#17 - Shelby Flint and Eva Gabor as Disembodied Voice and Miss Bianca - The Rescuers (1977)
Best Song: Someone's Waiting For You
I love The Rescuers. I think that it's one of the truly underappreciated, overlooked classics of the Disney canon, and it's one of my Top 10 animated films ever. I think it is a beautiful movie, for many reasons - the art design being a large factor in this, yes, but another chief reason is just the sound of it. The entire film not only looks and feels like a cohesive whole, it sounds like one. The muted, understated performances of Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor give The Rescuers a truly unique character in the canon, and the extra-narrative songs sung by Shelby Flint are underrated gems in their own right.
First of all, we have Eva Gabor's Bianca, who, somewhat similarly to Nala, is kind of overshadowed a little bit. But she's the perfect complement to Bob Newhart's voice - there's something about both of them that is both strangely and beautifully understated, and really adds to the connection between the two characters beyond what's actually on the page. Though, like Nala, perhaps not the most memorable of characters or performances, it's something subtle that simply works for me. I've only seen The Rescuers a handful of times compared to the Disney Renaissance films, as I only saw it for the first time a few years ago, but even though it's been a couple years since the last time, I can still hear what their voices sounded like in my head with tremendous clarity.
And then there's Shelby Flint with the songs. One of the only pitfalls that obstructs me from putting this ranking higher is really that this is another oddball ranking that I'm cheating with a little bit, as these really are two separate people accomplishing two entirely separate things. (I swear, the upper echelons of this list are more normal things you all will have been waiting for.) But for such a forgotten soundtrack, there are some great songs here - especially the beautiful "Someone's Waiting For You" - and their success in the context of the film is in large part due to Shelby Flint's similarly understated singing voice and gorgeously-nuanced performance of said songs.
So while this may not make anybody else on the planet's list, I really wanted to make it come across how memorable these two really made The Rescuers for me, and I would've been remiss to not give them an honorary position near the opening of this list. The movie truly wouldn't've been the same without them, despite so many other good things about it. Seriously, if you haven't seen The Rescuers recently, and don't really remember it, I'd implore you to watch it again. For my money, it really is a minor Disney masterpiece.