You'll Go Down in His-tor-y... About Six Feet Down, To Be Precise

(Merit for Mark)
Billy Richards has abdicated her seat in any subsequent reindeer games, dying of complications from a series of strokes at the age of 88. Richards is best remembered as the clogged nosed voice of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer in all three Rankin-Bass specials: the original, Rudolph's Shiny New Year and the 1979 summertime sequel Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July. Well-attuned ears will also recognize her as the voice of Tenderheart Bear in the first two Care Bears movies and all the female characters in The Undersea Adventures of Captain Nemo and The Toothbrush Family with Len Carlson. She made rare appearances in live action films, most notably in the 1998 horror film Bram Stoker's Shadow Builder, in which her character was attacked with an axe by Paul Soles, who had played Hermey the elf in the original Rudolph special.