.”
From 1949-52, Kerry starred as daughter Sharon Ruggles on the dwell ABC household sitcom The Ruggles, one of many first TV reveals to emanate not from New York however from Hollywood. Within the extremely rated collection finale, her character will get married and goes on her honeymoon.
As a voice actress, Kerry starred on Clutch Cargo in 1959, Space Angel in 1962-64 and Captain Fathom in 1965 — these cartoons used the Syncro-Vox system, with actual human lips superimposed over the animated characters’ mouths — and on The New Three Stooges in 1965. She did dwell segments with Moe Howard, Larry Superb and Joe DeRita as nicely. All have been for Cambria Productions, an organization led by her first husband, Dick Brown.
The 5-foot-2 Kerry had starred alongside Eddie Cantor in If You Knew Susie (1948) and was an assistant dance director on the Gloria DeHaven musical I’ll Get By (1950) when her agent despatched her to Disney Studios in Burbank to audition for Peter Pan, she recalled in a 2003 interview with Jim Korkis.
“They were looking for a young girl who was comfortable with dance movement,” she stated. “How do you audition for animation and for a personality who doesn’t communicate? At house I had a room arrange, my dance room, with all these mirrors and a barre. So I bought this little document participant and placed on an instrumental document and labored up a pantomime [as a 9-year-old boy] making breakfast to the beat of the document; you understand, carrying eggs and possibly dropping one, closing the fridge door with one foot, and so forth., as a lot number of motion as I may do within the context of a little bit story.
“The next day I went to the studio and took the record player and put on this 45-rpm record and did this mime. I choreographed a whole 3 ½-minute routine to this old record.”
Kerry bought the job, reported for work the following Tuesday and on and off for the following six to 9 months, she moved round “a great big soundstage that seemed to go on forever” carrying her personal one-piece bathing swimsuit and her hair in a bun and being noticed by Marc Davis (one in every of Walt Disney’s “Nine Old Men”) and different animators.
“There was no one for me to react to. I had to imagine almost everything,” she stated. “There was an occasional prop like huge scissors or a wire-frame keyhole or something. Most of the time it was just me pretending to be looking up from under something or walking around.”
Margaret Kerry supplied the actions for the three 1/2-inch tall Tinker Bell for 1953’s ‘Peter Pan.’
Courtesy Everett Assortment
Starring Bobby Driscoll as Peter, Kathryn Beaumont as Wendy Darling and Hans Conried as Captain Hook, Peter Pan performed in competitors on the 1953 Cannes Movie Pageant and was a giant hit on the field workplace.
Later, Tinker Bell would grow to be a mascot for Disneyland who sprinkled her magic pixie dust firstly of episodes of The Great World of Disney.
“They liked the character that I came up with,” she stated in a 2020 interview. “She’s feisty, and I call her beguiling. You love her if she’s very bad, and you love her if she’s very good.”
Margaret McCarty was born on Could 11, 1929, in Springfield, Illinois. After her mom died throughout childbirth, her father was unable to care for his or her 5 kids, and he or she and two siblings have been put up for adoption. Together with her new dad and mom, Fred and Grace, she was renamed Peggy Lynch, and the household moved to Los Angeles when she was 3.
She appeared as a fairy in A Midsummer Night time’s Dream (1935) — she said after a studio gentle caught fireplace, Mickey Rooney “dragged me into this little two-inch deep stream on the set so I’d be safe from any flames” — and in Our Gang comedy shorts and took dancing classes from Nico Charisse, husband of Cyd Charisse.
She confirmed up in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) and The Star Maker (1939) and was a stand-in for Elizabeth Taylor in Nationwide Velvet (1944), then tap-danced and sang because the daughter of Cantor and Joan Davis’ characters in If You Knew Susie. It was Cantor who gave her the stage title Margaret Kerry.
Through the making of the film, during which Driscoll performed her brother, she completed up at Benjamin Franklin Senior Excessive College and would later graduate from Los Angeles Metropolis School.
After starring as a co-host/performer on the native TV present Tele-Teen Reporter, produced and hosted by Al Burton, Kerry landed on The Ruggles. The present starred Charlie Ruggles as her dad, Irene Tedrow after which Erin O’Brien-Moore as her mother, Tom Bernard as her brother Chuck and It’s a Great Life actor Jimmy Hawkins and Judy Nuget as her twin siblings, Donald and Donna. The household house had one rest room, making for every kind of chaos.
The Ruggles ran for 137 episodes over about 32 months, with the forged doing one episode dwell for the East Coast, breaking for dinner after which doing one other one dwell for the West Coast. “And we never heard of a cue card,” she stated.
Meet the Ruggles, clockwise from prime left: Margaret Kerry, Charles Ruggles, Erin O’Brien-Moore, Tom Bernard, Jimmy Hawkins and Judy Nugent.
Courtesy Everett Assortment
Kerry famous she had simply received a “Most Beautiful Legs in Hollywood” contest when she went to work on Peter Pan.
“You remember the scene where [Tinker Bell] falls over backward in Wendy’s dresser drawer?” she requested Korkis. “Well, they had me falling over backward onto a mattress. The mattress was about a half-inch thick, or at least it seemed that thick, and I went over backward and went thud. The look of my face of surprise and pain was identical to the one Tink has in the finished film.”
Tinker Bell didn’t discuss within the film, however Kerry was heard — because the red-headed mermaid — and that kickstarted her voice-acting profession.
Kerry additionally appeared on a 1950 episode of The Lone Ranger and on two first-season installments of The Andy Griffith Present, in 1960’s “Christmas Story” as Bess Muggins and in 1961’s “Andy Forecloses” as Helen Scobey.
Extra lately, she was a motivational speaker and a producer, author and host of a program for a L.A.-based Christian radio station from 1992-2004. Her autobiography, Tinker Bell Talks: Tales of a Pixie Dusted Life, was printed in 2016.
Kerry was married to Brown from 1951 till their 1984 divorce — he was a director on The Ruggles once they first met — and to John H. Willcox from 1987 till his 1999 demise.
She then reconnected with Robert Boeke — a retired Mobil Oil exec and her boyfriend seven many years earlier— and married him on Valentine’s Day in 2020 (she had saved a bracelet he had given her all these years in the past). He died on Could 24.
Requested by Korkis what she thought when she noticed Peter Pan for the primary time, she replied: “Like everybody else, I was enchanted. It is such a happy film. When you look up on that screen, that’s me up there. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s been a blessing.”
