Before there was Dick Cheney, Elmer J. Fudd held the title of World's Most Famously Inept Hunter. Mr. Fudd was in that select (pre-Simpsons) group of cartoon characters who managed to become immortal without being either a super-hero or an animal. There were many reasons for this but the main one was probably Arthur Q. Bryan, who originated and performed the addictive Fudd voice. Over at Animation World Network, Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman provides a much-needed historical overview of Bryan and of Fudd…the man and the myth. Go read it and then come back here and I'll try to clarify the matter of Elmer Fudd's other voices.
Back so soon? Okay, fine. After Bryan died in 1959, Mel Blanc became the main voice of Elmer Fudd. Dr. Toon cites the oft-repeated story that Mel had to be convinced to take on the role because Mel didn't like doing impressions of others. I don't think that last part is quite true. Mel did lots of impressions throughout his cartoon career, including Lou Costello in A Tale of Two Kitties and radio actor Kenny Delmar in every single Foghorn Leghorn cartoon.
In fact, well before Bryan's death, Mel did a few Elmer lines in the 1950 Daffy Duck extravaganza, The Scarlet Pumpernickel. He also occasionally picked up a line in a cartoon where Fudd was otherwise voiced by Bryan. (Best example: In What's Opera, Doc?, when Elmer yells "SMOG!," that's Mel. Tapes were recently found of Bryan recording the same line so apparently director Chuck Jones wasn't happy with how Bryan did it and had Blanc redo it at a later session.) Bryan was commuting a lot to New York during the fifties, appearing on TV shows that emanated from the East Coast, so he was not always available.
That was presumably why Bryan did not do Elmer's voice in the 1958 Pre-Hysterical Hare. The role was played by comedian-impressionist Dave Barry, and you can read about Mr. Barry here. As you'll see there, Barry told me he also did Elmer in a couple of kids' records. Elmer is in a couple of the WB records produced for Capitol in the fifties but they all seem to be Bryan. In one though — "The Bugs Bunny Easter Song" — Bryan does Fudd's voice and Bugs Bunny is voiced by Barry.
As Goodman notes, Bryan's last performance as the Mighty Elmer was in the 1960 Person to Bunny. There was apparently some talk among the creative folks of just abandoning the character after that but Warner Brothers quickly vetoed that notion. For obvious reasons, they didn't care for the precedent of losing a valuable merchandisable property just because someone had died. What would happen when Mel went?
They not only insisted Fudd continue but that he be uncharacteristically featured in some cartoons. So Elmer lived to appear next on The Bugs Bunny Show, which was produced in 1960 for ABC Television, and in some Kool-Aid commercials that ran initially in that program. In these, he was occasionally voiced by Blanc but mainly by Hal Smith, who's best known today for his role as Otis the Town Drunk on The Andy Griffith Show. Smith also played Elmer in the two theatrical cartoons in which Elmer was starred. These were the 1960 Doggone People and the 1961 What's My Lion? (Blanc's in both and the latter also features Herb Vigran, who I mentioned in the previous item here.) and then Mel seems to have had the role to himself until his death in '89.
Some history books say Daws Butler did Elmer's voice after Bryan died…and Daws also said so, too. To date though, no one seems to have figured out where this performance might have appeared. Daws was an honest guy with a good memory so the logical conclusion is that he recorded a soundtrack for something, perhaps for Pre-Hysterical Hare, and it was discarded.
And that's pretty much all I have to add about Elmer Fudd…especially since I just noticed it's 2:30 in the A.M., which is no time for an allegedly grown man to be posting Fudd history on the Internet. Sweet dweams, my fwiends.