Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#335157
of 909177 performers
Top 50%
Bernice Hansen works on quiet performance rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Bernice Hansen appears in 3 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Bernice. Peace on Earth is the clearest case: a film rated 6.6 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, emotional range, comedy. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for war, animation, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Hugh Harman, Wilfred Jackson, Tex Avery, Bernice Hansen helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Peace on Earth (1939) as Baby Squirrel (uncredited) · I Love to Singa (1936) as Fat Chicken Singer (voice) · Elmer Elephant (1936) as Tillie Tiger (voice) (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #335157 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
3
1936–1939
Career length
3 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.6
Peace on Earth
Average Nutevio score
6.5
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.1
Peace on Earth
Most frequent director
Hugh Harman
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Hugh Harman
Most common genre
Animation
3 titles
Average runtime
0h 8m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.2
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1930s
6.5 average MV
The 1930s are where the work and the material meet. Peace on Earth, Elmer Elephant, I Love to Singa — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1930s
6.5
Across 3 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1930s
6.7
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1930s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Peace on Earth, Elmer Elephant, I Love to Singa.
Most productive era
1930s
3 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1930s |
|---|---|
| Comedy | 6.42 films |
| Romance | 6.31 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio · Career peak
1936Elmer Elephant
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Tillie Tiger (voice) (uncredited). Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Highest rated performance · Most recent film
1939Peace on Earth
6.6 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. The current state of the argument, as Baby Squirrel (uncredited).
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
3 of 3 films
as Baby Squirrel (uncredited)
Directed by Hugh Harman
as Tillie Tiger (voice) (uncredited)
Directed by Wilfred Jackson
as Fat Chicken Singer (voice)
Directed by Tex Avery
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
Baby Squirrel (uncredited)
Peace on Earth (1939)
Performance score7.0
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Baby Squirrel (uncredited) gives Bernice Hansen a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Tillie Tiger (voice) (uncredited)
Elmer Elephant (1936)
Performance score7.0
Elmer Elephant asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Tillie Tiger (voice) (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Fat Chicken Singer (voice)
I Love to Singa (1936)
Performance score6.7
I Love to Singa asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Fat Chicken Singer (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Baby Squirrel (uncredited)
Start here. Peace on Earth is the clearest statement of what Bernice Hansen does — accessible, 9 minutes, and rated 6.6 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Bernice at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Elmer Elephant (1936)
Keeps the animation register of Peace on Earth but asks for a colder reading of it.
I Love to Singa (1936)
Keeps the comedy register of Elmer Elephant but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Hugh Harman
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Peace on EarthTex Avery
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
I Love to SingaWilfred Jackson
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Elmer ElephantSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Peace on Earth
as Baby Squirrel (uncredited)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
Elmer Elephant
as Tillie Tiger (voice) (uncredited)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Peace on Earth
as Baby Squirrel (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
I Love to Singa
as Fat Chicken Singer (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Peace on Earth
as Baby Squirrel (uncredited)
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Bernice Hansen has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Animation Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in animation, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Peace on Earth
as Baby Squirrel (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Peace on Earth
as Baby Squirrel (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Elmer Elephant
as Tillie Tiger (voice) (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Elmer Elephant
as Tillie Tiger (voice) (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Peace on Earth
as Baby Squirrel (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
I Love to Singa
as Fat Chicken Singer (voice)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Elmer Elephant
as Tillie Tiger (voice) (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Elmer Elephant
as Tillie Tiger (voice) (uncredited)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
Community
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Reference
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