Mel Blanc

Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc (May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) was an American voice actor and actor. Although he began his sixty-plus-year career performing in radio, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros. as the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E. Coyote, the Tasmanian Devil and many of the other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon short films; produced during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s at the height of the golden age of American animation.

He later worked for Hanna-Barbera's television cartoons of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, most notably as the voices of Barney Rubble on The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely on The Jetsons. Blanc was also the original voice of Woody Woodpecker for Universal Pictures in the early 1940s, and provided vocal effects for the Tom and Jerry cartoons directed by Chuck Jones for MGM in the mid-1960s. Furthermore, during the golden age of radio, Blanc was a frequent performer on the radio programs of famous comedians from the era; including Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello, Burns and Allen, and Judy Canova.

Having earned the nickname "The Man of a Thousand Voices", Blanc is regarded as one of the most influential people in the voice acting industry.

Early life
Blanc was born in San Francisco, California, to Russian-Jewish parents Frederick and Eva Blank. The younger of two children, he grew up in the neighborhood of Western Addition in San Francisco, and later in Portland, Oregon, where he attended Lincoln High School. Growing up, he had a fondness for voices and dialect, which he began voicing at the age of ten. He claimed when he was sixteen, he changed the spelling from "Blank" to "Blanc," because a teacher told him that he would amount to nothing and be like his name, a "blank." Blanc joined The Order of DeMolay as a young man, and was eventually inducted into its Hall of Fame.

Radio work
Blanc began his radio career at the age of 19 when in 1927 he debuted as a voice actor on the KGW program The Hoot Owls, where his ability to provide voices for multiple characters first attracted attention. He moved to Los Angeles in 1932, where he met Estelle Rosenbaum (1909 - 2003), whom he married a year later, before returning to Portland. He moved to KEX in 1933 to produce and co-host his Cobweb And Nuts show with his wife Estelle, which debuted on June 15. The program played Monday through Saturday from 11:00 pm to midnight, and by the time the show ended two years later, it appeared from 10:30 pm to 11:00 pm.

With his wife's encouragement, Blanc returned to Los Angeles and joined Warner Bros.-owned KFWB in Hollywood, California, in 1935. He joined The Johnny Murray Show, but the following year switched to CBS Radio and The Joe Penner Show.



Blanc was a regular on the NBC Red Network show The Jack Benny Program in various roles, including voicing Benny's Maxwell automobile (in desperate need of a tune-up), violin teacher Professor LeBlanc, Polly the Parrot, Benny's pet polar bear Carmichael, the tormented department store clerk, and the train announcer (see below). The first role came from a mishap when the recording of the automobile's sounds failed to play on cue, prompting Blanc to take the microphone and improvise the sounds himself. The audience reacted so positively that Benny decided to dispense with the recording altogether and have Blanc continue in that role. One of Blanc's most memorable characters from Benny's radio (and later TV) programs was "Sy, the Little Mexican", who 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. He continued to work with him on radio until the series end in 1955 and followed the program Into television from Benny's 1950 debut episode through guest spots on NBC specials in the 1970s. They last appeared together on a Johnny Carson Tonight Show in January 1974. A few months later, Blanc spoke highly of Benny on a Tom Snyder Tomorrow show special aired the night of the comedian's death.

By 1946, Blanc appeared on over 15 radio programs in supporting roles. His 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, as well as his young cousin Zookie.

Blanc also appeared on such other national radio programs as The Abbott and Costello Show, the Happy Postman on Burns and Allen, and as August Moon on Point Sublime. During World War II, he appeared as Private Sad Sack on various radio shows, most notably G.I. Journal. Blanc recorded a song titled "Big Bear Lake."

Animation voice work during the golden age of Hollywood
In December 1936, Mel Blanc joined Leon Schlesinger Productions, which was producing theatrical cartoon shorts for Warner Bros. After sound man Treg Brown was put in charge of cartoon voices, and Carl Stalling became music director, Brown introduced Blanc to animation directors Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng and Frank Tashlin, who loved his voices. The first cartoon Blanc worked on was 1937's Picador Porky as the voice of a drunken bull.He soon after received his first starring role when he replaced Joe Dougherty as Porky Pig's voice in Porky's Duck Hunt, which marked the debut of Daffy Duck, also voiced by Blanc.

Following this, Blanc became a very prominent vocal artist for Warner Bros., voicing a wide variety of the Looney Tunes characters. Bugs Bunny (whom Blanc made his debut as in 1940's A Wild Hare was known for eating carrots frequently. To follow this sound with the animated voice, Blanc would bite into a carrot and then quickly spit into a spittoon. One oft-repeated story is that Blanc was allergic to carrots. However, Blanc denied having any allergy.

In Disney's Pinocchio, Blanc was hired to perform the voice of Gideon the Cat. However, it was eventually decided that Gideon would be a mute character (similar to Dopey from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), so all of Blanc's recorded dialogue was subsequently deleted except for a solitary hiccup, which was heard three times in the finished film.

Throughout his career, Blanc, aware of his talents, protected the rights to them contractually and legally. He, and later his estate, never hesitated taking civil action when those rights were violated. Voice actors at the time rarely received screen credits, but Blanc was a notable exception; by 1944, his contract with Warner Bros. stipulated a credit reading "Voice characterization(s) by Mel Blanc." Blanc asked for and received this screen credit from studio boss Leon Schlesinger when Schlesinger objected to giving Blanc a pay raise.

Voice work for Hanna-Barbera and others
In 1960, after the expiration of his exclusive contract with Warner Bros., Blanc continued working for WB, but also began providing voices for the TV cartoons produced by Hanna-Barbera; his most famous roles during this time were Barney Rubble of The Flintstones and Cosmo Spacely of The Jetsons. His other notable voice roles for Hanna-Barbara included Dino the Dinosaur, Secret Squirrel, Speed Buggy and Captain Caveman, as well as voices for Wally Gator and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop.

Blanc also worked with former Looney Tunes director Chuck Jones, who by this time was directing shorts with his own company Sib Tower 12 (later MGM Animation/Visual Arts) doing vocal effects in the Tom and Jerry series from 1963 to 1967. Blanc was the first voice of Toucan Sam in Froot Loops commercials.

Blanc reprised some of his Warner Bros. characters when the studio contracted him to make new theatrical cartoons in the mid-to-late 1960s. For these, Blanc voiced Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales, the characters who received the most frequent use in these shorts (later, newly introduced characters such as Cool Cat and Merlin the Magic Mouse were voiced by Larry Storch). Blanc also continued to voice the Looney Tunes for the bridging sequences of The Bugs Bunny Show, as well as in numerous animated advertisements and several compilation features, such as The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie (1979).

Car accident and aftermath
On January 24, 1961, Blanc was involved in a near-fatal car accident, as he was going to a studio to work on a commercial. He was driving alone when his sports car collided head-on with a car driven by 18-year-old college student Arthur Rolston on Sunset Boulevard. Rolston suffered minor injuries, but Blanc was rushed to the UCLA Medical Center with a triple skull fracture that left him in a coma for two weeks, along with sustaining fractures to both legs and the pelvis.

Blanc returned home on March 17. Four days later, Blanc filed a US$500,000 lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles. His accident, one of 26 in the preceding two years at the intersection known as Dead Man's Curve, resulted in the city funding restructuring curves at the location.

Years later, Blanc revealed that during his recovery, his son Noel "ghosted" several Warner Bros. cartoons' voice tracks for him. Warner Bros. had also asked Stan Freberg to provide the voice for Bugs Bunny, but Freberg declined, out of respect for Blanc. At the time of the accident Blanc was also serving as the voice of Barney Rubble in The Flintstones. His absence from the show would be relatively brief; Daws Butler provided the voice of Barney for a few episodes, after which the show's producers set up recording equipment in Blanc's hospital room and later at his home to allow him to work from there. Some of the recordings were made while he was in full-body cast as he lay flat on his back with the other Flintstones co-stars gathered around him. He also returned to The Jack Benny Program to film the program's 1961 Christmas show, moving around via crutches and a wheelchair.

Later career
In the 1970s, Blanc gave a series of college lectures across the US and appeared in commercials for American Express. He would also collaborate on a special with the Boston-based Shriners Burns Institute called Ounce of Prevention, which became a 30-minute TV special.

Throughout the 1980s, Blanc performed his Looney Tunes characters for bridging sequences in various compilation films of Golden-Age era Warner Bros. cartoons, such as The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie, Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales, Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island and Daffy Duck's Quackbusters.

After spending most of two seasons voicing the robot Twiki in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Blanc's last original character was Heathcliff, in the early 1980s. Blanc continued to voice his famous characters in commercials and TV specials for most of the decade. His final performance of his Looney Tunes roles was in Bugs Bunny's Wild World of Sports (1989).

In the 1983 live-action film Strange Brew, Blanc voiced the father of Bob and Doug MacKenzie, at the request of comedian Rick Moranis.

In the 1988 live-action/animated movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Blanc reprised several of his classic Looney Tunes roles (Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Tweety and Sylvester), but left Yosemite Sam to Joe Alaskey (who later became one of Blanc's regular replacements until his death in 2016). As Disney released the film, the company had to earn the blessing of Warner Bros. (and other rival studios) in order to feature the various non-Disney characters in the movie. Blanc died just a year after the film's release. His final recording session was for Jetsons: The Movie (1990).