Eleanor Audley

Eleanor Zellman (November 19, 1905 – November 25, 1991) was an American actress who was a familiar radio and animation voice, in addition to her TV and film roles. For many, she provided Disney animated features with their most outstanding and memorable villainess voices, most notably Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty and Lady Tremaine in Cinderella.

Radio
Beginning as a radio actress, she worked extensively in the 1940s and 50s in Hollywood on such shows as Escape, Suspense and the radio versions of My Favorite Husband (as mother-in-law Mrs. Cooper) and Father Knows Best (as one of the Anderson family's neighbors). In 1953, she played the stepmother in a re-imagining of the Cinderella story for The Six Shooter starring James Stewart.

Animation
In the animated film industry she was best known for giving her distinctive, powerful voice to the evil stepmother Lady Tremaine in the Disney animated film Cinderella and the wicked fairy Maleficent in Disney's Sleeping Beauty. For both films, animator Marc Davis created the characters' facial features to resemble Audley. Audley initially turned down the choice role of Maleficent because she was battling tuberculosis. She also provided the voice of Madame Leota in the Haunted Mansion attractions in Disneyland and Walt Disney World, speaking the memorable lines, "Rap on a table. It's time to respond. Send us a message from somewhere beyond!"

Television
Beginning in the mid-1950s, she appeared constantly on television, including episodes of I Love Lucy, Perry Mason, and  The Dick Van Dyke Show. She was a series regular as Oliver Douglas's disapproving mother on Green Acres (although she was only five months older than actor Eddie Albert, who played her son). She also played Millicent Schuyler-Potts, the headmistress of the Potts School which Jethro Bodine attended in The Beverly Hillbillies.

Death
Audley died of respiratory failure at her North Hollywood, Los Angeles home, on November 25, 1991, six days after her 86th birthday.