Margaret Kerry

Margaret Kerry was born Peggy Lynch on May 11, 1929, in Springfield, Illinois — a child full of light and restless energy who would spend the next nine decades enchanting audiences in ways she never quite planned. After losing her mother during childbirth, she was adopted at age three by the Robb family and brought to Los Angeles, where a new name and a new life awaited. By the age of four, she was already performing. She first appeared on screen in the 1935 film A Midsummer Night's Dream, working alongside a young Mickey Rooney, and soon found herself dancing through the Our Gang comedy shorts. She graduated from Benjamin Franklin Senior High School with honors while continuing to work in films and earned her undergraduate degree cum laude from Los Angeles City College — a discipline she carried through everything she did. It was Eddie Cantor who gave her the name Margaret Kerry when he cast her in the 1948 film If You Knew Susie, deciding she deserved a more theatrical name to match her talent. Her most enduring role came not on a stage or a screen in the usual sense, but on an empty Disney soundstage in 1952. Animator Marc Davis selected her as the live-action reference model for Tinker Bell in Peter Pan, and for six months she pantomimed the fairy's movements in a simple green bathing suit, her hair in a bun, working without sets or costumes, trusting Davis entirely. She also voiced and embodied the red-haired mermaid in the Neverland lagoon sequence. The results became one of the most beloved characters in animation history. After Disney, Margaret built a prolific voice-acting career, appearing in over 600 animated television programs using 21 dialects and 48 character voices. She was particularly celebrated for her work on Clutch Cargo, Space Angel, and The New 3 Stooges. From 1992 to 2004, she produced and hosted What's Up Weekly on KKLA-FM in Los Angeles, directing community outreach that connected listeners to over 200 nonprofit agencies. She published her memoir, Tinker Bell Talks: Tales of a Pixie Dusted Life, in 2016, and was still tap-dancing publicly well into her 90s — performing the Andy Griffith Show theme at Mayberry Days celebrations with the same joy she had brought to every stage since childhood. Margaret Kerry passed away peacefully on June 11, 2026, in Wilmington, North Carolina, from lung cancer. She was 97. Her family asked those who loved her to look up on any clear night for the second star to the right — which, they said, might shine just a little brighter in her honor.