Margaret Kerry, the hilarious actress and dancer who served as the model and inspiration for the Disney animators who created the fairy Tinker Bell for the 1953 classic Peter PanHe died. It was 97.
A family statement on Kerry’s Facebook page said: “It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of Margaret Kerry (Bowicki), our beloved Tinker Bell.” “Margaret passed peacefully into the arms of Jesus on June 11, 2026, in Wilmington, North Carolina. Her three beloved children, Ellen, Christina and Eric, were with her when she lost her courageous battle with lung cancer at the age of 97.”
The statement continued: “And remember, on any given night, look up at the night sky and look for the ‘second star to the right.’ When you look closely, you may notice that the star shines brighter in honor of Margaret.”
From 1949 to 1952, Kerry played daughter Sharon Ruggles on the ABC family sitcom Live Rugglesone of the first television shows that did not originate from New York, but from Hollywood. In the highly rated series finale, her character gets married and goes on their honeymoon.
As a voice actress, Kerry played the title role Cargo clutch In 1959, Space angel In 1962-1964 and Captain Fathoum In 1965 – those animations used the Syncro-Vox system, with real human lips superimposed over the mouths of the animated characters – and so on The New Three Stooges In 1965. She performed live segments with Mo Howard, Larry Fine and Joe DiRita as well. They were all affiliated with Cambria Productions, a company led by her first husband, Dick Brown.
The 5-foot-2 Kyrie starred alongside Eddie Cantor If you know Susie (1948) and was assistant dance director for the Gloria DeHaven musical I will order (1950) when her agent sent her to Disney Studios in Burbank to audition Peter PanI recalled this in a 2003 interview with Jim Korkis.
“They were looking for a young girl who was good at dancing,” she said. “How do you audition for a cartoon and a character who doesn’t speak? At home, I had a set up room, my dance room, with all these mirrors and a bar. So I got this little record player and I recorded a music record and I worked on a pantomime.” [as a 9-year-old boy] Prepare breakfast to the beat of the record; You know, carrying eggs and maybe dropping one, closing the refrigerator door with one foot, etc., with as much varied movement as I can make in the course of a little story.
“The next day I went into the studio and took the record player and recorded this 45-rpm record and did this mime. I choreographed a whole 3-and-a-half-minute routine for this old record.”
Kerry got the job, was sent to work the following Tuesday, and for the next six to nine months, she moved around “a great big soundstage that seemed to go on forever” wearing a one-piece bathing suit and her hair in a bun and watched by Mark Davis (one of Walt Disney’s Big Nine) and other animators.
“There was no one to interact with. I had to almost imagine everything,” she said. “There was the occasional prop like a giant pair of scissors or a wire-frame keyhole or something. Most of the time I was just pretending to be looking under something or walking around.”
Starring Bobby Driscoll as Peter, Catherine Beaumont as Wendy Darling, and Hans Conried as Captain Hook. Peter Pan It was screened in competition at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival and was a huge box office success.
Later, Tinker Bell became the mascot of Disneyland, sprinkling her magic dust at the beginning of the series. The wonderful world of Disney.
“They liked the character I came up with,” she said in a 2020 interview. “She’s feisty, I call her tricky. You like her if she’s very bad, you love her if she’s very good.”
Margaret McCarty was born on May 11, 1929 in Springfield, Illinois. After her mother died during childbirth, her father was unable to care for their five children, and she and two of her siblings were put up for adoption. With her new parents, Fred and Grace, her name was changed to Peggy Lynch, and the family moved to Los Angeles when she was three years old.
She appeared as a fairy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) — “Mickey Rooney dragged me into this little two-inch-deep stream on the set so I’d be safe from any flames,” she said after a studio light caught fire — and in Our Gang comedy shorts and took dance lessons from Nico Charisse, Sid Charisse’s husband.
Featured in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) and Star maker (1939) and was a replacement for Elizabeth Taylor in National velvet (1944), then danced and sang as the daughter of Cantor and Joan Davis’ characters in If you know Susie. It was Cantor who gave her the stage name Margaret Kerry.
During the making of the film, in which Driscoll plays her brother, she completed her studies at Benjamin Franklin Senior High School and later graduated from Los Angeles City College.
After starring as a host/co-performer on the local TV show Tele teen reporterproduced and hosted by Al Burton, Kerry has arrived the Ruggles. The series stars Charlie Ruggles as her father, Erin Tedrow, Erin O’Brien Moore as her mother, and Tom Bernard as her brother Chuck. It’s a wonderful life Cast Jimmy Hawkins and Judy Nugget as her twin siblings Donald and Donna. The family home had one bathroom, which created all kinds of chaos.
the Ruggles It ran for 137 episodes over approximately 32 months, with the actors doing one episode straight for the East Coast, then a break for dinner and then another straight episode for the West Coast. “And we’ve never heard of a cue card,” she said.
Keri pointed out that she had just won the “Most Beautiful Legs in Hollywood” contest when she went to work Peter Pan.
“You remember the scene where [Tinker Bell] “Falls backwards into Wendy’s dresser drawer?” Corkes asked. “Well, they had me fall backwards onto a mattress. The mattress was about half an inch thick, or at least it looked that thick, and I fell backwards and crashed. The look of surprise and pain on my face was identical to what Tink had in the final movie.
Tinker Bell does not speak in the film, but Kerry is heard – as the red-headed mermaid – and this is what launched her voice acting career.
Kerry also appeared in a 1950 episode of the series The lone guard And in two installments of the first season of The Andy Griffith Showin “A Christmas Story” in the 1960s as Bess Maggins and in “Andy Furclose” in 1961 as Helen Scobie.
Most recently, she was a motivational speaker, producer, writer, and show host for a Los Angeles-based Christian radio station from 1992 to 2004. Her biography, Tinker Bell Talks: Tales from the Life of a Dusty Elfpublished in 2016.
Kerry was married to Brown from 1951 until their divorce in 1984, and was her manager Ruggles When they first met – and to John H. Wilcox from 1987 until his death in 1999.
She then reconnected with Robert Buckey — a retired Mobil Oil executive and her boyfriend of seven decades — and married him on Valentine’s Day in 2020 (she had kept a bracelet he had given her all those years ago). He died on May 24, 2026.
Survivors include her children, Eric, Christina and Elaine;
Corkes asked her what she thought when she saw Peter Pan She answered for the first time: “Like everyone else, I was mesmerized. It’s a very happy movie. When you look at that screen, there’s me. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s been a blessing.”
