Here, for those of you who aren't familiar with Buzzy the Crow, is the first Buzzy the Crow cartoon. It's called The Stupiditious Cat and it was released to theaters on April 25, 1947. He was in eight or nine other cartoons after this, all produced by Paramount's cartoon studio.
Buzzy was not hugely popular as a cartoon star but he did appear a lot in Harvey comic books. In fact, when I was a kid, I'm sure I had one that adapted this cartoon. In 1959, Harvey acquired the rights to much of what the Paramount cartoon division had produced, including all the films which featured Buzzy. They removed the Paramount name from the openings on all of them, inserted "Harvey Films" and released them to television. This video has the original Paramount opening though.
All the historians tell you that Buzzy's voice was intended as a soundalike to Eddie "Rochester" Anderson from The Jack Benny Program. I'm not as sure of that as some people are but it's possible…and it is worth noting that the cat in this cartoon sounds a little like someone trying to do a Jack Benny impression. Buzzy's voice was done by the prolific voiceover actor (and white guy) Jackson Beck. He usually gets sole voice credit for this cartoon but I don't think that's him as the cat. I don't know who it is but it doesn't sound to me like Beck.
I've also heard that at some point after these cartoons were sold to television, Buzzy's voice was redubbed with something a bit less stereotyped. If this is so, I've either never seen one of them or it was so long ago, I didn't know the difference. In any case, here's Buzzy's screen debut…
