The woman responsible for shaping Tinker Bell as we know her has died. Margaret Kerry, the actress and dancer best known for being the live-action model for Peter Pan‘s Tinker Bell, was 97.
According to a statement on her Facebook page, Kerry died on June 11 in her home in Wilmington, N.C. after losing her battle with lung cancer.
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“Margaret was deeply grateful for the extraordinary life that she enjoyed and felt tremendously blessed by her loved ones and the countless friends and fans that she met along the way,” the statement said. “And remember, on any given night, look up into the night sky and search for that ‘Second Star to the Right’. Upon closer look, you might just notice that star shining a little brighter in Margaret’s honor.”
Tinker Bell’s origins lie in Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, a 1904 play by the British writer J.M. Barrie which was later expanded into a 1911 novel, Peter and Wendy. Barrie invented “fairy dust” to explain how Tinker Bell could enable kids to fly, but in the original story, she wasn’t quite the Tinker Bell fans know and love today. In fact, she was “quite a common fairy” who fixed pots and pans. Peter ultimately forgets about her, and in stage performances she was simply a spotlight.
But with Kerry’s help, Tinker Bell came alive in Disney’s original animated film adaptation Peter Pan (1953). To reinvent the character, who does not speak, for film, illustrator Marc Davis spent months with Kerry, having her pantomime everything he wanted Tinker Bell to do.
“Marc Davis is a man’s man — how does he know how a three and a half-inch sprite is going to move, get angry, or stamp her foot?” Kerry told The Los Angeles Times in 2002. “And how does he know what kind of emotion would go behind that?”
In a 2003 interview with historian Jim Korkis, Kerry said for her audition, she pantomimed making breakfast with “as much variety of movement as I could do in the context of a little story.”
She got the job, and throughout the course of it, even contributed to what ultimately culminated in a scene in Peter Pan. When pantomiming what she thought it would look like if Tinker Bell landed on a mirror and saw herself, she thought perhaps she would never have seen her reflection — so began a preening once-over until she reached her hips, got upset and stormed off, The New York Times reports.
Born Margaret McCarty on May 11, 1929, in Sprinfield, Ill., her mother died in childbirth and his father was unable to take care of his five children, Parade reports. She was adopted at age 3 by Frederick and Gracy Robb, who lived in Los Angeles. The couple thought she was “as cute as Shirley Temple” and by age 4 had her in Central Casting.
She was successful in Hollywood, and even appeared in eight of the Our Gang short films about the Little Rascals. Her stage name was originally Peggy Lynch but changed her name to Margaret Kerry at Eddie Cantor’s suggestion after having played his daughter in the movie If You Knew Susie.
She married Dick Brown, a TV producer and director, in 1951. They divorced in the 1980s. Her 1987 marriage to Jack Wilcox ended with his death in 1999. She is survived by three children from her first marriage, Eric Norquist, Christina McCarty and Ellen Seibel, as well as several grandchildren.
She remarried on Valentine’s Day 2020 in a story that sounds right out of Hollywood itself. In 2019, a veteran of D-Day, Robert Boeke, visited Europe to mark its 75th anniversary. He passed a store in Amsterdam called Tinker Bell Toys and said, “I have been in love with her all my life.”
Turns out, he was being literal; Boeke and Kerry dated years ago in Los Angeles. A friend of his found her email address and sent her a note, although Boeke assumed she had forgotten him — but Kerry had saved a piece of jewelry that he had given her all those years ago, and sparks flew once again. She told author and YouTube host Jonathan Rosen, “It was love at second sight.”
Boeke lived until just two and a half weeks before Kerry’s death.
