The greatest American voice actor
As a young man growing up in Portland, Oregon, with a name that literally means nothing, Mel Blanc would go on to a six decades long career in golden Hollywood as this centuries most prolific voice actor. Bringing to life nearly every famous cartoon character in a generation, Mel set the standard for voice actors and for the art of voice over for years to come. But how did the most well-known name in voice acting get his start?
Born in San Francisco, California on May 30, 1908 Mel’s family soon moved to Portland, Oregon where he would spend his childhood. The northwest is where this child would attend school and begin honing his craft before he would even know what craft needed to be honed. Not a seemingly good student Mel is reported to have changed the spelling of his last name from “Blank” to “Blanc” due to a teacher of his stating that he would amount to nothing, and be just like his last name.
This same “nothing” could then be found after school using the empty hallways as an echo chamber to practice some very early iterations of his voices. From these hallway sessions came a very distinct laughter that, at the time, may have just seemed funny to a child in a student-less school. In 1940 the rest of the world was let in on the joke as that schoolhouse laugh became Woody Woodpecker’s signature call. I wonder if any of the real woodpeckers in Oregon had a problem that their most famous “cousin” sounded nothing like them?
School is also where Blanc first tasted the sweet nectar that is the applauding audience. He took a liking to people’s voices and the interesting differences in accents. Young Mel would study and practice the voices of his ethnic neighbors and impersonate them back to teachers and classmates in the form of jokes. He seemed to be hooked on the attention.
In 1927 after high school Mel immediately began working at the local radio station KGW on the program The Hoot Owls. After six years he was finally given his own show in which he co-starred with his wife Estell on sister station KEX. Cobwebs and Nuts was a largely ad-libbed program and due to budgetary constraints Blanc voiced the menagerie of characters himself.
Mel’s ability to create voices for multiple characters began to attract attention and in 1935 he packed-up and left for Hollywood. There he would move from radio program to radio program until in 1937 he wound up on The Jack Benny Program. Mel voiced many characters in this time from Benny’s pet polar bear Carmichael, Polly the Parrot, Professor LeBlanc the violin teacher and most notably Benny’s automobile, Maxwell. Always in desperate need of a tune-up Blanc brought the car to life with his sputtering and exhausted sound effects.
Sawing the microphone
After his success on The Jack Benny Program Mel led his own radio show on the CBS Radio Network in 1946 titled The Mel Blanc Show. On his show he played the owner of a fix-it shop and provided the voices of a wide range of supporting characters. Even though it was quite possible for him to be, Mel was not alone and other regular characters were played by Mary Jane Croft, Joseph Kearns, Hans Conried, Alan Reed, Earle Ross, Jim Backus and Bea Benaderet. The Mel Blanc Show was short-lived and nine months after it began it last aired in June of 1947.
It was a good thing that in 1936 Blanc began working on his back-up career as a voice actor on Warner Bros. Pictures cartoons under the subsidary Leon Schlesinger Studios. This didn’t come easy though as for a year and a half he was constantly denied work at the door by then music director Norman Spencer who was in charge of cartoon voices at the time. It took Spencer’s death for Mel to get his big break when sound man Treg Brown took over hiring for cartoon voices.
Mel’s first voice acting work at Warner Bros. was that of a drunken bull in Picador Porky. Later he took over as the voice of the shy stammering Porky Pig from Joe Dougherty, an actual stammerer, as he had no comedic timing or control over his stutter. Blanc’s first appearance as Porky himself was in the cartoon Porky’s Duck Hunt which also featured the debut of Daffy Duck. Daffy’s voice, also created by Mel, has been the subject of some debate. The original story was that Daffy’s trademark lisp came from Blanc imitating then producer Leon Schlesinger’s voice pattern. Mel himself denied this in his autobiography, “That’s NOT All Folks”, in which he stated that due to his large duck bill it would have been hard for Daffy to produce the S sound.
1940 was the year that brought about Mel’s most famously voiced character, Bugs Bunny. The version of Bugs we all know and love today made his debut in A Wild Hare with Elmer Fudd (whom Blanc would voice in the 1970’s and ’80’s) and asks him, “What’s up, Doc?” Another topic of Mel Blanc debate arose around Bugs Bunny’s carrot-chomping sound effect. During recording Mel would bite into a raw carrot and chew away creating the sound and then immediately spit it into a wastebasket or spittoon. It then became widely speculated that Mel, the voice of the most famous carrot eater, was himself allergic to raw carrots. He once again dispelled this myth in his autobiography stating that he merely didn’t like the taste of raw carrots.
Mel would go on to voice nearly 400 characters in his career with some 3,000 cartoons under his belt. More notable characters not yet mentioned include Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Pepe Le Pew, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, the Tasmanian Devil and Barney Rubble and Dino from The Flintstone’s.
The winter of 1961 almost saw the end of Blanc’s illustrious career as he was involved in a head-on collision car accident on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. The near-fatal result was a triple skull fracture, fractures in both legs and a broken pelvis that left him in a coma for three weeks. Mel later reported in his autobiography that one clever doctor tried to coax him out of his coma by talking to him as if he were Bugs Bunny. The doctor would ask, “How are you today, Bugs Bunny?”, in which Mel would reply back in the voice of that Wascally Wabbit. He then credited Bugs Bunny as saving his life.
A smile in the studio
Once Blanc’s contract with Warner Bros. ended in the early 1960’s he went to work at Hannah-Barbera where the more famous of the characters that he voiced were Barney Rubble of The Flintstone’s and Mr. Spacely of The Jetson’s. Mel’s accident occurred during ABC’s taping season of The Flintstone’s and fellow voice actor Daws Butler filled in and voiced Barney Rubble for a couple of episodes. This absence was brief as the producer’s of the show then set up recording equipment in Mel’s hospital room and then in his bedroom at his home. During this time he recorded his characters for ABC in a full body cast. Years later Mel would divulge that his son Noel “ghosted” for him and recorded several of his character’s voices for Warner Bros. during this time.
Mel continued to work throughout the 1970’s and 80’s and his final original character was Healthcliff the Cat, who sounded an awful lot like Bugs Bunny but with a tough street accent. He continued to voice his most famous characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd in commercials, but is said that he left his “yelling” characters like Yosemite Sam and Foghorn Leghorn to younger voice actors as they were too hard on his throat and voice.
The last recording session that Mel would attend would be for Mr. Spacely on Jetson’s: The Movie. He would unfortunately pass away of cardiovascular disease on July 10, 1989 during recording and voice actor Jeff Bergman would then fill in for the remaining scenes.
Mel Blanc was 81 years-old at the time of his passing and left a legacy in the voice acting community and a barnyard full of character voices which are still heard today. Although Mel is no longer with us, the characters that he helped bring to life are, and they continue to share his memory with the world. Other voice actors such as Billy West, Joe Alaskey and Bob Bergen have picked up where Mel has left off to breathe life into his creations for another generation of cartoon-lovers to enjoy.
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