Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore Sterling Holloway elected not to continue the role of Pooh and Sebastian Cabot, the original narrator, died shortly after the release of the feature film "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh". The deaths of Junius Matthews in 1978 and Barbara Luddy in 1979 also necessitated changes in Rabbit's and Kanga's portrayers; Will Ryan began a three-year stint as Rabbit's voice in this featurette while Julie McWhirter portrayed Kanga only once. Additionally, Laurie Main, Hal Smith, Will Ryan, and Kim Christianson later appear in the live-action series "Welcome to Pooh Corner" as the Narrator, Winnie the Pooh, Owl, Rabbit, and
Winnie-the-Pooh Fry as Winnie-the-Pooh, Jane Horrocks as Piglet, Geoffrey Palmer as Eeyore, and Judi Dench as Kanga. In the Soviet Union, three Winnie-the-Pooh, (transcribed in Russian as ""Vinni Pukh"") (Russian language: ) stories were made into a celebrated trilogy of short films by Soyuzmultfilm (directed by Fyodor Khitruk) from 1969 to 1972, after being granted permission by Disney to make their own adaptation in a gesture of Cold War détente. Films use Boris Zakhoder's translation of the book. Pooh was voiced by Yevgeny Leonov. Unlike the Disney adaptations, the animators did not base their depictions of the characters on Shepard's illustrations,