Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#173314
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Mary Moder 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.
Mary Moder appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Mary. Three Little Pigs is the clearest case: a film rated 6.7 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, versatility, transformation. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, western, comedy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with George Sidney, David Hand, Walt Disney and others, Mary Moder 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.
Three Little Pigs (1933) as Fifer Pig (voice) · The Tortoise and the Hare (1935) as Girl Bunny (voice) (uncredited) · The Harvey Girls (1946) as Specialty Performer (uncredited)
Career snapshot
Ranked #173314 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
7
1932–1946
Career length
14 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
6.7
Three Little Pigs
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
6.9
Three Little Pigs
Most frequent director
Burt Gillett
3 films together
Longest collaboration
3×
With Burt Gillett
Most common genre
Animation
6 titles
Average runtime
0h 22m
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
6.3
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
6.4 average MV
The 1930s are where the work and the material meet. Three Little Wolves, The Golden Touch, The Tortoise and the Hare — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1930s
6.4
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1940s
6.6
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. Three Little Wolves, The Golden Touch, The Tortoise and the Hare.
Most productive era
1930s
6 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 | 1940s |
|---|---|---|
| Comedy | 6.54 films | 6.41 film |
| Romance | — | 6.41 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Singer (voice) (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
6.7 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
1946The Harvey Girls
The current state of the argument, as Specialty Performer (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.
7 of 7 films
as Fiddler Pig (voice) (uncredited)
Directed by David Hand
as Goldie (voice) (uncredited)
Directed by Walt Disney
as Fifer Pig (voice)
Directed by Burt Gillett
as Singer (voice) (uncredited)
Directed by Burt Gillett
as Fiddler Pig (voice) (uncredited)
Directed by Burt Gillett
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
Fiddler Pig (voice) (uncredited)
Three Little Wolves (1936)
Performance score6.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Fiddler Pig (voice) (uncredited) gives Mary Moder a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Goldie (voice) (uncredited)
The Golden Touch (1935)
Performance score6.9
The Golden Touch asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Goldie (voice) (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Fifer Pig (voice)
Three Little Pigs (1933)
Performance score6.9
Three Little Pigs asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Fifer Pig (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Singer (voice) (uncredited)
Babes in the Woods (1932)
Performance score6.7
Babes in the Woods asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Singer (voice) (uncredited) 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 Fiddler Pig (voice) (uncredited)
Start here. Three Little Wolves is the clearest statement of what Mary Moder does — accessible, 9 minutes, and rated 6.4 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Mary 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.
Babes in the Woods (1932)
Keeps the animation register of Three Little Wolves but asks for a colder reading of it.
Three Little Pigs (1933)
Same director as Babes in the Woods, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Big Bad Wolf (1934)
Same director as Three Little Pigs, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Golden Touch (1935)
Keeps the comedy register of The Big Bad Wolf but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Burt Gillett
Director
3 films together
Notably Three Little Pigs
Wilfred Jackson
Director
1 film together
Notably The Tortoise and the Hare
Walt Disney
Director
1 film together
Notably The Golden Touch
David Hand
Director
1 film together
Notably Three Little Wolves
George Sidney
Director
1 film together
Notably The Harvey Girls
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Burt Gillett
Director
3 films together · 6.4 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 3 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
Three Little PigsWilfred Jackson
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Tortoise and the HareGeorge Sidney
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Harvey GirlsDavid Hand
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Three Little WolvesWalt Disney
Director
1 film together · 6.4 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Golden TouchSix 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
The Harvey Girls
as Specialty Performer (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
The Tortoise and the Hare
as Girl Bunny (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
Three Little Pigs
as Fifer Pig (voice)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Harvey Girls
as Specialty Performer (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Three Little Wolves
as Fiddler Pig (voice) (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. Mary Moder 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
6 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
The Tortoise and the Hare
as Girl Bunny (voice) (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Three Little Pigs
as Fifer Pig (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Tortoise and the Hare
as Girl Bunny (voice) (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
The Tortoise and the Hare
as Girl Bunny (voice) (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
The Harvey Girls
as Specialty Performer (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
The Harvey Girls
as Specialty Performer (uncredited)
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Harvey Girls
as Specialty Performer (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Babes in the Woods
as Singer (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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