Velma is the brainy wallflower who solves mysteries with her teenage friends, and a cowardly but lovable Great Dane, in the TV cartoon series Scooby Doo, Where Are You! (1969) and its long series of follow-ups. These include other TV series, made-for-TV and -video movies and two big-budget live-action theatrical films in which Velma is played by a ...
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Velma is the brainy wallflower who solves mysteries with her teenage friends, and a cowardly but lovable Great Dane, in the TV cartoon series Scooby Doo, Where Are You! (1969) and its long series of follow-ups. These include other TV series, made-for-TV and -video movies and two big-budget live-action theatrical films in which Velma is played by a flesh-and-blood actress (Linda Cardellini) alongside a computer-animated Scooby-Doo.Velma's most memorable attribute is that she's blind as a bat whenever she loses her glasses--which, given the requirements of a comedy show, she does often. Her nasal cry-- My glasses! I can't find my glasses! --still rings in the ears of every child who has heard it.Like her teenage friends, little is known about Velma outside her adventures in crime-solving. Later cartoon makers have tried to fill in the details, but have only proven that the less we're allowed to guess about her, the less interesting she is. Parodists, for instance, infer from her mannish appearance that she's a lesbian, perhaps the lover of Daphne, the prettier and more feminine member of the gang. This kind of speculation becomes idle and tedious when the live-action movies make their own jokes about it.Nicole Jaffe was the first voice actress to play Velma and has continued to do so occasionally into this century. A number of other women have played her, including Mindy Cohn, best known as Natalie on The Facts of Life (1979).
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