Yesterday, I posted one of the two short adventures on the Huckleberry Hound Movie-Wheel. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go read yesterday's post.
This one is Felix the Cat and all the voices are done by Jack Mercer, who started in the cartoon business as an artist (and occasional storyman) at Max Fleischer's Studio and wound up as the voice of their most popular character, a spinach-eater named Popeye. Once he became a voice guy, he did less artwork, some writing and a lot of time at the microphone. He was pretty good as Popeye and did a lot more work as a voice actor than most folks think.
The video version of the Movie-Wheel was prepared by my pal Greg Ehrbar, who is one of the great experts on animation and especially on voices and music. By coincidence, the same day I chose to post his Movie-Wheel video, Greg has a new article over at Cartoon Research about Jack Mercer. Go read it here. And if you'd like to get a look at Mr. Mercer, here's a link I put up some time ago to a 1974 episode of the game show To Tell the Truth.
I got to meet Jack Mercer briefly in the early eighties when Hanna-Barbera was producing a new Popeye cartoon show and Mercer was residing from time to time in L.A. to do the voice. I gather the studio searched high 'n' low for someone local who could speak for the sailor man and finally had to cough up the bucks to fly him out and house him for a few months now and then…but I think they also recorded him at times with him at a studio in Manhattan. He was a nice, funny gent and though I didn't work on that show, I got to take him and Daws Butler out to lunch. Daws was on the show playing Wimpy, a role Mercer sometimes did in the old Fleischer films along with playing Popeye and other parts.
He does every voice in this…