R.I.P Heather North Kenney · 5:05pm Dec 20th, 2017
Well, apparently, she's been dead for almost a month now, but no one knew about it until today. Heather North Kenney (or just Heather North), the voice of Daphne Blake from the second season of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? all the way up to her retirement from the role in 1997, died on November 30 after a long illness, She was 70 years old.
Heather took over the role of Daphne from the original voice actor, Indira Stefanianna Christopherson in the show's second season, when Indira left for another job. Heather remained a regular on the franchise consistently through the 1970's and 1980's, only being absent from A Pup Named Scooby-Doo which ran from 1988 to 1991. After lending her voice to the character in a Johnny Bravo crossover episode in 1997, Heather retired and the role of Daphne passed to the late great Mary Kay Bergman (after her suicide in early November 1999, the role was recast to her student, Grey DeLisle now Grey Griffin, who has voiced Daphne ever since). However, Heather did come out of retirement briefly for two direct to video Scooby-Doo movies in 2002 and 2003 (which featured all of the original voice actors, minus Don Messick had who passed away in 1997).
Married to the producer of the NBC daytime drama known as "Days of Our Lives" from 1971 until her husband's death in 2015, Heather had a role in the show as Dr. Sandy Horton, and had a few other roles in her television career.
She now joins fellow co-stars Don Messick and Casey Kasem, in the final resting place of super slueths up above.
Rest in peace North. You shall be missed.
Good heavens, that's terrible! Now the only ones left are Nicole Jaffe and Frank Welker!
4754302
Indeed.
Well, it's true that death is inevitable but still, all these deaths in a single year gets more than a little disheartening. Pretty much the ONLY death I was happy to hear about this year was that of Charles Manson (but, given he was one of the most infamous serial killers in American history, I don't think ANY sane person would be sad about HIS death).
But, yeah, it IS pretty sad news for classic cartoon fans. Somehow, I have a bad feeling about what other legends might be passing away both before the end of THIS year AND NEXT year.
4754723 I swear, if somehow we lose Frank Welker or Jim Cummings in 2018, I will be so mad! They are the only ones left who can stand among the ranks of cartoon voice actors that span the generations.
4754752
All too true.
Oh I posted about this on Facebook, I wasn't a huge fan of Scooby Doo,(But I did like two movies, Scooby Doo And The Cyber Chase and Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island these two are classics) I did like Scrappy Doo though.