As a follow-up to this post, Andy Rose wrote in to ask…
In addition to Ducky Nash, wasn't Mel Blanc on an exclusive contract to Warner Bros. for a while (at least for cartoons)? It was my understanding that was why Mel suddenly stopped playing Woody Woodpecker for Walter Lantz in 1941, and then doesn't appear to have done cartoons for anybody else except Warners until around 1960. Of course, Mel wasn't exactly on staff since he was busy with lots of other radio and TV work, but I assume WB had to at least pay him some sort of ongoing retainer for him to not work for anybody else.
By "on staff," we're referring to a situation where someone is paid by the week or the month; where the employer buys his or her time rather than to hire them for a specific job. As I understand it, Mel had an exclusive contract with Warners for animation. They paid him some amount higher than union scale and gave him that screen credit that annoyed some of the other actors in those cartoons. They may even have guaranteed him a certain number of recording sessions over a specified time period.
In exchange, Mel agreed to be exclusive to them in…well, I'm not sure if it was for short theatrical cartoons or all animation but that would have been spelled out in the contract. As we all know, Mel recorded a voice for Mr. Disney's Pinocchio though only a hiccup was used. I'm thinking though that was before his exclusive deal with WB. (I'm having lunch in a week or two with someone who would know and I'll find out.)
The point is that an exclusive deal to work a certain number of days for a certain amount is not the same thing as a staff job. Mel never had the latter, which is why he was free to work anywhere else at any time of any day so long as he worked Warners' needs into his schedule.
A friend who worked for Disney and didn't want his name mentioned wrote me that Clarence "Ducky" Nash may not have been the only voice actor Disney ever had on staff. My friend thinks Cliff Edwards, who was the voice of Jiminy Cricket, did for a time, also. But both these men might also fall into that category I mentioned — folks who did voices and other things for the studio.
There were storymen and animators and others on staff who occasionally would play a role or two in a cartoon. Nash and Edwards did a lot of P.R. work and appearances and someone else wrote me that "Ducky" even sometimes conducted studio tours on the lot for V.I.P. guests. I wonder if they ever thought of putting him at the switchboard and having Donald Duck answer the studio phone. I've talked to operators who were less intelligible.
