In this message, I said that when they did the classic Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, four people — Bill Scott, June Foray, Paul Frees and William Conrad — did all the voices. This prompted Erik Sansom to write…
I know you're a busy man, but I can't let this pass. Are you not counting Fractured Fairy Tales with the late, great Edward Everett Horton?
No, I was just talking about the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons. The Fractured Fairy Tales cartoons were narrated by Mr. Horton and then the other voices were done in each by some combination of Daws Butler, June Foray, Bill Scott and in just a few, Paul Frees. The late Julie Bennett filled in on three cartoons that were recorded during one session that June Foray missed because she was working with Stan Freberg that evening.
While I'm at it: The Mr. Peabody cartoons all featured Bill Scott, Walter Tetley and some combination of Paul Frees, June Foray or, once in a while, Dorothy Scott, who was Bill's wife. The Dudley Do-Right cartoons were voiced by Frees, Foray, Scott, Hans Conried and then some were narrated by Bill Conrad and some by Paul Frees. The Aesop & Son cartoons had Charlie Ruggles as Narrator and they all had Daws Butler, almost all had Bill Scott and when they needed her, June Foray. All of the cartoon segments on the George of the Jungle show were voiced by Scott, Foray, Butler and Frees.
The point is that most cartoons then didn't hire guest actors except if one of the regulars was unavailable. Over at Hanna-Barbera, a lot of the cartoons on shows like Huckleberry Hound or Quick Draw McGraw were just Daws Butler and Don Messick or Daws Butler and Hal Smith. A few were just Daws Butler. The Augie Doggie cartoons were usually just Doug Young and Daws. If they had a guest star, it was because they really needed a female voice or they had a baby duck in the cartoon. They'd call in a baby duck specialist.
In those days, actors were paid a flat session fee, regardless of how many different characters they voiced. If the cartoon had eight voices in it, two guys would do them all. That was why most actors in cartoons were people like Daws and Paul and June and Don and Mel who could do nine different voices in one film. It's also why very few of those cartoons had female characters in them. Once in a while in a cartoon voices by Daws and Don, one of them would try to do a lady's voice.
So most actors then had to be capable of many voices. Hans Conried, who just basically had the one voice, was a rare exception. Jay Ward thought Conried's contribution was so great it was worth the extra cost, rather than have Paul Frees or Bill Scott play Snidely Whiplash.
Also, Dudley Do-Right was produced for prime-time. On a prime-time cartoon like The Flintstones or The Jetsons, there were higher budgets so you might hire more few one-voice actors like Mr. Conried and you were also likely to have more female roles. Both of those series had two female characters in every episode; thus, at least two voice actresses in every recording session.
In the late sixties, the contract was changed so a session fee covered three roles. If your cartoon had 7-9 characters speaking, you would need to pay three session fees. You could pay one actor to do five and the other to do three. Or you could divide them up between three actors for the same cost. This led to even more female roles in cartoons and to more jobs for the actor who could do one or two voices but couldn't do ten.
In the eighties, it was changed so the session fee covered two roles but you would get a small "bump" for the third role. Then if that actor did a fourth part, they'd be paid another session fee which could also cover a fifth role…and then there'd be that "bump" again for the sixth part. When we cast shows, we often think in multiples of three.
When we did Garfield and Friends, Lorenzo Music played Garfield and Lorenzo, wonderful though he was, only had one voice. It was a great voice but it was one voice. (Actually, there were one or two cartoons where he did a line as someone else but that was rare.) Gregg Berger played Odie and Thom Huge played Jon. Gregg and Thom could each do multiple voices and usually each would do his regular character plus two others. So if we had ten speaking parts, the three of them would cover seven of them. If the three other voices were all male or all female, one person could cover them but I might need two. Of course, we could also pay Gregg or Thom a second session fee to do those three but there was no financial advantage to us; just the convenience of not having to bring in another actor and fill out contracts and such for them.
And of course, every so often, I might decide a certain role should be played by a one-voice actor because that person was so perfect. Among the actors we had on who fit into that category were Gary Owens, Marvin Kaplan, Buddy Hackett, James Earl Jones, Don Knotts, Shelley Berman, Dick Beals and Arnold Stang.
We paid our actors very well on that show. The producer agreed to do so but I promised him that I wouldn't hire more actors than absolutely needed for each episode. Whenever we had a bit part in the show that could be male or female — a store clerk or a food server or a newsperson, for example — what would determine if that character was male or female was how many other roles the actors of each gender were otherwise doing in the cartoon. It was a lot simpler in the old days where a director could just bring in Daws Butler and June Foray and they could play everyone.