OU alumna provides voice of most famous 10-year-old

by Brynn Burton
Staff Writer

The phrases "Eat my shorts" and "Don't have a cow, man" are parts of pop-culture vocabulary all because of a 10-year old cartoon character named Bart Simpson. But Bart got his start not on the television screen, but at Ohio University.

Emmy Award winner Nancy Cartwright, who attended OU for two years before moving to California, started doing Bart's voice 14 years ago on the Tracy Ullman Show. The Simpsons first appeared in 1987 as a cartoon on the Ullman Show; two years later it became a series on the Fox network.

"Ever since I was Bart's age, voice-overs were what I wanted to do," Cartwright said in her book **My Life as a 10-Year Old Boy.**

Cartwright is also the voice of Todd and Rod Flanders, Nelson Muntz, Ralph Wiggum and Kearny.

She was born Oct. 26, 1960 in Kettering, Ohio, and found her niche at age 10 when she won a speech contest at her school.

According to her biography, she also won first place in the National Speech Competition in both her junior and senior years of high school.

Cartwright attended OU from 1976-1978, as an INCO major, when she was awarded the Cutler Scholarship. The Cutler Scholars Program is a merit scholarship program that is awarded to students who excel academically and have great leadership experience.

"Without OU, I wouldn't be where I am today," Cartwright said. "Without the Cutler scholarship, I would've went to a community college in Dayton."

While at OU, Cartwright competed on the speech team

"That's all I did, speech and forensics - that was my life," she said.

Cartwright said she remembers OU and her first time living in an apartment during her freshman year, having freedom and having parties.

"I finally had my own room, and I lived with five other girls who were juniors and seniors," Cartwright said. "We had parties all the time."

"Once we had a hairy buffalo party that got out of control," she said. "We had frat boys there, along with my speech team friends. One of my speech friends brought his snake, Cecilia, and at one point, my roommate had her top off."

Cartwright always enjoyed performing and was always the talent for her friends' projects, adding her voice or acting in one of their film projects, she said.

In her second year at OU, Cartwright began her relationship with her mentor, voice-over artist Daws Butler, who was the voice of Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear.

"What I remember of my conversations with Nancy at OU," said her father Frank Cartwright, "was her relationship with Butler. He encouraged her to identify her talent and told her that he couldn't help her unless she moved to L.A. to work with him."

Cartwright's father had no choice but to let her embark on her new journey at UCLA.

"On September 14, 1978, we left for UCLA. I had to let her go; it was a terrific opportunity," Cartwright's father said. "I dropped her off on campus and said 'Go get 'em kiddo.'"

Nancy spent her time at UCLA, recognizing her passion and becoming more active towards her career.

"I became really involved in theater at UCLA," Cartwright said. "I took a quarter off to continue a character in a production at a theater in Hollywood. I played a 12-year-old girl when I was 20."

An agency saw her performance and signed her to a contract.

Cartwright's career was launched after she signed the contract. She was offered a role starring in a television pilot.

"With that contract, I made more money doing that job than my father made in his life," she said.

Cartwright appeared in other cartoons including **Animainiacs,** **The Critic,** **Goof Troop,** **Pound Puppies** and **The Snorks** before auditioning for the role of Bart.

Cartwright often asked her speech-team friends to help her in creating her tapes to send to Butler.

"There is a small group of us (friends from OU) that still keep in touch and get together," Cartwright said. "We attend reunions together whenever they come up."

Cartwright's production company, Homeland Productions, is a developmental company, which oversees animation projects for television, films and the Internet.

Cartwright said she credits her success and her ability to perform in front of people to OU.

"When I have book signings or am speaking in front of four, 10 or 3,000 people, I feel like I am speaking to one person," she said. "I can do this because of what I gained from the speech team at OU."

Cartwright said she is eager to return to OU and hopes that she will be asked to participate in an event on campus.

"I would really, really like to go back, to see the campus and meet all the students," she said.