Search Results for: mel blanc

This is what's called a Soundie. Soundies were little 16mm music videos that were made, primarily in the forties, to play in the equivalent of video jukeboxes in public places. This one features Spike Jones and His City Slickers pantomiming to a record they released called "Clink Clink, Another Drink." Spike is the guy behind the bar with the fake mustache. The soloist is the great Mel Blanc. The miming isn't wonderful but who cares? It's Spike Jones and Mel Blanc. Watch it.

Here's another version (different from this one) of Jack Benny and Mel Blanc doing the Sí/Sy routine. What's fascinating to me about this one is that it was obviously shot without a live audience. Benny, of course, controls the timing of the entire scene with Blanc responding to his cues. What Jack is doing in it is more or less replicating the timing of the bit as per previous times when they'd done it in front of actual, laughing human beings. He's leaving the proper intervals, presuming that whoever will add the laugh track later will follow his pacing and properly dial down the laughs. Benny even allows himself a slight smirk or two, like he's trying to prevent himself from breaking up, as he probably did when they performed this sketch on a live broadcast. And of course, Mel throughout is perfectly deadpan.

It's also a pretty good job of laugh-tracking, including the faint sound of recognition when Mel is revealed and the "audience" realizes it's this bit again…

This is a commercial for an animation gallery but it's also four minutes of Mel Blanc telling how he created the voices of the classic Warner Brothers characters.

Well, actually, these are what I call the "talk show" versions of how those voices came to be, as opposed to the actual stories. Mel was a great self-promoter, and I don't mean that at all in a bad way. The man raised his craft to a high level and also a visible one, doing interviews and appearing on television to remind people that actors spoke for cartoon characters. With the possible exception of Jim Backus, Mel was the only "celebrity" known for that job in the forties, fifties and even into the sixties.

During that time, there was little or no scholarship about cartoons…no books wherein one could learn the history of the Warner Brothers studio, for instance, nor was there anyone else on the interview circuit talking about it. The nature of talk shows and interviews causes people who are asked the same questions over and over to develop short, funny responses that they repeat over and over, usually to the delight of interviewers and audiences. When Mel went on with Johnny Carson, what was expected of him was not a precise history of the development of Porky's voice. What was desired was a brief and humorous anecdote…so he developed one about deciding that a pig's grunt might be similar to a human stutter. For years, there was no one around to point out that Mel did not invent the idea of Porky stuttering; that Mel was the second voice of Porky Pig and that the first guy had given him a stuttering voice which Mel started by replicating and eventually making his own. (Porky's first voice was done by a man named Joe Dougherty. He was hired because he was an actual stutterer, meaning that the cartoon's directors and gag men were the ones who decided the pig should have a speech impediment.)

In the late sixties and since, there have been people around who've researched the history of the cartoons, and some of Mel's colleagues from those days also were getting interviewed…so Mel, being a smart guy, didn't push the "talk show" anecdotes in every venue. He recognized when he was in front of an audience that expected the real story and knew the difference, and there are some wonderful interviews around where he goes into great and accurate depth about how he did what he did. This is not one of those interviews but it's entertaining, anyway. Everything Mel did was entertaining…

What shall I link to today? What shall I link to? Hey, I have an idea! How about this commercial for Kellogg's Apple Jacks, a cereal that I used to like even if I could never connect its flavor in any way to that of an apple? Yeah, that'll work.

That's Paul Frees doing the voice of the guy with the apple for a head, and I think Paul is also one of the bullies. The other bully voices sound like Mel Blanc, which I don't understand. Why hire Mel Blanc for two lines when Paul could have done them? Anyway, here's the commercial…

This is the third of an as-yet-undetermined number of parts. I'm serializing the tale of how Scrappy Doo became a part of the Scooby Doo cartoon show and I'm owning up as to what I had to do with that. If you haven't read Part One or Part Two you might want to do so before venturing into what follows, which is our third chapter…

Everyone in sync? Good. So I'd just written the script which convinced ABC to pick Scooby Doo up for its ninety-eighth (or whatever number it was) season. I was asked to story-edit the show but I'd accepted a job to serve as head writer for a couple of variety specials for Sid and Marty Krofft and had to pass. I still, however, had to do another rewrite on my Scooby script to address a few comments that folks at Hanna-Barbera and ABC had before it could be produced…and you'd think that would be simple. I mean, they all loved the script and it had gotten the show renewed for another year. So how many problems could it have?

As it turned out, plenty. Ordinarily, when you wrote a script for H-B, you got "notes" from one person at the network and maybe (and maybe not) someone at Hanna-Barbera. But this was a pilot, even if they'd denied as much when negotiating my fee. A pilot pays more because more people have input and they're always more concerned about teensy details. So I got notes. Boy, did I get notes. Johannes Brahms once wrote a piece called Ein Deutsches Requiem that runs seventy minutes in performance. It had fewer notes than I got.

Joe Barbera read the script, told me it was wonderful but he gave me notes in such volume that I found myself wondering how many I'd get if he hadn't liked it. The person who ran the studio's day to day operations gave me a set of notes that topped Barbera's in breadth and volume. The head of the story department gave me a pile of comments…and then there was a set from the fellow who was line-producing the Scooby Doo show and yet another from the team of writers who'd signed on to story-edit the series after I passed. That's five sets of comments and we hadn't even gotten to the network where the real power was wielded.

I got three sets from ABC — from different programming execs there — and another from the Standards and Practices Lady. I ignored the S&P Lady because…well, I always ignored her notes. But even then, I had eight sets and they could not be humanly reconciled. One set said, "Let's lose the joke at the top of page 19." Another said, "Love the joke at the top of page 19." Yet another said, "Hey, could we make that joke on the top of page 19 a running gag and do it a few more times?" Being a mystery, the story involved three suspects and one set of notes suggested switching whodunnit from Suspect A to Suspect B, while another set of notes thought all clues pointed to C. It went that way all through all the notes. I suspected the eight of them had gotten together and divided up my script in a devious plot to drive me insane. ("Okay, you'll hate the scene in the cave and I'll love it and Joe will tell him to change it to a Chinese restaurant…")

For maybe a week, I struggled with rounding off this odd trapezium my script had become. Finally, I went to the person I just mentioned who ran operations, laid eight sets of notes on this person's desk and said, "Pick any two." I was immediately told, "Throw out everyone's comments except Mr. B's" — "B" for Barbera — "and Squire's." Squire Rushnell was the Vice-President of Children's Programming at ABC, the guy who everyone said loved it when the new characters were inspired by Warner Brothers cartoons and voiced by Mel Blanc.

I went home, did a rewrite to please Joe and Squire, and the next day the script was marked "final."

A week or so later, I was in the Hanna-Barbera Xerox Room and I happened to see my script being mass-copied for distribution. I peeked to see if any rewrites had been done since it had left me and there didn't seem to be any. In fact, the script hadn't even been retyped. They were copying the printout I'd handed in, the one from my word processor.

But someone had typed a new title page and instead of saying, "Written by Mark Evanier," it now had my name plus that of another writer in the studio. In fact, the other writer was the son of an executive at the Hanna-Barbera studio.

Three minutes later, title page in hand, I barged into the office of that executive and you can pretty much imagine what I said. He explained that his son had been among the many writers who'd worked on Scrappy Doo before I'd been hired. He felt his son deserved some credit for all the hours he'd put in on the project. I said, "He may have put in many hours but he didn't put them in on this script. I wrote this script and you put his name on my work." The exec apologized and ordered the title pages reprinted…and I had yet another example to cite of how writers get abused when they work on projects not covered by the Writers Guild of America. That kind of thing would never have happened on a WGA show…or if it had, the Guild would have handled it in a jif.

Okay, so we had a script. Now, Scrappy needed a voice. In our next installment, whenever it appears, I'll tell you about the actor they selected as being the perfect voice of Scrappy Doo. And then I'll tell you about the actor they replaced him with. And the actor they replaced the second guy with. And the one who replaced the third guy. And the fourth guy and the fifth guy and so on. Scrappy's still quite some distance from being born.

If anyone ever asks you to explain what "timing" means in comedy, don't waste your time with words. Just show them this clip of Jack Benny and Mel Blanc. The other day, I sat for a video interview that will appear on the fifth DVD volume of The Golden Age of Looney Tunes and I made the point that Mel wasn't just a guy with a lot of voices. He was a very gifted, skilled comic actor. You had to be to play opposite Benny, Abbott and Costello, Bob Hope and all the other people he worked with on radio.

Even the bit in which he played the little Mexican guy opposite Benny, of which this is an abridged version, demonstrates superior acting. He doesn't have a wide variety of dialogue but what makes the bit work is not just Benny's expressions but Blanc's lack of any. He is perfectly deadpan throughout, making his character (the pun is unavoidable) an absolute blank and directing all attention to Mr. Benny. The routine wouldn't have been funny if you saw the slightest smirk or sign of life on Mel's part. As you'll see, Blanc knew how to do that. He didn't know how to play the bass but he knew how to get a laugh…

We were talking here the other day about the new NBC show, Thank God You're Here, and how it isn't real improv comedy. Last evening, I went to see real improv comedy…a performance by The Spolin Players.

The "Spolin" refers to the late Viola Spolin, hailed by many as "The Grandmother of Improv Comedy." She was, among other things, a teacher and an awful lot of fine actors either studied with her or studied with someone who was offering a second-hand version of her curriculum. She more or less invented the idea of Theater Games, a set of little exercises that hone the skills of an improvisational actor. A lot of what they do on Whose Line Is It Anyway? is the kind of thing — often, the same games — that Ms. Spolin invented. There are presently two troupes — one in Seattle, one here in Los Angeles — that carry on her work and do occasional shows.

The troupe at tonight's L.A. show consisted of David McCharen, John Mariano, Anna Mathias, Danny Mann, Harry Murphy, Donna DuBain, Edie McClurg, Gail Matthius and I know I'm leaving someone out. Forgive me, whoever I left out. Everyone was very good in ways that will not mean anything if I start quoting lines and snippets here. The great thing about true improv is that it's in the moment. There's a loose structure for a game and then the audience throws out some specifics: Who are the people on stage? Where are they? What is their relationship? And so on. Then you see the scene created before your eyes.

There are certain regulations, one of the most important being the "Yes, and…" rule. In improv, you must not deny anything that is said. If you enter the scene and someone says, "Ah, you're back with the pizza," then you're back with the pizza and that's part of the scenario. You don't say, "I wasn't going out for pizza." If you're going to take things in another direction, you have to say something like, "Yes, and…" and then append your new information to what's already been established. Once or twice last night when someone violated this rule, you could hear moans from the audience.

That was because the audience was full of actors, most of whom had extensive backgrounds in improv. In fact, I think I knew about half the audience, which included Ann Ryerson, Shelley Long, Dani and Jim Staahl, my pal Teresa Ganzel, cartoon voice director Ginny McSwain and cartoon voice actor Michael Bell. (Michael's the guy we had on the voice panel at San Diego who told the great anecdote about working with Mel Blanc.) I may have been the only one in the place without a SAG card and it was fun watching one group of fine actors be appreciated by another.

Amidst the intermission and post-show chatter, I heard a lot of talk about Thank God You're Here, all of it quite negative…although when I spoke with Edie McClurg, who was on the show (and very good on it), the subject didn't come up. Everyone else though was negative about the series for being edited, for having all but the main actor so well scripted and for violating principles like the "Yes, and…" rule. There seemed to be a general horror that the tradition of improv games had been corrupted so for television, particularly when the real thing would have been far more entertainining…and honest. In fairness to the TV show, it never claimed to be classic improv — though I agree that the kind of thing Viola Spolin taught her students would have made for a much better program.

This troupe of the Spolin Players currently has no future performances scheduled but they'll be back soon. When they are, I'll let you know here in case you watch Thank God You're Here and would like to see what real improv looks like.

Here we have a commercial for Soaky toys…and what's interesting about it is that it has a Walt Disney character (Donald Duck) and a Warner Brothers character (Porky Pig) in the same ad. They don't meet and I'd be fascinated to know if that was a condition of the deal…if Disney said they wouldn't allow Donald to appear in the same scene with a non-Disney character or what. It also looks to me like the two halves of the commercial have different animators and could possibly even be the work of separate studios.

In any case, here are the voice credits: Donald Duck is voiced by Clarence Nash. Porky Pig is voiced by Mel Blanc. And the Soaky Kid is voiced by Dick Beals…and by God, I think it's been a whole eighteen days since I last linked to a commercial with Dick Beals in it. I'll try not to make it so long until the next one.

What has Mark found this time? Hmm…how about a Post Alpha-Bits commercial with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd? This one was done for inclusion in the prime-time series, The Bugs Bunny Show, which ran on ABC from 1960 to 1962 before being relocated to Saturday morn. I think Friz Freleng directed this ad or at least supervised its direction. Mel Blanc, of course, is voicing Bugs Bunny. The Fudd voice is by Hal Smith, who most people will remember best as Otis the Town Drunk on The Andy Griffith Show. Hal did an amazing amount of animation voicing in his long career without ever becoming associated with a famous character.

This commercial does not make me want to buy Post Alpha-Bits. In fact, it suggests that if you do, you're likely to drive off a cliff. But it's interesting that in it, they're touting a new formula for the product. For fifty-some-odd years now, whenever I've seen a commercial for Alpha-Bits, it always seems to be announcing a new formula. This may be the only cereal to change the outside of the box less often than they change what's inside it.

This is an outsider's perception but it's always seemed to me that Post lucked into a great name for a cereal and a great gimmick — the letter shapes — but they've never found an actual cereal that can be sold in those shapes and under that name that people like. I remember trying it a couple of times when I was a kid, usually when a little box of it came in one of those "Post Ten Trays" with individual servings. It tasted a lot like eating plain table sugar. Even when I was ten, it was too sweet for me. For a time there, it was even called Frosted Alpha-Bits.

About two years ago, the Post people reconfigured its recipe for the umpteenth time, removing all the sugar and adding in whole-grain oat bran. It's now supposedly just like Cheerios except that you get the 25 other letters in the box, as well and the ads now tout its fiber content…an amazing transformation. And now, here are Bugs and Elmer…

Here's a list of names. Guess what these people have in common. No, on second thought. Don't bother. You won't be able to guess. I'll tell you what they have in common after you scan the list.

• Johnny Carson
• Bob Hope
• Frank Sinatra
• Dean Martin
• Mel Blanc
• Jim Backus
• Stan Laurel
• Bud Abbott
• Buster Keaton
• Oliver Hardy
• Lou Costello
• Buddy Hackett

Okay, yes, they're all dead but that's not the answer I'm looking for. Here's the answer: They all apparently have money being held for them by the Screen Actors Guild department that collects residuals. Their names all turn up on this database on the SAG website. The union collects this money and is supposed to forward it to the performer or if said performer is deceased, to the appropriate heirs. But sometimes they don't have an address and that's where the database comes in. If you're a member of SAG or you know a member of SAG or you know someone who's a relative of a deceased member of SAG, go to the database, enter their name and if it's in there, let someone know.

This does not just apply to biggies like Carson and Sinatra. My friend Earl Kress and I just entered the names of every cartoon voice actor we could think of. In addition to Mel Blanc and Jim Backus, the database says they're holding cash for Daws Butler, Don Messick, Alan Reed, Paul Winchell, Bill Scott, Jackson Beck, Jack Mercer, Mae Questel, Syd Raymond, Jean Vander Pyl, Vance Colvig, Thurl Ravenscroft, Paul Frees, Lennie Weinrib, Walker Edmiston, Howard Morris and Sterling Holloway. Earl and I are going to alert the heirs of some of those folks but if you're in contact with any of them, by all means, be our guest.

You might caution them, by the way: It could be a lot of money or it could be almost nothing. Some people are going to go to the trouble of calling SAG and/or downloading and filling out forms in order to receive a check for three dollars or thereabouts. But I'll bet some of them have tidy sums waiting.

The problem may puzzle some of you. Why can't SAG find Bob Hope's family? The Hopes operate a website. There's still a Bob Hope estate that produces projects and controls the rights to what he owned. Okay, so the current address they have for Frank Sinatra is no good. Don't they have one for Frank Jr. or Nancy? And the answer is that it's probably a drawback to the age of computers. Back when human beings handled all this stuff, someone could figure that out. SAG needs to do what some other unions, including the Writers Guild, have sometimes done, which is to hire a few people to just work the phones and play Detective. It's probably a pretty formidable task however, given the size of the SAG membership, past and present.

It may also puzzle some of you that so many addresses would be no good. The widow of Daws Butler still lives in the same home where she and Daws lived since the sixties. Why doesn't SAG have that address? I'm just speculating here but I'd guess that near the end of his life, Daws had his agent's or business manager's address listed with the union. That address is now invalid — Daws's last agent died years ago — and no one at SAG has done any legwork to find the Butler home address, which they could get from any number of sources. That is, if they had anyone or even enough people assigned to do that.

And let me emphasize that though I'm talking here so far about deceased actors, the database is full of people who are alive. I'm going to call some of the ones I know over the next few days but, to quote Regis Philbin (who does not seem to have any money due him), I'm only one man. In particular, we oughta try to notify the performers who could really use it.

I'm thinking of one particular veteran character actor who I believe is now homeless and on the streets. Or at least he was a few years ago when I used to occasionally see him in my neighborhood. I tried once to slip him some cash but he refused it because I made the mistake of greeting him by name before offering. At least, I think that was his reason. I sure got the feeling that if he hadn't known I knew who he was, he would have grabbed the loot. Anyway, I haven't seem him in some time but his name is in the database. I'm not sure what can be done to get him whatever money they have for him — that is, assuming he's still around. But if he is, I'll bet he could sure use it.

Thanks to James H. Burns who wrote to remind me about this database. I'd been meaning to link to it and also to the much smaller Writers Guild Undeliverable Funds database to see if we could help get some of these bucks to the right people. If you're in or around what they call "The Industry," take a look and see if you can help a friend.

This is the second part of I-don't-know-how-many detailing the creation of the cartoon character, Scrappy Doo. If you haven't read the first part, you might want to study it before proceeding with this one. Which you can do over on this page.

Now then. When we last left me, I was lunching with Joe Barbera at the Villa Capri restaurant in Hollywood, being charged with my mission: To write a Scooby Doo script that would introduce the character of Scrappy Doo. I had to make Scrappy "work," at least on paper, so the good folks at ABC would invest in another season of the series. Mr. B. had sketches of Scrappy — mostly by Iwao Takamoto, I believe — and a rough idea of who the character was. As he told me what he had in mind, it sounded to me like he was trying to avoid saying two words. The two words were "Henery Hawk."

It is not uncommon for a new creation to start with what some might call a reference point or some element of inspiration. We all know about The Honeymooners turning into The Flintstones or Sgt. Bilko being a jumping-off point for Top Cat. Some are less obvious and there are also times in the development process when you start with one idea and by the time it reaches the air, it bears so little resemblance to that idea that it really qualifies as a new creation. The Scooby Doo show itself started out with the template of the old Dobie Gillis show and morphed into something altogether different.

There was at the time at ABC, a senior exec who (it was said) could best be sold a new series if he perceived some lineage to the classic Warner Brothers cartoons. Years later, I discussed this with the exec and became convinced his passion in this area was greatly exaggerated. But at the time, many of the folks whose livelihoods involved selling shows to him believed it, and so would laden their pitches with WB references — "This character is like Daffy Duck crossed with Wile E. Coyote" or somesuch gobbledygook. There was also a special sales magic to obtaining the services of Mel Blanc to voice a new character.

Not long before, H-B had tried to sell a series to ABC featuring a hero whose body was mostly mustache, a la Yosemite Sam. The network was only semi-interested so more sketches were done and the concept was changed a bit…and the character got hairier and hairier. At some point, he was so hirsute that they decided to make him into a caveman and that's when ABC bought the show. Soon after, he made his debut: Captain Caveman…with a voice provided by Mel Blanc.

I was startled when an H-B exec told me this. The two characters have zero in common apart from hair and Mel. It's one of those cases where Yosemite Sam was a jumping-off point but he jumped so far that he became a wholly new entity. Still, the WB connection (and Mel) were of some import in the sales of the series.

As Mr. Barbera told me how he saw Scrappy Doo, I kept thinking of Henery Hawk. Barbera never said that name and may not have even realized he was describing the pint-sized chicken hawk from several WB epics. But that's what it sounded like they wanted. So I went home and wrote a short scene, imagining Scrappy to have Henery Hawk's voice and swagger, and when Mr. B. read it, he called and said, "You've nailed it. That's exactly what I had in mind."

So that was Hurdle #1. The next hurdle was to come up with a ghost and mystery for the script. For this, I decided to steal from myself. I looked back over the issues of the Scooby Doo comic book I'd written a few years earlier, selected a couple of my favorite ideas and typed up short summaries. Someone at ABC picked the one they liked best and I went ahead and wrote the script in about a week. The hardest part of it was that every day, some Hanna-Barbera exec or agent (though never Joe) would call me and try to convince me how vital it was that the script be strong enough to convince ABC that Scrappy was viable. They all had a way of saying it as if they expected me to go, "What? You want it to be good? Well then, maybe I'd better take out all the recipes I'm putting in and insert some jokes instead!"

I handed the script in on a Friday and it was simultaneously distributed to all the important folks at H-B and sent to the folks over at the network. Over the weekend, Barbera called to say he was very happy with it. He had a few notes but not many and he thought we were in very good shape. Monday morning, I got a call from a rival producer, the one for whom I'd done another pilot that ABC was considering for that season. He "jokingly" told me that I did too good a job for Hanna-Barbera. He'd just heard that the show I'd developed for him wasn't going to make it because ABC liked my Scrappy script. (I put "jokingly" in quotes because the truth is that the guy was pissed.) Later that day, someone called from Hanna-Barbera to say that I was a hero and that Scooby Doo was being picked up for another season.

I was happy, of course. Little did I know my troubles were only starting.

Tune in one of these days — I'm not sure when but soon — for more of the story of how Scrappy Doo came to be.

Let's go back to the one of Cartoon Voice panels I hosted at last year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. Last week, we linked to a video of the fine actor Gregg Berger telling a story about working with Mel Blanc in a Jetsons session. Shortly before he told that tale, another fine actor, Michael Bell, told about working with Mel in a recording session for Speed Buggy. Here's what Michael had to say…

And now, in case you didn't click on it the other day, here's Gregg Berger with the follow-up anecdote.

Let's talk about Mel Blanc. Better still, let's let the fine voice actor Gregg Berger talk about Mel Blanc. This is a clip someone shot from the audience of one of the Cartoon Voice Panels I hosted at last year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. The camerawork and the ethics of taping and posting this stuff are all a little shaky but it's a good story.

I'm the big guy at the podium. Another great voice actor on the panel, Michael Bell, had just told a story about working with Mel on a Hanna-Barbera show — Speed Buggy, I think. Michael enjoyed the experience except for the fact that Mel, who was playing a talking car in that series, tended to spray large quantities of saliva in the air when he simulated the engine sounds of the character he voiced. Bell explained how he went home drenched in Blanc spit and then Berger told the following anecdote…

Now, here's something weirder. This is a video about which I know nothing other than that it purports to be footage of Mel Blanc's vocal cords as he demonstrates some of his character voices. I don't know how or where this was made or even why. I don't even guarantee it's legit. But Bob Bergen, who's the current voice of Porky Pig, sent me this link and it's too bizarre not to share it with you all…

As you may know, I sometimes direct voices for cartoon shows. Whenever feasible, I try to heed a piece of wisdom that was imparted to me by one Mr. Joseph Barbera. He said, "It's important to audition everyone you can before you hire Frank Welker." Frank is the "workingest" voice actor in the history of mankind. I don't mean he's worked more than Mel Blanc, Daws Butler or Paul Frees. I mean he's worked more than all three of them put together.

Frank does cartoon voices. He does commercials. You've heard him in dozens of movies, including many of the top box office grossers of all time, making creature sounds and barking for dogs and often replacing the vocal tracks of the on-screen actors. Sometimes when you think you're hearing Jack Nicholson or someone like that in one of their movies, you're hearing a line redubbed by Frank. He can sound like anyone or anything.

This is a very tiny taste of what he does. This is two and a half minutes of him making monkey sounds for a Curious George videogame. The weird and amazing thing about him is that he could go seamlessly from doing this to making terrifying dragon shrieks or sounding just like Bill Cosby or Gregory Peck. Once for a show, I asked him to create the sound of living oatmeal that was bubbling in the pot and getting angry at the person cooking it. Without pause to ponder, Frank went immediately to the microphone and made the sound of living oatmeal that was bubbling in the pot and getting angry at the person cooking it. Honest. If I played you the tape with no explanation, you'd hear it and say, "Hey, that sounds like living oatmeal bubbling in the pot and getting angry at the person cooking it." He's that good.

Thanks go out to Augie De Blieck Jr. for telling me about this. Here's Frank getting paid, probably very well, for making monkey sounds. This man, by the way, went to college.

Say, how about if we watch a Daffy Duck cartoon? You could always do with a Daffy Duck cartoon. This is Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur, which was released April 22, 1939. It was directed by Chuck Jones — one of his earlier efforts and the first time he ever got his hands on that crazy water fowl.

Mel Blanc, of course, supplies the voice of Daffy. His adversary, Casper Caveman, is a caricature in voice (and to some extent, manner and appearance) of Mr. Blanc's frequent employer, Jack Benny. The impression was done by an actor/announcer named Jack Lescoulie who was then on a Los Angeles-based radio series called The Grouch Club, produced by the great Nat Hiken. Lescoulie later relocated to New York where he a prominent announcer/host on NBC shows for many years. He was a regular on The Today Show from 1952 to 1967 and was a host of Tonight: America After Dark, the short-lived series that NBC attempted to launch in the 11:30 PM Monday-Friday slot in 1957 after Steve Allen left The Tonight Show. It flopped big and the network hurriedly brought back The Tonight Show and got Jack Paar to host it. Lescoulie later filled in occasionally as announcer/sidekick on The Tonight Show during both the Paar and Johnny Carson years.

Anyway, that's him doing Jack Benny. Here comes the cartoon…