Daws Butler
Part 3
by Mark Evanier
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 2/9/01
Comics Buyer's Guide
[And now we're in Part Three of our profile of the great voice actor, Daws Butler. When last we spoke, we were discussing how Daws became the star of every single early Hanna-Barbera TV production…]
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera weren't the only ones inventing TV animation in the late fifties. Just a few blocks from their studio at Sunset and La Brea, producer Jay Ward was teaming with writer-actor-producer Bill Scott for much the same purpose. Daws was not a part of the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons they initially launched on Rocky and His Friends, but he was heard loud and clear on one of its supporting features.
Fractured Fairy Tales featured Daws in most of the male, non-narrator roles. The series was one of his favorites, due to the witty scripts (primarily by George Atkins) and the challenge of coming up with new voices for each episode…or, at least, he wanted to come up with new voices for each episode. "Jay was always insisting I use the same prince voice whenever there was any sort of royal character," Daws noted. "I'd always say, 'How about this one, instead?' and he'd say, 'No, no, give us the prince.' He also insisted June [Foray] use her Brooklyn voice for most of the princesses."
Later, when Rocky and His Friends morphed into The Bullwinkle Show, Fractured Fairy Tales was sometimes replaced by Aesop and Son, which consisted of fables instead of fairy tales. Daws continued to do most of the male voices, including that of Aesop's son. And still later, he was heard throughout Ward's George of the Jungle series, often as the villains encountered by George or Super Chicken, and as Clutcher in the Tom Slick segments. His most memorable role for the studio, however, was probably as the voice of Captain Crunch in dozens of commercials they produced for the breakfast cereal.
Working for Ward, Daws was a part of what has been often hailed as the best ensemble of voice actors ever assembled for television — Foray, Scott, Paul Frees, Hans Conried, William Conrad and only a few others. That he was in such distinguished company is not widely known since, feeling he was over-exposed from his Hanna-Barbera work, he declined screen credit on the Ward shows.
Daws remained the star voice in everything Hanna-Barbera did for daytime television, but he was reduced to a supporting player (or less) on their prime-time ventures. He initially voiced both Fred and Barney in the short demo film for a show called The Flagstones. It soon became the first nighttime animated series, The Flintstones…but without Daws in either lead.
Why he was replaced remains a bit of a mystery. Daws said that, what with his work for Walter Lantz, Jay Ward and the other H-B shows, he was overexposed at the time. More probable, it was that he was overexposed and typed as a voice for kids' cartoons. Though The Flintstones would soon become a kids' cartoon, it was initially slotted in a 9 PM time slot, sponsored by a cigarette company and targeted for an "adult" audience. The network and, more importantly, the sponsor did not want it to sound like the other shows Bill and Joe were producing.
Moreover, it's rumored that someone at Hanna-Barbera feared legal problems. Like the "Honeymousers" cartoons Daws had voiced for Warner Brothers, The Flintstones was inspired by — to put it nicely — the popular TV show, The Honeymooners. As directed, Daws did the same impressions of Jackie Gleason and Art Carney for the Flagstones pilot, with June Foray (his co-star in "The Honeymousers") providing the same Audrey Meadows impression as the wife.
It seems likely that Hanna-Barbera's lawyers felt that they'd be on less-shaky ground if they did not employ someone who was as well-established as a mimic of Gleason and Carney. (In a 1986 Playboy interview, Gleason said they he and his people had discussed suing over the resultant series but finally deciding not to bother.)
Daws and June were both replaced for the series, though it remains a mystery as to who immediately followed Daws in his roles. Jean Vander Pyl, who would wind up playing Wilma Flintstone, recalled that Hal Smith and Bill Thompson took over. Indeed, both actors can still be heard in bit parts in the first episode — the kind of small roles that were usually filled by having the lead actors "double." This would suggest that they were recorded in the starring roles and that those parts were later redubbed by the eventual stars, Alan Reed and Mel Blanc.
Joe Barbera, however, says that two other actors were recorded for as many as a half-dozen episodes before their voice tracks were dumped. He doesn't recall who they were but says they were not Smith or Thompson. Eventually, Daws's old co-stars, Reed and Blanc, were cast — and well-cast — as Fred and Barney. Daws wound up playing bit parts on The Flintstones, and filling in for several episodes as Barney when Blanc suffered a near-fatal auto accident.
Hanna-Barbera's second prime-time series, Top Cat, was also inspired by a popular live-action situation comedy…in this case, You'll Never Get Rich, on which Phil Silvers created the memorable character of Sgt. Ernest T. Bilko. Again, the show began with a Butler voice — much the same one he used for Hokey Wolf. And again, Daws was replaced because of lawsuit fears and/or because someone felt he'd make the show sound like a kids' cartoon.
Several different performers were recorded in the role before Hanna and Barbera settled on veteran actor Arnold Stang. Daws wound up playing only a few guest parts, including one episode where, playing a rival of Top Cat's, he employed the Hokey Wolf voice.
For the studio's third prime-time series, The Jetsons, the pattern was reversed: Daws replaced someone else. Veteran voice actress Lucille Bliss was initially cast to speak for the Jetsons' son Elroy but, after a few recordings, Daws was brought in to take over the role and redub the shows already recorded. He also played the building handyman, Henry, and the flamboyant businessman, Cogswell, who was in perpetual competition with George Jetson's employer, Spacely.
At first hearing, Elroy's high voice sounded like what he'd done for Augie Doggie or Aesop's Son. It even recalled Beany from the Time for Beany show…but it was none of these, as Daws would sometimes demonstrate by simulating a four-way conversation between the characters. There really was something different in each, not so much in pitch but in word emphasis, attitude and personality.
It was another favored role of his, if only because he found it therapeutic to make himself eight years old from time to time. Called back to do Elroy in the 1990 Jetsons movie and series, Daws — then age 72 — said, "I figure, as long as I can still sound like Elroy, I can't be that old."
It was around the time of the original Jetsons series that the long and fruitful relationship between Hanna-Barbera and Daws Butler began to unravel. Perhaps inevitably, the main concern was money. The studio had become huge and successful, and Daws had created the voices of most of its key characters.
Still, as was customary in the industry, he remained a freelance day player. Every time his services were required, his agent, Miles Auer, had to negotiate and, like any agent dealing with a burgeoning company, he was out to boost his client's compensation.
At the same time, Bill and Joe both were uneasy at the occasional criticism that all their cartoons sounded alike. There was also the concern of having one man responsible for so many of their characters. As Daws later put it, "They were worried that if I went on strike, they'd have to recast almost everything they were doing."
New characters as they came along were less of a problem. Daws was auditioned for most but, increasingly, lead roles went to others — especially if it seemed like he'd be demanding significantly above scale pay. The real battles came when Daws was needed to voice a Yogi Bear record or a Huckleberry Hound commercial.
Many of those negotiations left hurt feelings and resentments…and, once in a while, no deal was made and Yogi's voice wound up being imitated by Hal Smith or Allan Melvin. The results were never satisfactory.
Daws was heard only sporadically in Hanna-Barbera shows from the mid-sixties on. He was Peter Potamus in 1963 and the villainous Captain Skyhook on Space Kidettes in '66. In 1968, he was one of The Banana Splits and many of the contestants on Wacky Races. The year after, he supplied the voice of Lambsy for the "It's the Wolf" segments on Catanooga Cats. (It was pronounced with "wolf" broken into two syllables — most likely a Butler contribution.)
In 1971, he was asked to recycle the Snagglepuss voice for the title role of The Funky Phantom but, typically, he quietly evolved the character in a slightly-different direction. In 1978, when Hanna-Barbera brought forth its Saturday morn version of Popeye, Daws played J. Wellington Wimpy.
Apart from these roles, the only times he worked for Hanna-Barbera were when they brought back The Jetsons or revived Yogi, Huck, Quick Draw and all the rest, such as for Yogi's Gang (1973), Yogi's Space Race (1978), Laff-a-Lympics (1980) and Yogi's Treasure Hunt (1985). It was a shame he wasn't heard more…on their cartoons and other studios'. He really was the best.
I first met Daws Butler in the mid-seventies but, of course, I'd known him all my life and perhaps even longer. My mother says that she routinely watched Time For Beany when she was "with child," so perhaps his voice filtered in. As a kid, I loved Hanna-Barbera cartoons, Jay Ward cartoons, Warner Brothers cartoons and Stan Freberg records. Thus, when I was about ten, I came to the not-altogether-unwarranted conclusion that there was some Federal Law against doing something funny for kids without the participation of Daws Butler.
Many years later, when I was still ten but my I.D. claimed I was in my thirties, I had his voice on my voice mail doing Yogi and/or Huck. Friends who were around my age would call and hope I wasn't home, just so they could hear him. If they got me, they were disappointed and they'd ask me to hang up and let the machine get it when they called back.
That was after I'd gotten to know one of the dearest, sweetest people I have ever known…an opinion that is darn near unanimous among those who worked and/or studied with Daws. He was a man who loved talent, and not exclusively his own. He loved to see writers writing and actors acting and when you were with him, you just felt more like a writer or actor. He brought that out in everyone.
An extended family of young actors and would-be voice artists flocked to him, along with the occasional writer, like myself. We would sit for hours in the little workshop he maintained behind his Beverly Hills home, talking about acting and writing — or, sometimes, writing and acting. Daws could speak endlessly on those subjects and never run out of valuable things to say.
He also listened well…a skill I'm sure was crucial to his acting.
Those who had even the slightest amount of performing ability — i.e., everyone but me — took classes from him. Many have gone on to wildly successful careers, not only in voice work but in on-camera acting, as well. They will all tell you that studying with Daws was the most valuable experience of their careers. Some would go farther and say, "…of my career and of my life."
His techniques, his methods of teaching were all his own. He was not, like some acting tutors, passing on that which had been taught to him by others. I don't think he'd ever learned that way.
Rather, what you got from Daws was the sage experience of someone who'd been there, done that and — most importantly — understood precisely where he'd been and what he'd done. There are some wonderful actors who haven't the foggiest notion as to what they do or how they do it.
Daws was not that kind of actor. He was like Olivier, of whom it was said that he understood the reason for every inflection of every syllable he uttered. To add the slightest hint of sibilance to a word told us something about the character speaking it…said something about his background, his breeding, his intelligence. Daws, like Sir Laurence, always knew precisely why he was doing what he was doing. That made him the ideal tutor.
It isn't enough to say that he was loved by his students; I daresay any of them wouldn't hesitate to deck you on the spot if you said an unkind work about Daws. He was so giving, so willing to share his skills and time with anyone displaying the slightest dram of talent, that you couldn't help but love the guy.
We all did, anyway.
A heart attack took him from us in May of 1988 and I still find myself missing him terribly…not the voice, for that will be with us as long as his cartoons are rerun, which will be forever. But I miss being able to call him, to visit him, to listen as he dissected a piece of writing with the sharpest eye and ear of any actor I have known.
For a long time, I followed a little ritual most nights before turning in. I'd write 'til two or three in the morning…then I'd turn on the TV and start channel-hopping, primarily through the Turner stations. The idea was that I wouldn't go to bed until I had heard Daws. It usually did not take long.
There is still something very comforting about hearing him…something very human about his characters, be they bears or lions or hound dogs. I don't believe that's just because I knew the man who did them. I believe it's because he was extraordinarily human…and in all the right places.
This concludes our three-part look at the life and times of Daws Butler, but it's by no means the last word on him. In fact, I already have another story, which I think I'll save for a few weeks. Just to break things up a bit.