'Wisdom, laughter and kindness': Long-time friend remembers Pat Carroll, voice of Ursula

This remembrance and obituary were written by Marcia J. Monbleau, a longtime friend and housemate of acclaimed actress, comedian and voice artist Pat Carroll, who died  Sunday at their Harwich Port home.

HARWICH PORT — When I wrote to Pat Carroll in the summer of 1992, inviting her to be on the television program I hosted with stars from the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, she picked up the phone and called to accept.

I may have sounded wobbly, hearing the voice of the person I’d seen all over TV years earlier. What would I ask her? Would I make hash out of the half-hour show?

I believe Pat sensed that. She said, “Just ask me a question, then tell me when to shut up.”

I did the first and last bits, Pat filled in the middle with wisdom, laughter and kindness and we were off and rolling.

Thus began a friendship that would last 30 years. Now Pat has taken her final bow and left the stage.

Friendship was built out of letters between Cape Cod and New York or California — letters that required stamps and envelopes. We loved to write, understood punctuation and “delete” hadn’t been invented.

In 1994 — when Pat decided she’d retire to Cape Cod — we took a leap of faith, pooled resources and bought a house together — a quirky but ideal place for two women who wanted their own territory, but with comfortable space to share. Brave, silly us. But we paid off the 30-year mortgage in 18 years, despite both being somewhat checkbook-challenged.

We created a home where — as Pat put it — “Contentment is written on the walls,” and the interior design was a mix of English Cottage and pre-school.

We weren’t a couple — just a couple of friends who got along wonderfully well. We liked the same things — dark chocolate, English pubs, every sort of music and stacks of books — and didn’t like the same things — mushrooms, green peppers, suggestive humor and any sort of meanness.

Pat left me in the dust when it came to reading. She read “Gone With the Wind” when she was 9 and went to the movie with her mother when the movie came out four years later. At that age, I’d have favored Nancy Drew books and the re-release of “Bambi.” She was the smartest and most voracious reader I’ve ever known.

Pat saw me through the loss of my parents, and I hope I helped when her son died. Many years ago, she asked if I would write her final notice. I said I would, if she’d give me a couple of decades to think about it.

She did.

But time has flown, and time is up.

Pat Carroll dies at 95

Pat Carroll — one of television’s pioneer comediennes, winner of an Emmy, a Grammy, a Drama Desk Award, three Helen Hayes Awards and forevermore the voice of “Ursula” in Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” — died July 31 at her home in Harwich Port. She was 95.

Pat was born May 5, 1927, in Shreveport, Louisiana, to Maurice and Katherine Angela (Meagher) Carroll. They moved to El Paso, Texas, for a short stay.

It was there that the family crossed the border into Juarez, Mexico, now and then and Pat, age 3, got her first applause and piggy bank money. In Pat’s own words, from notes she wrote about her life: “With little or no prodding, I would burst into song at one of the bars. My big hit was ‘When It’s Springtime in the Rockies.’ I’m not a singer, but I love singing.”

With the family’s eventual move to Los Angeles, Pat fell in love with all things theatrical. And with the downtown library “and any other branch I could reach by trolley,” she wrote. “The summer I was 13, I read all of Eugene O’Neill and some of Freud. Thank the Lord I didn’t understand a word of the latter.”

From USA Today: Pat Carroll, voice of Ursula in 'The Little Mermaid' and 'Caesar's Hour' comedian, dead at 95

In 1947, 20-year-old Pat Carroll took the train from Los Angeles to Boston and continued on to Plymouth to do summer stock at the Priscilla Beach Theatre. This was her first taste of New England.

Many years later, she would come back to stay.

Her television career began in 1953 on “The Red Buttons Show.” Following were “Caesar’s Hour" (for which she won an Emmy), “The Danny Thomas Show,” “The Ted Knight Show,” “The Red Skelton Show,” “She’s the Sheriff,” “The Carol Burnett Show” and perhaps 15 or 20 more.

She was described as “The Dowager Queen” of TV talk and game shows and played “Prunella,” one of the wicked stepsisters in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella,” which aired for 10 consecutive years on CBS.

Work in television filled 35 years.

Acting on stage and under the sea

In 1979, Pat starred in her one-woman show, “Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein,” which ran for 18 months in New York and four years on the road, in 30 states and 79 cities. She won a Grammy Award for the Caedmon recording and a Drama Desk Award for Best Actress.

Her career took a dramatic turn in 1986 when she began doing classical theater in Washington, D.C.

She won three Helen Hayes Awards there for playing the nurse in “Romeo and Juliet,”  Falstaff in “The Merry Wives of Windsor” and the title character in “Mother Courage.”

Three years later, in another unusual about-face, Pat became the voice of Ursula, one of the all-time greatest film villains, in Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.”

She “retired” in 1994, but didn’t stay that way for long. In 1996, she was Little Buttercup in the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players’ production of “H.M.S. Pinafore.”

In Broadway’s 1998-99 season, she appeared in Sophocles’ “Electra,” with Zoë Wanamaker and Claire Bloom.

“I’d always wanted to do one of the Greeks. OK. I’ve done one. That’s enough,” Pat wrote.

In the 2000 film “Songcatcher,” she played Aidan Quinn’s mountain grandmother. In 2002, she was The Stage Manager in “Our Town” at the Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Maryland.

On Cape Cod, she performed six times during the regular season at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, according to playhouse archives: "Two for the Seesaw" in 1960; "Something's Afoot" in 1975; "Nunsense" in 1992; "Nunsense II" in 1993; "Everybody Loves Opal" in 1994; and "Grace and Glorie" in 1997 with Bonnie Franklin. In 1995, she directed “The Supporting Cast” at Cape Playhouse with Marcia Wallace and Rosemary Prinz.

In 2002, Pat starred in a new play by Marcia J. Monbleau that had its world premiere at Cape Playhouse of “oldfriends.com,” which she also performed two years later at Monomoy Theatre in Chatham, with acclaimed actress Julie Harris co-directing.

Over the years, Pat did narration or otherwise guested at Cape performances, always saying yes when asked by local organizations to help.

“I have had my heart’s desires fulfilled just by opening my mouth,” Pat wrote of her career.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Pat Carroll of Cape Cod, voice of Little Mermaid’s Ursula, dead at 95