Pat Carroll

Patricia Ann Carroll was born on May 5, 1927, in Shreveport, Louisiana, to Maurice Clifton Carroll and Kathryn Angela Carroll, née Meagher. Her family relocated to Los Angeles when she was five years old, where she began participating in local theatrical productions. She completed her secondary education at Immaculate Heart High School and subsequently attended Catholic University of America following a period of service with the United States Army as a civilian actress technician.

Carroll launched her professional acting career in 1947, receiving her first screen credit the following year as Lorelei Crawford in the 1948 film Hometown Girl. Her television career began in 1952 with an appearance on The Red Buttons Show. Three years later, her Broadway debut in Catch a Star! earned her a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. That same year, 1955, she married Lee Karsian; the couple had three children — a son, Sean, and two daughters, Kerry and actress Tara Karsian — before divorcing in 1976. In 1956, Carroll received an Emmy Award for her contributions to Caesar's Hour.

Her Broadway work included an appearance in Lovely Lady, with her stage career spanning productions such as Our Town and Sophocles's Electra. As a member of the Actors Studio, she maintained an active presence in theater throughout her career. In 1990, she took on the role of Sir John Falstaff — a balding, whiskered knight — in The Merry Wives of Windsor at the Shakespeare Theatre at the Folger. Drama critic Frank Rich of The New York Times reviewed the performance, writing that Carroll and director Kahn helped "revivify the argument that the right actresses can perform some of the great classic roles traditionally denied to women and make them their own," and that her performance existed "to investigate a character rather than merely as ideological window dressing for a gimmicky production."

On television, Carroll held a regular role as Bunny Halper on The Danny Thomas Show and appeared as a regular cast member on the sitcom Make Room for Daddy from 1961 to 1964. She guest-starred on The DuPont Show with June Allyson and co-starred in the 1965 television production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella as Prunella, one of the wicked stepsisters. Her later television credits included the role of Lily, Shirley Feeney's mother, in a 1976 episode of Laverne & Shirley; Pearl Markowitz in the 1977 CBS sitcom Busting Loose; and a guest appearance on The Love Boat in 1978. In the 1980s, she played newspaper owner Hope Stinson on The Ted Knight Show during its final season in 1986, and Gussie Holt, the mother of Suzanne Somers's lead character, in She's the Sheriff from 1987 to 1989. She also appeared across numerous variety and game shows, including The Carol Burnett Show, Match Game 73, and The $10,000 Pyramid.

In the late 1970s, Carroll developed a one-woman stage show, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, Gertrude Stein, written by playwright Marty Martin, which earned multiple major theater awards. A recorded version of the production won the 1980 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word, Documentary or Drama.

Beginning in the late 1980s, Carroll pursued an extensive voice acting career. She voiced recurring characters on Pound Puppies as Katrina Stoneheart and portrayed Jon's grandmother in two Garfield television specials, A Garfield Christmas and Garfield's Thanksgiving. Additional voice work included roles in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, Galaxy High, Foofur, and A Goofy Movie, as well as the character of Granny in the 2005 re-release of Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro. Her most widely recognized voice role came in 1989, when she portrayed the sea witch Ursula in Disney's The Little Mermaid, performing the song "Poor Unfortunate Souls." Carroll described the role, her first as a villain, as one of her career favorites. She reprised the character in the Little Mermaid television series, the Kingdom Hearts video game series, the Disney+ series The Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse, various Disney theme park attractions, and voiced Ursula's sister Morgana in the direct-to-video sequel The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea.

In 1963, Carroll filed a $12,000 lawsuit against Hanna-Barbera, alleging breach of contract after being cast and then replaced in the role of Jane Jetson on The Jetsons. Her contracts had stipulated payment of $500 per episode with a guarantee of twenty-four episodes, though she recorded only one before being replaced. Morey Amsterdam filed a related claim as a co-plaintiff. The court ruled in favor of Hanna-Barbera, with the case closed by early 1965. In 1991, Carroll received an honorary doctorate from Siena College in Albany, New York. Her son Sean predeceased her, having died in 2009, and her former husband Lee Karsian died in 1991. Carroll died of pneumonia at her home on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on July 30, 2022, at the age of 95.