Melvin Jerome Blanc (May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) was a prolific American voice actor, performing on radio, in television commercials, and most famously, in hundreds of cartoon shorts for Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera during the Golden Age of American animation. He is often regarded as one of the most gifted and influential persons in his field, providing the definitive voices for iconic characters such as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and Barney Rubble among hundreds of others. His talents earned him the nickname, "The Man of a Thousand Voices".
Biography
[edit] Early years and radio work
Born in San Francisco, California, he grew up in Portland, Oregon, attending Lincoln High School. At 16, he changed the spelling of his last name, from "Blank". Blanc was working as a voice actor in radio when his ability to create voices for multiple characters first attracted attention. He was a regular on the Jack Benny Program in various roles, including Benny's automobile (a Maxwell in desperate need of a tune up), violin teacher Professor LeBlanc, Polly the Parrot, Benny's pet polar bear Carmichael, and the tormented department store clerk.
Blanc's success on the Jack Benny Program led to his own radio show on the CBS radio network, The Mel Blanc Show, which ran from September 3, 1946 to June 24, 1947. Blanc played himself as the hapless owner of a fix-it shop, in addition to a wide range of comical support characters. Other regular characters were played by Mary Jane Croft, Joseph Kearns, Hans Conried, Alan Reed, Earle Ross, Jim Backus and Bea Benaderet.
Blanc also appeared on other national radio programs such as The Abbott and Costello Show, Burns and Allen as the Happy Postman, August Moon on Point Sublime, Sad Sack on G.I. Journal, and later played various small parts on Benny's television show. One of Blanc's most memorable routines from Benny's radio and TV programs is called "Sy, the little Mexican" in which he spoke one word at a time. The famous "Sí...Sy...sew...Sue" routine was so effective that no matter how many times it was performed, the laughter was always there, thanks to the comedic timing of Blanc and Benny. At times, sharp-eyed audience members (and later, TV viewers) could see Benny struggling to keep a straight face; Blanc's absolutely dead-pan delivery was a formidable challenge for him.
Another famous Blanc schtick on Jack's show was the train Depot announcer who inevitably intoned, sidelong: "Train leaving on Track Five for Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga". Part of that joke was the Angelino studio audience's awareness that no such train existed connecting those then-small towns (years before Disneyland opened). To the wider audience, the primary joke was the pregnant pause that evolved over time between "Cuc.." and "...amonga" -- eventually minutes would pass while the skit went on, the audience awaiting the inevitable conclusion of the word. On at least one occasion, a completely different skit followed before the inevitable "...amonga" finally appeared. For his contribution to radio, Mel Blanc has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6385 Hollywood Blvd.
[edit] Animation voice work during the Golden Age of Hollywood
Mel Blanc joined Leon Schlesinger Studios (which made animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures) in 1936. Mel liked to tell the story about how he got turned down at the Schlesinger studio by music director Norman Spencer who was in charge of cartoon voices saying that they had all the voices they needed. Then Spencer died and sound man Treg Brown took over. (Carl Stalling took over as music director.) Brown introduced Blanc to the animation directors (Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng and Frank Tashlin) who loved Mel's voices. The first cartoon Blanc worked on was Picador Porky as the voice of a drunken bull. He took over as Porky Pig's voice in Porky's Duck Hunt which marked the debut of Daffy Duck also voiced by Blanc. He soon became noted for voicing a wide variety of cartoon characters, adding Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, Pepé Le Pew and many others. His natural voice was that of Sylvester the cat but without the lispy spray (it can be heard in an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies, which also featured frequent Blanc vocal foil Bea Benaderet; in his small appearance, Blanc plays a vexed cab-driver).
Though his best-known character was a carrot-chomping rabbit, Blanc himself did not like the taste of raw carrots, as he noted in his autobiography. Additionally, munching on the carrots interrupted the dialogue. Various substitutes, such as celery, were tried, but none of them sounded like a carrot. So for the sake of expedience as well as personal taste, he would munch and then spit the carrot bits into a spittoon rather than swallowing them, and continue with the dialogue. One oft-repeated story is that he was allergic to carrots and had to spit them out to minimize any allergic reaction; but his autobiography makes no such claim; in fact, in a 1984 interview with Tim Lawson, co-author of The Magic Behind The Voices: A Who's Who of Cartoon Voice Actors (University Press of Mississippi, 2004), Blanc emphatically denied being allergic to carrots.
Blanc said his most challenging job was voicing Yosemite Sam; it was rough on the throat because of Sam’s sheer volume. (Foghorn Leghorn's voice was similar, and similarly raucous.) Late in life, he reprised several of his classic voices for Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but deferred to Joe Alaskey to do Yosemite Sam's voice.
Blanc's long association with the Warner Brothers theatrical cartoons was in contrast with the primarily television-oriented careers of such voice actors as Daws Butler and Don Messick. Although Butler and Messick both had voice roles in MGM theatrical cartoons (Butler being the southern talking wolf who always whistled and Don at times being "Droopy"), the two made far fewer theatrical shorts than Blanc. A closer parallel to Blanc's career can be found in that of Paul Frees, who did substantial voice work for films as well as television.
Throughout his career, Blanc was well aware of his talents and protected the rights to them contractually and legally. He (and later, his estate) did not hesitate to take civil action when his contractual rights were violated. Voice actors tended to get no screen credits at all. Blanc was a notable exception. By 1944, his contract stipulated a credit reading "Voice characterization by Mel Blanc". Blanc asked for and received screen credit from studio boss Leon Schlesinger as he objected to a pay raise.[1] Other frequent Warner voice artists such as Arthur Q. Bryan (Elmer Fudd) and Bea Benaderet (many female voices) remained uncredited on-screen. Blanc's screen credit was noticed by radio show producers who gave Blanc more radio work as a result.
[edit] Benny/Bugsy crossover
The Warner cartoons were filled with references to the popular media of film and radio, including references to the Jack Benny program, whose various gags frequently found their way into Warner scripts, voiced by Blanc. For example:
Bugs was known for repeating Benny's catchphrase, "Now cut that out!"
The "Anaheim, Azusa and Cuc...amonga" joke was used by Daffy Duck.
Frank Nelson's "Yessss?" would be invoked by minor characters from time to time.
Blanc's imitations of sputtering cars, squawking parrots, whinnying horses, etc., would be invoked frequently in both series.
He used his various Mexican stereotypes frequently in both series.
On the March 23, 1954 episode of Benny's radio program, Benny encounters Bugs Bunny in a dream.
[edit] Car accident and aftermath
On January 24, 1961, Blanc was involved in a near-fatal auto accident on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. Hit head-on, Blanc suffered a triple skull fracture that left him in a coma for three weeks, along with fractures of both legs and the pelvis.
The accident prompted over 15,000 get-well cards from anxious fans, including some addressed only to "Bugs Bunny, Hollywood, USA", according to Blanc's autobiography. One newspaper falsely reported that he had died. After his recovery, Blanc reported in TV interviews, and later in his autobiography, that a clever doctor had helped him to come out of his coma by talking to Bugs Bunny, after futile efforts to talk directly to Blanc. Although he had no actual recollection of this, Blanc learned that when the doctor was inspired to ask him, "How are you today, Bugs Bunny?", Blanc answered in Bugs' voice. Blanc thus credited Bugs with saving his life.
Blanc returned home from the UCLA Medical Center on March 17 to the cheers of more than 150 friends and neighbors. On March 22, he filed a $500,000 lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles. His accident, one of 26 in the preceding two years at the intersection, resulted in the city quickly providing money to reconstruct curves at the dangerous corner.
At the time of the accident, Blanc served as the voice of Barney Rubble on ABC's The Flintstones. His absence from the show would be relatively brief; Daws Butler provided the voice of Rubble for a few episodes, after which the show's producers set up recording equipment in Blanc's house to allow him to work from his residence. He also returned to The Jack Benny Program to film the program's 1961 Christmas show, moving around via crutches and/or a wheelchair.
[edit] Voice work for Hanna-Barbera and others
In the early 1960s, after the expiration of his exclusive contract with Warner Bros., Blanc went to Hanna-Barbera and continued to voice various characters, with Barney Rubble from The Flintstones (whose dopey laugh is very similar to Foghorn Leghorn's booming chuckle) and Mr. Spacely from The Jetsons (similar to Yosemite Sam, but not as raucous) being his most famous. Daws Butler and Don Messick were Hanna-Barbera's top voice men and Blanc was the newcomer to H-B. However, all of the 1930s and 1940s theatrical cartoons from Warner Brothers were making their way to Saturday morning TV to compete with the made-for-TV Hanna-Barberas and Blanc was once more deemed relevant. Blanc did these voices plus the ones he did for the ensemble cartoons like Wacky Races and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop for Hanna-Barbera. Blanc even shared the spotlight with his two professional rivals and personal friends, Daws Butler and Don Messick. In a short called Lippy the Lion, Butler was Lippy while Blanc was his side-kick, Hardy Har-Har. In the short Ricochet Rabbit, Messick provided the voice of the gun slinging rabbit while Blanc was his sidekick, Deputy Droop-a-Long. In addition, Blanc was the first person to play Toucan Sam in Froot Loops commercials, using a slightly cartoonish version of his own natural voice. The ad agency later decided to give Sam an upper-crust English accent, and replaced Blanc with Paul Frees.
Blanc reprised some of his Warner Bros. characters when the studio contracted to make first-run cartoon shorts for TV in the late '60s. For these, Blanc primarily voiced Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales or Tweety and Sylvester (since he was forbidden by Hanna-Barbera to voice Bugs Bunny).
[edit] Later career and death
Blanc was one of hundreds of individuals that George Lucas auditioned to provide the voice for the character of C-3PO for his 1977 motion picture Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, and it was he who ultimately suggested that the producers use mime actor Anthony Daniels' own voice in the role.
Mel Blanc's gravesite marker.
The Looney Tunes pay tribute to Mel.After spending most of two seasons voicing the robot Twiki in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Blanc's last original character was an orange cat named Heathcliff, who spoke a little like his famed Bugs Bunny but with a more street tough demeanor, in the early 1980s. Blanc continued to voice his famous characters in commercials and TV specials for most of the decade, although he increasingly left the "yelling" characters like Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn and the Tasmanian Devil to other voice actors as performing these were too hard on his throat and voice by the time of his old age in the 1980s. One of his last recording sessions was for a new animated theatrical version of The Jetsons, Jetsons: The Movie.
Blanc's death from cardiovascular disease at age 81 was considered a significant loss to the cartoon industry because of his skill, expressive range, and the sheer volume of continuing characters he portrayed, which are currently taken up by several other voice talents; no one individual can currently match the vocal range Blanc was able to establish. Indeed, as movie critic Leonard Maltin once pointed out, "it is astounding to realize that Tweety Bird and Yosemite Sam are the same man!". That range was partially aided by recording technology. For instance, Blanc's standard Daffy Duck voice is essentially his Sylvester voice played back a few percent faster than it was recorded to give it a higher pitch. Blanc would later develop the skill to reproduce such "sped up" voices himself live as necessary. Other character voices that were given this special treatment included Porky Pig, Henery Hawk, and Speedy Gonzales.
After his death, Blanc's voice continued to be heard in newly released properties. In particular, a recording of his Dino the dinosaur bark from the 1960s Flintstones series was used in the 1994 live-action theatrical film based upon the series. This resulted in legal action against the film studio by the Blanc estate, which claimed his recordings were used without permission or proper credit. Less problematic was the retention of older recordings of Blanc as Uncle Orville and a pet bird in the 1994 update of the Carousel of Progress attraction at Walt Disney World, despite cast changes in other roles. Blanc's distinctive voice can still be heard in the Audio-Animatronic presentation.
Blanc died in Los Angeles, California, and is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California. Blanc's will stated his desire to have the inscription on his gravestone read, "THAT'S ALL FOLKS", considered by some to be one of the most famous epitaphs in the world.
Blanc trained his son, Noel, in the field of voice characterization. While Noel Blanc has performed his father's characters (particularly Porky Pig) on some programs, he chose not to become a full-time voice artist.
