Mel Blanc

Melvin Jerome Blanc, better known as Mel Blanc, (May 30, 1908 - July 10, 1989) was a famous American voice actor for many animation studios, primarily the Warner Brothers and Hanna-Barbera studios.

Early Career
Blanc's ability to create voices for multiple characters first attracted attention when he worked as a voice actor in radio. 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, and Benny's pet polar bear Carmichael. Blanc also appeared on other national radio programs such as Burns and Allen as the Happy Postman, August Moon on Point Sublime, Sad Sack on G.I. Journal, Floyd Munson the barber on The Great Gildersleeve (in the earliest episodes only, relinquishing the role to his cartoon co-star Arthur Q. Bryan), and later played various small parts on Benny's television show. Blanc's most famous role on Benny's TV show, a role which he originated on radio, was as "Sy, the Mexican" in which he spoke one word at a time. The famous 'si-sy-sue' routine was so hilarious that no matter how many times it was performed, the laughter was always there. Another famous Blanc role on Jack's show was the Train Depot announcer who always said the phrase: "Train leaving on Track Five for Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga". What made that phrase so funny was the spacing between "Cu.." and "...camonga" -- sometimes minutes would pass while the skit went on, the audience waiting the inevitable conclusion of the word.

Warner Bros.
Mel Blanc joined Leon Schlesinger Studios (the subsidiary of Warner Brothers Pictures which produced animated cartoons) in 1936. He soon became noted for voicing a wide variety of cartoon characters, including Bugs Bunny, Tweety Bird, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and many others. His natural voice was that of Sylvester the cat but without the lispy spray (you can hear it 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 had a severe distaste for carrots. No other vegetable produced the desired crunch, however, so Blanc would chomp a raw carrot, say his lines, and then hawk a mouthful of chewed carrot in a convenient wastebasket. He also once claimed to dislike doing the voice of Yosemite Sam; it was rough on the throat.

Blanc's long association with the theatrical cartoons of Warner Brothers gave him an edge over the made-for-TV voice actors like the two greats Daws Butler and Don Messick. Although Daws and Don both had voice roles in MGM theatrical cartoons {Daws being the southern talking wolf who always whistled and Don at times being "Droopy"}, the two didn't do as many theatricals as Mel.

After Warner
In the early 1960s Mel 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 being his most famous. Daws Butler and Don Messick were Hanna-Barbera's top voice men and Mel was the newcomer to H-B. However, all of the 1930s and 190s theatrical cartoons from Warner Brothers were making their way to Saturday morning TV to compete with the made-for-TV Hanna-Barberas and Mel was once more deemed relevant. Warner Bros then started to make first-run cartoon shorts for TV in the late '60s, mostly shorts consisting of Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales or Tweety and Sylvester. Mel did these voices, plus the ones he did for the ensemble cartoons like The Perils of Penelope Pitstop for Hanna-Barbera. Mel even shared the spotlight with his two rivals and personal friends Daws Butler and Don Messick. In the series "Lippy the Lion", Daws was Lippy while Mel was his side-kick, Hardy Har-Har. In the "Ricochet Rabbit" TV shorts, Don provided the voice of the gunslinging rabbit while Mel was his sidekick, Deputy Droop-a-Long.

Last Voices
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 called Heathcliff, who spoke a little like his famed Bugs Bunny but with a more street tough demeanor. This was the early 1980s. Mel 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.

Death
Blanc died in Los Angelea, California at age 81 of Cardivascular disease.

Legacy
His death was considered a significant loss to the cartoon industry because of his skill, expressive range, and the sheer number of characters he portrayed, which must now be taken up by others as no one person can match his vocal range. That range was aided with technology. For instance, his Daffy Duck voice is essentially his Sylvester voice played at a higher play speed on the recording tape to give it a higher pitch although he would later learn the skill to reproduce such "sped" voices himself live.

After his death, Blanc's voice continued to be heard in new productions. In particular, a recording of him doing Dino the dinosaur's bark from the 1960s Flintstones series was utilized in the 1994 live-action theatrical film based upon the series, which led to legal action against the film studio by Blanc's estate, which claimed his recordings were used without permission or proper credit.

That's All Folks
Blanc was born in San Francisco, California and died in Los Angeles, California at age 81.

Funeral
He is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California. The inscription on his gravestone, one of the most famous epitaphs in the world, reads, "That's all, folks! Mel Blanc Man of a 1000 voices Beloved Father and Husband 1908-1989."

List of characters and year he first voiced them

 * Porky Pig (1937, assumed from Joe Dougherty)
 * Daffy Duck (1938)
 * Bugs Bunny (1940)
 * Woody Woodpecker (1940)
 * Tweety Bird (1942)
 * The Hep Cat (1942)
 * Private Snafu, numerous World War II related cartoons (1943)
 * Yosemite Sam (1945) ("Hare Trigger ")
 * Pepe Le Pew (1945)
 * Sylvester the cat (1946) aka Thomas (1947) in some films
 * Foghorn Leghorn (1946)
 * Henery Hawk (1946)
 * Charlie Dog (1947)
 * Wile E. Coyote (1948)
 * K-9 (1948) (sidekick to Marvin the Martian)
 * Marvin the Martian (1948)
 * Road Runner (1948)
 * The Tasmanian Devil (1954)
 * Speedy Gonzales (1955)
 * Elmer Fudd (1959, assumed from Arthur Q Bryan)
 * Barney Rubble (1960)
 * Dino (1960) (Fred Flintstone's pet.)
 * Cosmo G. Spacely (1962)
 * Secret Squirrel (1964-1965)
 * Hardy Harr Harr (1965-1966)
 * Bubba McCoy from "Where's Huddles?"
 * Captain Caveman
 * Chug-a-Boom /the Ant Hill Mob /the Bully Brothers from "The Perils of Penelope Pitstop"
 * Twiki from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979)
 * Heathcliff (1981 / appeared in syndication from 1986-1988)

Reference

 * That's Not All, Folks!, 1988 by Mel Blanc, Philip Bashe. Warner Books, ASIN 0446390895 (Softcover) ASIN 0446512443 (Hardcover)