Here's a real treasure. One of the greatest people I ever had the honor of knowing was a man named Daws Butler. I grew up on his voice, which was heard in most of the good cartoons produced for television in the fifties and early sixties. He spoke for many characters including Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Snooper and Blabber, Hokey Wolf, Snagglepuss, Mr. Jinks, Wally Gator, Augie Doggie, Elroy Jetson…and the list goes on and on. He was a wonderful actor and a wonderful man.
He was also a wonderful teacher. He turned a guest house behind his Beverly Hills home into a workshop and a studio…and there he would teach aspiring voice actors. It was a building that overflowed with enthusiasm and talent, for Daws wouldn't take just anyone on as a student. You had to audition and he had to think you had promise. If you passed, the lessons were not expensive but they were priceless.
Daws did not teach, as some teachers do, by regurgitating what others had taught them or what they'd read in books. He taught that which he had learned throughout decades of work and he taught in his own terms with his own theories and his own vocabulary and his own standards. There are some great actors who do not quite understand what it is they do or how they do it. Daws knew exactly what he did: Why he took this pause, why he accented that syllable, etc., and he could explain it in a useful way.
He was largely above ego. He knew he was among the best at what he did but he knew it in a kindly, non-arrogant way. He loved watching talent emerge and he talked to you like you were an equal, even though you both knew you weren't and you knew you probably would never be.
Having zero flair for acting, I did not study with him but fortunately, he also loved writers and would have me over to just sit and talk about writing and creativity and anything that popped into anyone's mind. I was occasionally intimidated and once in a while, I'd just get lost in the realization that that voice — the one I knew so well from all my favorite TV shows as a kid — was coming out of the little man sitting eighteen inches from me. And it was telling me how much he hated Richard Nixon.
This video was shot by Bill Simpson on April 3, 1986, a little more than two years before we lost Daws. It's a brief tour of his workshop…and perhaps out of humility, he doesn't dwell on how many younger actors had their lives forever changed for the better in that building. Trust me. There were a lot of them, including many who are among the top voice actors of today. (The pride he had in his students does show through, though. He had their photos all over the place. I see my pal Earl Kress's eight-by-ten is next to the coffee urn.) Thanks to another of his students, Joe Bevilacqua, for posting this so I can share 14 minutes of Daws Butler with you. It's not nearly enough. Fourteen years wouldn't be, either…