Ernest John Morris
Ernest John Morris, professionally known as Johnny Morris (1916-1999) was a British actor and voice actor. He is best-known for his role in the BBC children’s series Animal Magic, in which he appeared alongside animals and narrated comic dialogues for the animals. This programme ran from 1962-1983. In 1960, he also narrated the Canadian-produced Tales from the Riverbank series which also involved real animals in humanised surroundings.
For Dorling Kindersley Vision, Johnny Morris narrated all ten episodes of See How They Grow that released in Britain – the Sony Wonder releases in America replaced his narration with that of a group of several actors and actresses. In the first five episodes, the narration is almost all done in the same voice (a distinct voice is put on for some animal dialogues, such as for the ducks in Pond Animals). In the latter five episodes, he used far more distinctive voices for each animal to separate them from his narration segments. He was known to have a fear of spiders and refused to appear alongside them in Animal Magic, but he narrated two segments with spiders in See How They Grow – spider in Mini Beasts and tarantula in Desert Animals.