Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Kathy "Alice in Wonderland" Beaumont Went to BHS



Yesterday, my sister, Patricia Palmer (Lundquist) Peck, BHS '55, told me that in high school one day, her teacher told the class to be nice to a new student. Come to find out, the new student was Kathy Beaumont, the girl who Disney used for the voice of Alice in "Alice in Wonderland" and as Wendy in "Peter Pan"!

Today I found her website which is very interesting:
http://www.kathrynbeaumont.com/


EXCERPT:
"After the 1953 release of Peter Pan, Kathryn headed off for public high school, where she pursued drill team rather than drama and ran for a position in student government. Kathryn was subsequently accepted at the University of Southern California, where she earned a degree and teaching credential. Kathryn continued to work for Disney each summer during college. On the completion of her studies... and for the next thirty years... Kathryn devoted her time and energy to being a school teacher in a local elementary school, a move she has never regretted. 'I just went into another career,' she reports. 'I was just very young when I did these roles, so I went back to school and I had other ideas of things I wanted to do. In a sense, the roles that I did were somewhat anonymous because I lent my voice, not my physical being,' Kathryn explains. 'When I went on to school, it became a past experience. Teaching gave me satisfaction, and I stayed.' Occasionally, a sharp-eared student would wonder why the teacher's voice sounded so familiar, but not too often, since home video was a decade or two off... and prior to home video availability, the Disney features were re-released to theatres only every seven years, on average. Kathryn lost contact with Disney, even though she lived just a stone's throw from the studio. In 1983, Disney promotion executive Howard Green reestablished contact."

UPDATE
1/13/2023
Photo my sister had sent to me a few years ago. 

R-L: Ron Johnson, Kathy Beaumont, Leslie Helhena Delaney, Julia Kaestle Black, Bev Savage Rupel, Elaine Dickes Thomas and Kathy Sutton 
Dec 2013 at Elaine Dickes Burbank home

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