Mel Blanc

Melvin Jerome Blanc (né Blank ; May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) was an American voice actor and radio personality whose career spanned over sixty years. Referred to as "The Man of a Thousand Voices", he is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential voice actor of all time. Blanc is best known for providing voices for Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons released by Warner Bros. during the golden age of American animation.

Blanc began his career during the Golden Age of Radio when he provided character voices and vocal sound effects for comedy radio programs, including those of Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello, Burns and Allen, The Great Gildersleeve, Judy Canova and his own short-lived sitcom. He later expanded to animation, providing the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Wile E. Coyote, Speedy Gonzales, Marvin the Martian, Foghorn Leghorn, the Tasmanian Devil, Pepé Le Pew and numerous other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoons. Blanc also voiced the characters Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd after replacing their original performers, Joe Dougherty and Arthur Q. Bryan, respectively, although he occasionally voiced Elmer during Bryan's lifetime as well. Blanc’s paternal grandparents, Heinrich Sebastian and Katharine (Schwarzel), immigrated to Brooklyn from Bavaria in 1860 and 1862, respectively. Eva Katz was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, and immigrated to America with her parents, Nolan Chaim and Laura Golemba Katz, as a child. Blanc also had an older brother, Henry Charles Blank (1904-1981).

He grew up in San Francisco's Western Addition neighborhood, and later in Portland, Oregon, where he attended Lincoln High School. He had an early fondness for voices and dialect, which he began practicing at the age of 10. He claimed that he changed the spelling of his name when he was 16, from Blank to Blanc, because a teacher told him that he would amount to nothing and be like his name, a "blank". He joined the Order of DeMolay as a young man, and was eventually inducted into its Hall of Fame. After graduating from high school in 1927, he divided his time between leading an orchestra (becoming the youngest conductor in the country at the age of 19) and performing "shtick" in vaudeville shows around Washington, Oregon, and northern California.

Career

Radio work Blanc began his radio career at the age of 19 in 1927, when he made his acting debut 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 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 and the train announcer. 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 characters from Benny's radio (and later TV) programs was "Sy, the Little Mexican", who spoke one word at a time. and by 1946, he was appearing on over fifteen programs in various 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, including 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. Pictures. After sound man Treg Brown was put in charge of cartoon voices, and Carl W. 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 Picador Porky (1937) as the voice of Porky Pig's drunken friends who dress up as a bull. was known for eating carrots frequently (especially while saying his catchphrase "Eh, what's up, doc?"). To follow this sound with the animated voice, Blanc would bite into a carrot and then quickly spit into a spittoon. One often-repeated story is that Blanc was allergic to carrots, which Blanc denied.

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

Blanc also originated the voice and laugh of Woody Woodpecker for the theatrical cartoons produced by Walter Lantz for Universal Pictures, but stopped voicing Woody after the character's first four shorts when he was signed to an exclusive contract with Warner Bros. Blanc had recorded some of Woody's lines for Pantry Panic, but had already left the Lantz studio before the short was released, so Danny Webb was hired to finished Woody's remaining lines for that particular short. Despite this, his laugh was still used in the Woody Woodpecker cartoons until 1951, when Grace Stafford recorded a softer version, while his "Guess who!?" signature line was used in the opening titles until the end of the series and closure of Walter Lantz Productions in 1972.

Throughout his career, Blanc, aware of his talents, protected the rights to his voice characterizations contractually and legally. He, and later his estate, never hesitated to take civil action when those rights were violated. Voice actors at the time rarely received screen credits, but Blanc was an exception; by 1944, his contract with Warner Bros. stipulated a credit reading "Voice characterization(s) by Mel Blanc". According to his autobiography, Blanc asked for and received this screen credit from studio boss Leon Schlesinger after he was denied a salary raise. Initially, Blanc's screen credit was limited only to cartoons in which he voiced Bugs Bunny. This changed in March 1945 when the contract was amended to also include a screen credit for cartoons featuring Porky Pig and/or Daffy Duck. This however, excluded any shorts with the two characters made before that amendment occurred, even if they released after the fact (Book Revue and Baby Bottleneck are both examples of this). By the end of 1946, Blanc began receiving a screen credit in any subsequent Warner Bros. cartoon for which he provided voices.

Voice work for Hanna-Barbera and others In 1960, after the expiration of his exclusive contract with Warner Bros., Blanc continued working for them, but also began providing voices for the TV cartoons produced by Hanna-Barbera; his roles during this time included Barney Rubble of The Flintstones and Cosmo Spacely of The Jetsons. His other voice roles for Hanna-Barbera 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 for 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). He also voiced Granny on Peter Pan Records in 4 More Adventures of Bugs Bunny (1974) and Holly-Daze (1974), in place of June Foray, and replaced the late Arthur Q. Bryan as Elmer Fudd's voice during the post-golden age era.

Car accident and aftermath Blanc in 1975On January 24, 1961, Blanc was driving alone when his sports car was involved in a head-on collision on Sunset Boulevard; his legs and his pelvis were fractured as a result. He was in a coma and completely non-responsive. About two weeks later, one of Blanc's neurologists at the UCLA Medical Center tried a different approach than just trying to address the unconscious Blanc—address his characters instead. Blanc was asked, "How are you feeling today, Bugs Bunny?" After a slight pause, Blanc answered, in a weak voice, "Eh ... just fine, Doc. How are you?" 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 the restructuring of curves at the location.

Years later, Blanc's son Noel revealed that he performed some of his father's Warner Bros. characters for some cartoons during his recovery. Warner Bros. had also asked Stan Freberg to provide the voices for Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig, but Freberg declined, out of respect for Blanc. Jerry Hausner briefly filled in for Blanc as Bugs and Yosemite Sam for some commercials and spots for The Bugs Bunny Show and additional lines in Devil's Feud Cake. At the time of the accident, Blanc was also serving as the voice of Barney Rubble in The Flintstones. His absence from the show was 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. Unknown people would arrive at Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera and say that they could do Blanc's character voices, but ended up being dismissed. He returned to The Jack Benny Program to film the program's 1961 Christmas show, moving around by crutches and a wheelchair.

Later years On January 29, 1962, Mel and his son Noel formed Blanc Communications Corporation, a media company which produced over 5,000 commercials and public service announcements, which remains in operation. Mel and Noel appeared with many stars, including: Kirk Douglas, Lucille Ball, Vincent Price, Phyllis Diller, Liberace and The Who.

In the 1970s, Blanc gave a series of college lectures across the US and appeared in commercials for American Express. In 1972, Chuck McKibben started working as Blanc's personal recording engineer/producer and studio manager. His daily responsibilities at Mel Blanc Audiomedia in Beverly Hills, California included recording Blanc's voice for a variety of film, advertising and theme park projects. In 1982, Mel's production company, Blanc Communications Corporation, collaborated on a special with the Boston-based Shriners' Burns Institute called Ounce of Prevention, which became a 30-minute TV special.

Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Blanc performed his Looney Tunes characters for bridging sequences in various compilation films of Golden Age-era Warner Bros. cartoons, such as: The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, 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. His final performance of his Looney Tunes roles was in Bugs Bunny's Wild World of Sports (1989). After spending most of two seasons voicing the diminutive robot Twiki in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Blanc's last major original character was Heathcliff, who he voiced from 1980 to 1988.

In the live-action film Strange Brew (1983), Blanc voiced the father of Bob and Doug McKenzie, at the request of comedian Rick Moranis. In the live-action/animated movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Blanc reprised several of his roles from Warner Bros. cartoons (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). The film was one of the few Disney projects in which Blanc was involved. Blanc died just a year after the film's release. His final recording session was for Jetsons: The Movie (1990).

Personal life Blanc and his wife Estelle Rosenbaum were married on January 4, 1933, He held membership at the lodge for 58 years. Blanc was also a Shriner.

Death

Blanc began smoking at least one pack of cigarettes per day at the age of nine and continued up through 1985, having quit smoking after being diagnosed with emphysema. He was later diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), after his family checked him into the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on May 19, 1989 but after his health had worsened, doctors discovered that he had advanced coronary artery disease. He also fell from his bed and broke his femur during the stay.

Blanc died at the age of 81 from complications related to both illnesses on July 10, 1989, at 2:30 pm, nearly two months after being admitted into the hospital. His will specified that his memorial marker read ""—the phrase with which Blanc's character, Porky Pig, concluded Warner Bros. cartoons from 1937 to 1946.

Legacy Blanc is regarded as the most prolific voice actor in entertainment history. He was the first voice actor to receive on-screen credit.

Blanc's death was considered a significant loss to the cartoon industry because of his skill, expressive range, and the sheer number of the continuing characters he portrayed, whose roles were subsequently assumed by several other voice talents. As film critic Leonard Maltin observed, "It is astounding to realize that Tweety Bird and Yosemite Sam are the same man!" Darrell Van Citters drew a lithograph titled "Speechless" in tribute to Blanc, which showed a spotlight on a microphone while the Looney Tunes characters somberly bowed their heads in a moment of silence. Noel Blanc stated that they could also rearrange "syllables" of the new recordings to create custom dialogue for the characters. These recordings were also used for toys, watches, video games, commercials, and websites. Later archive recordings of Blanc were featured in computer-generated imagery-animated Looney Tunes theatrical shorts; I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat (shown with Happy Feet Two) and Daffy's Rhapsody (shown with Journey 2: The Mysterious Island).

For his contributions to the radio industry, Blanc has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6385 Hollywood Boulevard. His character Bugs Bunny was also awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on December 10, 1985.

Blanc trained his son Noel in the field of voice characterization. Noel performed his father's characters (particularly Porky Pig) on some programs, but did not become a full-time voice artist. and employed multiple new voice actors to fill the roles since the 1990s, including Noel Blanc, Jeff Bergman, Joe Alaskey, Greg Burson, Bob Bergen, Billy West, Maurice LaMarche, and Eric Bauza.

On September 19, 2017, publisher Penguin Random House released the picture book Melvin the Mouth, written by Mel's daughter-in-law Katherine Blanc and illustrated by Jeffrey Ebbeler. The book follows the daily life of Blanc (here named "Melvin") during his childhood, in which he makes his comical noises and sound effects. An audiobook adaptation was released on December 15, 2017, narrated by Ramón De Ocampo.

Filmography

Radio Original air date Program Role 1933 The Happy-Go-Lucky Hour Additional voices 1937 The Joe Penner Show 1938 The Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air Mayor of Hamelin, Neptune's Son, Priscilly, Royal Herald, additional voices 1939–1943 Fibber McGee and Molly Hiccuping Man 1939–1955 The Jack Benny Program Sy, Polly the Parrot, Mr. Finque, Nottingham, Train Announcer, Jack Benny's Maxwell, additional voices 1940–1944, 1947–1948 Point Sublime August Moon 1941–1943 The Great Gildersleeve Floyd Munson 1942–1947 The Abbott and Costello Show Himself, Botsford Twink, Scotty Brown 1943–1947 The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show The Happy Postman 1943–1955 The Judy Canova Show Paw, Pedro, Roscoe E. Wortle 1944 Nitwit Court Bigelow Hornblower1945The Life of RileyAdditional voicesIt's Time to Smile (The Eddie Cantor Show) 1946–1947 The Mel Blanc Show Himself, Dr. Christopher Crab, Zookie 1955–1956 The Cisco Kid Pan Pancho (replacing Harry E. Lang), additional voices

Film

Television

Video games Year Title Role Notes 1990 Bugs Bunny's Birthday Ball Sylvester Archival recording 1999 Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time Pirate Yosemite Sam, Daffy Duck Archival recordings

Theme park attractions Year Title Role Notes 1964 Carousel of Progress Uncle Orville, Parrot, Cuckoo Clock, Radio Personalities Mel Blanc's voices for the Cuckoo Clock and Radio Personalities were re-recorded by his son Noel Blanc in 1993. 1980 The Bugs Bunny Merrie Holiday Revue Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Sylvester, Tweety, Foghorn Leghorn Live show at Six Flags AstroWorld 1981–1984 Foghorn Leghorn Foghorn Leghorn 10-minute animatronic show at Six Flags Great America's Snowshoe Saloon, designed by Creative Presentations 1982–1984 The Looney Tunes Revue Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Pepé Le Pew, Yosemite Sam, Sylvester, Sylvester Jr., Tweety, Speedy Gonzales, Foghorn Leghorn, Henery Hawk, Tasmanian Devil Animatronic show at Gadgets restaurants, designed by Advanced Animations (later Warner Technologies) 1991 Looney Tunes River Ride Tasmanian Devil Archival recordings1992 Yosemite Sam and the Gold River Adventure! Tasmanian Devil, Tasmanian She-Devil Archival recordings from Devil May Hare Bugs Bunny Goin' Hollywood Tasmanian Devil Archival recordings

Discography Yah, Das Ist Ein Christmas Tree and I Tan't Wait Til Quithmuth Day (Capitol, 1950, Album CAS-3191) Clink, Clink, Another Drink (Bluebird, 1942) as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, additional voices The Woody Woodpecker Song (Capitol, 1948) as Woody Woodpecker Bugs Bunny and the Tortoise (Capitol, 1948) as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Beaky Buzzard, Old King Cole, Fiddlers Three, Mary's Lamb, Bo Peep's Sheep, Big Bad Wolf "Clink, Clink, Another Drink" (with Spike Jones and His City Slickers) (Bluebird Records, 1949), sings the bridge and hiccups Woody Woodpecker and His Talent Show (Capitol, 1949) as Woody Woodpecker, Stanley Squirrel, Billy Goat, Plato Platypus, Fido, Happy Hedgehog, Harry Humbug Bugs Bunny Sings with Daffy Duck, Tweety Pie, Yosemite Sam, Sylvester (Capitol, 1950) as Daffy Duck Sylvester and Hippety Hopper (Capitol, 1952) as Daffy Duck, Dog Bugs Bunny and the Pirate (Capitol, 1954) as Pepito, sailor, Malamute, Andy Panda, Fluten Bluten, Heinie the Hyena, Homer Pigeon, Cuckoo, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit "There's a Hole in the Iron Curtain" (with Mickey Katz and His Orchestra) (Capitol, 1960, Album 45–5425) Bugs Bunny Songfest (Golden, 1961) as Bugs Bunny, Sylvester, Tweety, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Henery Hawk, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Hippety Hopper, Foghorn Leghorn, Cicero Pig Speedy Gonzales (Dot, 1962) as Speedy Gonzales Magilla Gorilla and His Pals (Golden, 1964) as Droop-A-Long The Flintstones: Flip Fables (Hanna-Barbera, 1965) as Barney Rubble, Chubby, Tubby, Stubby, Landlord, Beowolfe The Flintstones: Hansel and Gretel (Hanna-Barbera, 1965) as Salty Secret Squirrel and Morocco Mole in: Super Spy (Hanna-Barbera, 1965) as Secret Squirrel, Tyrone The New Alice in Wonderland or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (Hanna-Barbera, 1966) as Barney Rubble, March Hare, Prosecuting Attorney/King's Son The Flintstones Meet the Orchestra Family (Sunset, 1968) as Barney Rubble The New Adventures of Bugs Bunny (Peter Pan, 1973) as Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, additional voices The Desert Island (Fisher-Price, 1978) as Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam Looney Tales (Fisher-Price, 1978) as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Tweety, Sylvester, Granny, additional voices Looney Tunes Learn About Numbers (Warner Audio Publishing, 1986) as Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, additional voices Looney Tunes Learn About The Alphabet (Warner Audio Publishing, 1986) as Porky Pig (archive recording)