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The Big Picture
- Pixar has a track record of box-office and critical success, which can be attributed, in part, to their “good luck charm,” actor John Ratzenberger.
- John Ratzenberger’s acting career began in the 1970s, but he achieved fame for his role as Cliff Clavin in Cheers, which led to his involvement with Pixar.
- Ratzenberger became intertwined with Pixar, voicing characters in all of their films until Onward in 2020.
It would be fair to say, even without crunching numbers, that Pixar has a far better percentage of box-office and critical wins than losses, with total box-office receipts of $15,407,450,839 and only one film, Cars 2, with a Rotten rating (40% on Rotten Tomatoes, with Cars 3 the second-lowest rated at 69%). Just how have they managed to stay successful? Is it their ground-breaking animation? The imaginative and clever storylines? The deep, emotional core at the center of each film, as noted by Business Insider? Maybe, but perhaps the reason is a little more mystical in nature. Need a clue? A look at the top 10 critically-favored Pixar films on Rotten Tomatoes all have one thing in common. That one thing is Pixar’s own “good luck charm,” actor John Ratzenberger.
Who Is John Ratzenberger?
John Ratzenberger was born in 1947 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. In 1971, Ratzenberger ventured to London, England, for a vacation. What was supposed to be a sojourn turned into a 10-year stay in the country. During this time, Ratzenberger initiated his acting career and formed a traveling comedy troupe, “Sal’s Meat Market,” with Ray Hassett. His feature film debut occurred in the 1976 film The Ritz as “Patron.” Over the next six years, Ratzenberger toiled away in supporting roles in movies and on television, including “Controller No. 1” in both Superman and Superman II, a policeman in Ragtime, and perhaps his biggest “blink, and you’ll miss it” film appearance as Major Bren Derlin in a small, artsy film known as Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back.
Pixar’s good-luck charm would score some good luck of his own when he auditioned for Cheers in 1982. Ratzenberger had actually auditioned for the role of Norm Peterson, a role which fell to George Wendt. According to the book Toasting Cheers, the audition did not go well, but instead of walking out the door with his tail between his legs, Ratzenberger asked the producers if Cheers had a know-it-all bar patron character, explaining how all bars have at least one. The producers found the moment quite funny and considered the need to have a know-it-all in the show. A few days later, Ratzenberger got the call: he would play Cliff Clavin, mail carrier. In essence, Ratzenberger created his own role, the biggest of his career, for Cheers. The sitcom was a critical success with high viewership, a testament to just how well the entire cast complemented one another within the context of cleverly written scripts. Cliff and Norm would become one of the most popular pairings on the show, and Ratzenberger’s unique delivery of Cliff’s unending diatribe of trivia could not have been more perfect.
John Ratzenberger Starts With Pixar After ‘Cheers’ Ends
After Cheers ended in 1992, Ratzenberger laid low, making appearances in TV shows like Moon Over Miami and The Simpsons. Then came 1995, and yet another fortuitous event in Ratzenberger’s career: meeting with Pixar. Ratzenberger had never heard of Pixar when they approached him to voice Hamm, the piggy bank, in Toy Story but was impressed by the upstart company and their strong work ethic, commitment to quality, and how control was placed in the hands of the artists, not executives. The film was a huge hit, a home run out of the gate for Pixar, and Ratzenberger’s distinct voice-over work played into that success. Pixar followed up Toy Story with 1998’s A Bug’s Life, and again approached Ratzenberger for a role, this time as P.T. Flea, the circus ringmaster (it is also Ratzenberger’s favorite Pixar role, “because everything in his life is a crisis — he always makes me laugh.”). Monsters Inc., 2001, featured Ratzenberger in a smaller, but memorable, role as Yeti the Abominable Snowman.
By now, the public perception was that Pixar could do no wrong, and Ratzenberger, as the only common thread between the films, became intertwined with the studio. Ratzenberger and Pixar were inseparable, with each subsequent Pixar release featuring the actor in roles big and small, becoming an Easter egg of sorts with audiences waiting to hear that familiar delivery. The school of moonfish in Finding Nemo, the Underminer in The Incredibles, Mustafa the waiter in Ratatouille, Fritz in Inside Out, and many more are all voiced by Ratzenberger. Pixar and Ratzenberger even poked fun at the recurring presence of the actor in the Pixar films, when Mack the Truck is watching Ratzenberger’s appearances at the drive-in in the closing credit sequence of Cars. “They’re using the same character over and over,” Mack says as he watches the parade of automobile-ified performances, “What kind of cut-rate production is this?”
John Ratzenberger’s Last Pixar Movie Is (Unofficially) ‘Onward’
Nothing lasts forever, as they say, even a partnership as iconic as John Ratzenberger and Pixar. The 2020 film Onward was the last Pixar release to feature Ratzenberger’s voice, playing the Cyclops construction worker Fennwick. Soul, in late 2020, featured Ratzenberger’s likeness, but not his voice. Reportedly, director Pete Docter wanted to try something different, with a cameo of a character that looks like a younger, Cheers-era Ratzenberger. Apart from voicing Yeti once again for the Disney+ series Monsters at Work, it appears that the Ratzenberger/Pixar age is indeed over. There have been no comments from either as to why, with Ratzenberger’s exit seeming to have just happened, the same way his continued presence in the Pixar films “just happened.” That said, Ratzenberger has made one last Pixar-related voice-over, as Rootie in Skydance Animation’s 2022 film Luck, produced by former chief creative officer of Pixar John Lasseter.
The legacy left behind by the Ratzenberger/Pixar relationship is impressive. Pixar went from six people to become an animation powerhouse that still has the power to draw in audiences with its quality fare. The word-of-mouth success of this year’s Elemental is proof-positive of that, while 2024’s Inside Out 2 promises to be another win. As for Ratzenberger, his work on Pixar films has been lucrative, with the previously-cited The Independent indicating that he was as high as number six on the list of highest-grossing actors. And thanks to his work, it’s more than just the patrons of Cheers that know his name.
Pixar films are available for streaming exclusively on Disney+ in the U.S.
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