Brian Cummings: Actor Gives Voice to Characters

Aberdeen native has had roles in movies, shows and video games

By Scott Waltman
Aberdeen American News
Published in 2012

Ever since he was a youngster in Aberdeen, Brian Cummings has found a way to use his voice to his benefit.

In his youth, it ingratiated him to classmates, entertained neighbors, kept him out of trouble and provided an admitted nerd a way to make bullies chuckle and, as a result, escape their wrath.

And in adulthood, it’s helped him pay the bills.

Cummings said he discovered early in life that his impressions were a hit and that he had a knack for funny and entertaining voices. The 1966 Central High School graduate has parlayed his voice into a career in radio and voice acting. He left Aberdeen in the late 1960s for a radio gig in Sioux Falls and made a couple of other stops, mostly on the Great Plains, before moving to the Los Angeles area in the mid-1970s.

Now he and his wife, Carla, are settling into a new home near Denver. They have eight children, one of whom still lives at home.

Growing up in Aberdeen, Cummings was involved in drama and took a liking to music. He said the fine arts have a way of drawing in students who might not be considered terribly popular in high school. There might have been, he said, an instance or two when classmates noticed him talking to himself as he practiced his voices.

“Voice people were the world’s first geeks before there were techno geeks,” he said.

As a junior in high school, he responded to an advertisement seeking a college student to do some weekend work at KSDN radio. He got the job, perhaps because the station believed that by hiring a local high school kid, it could get six years of service out of him as opposed to four years by hiring a freshman at what was then called Northern State College, he said.

Ultimately, Cummings moved on after a few years. Later, when he headed to California, his hopes were that some comedy and radio work would lead to a television situation comedy. Instead, as the 1970s came to a close, Cummings found himself doing less live radio, and more voice acting. By the early 1980s, he was starting to do a fair amount of credited voice work, including voicing President Richard Nixon in the 1980 film “Where the Buffalo Roam,” a semi-autobiographical movie on the life of Hunter S. Thompson in which Bill Murray played the gonzo journalist.

Most of Cummings’ work, though, has been for animated movies, cartoons and video games. He was the voice of Doofus Drake in “Duck Tales,” Dr. Mindbender in “G.I. Joe: The Movie” and the Papa Q. Bear in “The Berenstain Bears.” He was Stove in the movie “Beauty and the Beast.” He also voiced multiple characters for the TV shows “2 Stupid Dogs” and “The California Raisin Show.” Work on the shows “Wuzzles,” “The Jetsons,” “Snorks,” “Rugrats,” “Garfield and Friends,” “Animaniacs” and “Batman” are also among his credits. And he did voice work for two episodes of “Saturday Night Live” in the early 2000s.

There have been some close calls in parts in what turned out to be very successful movies in Cummings’ career. For instance, he said, he voiced the character Iago for the film “Aladdin,” but producers decided that they wanted an edgier sound and hired Gilbert Gottfried for the part. And he did significant voice work for the 1992 movie “Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest.” Before producers landed Robin Williams at the last minute to voice the character Cummings was working on. Cumming is still credited in the movie, though.

Nowadays, the makers of animated movies have grown infatuated with hiring celebrities and actors to do voices in animated films, Cummings said. He understands the appeal, but said the trend cuts into the roles available to voice actors.

“They are so enamored with celebrities that they want celebs for even small roles,” he said.

Through the years, Cummings has worked with a host of celebrities, including while he was still in the radio industry. Before his time in California, Cummings worked at a radio station in Nashville where the weatherman was Pat Sajak and Oprah Winfrey was a young reporter.

For all the shoulder rubbing, though, Cummings said one of the highlights of his career was meeting and becoming friends with a voice actor most folks likely haven’t heard of. Cummings said Daws Butler, best known for his work with Hanna-Barbera cartoons, served as his mentor. Butler voiced characters like Yogi Bear, Snagglepuss, Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw.

Cummings said that a YouTube video he voiced and on which a friend did the digital work embodies what he learned from Butler. The Christmas-themed, ad-libbed video is called “The Trashpicker” and, Cummings said, it felt like Butler was speaking through him as he voiced the character.

Because gaming has become so popular, Cummings said, his voice work for video games, especially that of Dr. Mindbender in the G.I. Joe games, might be what he’s become best known for by the public. He also voiced about a dozen characters for the game EverQuest II.

In doing Mindbender’s voice, Cummings said, he didn’t think the character would become terribly notable. Instead, it’s become a fan favorite.

Cummings did advance voice work — reading the part of John Goodman’s character Pacha to give producers an idea of what they could expect in the movie — for “The Emperor’s New Groove.” That led to his landing work voicing Pacha in the spinoff animated television show “The Emperor’s New School.” And because he can do a solid Goodman impression, Cummings did voice work for Goodman-based products associated with the movie “Monsters Inc.”

Now, removed from California, Cummings said he likely won’t do as much studio work. Animators like voice actors in the studio, though, so he will still return to Los Angeles to do some of that. But, with the Internet, he will also be able to do a lot of voice work from his still-under-construction home studio, he said.

In 2011, Cummings was inducted into the South Dakota Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, largely for his work at KIMM Radio in Rapid City. That was the last time he was back to Aberdeen. And, he said, as he was leaving town for the induction ceremony in Sioux Falls, he stopped at a truck stop to fill up with gas when a woman recognized him.

“I know who you are,” Cummings said the woman told him. “You’re the brother of the guy who works for the radio station.”

The woman then mentioned how beloved Les, an Aberdeen radio veteran of nearly 40 years who followed his brother into the radio business, is. It’s a comment that Brian Cummings said still means a lot to him.

He said he never worked with the other well-known voice actor from Aberdeen, Wally Wingert, 51, a fellow CHS grad who has done voice work for “Family Guy” and “The Simpsons” among other shows. The two men have worked for some of the same shows and some of the same people, but never together.

“One of these days, it’ll happen,” Cummings said.