Melvin Jerome Mel Blanc (May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his more than six-decade-long 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 theatrical short films, during the golden age of American animation.[1] He later worked for Hanna-Barberas television productions, most notably as the voices of Barney Rubble in The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely in The Jetsons. Blanc was also a regular performer on The Jack Benny Program in both its radio and television formats (among various other radio and TV programs), and was the original voice of Woody Woodpecker for Universal Pictures.[1] 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 Blanc was born Melvin Jerome Blank in San Francisco, California, to 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.[3] After graduating high school in 1927, he split 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 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, 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 wifes 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 Bennys Maxwell automobile (in desperate need of a tune-up), violin teacher Professor LeBlanc, Polly the Parrot, Bennys 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 automobiles 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 Blancs most memorable characters from Bennys 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.[5] 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 In December 1936, Mel Blanc joined Leon Schlesinger Productions, which was producing animated short films 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 1937s Picador Porky as the voice of a drunken bull.[4] He soon after received his first starring role when he replaced Joe Dougherty as Porky Pigs voice in Porkys 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 1940s A Wild Hare[6][7]) 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.[8][9] In Disneys Pinnochio, Blanc was hired to perform the voice of Gideon the Cat. However, it was eventually decided that Gideon would be mute (similar to Dopey from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), so all of Blancs recorded dialogue was subsequently deleted except for a solitary hiccup, which was heard three times in the finished film (Blanc would not work for Disney again until Who Framed Roger Rabbit, more than 45 years later).[10] Blanc also originated the voice (and laugh) of Woody Woodpecker for the theatrical shorts produced by Walter Lantz for Universal Pictures, but stopped voicing the character after he was signed to an exclusive contract with Warner Bros.[4] During World War II, Blanc served as the voice of the hapless Private Snafu in various war-themed animated shorts.[11] 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 those rights were violated. Voice actors at the time usually got no screen credits at all, 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 In 1960, after the expiration of his exclusive contract with Warner Bros., Blanc continued working for WB, but also began providing voices for 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) 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 On January 24, 1961, Blanc was involved in a near-fatal car accident on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Hit head-on, Blanc suffered a triple skull fracture that left him in a coma for three weeks, along with sustaining fractures to both legs and the pelvis.[13] Blanc returned home from the UCLA Medical Center on March 17. On March 22, 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 Mans Curve, resulted in the city funding restructuring curves at the location. Years later, Blanc revealed 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 shows producers set up recording equipment in Blancs 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.[14] He also returned to The Jack Benny Program to film the programs 1961 Christmas show, moving around via crutches and a wheelchair. In the 1970s, Blanc did 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. After spending most of two seasons voicing the robot Twiki in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Blancs 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, although he increasingly left the yelling characters like Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn and Taz to other voice actors since as he got older, he found their voices too hard on his throat. 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 Blancs permanent successors). As Disney released the film (under its Touchstone Pictures banner), it 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 films release. One of his last recording sessions was for a new animated theatrical version of The Jetsons.[ Blanc began smoking cigarettes when he was nine years old. He continued his pack-a-day habit until he was diagnosed with emphysema, which pushed him to quit at age 77.[16] On May 19, 1989, Blanc was checked into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center by his family[17] when they noticed he had a bad cough while shooting a commercial; he was originally expected to recover. Blancs health then took a turn for the worse and doctors found that he had advanced coronary artery disease. He died on July 10 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California at the age of 81.[18] He was interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California. Blancs will stated his desire to have the inscription on his gravestone read, THATS ALL FOLKS (the phrase was a trademark of Blancs character Porky Pig
Posted on: Sat, 31 May 2014 08:43:14 +0000
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