In One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Cruella de Vil is voiced by Betty Lou Gerson, with Michiko Hirai providing the Japanese accent.
Who voiced Cruella de Vil in the cartoon?
While still in her 20s, she started her acting career in radio drama in 1935. She was a regular on soap operas during this time, appearing on Arnold Grimm’s Daughter (in 1938 as the titular daughter Constance), Midstream (in the lead role of Julia), Women in White (as Karen Adams), Road of Life (as Nurse Helen Gowan), Lonely Women (as Marilyn Larimore), and The Guiding Light (on radio, in the mid-1940s) as Charlotte Wilson.
She appeared in the 1938 summer drama Win Your Woman alongside Jim Ameche, and she frequently played the romantic lead in romance anthologies like Curtain Time and Grand Hotel.
Joseph T. Ainley and Gerson were wed in 1936 at Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian Church. He was the Leo Burnett Company, Inc.’s radio director at the time. They stayed together till his passing in 1965. The couple had no children.
Although Gerson retired in 1966, she continued to use her voice while working at Louis R. “Lou” Lauria’s telephone answering business. Gerson and Lauria were married from 1966 until his death in 1994. Both of those unions were childless.
