Search Results for: mel blanc

Here's the second installment of Anna "Brizzy" Brisbin's informative series on the history of voiceover. If you missed the first chapter, you can view it here before you watch this one…

You will note in this one, Anna has a little problem with an interview in which Mel Blanc said something that doesn't pass serious fact-checking. One must always remember that people don't always remember. Even the most honest of us can get confused or misspeak. In Mel's case, I had enough contact with the man to formulate a theory why some of his stories don't seem to be utterly accurate.

Unlike other cartoon voice actors, Mel was a star. The others rarely (if ever) got billing. The others did radio shows as he did but didn't get prominent roles and featured billing the way Mel usually did, plus his association with Jack Benny made him pretty famous. And Mel understood the value of self-promotion. A number of the best voice actors became voice actors because they didn't hunger to be on camera. Some even liked the relative anonymity.

So Mel appeared on a lot of talk shows. He was a busy voice actor but never too busy to give an interview. And of course, the interviewers would always ask the same questions over and over: "How did you get into doing voices?" "Where did Bugs Bunny's voice come from?" And so on.

If people keep asking you the same questions over and over, you tend to give them the same answers. And if you're on talk shows, especially in front of a live audience, your answers need to be (a) quick and (b) funny. If accuracy is a condition at all — and with some people, it isn't — it's a distant third. When I was starting out in my vocation of writing things for which people would pay me money, I did a fair amount of writing "panel," that being stories that would be told while sitting in the guest chair with Johnny or Merv or the hosts of Good Morning, Oxnard.

A publicist for whom I worked occasionally would call and say that a certain client was up for a guest slot on The Mike Douglas Show and was "in need of panel." So I'd work with the client to make some anecdote they had shorter and simpler and it of course had to have a great punch line. I'm not going to say we sometimes made up completely phony stories…

Well, yes I am. I can't lie to you people. We did. Guests on talk shows still do that and often employ others to help them do it.

So what I think happened with Mr. Blanc was that he developed answers to talk show questions that weren't exactly fibs but weren't exactly the truth, either. As I said, what is wanted in that situation is quick and funny. If you were a serious animation historian, you wanted something detailed and accurate but if you were a talk show host and you had Mel Blanc on your show, you wanted quick and funny.

And Mel did a lot of those shows, especially after his near-fatal auto accident in 1961. Once he'd recovered enough to make the rounds, everyone wanted him on their programs to tell his story, and he wanted to do as many of them as possible to show the world that he was back and able to work. And I think sometimes, he got a little lost between the "talk show" version of a story and the real one. That happens a lot with people who get asked the same questions over and over and over and over…

Anyway, we eagerly await Part III of Anna's valuable history lesson. Good stuff.

Here's a good print of a vintage cartoon that you may never have seen. Bob Clampett directed some of the funniest cartoons that came out of the Warner Brothers Studio during its Golden Age but he left there in 1945, worked briefly for Screen Gems (Columbia's short films and cartoon division) then made a deal to try and put Republic Pictures into the cartoon business. It was a helluva deal but it fell apart after one cartoon…It's a Grand Old Nag.

The cartoon introduced, for his one and only appearance anywhere, the character of Charlie Horse. His voice and a few others were done by Stan Freberg, getting his first-ever screen credit since his name was not on the many WB cartoons he'd done with Mel Blanc receiving sole credit. Other voices in It's a Grand Old Nag were done by Dave Barry, who did not receive credit.

Clampett managed to assemble some real good animators and he reportedly got Michael Maltese to moonlight from WB and write the script, sans credit. It's not a bad little film but problems quickly arose which, according to Bob, had nothing to do with the cartoon and any reactions to it. Republic Studios just got themselves into a financial mess and had to close down some divisions and cancel many projects. It was the last cartoon Clampett directed in that era before redirecting his energies to the new medium of television and his show, Time for Beany, also starring Freberg.

It's interesting to speculate what the new operation would have produced if they hadn't been shut down after this one film. Given the potential in this film and Bob Clampett's track record, wonders might have occurred. As it is though, we have to settle for just this…

Back here on Easter Sunday, I flashed back to a memory from my childhood. The local chain of May Company department stores did a promotion with Bugs Bunny. You could call a special phone number they advertised — and you could dial and dial and dial and dial and dial and dial and dial and dial and dial and dial and dial and dial and dial and dial and dial and dial and dial and dial nineteen more times to get through and hear a recorded message from Bugs Bunny telling you to come in to your nearest May Company where he'd have a special Easter gift for you and another message.

Dialing a phone number to hear a recorded message from anyone was a big deal when I was a wee laddie. That it was a message from was my dear and beloved friend Bugs Bunny was a special thrill. So I dialed and dialed and dialed and…well, you can read the whole story here and you probably already did.

When I posted the memory here the other day, I kinda hoped some reader of this site would dig up the newspaper ad for it and, sure enough, David Grudt did. He found this ad in The Los Angeles Times for Wednesday, April 6th, 1960 (when I was eight) and it apparently also ran the year earlier (when I was seven). I'm pretty sure I called in both years and that I got my parents to take me to the department store in '59.

Apparently, the downtown May Company — to which we did not go — also had a little display of "live easter animals."  I'm guessing two chickens, a baby goat and some kind of lamb.  That wouldn't have mattered to me.  I just wanted to get as up-close and personal with Bugs Bunny as I could.  (Possibly Interesting Fact: Twelve years later, I was writing the Bugs Bunny comic book.  And a decade or two after that, I was voice-directing Mel Blanc doing Bugs' voice for a TV special I wrote and co-produced.)

I also recalled a similar promotion with Fred Flintstone but David was unable to find anything in the online newspaper archives about that.  But thank you for what you did find, David.  And I must say that the phone number, which I dialed ad infinitum 63 years ago, looked awfully familiar.

The nominations for this year's Emmy Awards in the category of "Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance" are as follows: Jessica Walters, Maya Rudolph, Stacey Abrams, Julie Andrews, Tituss Burgess, Stanley Tucci and Seth MacFarlane. With the exception of Mr. McFarlane, these are all actors known for their on-camera or on-stage work who do an occasional voice in a cartoon or something. When they do, they are at the center of two prejudices.

One — which I hear less often but I do hear it — is the presumption that they aren't very good and they were cast — to the exclusion of full-time voiceover performers — only because of their reputations. This is undoubtedly true in some cases. Hell, I've even had producers or casting directors admit as much to me and I can almost (almost!) defend it in certain cases, especially relating to feature films.

The sale of a movie to exhibitors — or of a TV series or special to a network — can often be easier with a S*T*A*R attached. Not everyone is cast in roles because they are the most talented or "rightest" for a role. Sometimes, they're cast for their reputation and the belief that they have some sort of following that will sell tickets or bring in viewers.  The movie Shrek might not have been made or been sold in advance to so many theaters with unknowns voicing the leads instead of Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy. A certain part of the movie business (emphasis on "business") does revolve around star names. That screenplay you wrote that no one even wants to read, let alone make, might be helped immeasurably if Tom Hanks was interested in starring in it.

Still, I love "real" voice actors — the kind who follow the lineage of Daws Butler, Mel Blanc, June Foray, Paul Frees, Don Messick and so many more…the kind who really know how to act with only their voices. No body language…no facial expressions…just their voices.

If I just start giving you the names of current "real" voice actors, I'll offend many friends by leaving them out so I'll just list the ones who've participated in the online Cartoon Voices panels I've done during The Pandemic. All of these videos can be found in this section of this website. Here's the list…

Bob Bergen, Julie Nathanson, Fred Tatasciore, Phil LaMarr, Secunda Wood, Jim Meskimen, Gregg Berger, Kaitlyn Robrock, Rob Paulsen, Debra Wilson, Alan Oppenheimer, Alicyn Packard, Jason Marsden, Elle Newlands, John Mariano, Debi Derryberry, Michael Bell, Neil Ross, Neil Kaplan, Nickie Bryar, Laraine Newman, Misty Lee, Dee Bradley Baker, Bill Farmer, Corey Burton, Kari Wahlgren, J.P. Karliak, Kimberly Brooks, Jon Bailey, Mara Junot, Maurice LaMarche, Anna Brisbin and Brock Powell. And in two weeks, the one I did with Candi Milo, Wally Wingert, Jenny Yokibori and Zeno Robinson will be online.

These are all folks who do a lot of voiceover work. Some of them also do on-camera…just as Mel Blanc, June Foray, Paul Winchell, Gary Owens, Stan Freberg and other inarguable voice actors occasionally did on-camera. But I think you can see the difference between them and when a cartoon special or Mr. Disney brought in Bing Crosby or Ed Wynn or Boris Karloff to do a voiceover for a cartoon.

As a director of cartoon voices, I've hired the "on-camera" variety — Don Knotts, Buddy Hackett, Jonathan Winters, Jesse White and even a few who weren't in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World like Jeffrey Tambor and Shelley Berman. The prejudice that such actors are only hired for their names is just plain wrong. Some of them are good at voiceover and some of them are not.

But the other prejudice is also wrong. That's the prejudice — and I've heard this one too from folks who admitted to it — that on-camera actors are somehow preferable because they're "real actors." That's absurd. Look at the names in the list above of folks who've been on my online panels. Any one of them is capable of doing things in front of a microphone that such "real actors" could never do.

We once had James Earl Jones on an episode of Garfield and Friends. I would never have thought of casting him but one day when we were recording in Studio A, he was recording promo-type announcements in Studio B. He wandered over and watched our troupe for a while and then asked me if I could use him someday for a character part. I immediately said, "Have you got a demo of your work I could listen to?"

No, I didn't say that. That stupid, I am not.  What I actually said was, "Sure if you're willing to work for what we pay." He was…and two weeks later, he came in and played — of course — a dastardly villain with a real deep voice. He was fine but throughout the whole session, he kept saying of the other actors in our cast, "I can't believe them, switching voices like that, making creature sounds." He was impressed with the sheer acting.

I don't know if we submitted him for Emmy consideration that year. If we had and he'd been nominated, that would have felt very, very wrong to me. I'm sure he was magnificent doing Othello or Driving Miss Daisy or The Great White Hope or almost anything else on the Broadway stage but not everyone can do everything.   Laurence Olivier was ten times the actor that Bruce Lee was but if you'd been casting the lead in a martial arts movie when both were around, which one would you have picked?

My point is that the great voice actors are great at voice acting.  Some who are not primarily voice actors can be fine in certain roles in certain situations as Mr. Jones was…but when I see a list of nominees like the one for this year's Emmy Awards, I think someone is disrespecting professional, full-or-most-time voice actors.  They're voting for celebrity, not talent.

They're not understanding what James Earl Jones understood about how the other actors in the session with him were exhibiting a range and expertise he did not have.  Even the late Lorenzo Music, who really only had the one voice, was using it to give life to a fully-fleshed characterization, created using only his voice, not his face or body.

I have not heard all of what earned this year's nominees their nominations.  Perhaps some of their performances were wonderful but it's hard to think some judges didn't stampede over the work of some actors with less familiar names to get to actors they'd heard of.  Come on, Academy.  Give voice acting awards to voice actors.

Fearless Fosdick was a comic-strip-within-a-comic-strip, in this case appearing within Al Capp's popular Li'l Abner strip. Fosdick was Abner's hero and every so often, Capp would give the strip over for several weeks to the adventures of this Dick Tracy parody. At first, Tracy's creator Chester Gould was said to be amused by the spoof but increasingly less so as the spoof went on and on for years and Capp's merchandising revenues from the parody character eclipsed Gould's merchandising on the source material. (Gould himself later tried doing the same thing with Charles Schulz's Peanuts.)

One way Fosdick was exploited was with a short-lived TV series performed by marionettes. Thirteen episodes were made, the first debuting on June 15, 1952. Perhaps you are of sounder stock than I am but I was not able to sit through even the one below, let alone more than that. But it is a nice novelty. Mary Chase, proprietor of the Mary Chase Puppets, directed and did a lot of it. The script was by Everett Crosby, who occasionally wrote or managed business affairs for his older brother, Bing.

The voices were supplied by John Griggs and Gilbert Mack, two New York-based character actors who were seen on a lot of TV shows that came out of Manhattan. Both had really good careers doing voiceovers from commercials and cartoons. Mack is the guy who was often called in by Golden Records and given the impossible task of replicating the voices of the star characters usually voiced by Mel Blanc or Daws Butler. He was a pretty good voice actor when he wasn't trying to do that.

Here's the first episode of the Fearless Fosdick TV show. You will not be tempted to seek out others…

Here we have three minutes from "All American Co-Ed," a 1941 college comedy and I call your attention to the young actor doing the impression of Gary Cooper and, later, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. That's Kent Rogers and if you've watched a lot of old cartoons, you've heard his voice, especially in old Warner Brothers cartoons like Hollywood Steps Out that featured a lot of celebrity imitations.

He was the first voice of Henery Hawk, Junior Bear and Beaky Buzzard, among many other roles. He was also one of the many actors who spoke for Woody Woodpecker for a time. And the other day here, I mentioned the little pig in Tex Avery's cartoon, One Ham's Family. If I remember correctly, Rogers did the Red Skelton impression as the pig.

He was very good and what could have been a great career — both on-camera and off — was cut short in 1943 when he went into the Navy and was killed in a plane crash during training exercises. Thereafter, Mel Blanc spoke for Henery, Stan Freberg took over as Junyer Bear and they took turns playing Beaky. Thanks to whoever found this clip and uploaded it to YouTube…

When The Flintstones debuted on ABC — which it did on September 30, 1960 — it had a different theme song than the one we all know. It was an instrumental called "Rise and Shine." Commencing with Season Three, the whole opening was changed and there was a new song — "Meet the Flintstones" complete with lyrics performed by the Randy Van Horne Singers. When the first two seasons were later rerun anywhere, the old opening was replaced with the new one.

In fact, there was a time when the video of the old one was lost. No one at Hanna-Barbera (or, later on, the Time-Warner beast that had consumed H-B) could locate a decent copy of that video. My old buddy Earl Kress — a guy I miss a lot — finally found one when he was working on a project for the studio. It was on a reel of tape or film that was labeled as containing something else.

The video on which you're about to click will show you that opening followed by a restored audio version of the song sung for a kids' record by the original cast — Alan Reed, Jean Vander Pyl, Mel Blanc and Bea Benaderet.  And then there's a look at some of the original designs for the show by Ed Benedict and — well, it all makes me feel about eight years old again, especially that original opening…

Here's a neat question. After she read this posting, Dina Wolfe wrote to ask…

In a recent post, you listed what must have been hundreds of names of people who were stars in the forties and who performed at the Hollywood Canteen. How many of them did you ever get to meet? And did any of them ever disappoint you? And do you have any tips about approaching or talking to stars like that?

Ooh. Well, I'll go over the list and use the loosest possible definition of "meet." I didn't introduce myself or shake hands with every one of these people but I did at least exchange a few words with them…

Bud Abbott, Eve Arden, Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Mel Blanc, George Burns, Cab Calloway, Adriana Caselotti, Bette Davis, Doris Day, Yvonne De Carlo, Dale Evans, Eva Gabor, Bob Hope, Gene Kelly, Pinky Lee, Harold Lloyd, June Lockhart, Fred MacMurray, Groucho Marx of the Marx Brothers, Roddy McDowall, Fayard Nicholas of the Nicholas Brothers, Margaret O'Brien, Vincent Price, Roy Rogers, Mickey Rooney, Phil Silvers, Red Skelton, Moe Howard and Larry Fine of The Three Stooges, Shelley Winters and Jane Withers.

I also met Joe Besser and Joe DeRita of the Stooges but they weren't Stooges in the forties.

But I should emphasize that some of those were real brief encounters. The one with Jack Benny (which I told here) was under thirty seconds. The one with Bud Abbott (which I told here) lasted about ninety seconds.

I was disappointed by the brevity of my encounter with Mr. Abbott. It was at the Motion Picture Country Home/Hospital, which a lot of people still refer to as "The Old Show Biz Folks' Home" and I was leaving after a long chat with Larry Fine. Back then, you could talk to Larry as long as you wanted and as long as you were willing to sit and hear the same nine anecdotes over and over and over. He had nothing else to do and he welcomed the company.

On my way out that day, a nurse mentioned to me that Bud Abbott was also there so I popped in to see him. Like Larry, he had nothing to do but I caught him in a foul mood and he did not welcome company at that moment or maybe ever. I was outta there faster than you could say "Susquehanna Hat Company."

I might have been disappointed that Mickey Rooney acted like a crazy person, ranting and yelling at one of those Hollywood Collectors Shows. But I already knew he could be like that so I was not surprised.

Everyone else on that list was at least civil and some of them — like Berle, Burns, Silvers and especially Harold Lloyd — were genuinely pleased that a kid my age knew as much about their careers as I did. Red Skelton didn't care that I wanted to talk about his films or TV shows. He just wanted an audience to listen to dirty jokes which was…well, okay, I guess.

Vincent Price was pleased that I asked him about work he'd done that was not in horror films. Gene Kelly liked that we talked about his work as a film director and not just as a dancer. You want a tip? Here's a tip…

If you ever get to meet someone you've admired who has had a long career, try to ask them about something they did that not everyone asks them about. When I was introduced to Robert Morse, he was so happy that I knew of things he'd done besides How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, including projects that were relatively recent. When I met Billy Wilder, he was pleased that I wanted to know about Ace in the Hole instead of Some Like It Hot.

I doubt one person on the above list could have told you my name a day later and at least two-thirds of them never heard it at all. The only person I can think of who performed at the Hollywood Canteen who I would call an actual friend was June Foray. She danced there on stage with other starlets who kicked up their heels for the soldiers but she wasn't on the list I posted. It was a list which, in case you couldn't guess, I cribbed off Wikipedia. I still find it a little hard to believe that anyone — let alone silly ol' me — could actually meet most of those folks.

This is a scene from the 1944 movie, Hollywood Canteen. The Canteen was a club during war where soldiers could go to eat, drink and be entertained by some pretty big movie and radio stars and they made a movie about it.

Your admission ticket to the place was your uniform and you never knew who you were going to see performing there. The list included Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Iris Adrian, Fred Allen, June Allyson, Brian Aherne, Don Ameche, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, The Andrews Sisters, Dana Andrews, Eve Arden, Louis Armstrong, Jean Arthur, Fred Astaire, Mary Astor, Roscoe Ates, Lauren Bacall, Lucille Ball, Tallulah Bankhead, Theda Bara, Lynn Bari, Jess Barker, Binnie Barnes, Diana Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Count Basie, Anne Baxter, Warner Baxter, Louise Beavers, Wallace Beery, William Bendix, Constance Bennett, Joan Bennett, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen, Ingrid Bergman, Milton Berle, Julie Bishop, Mel Blanc, Joan Blondell, Ann Blyth, Humphrey Bogart, Mary Boland, Ray Bolger, Beulah Bondi, William Boyd, Charles Boyer, Clara Bow, Eddie Bracken, El Brendel, Walter Brennan, Fanny Brice, Joe E. Brown, Les Brown, Virginia Bruce, Billie Burke, George Burns & Gracie Allen, Spring Byington, James Cagney, Cab Calloway, Rod Cameron, Eddie Cantor, Judy Canova, Kitty Carlisle, Jack Carson, Adriana Caselotti, Charlie Chaplin, Marguerite Chapman, Cyd Charisse, Charles Coburn, Claudette Colbert, Jerry Colonna, Ronald Colman, Betty Compson, Perry Como, Chester Conklin, Gary Cooper, Joseph Cotten, Noël Coward, James Craig, Bing Crosby, Joan Crawford, George Cukor, Xavier Cugat, Cass Daley, Dorothy Dandridge, Linda Darnell, Harry Davenport, Bette Davis, Dennis Day, Doris Day, Yvonne De Carlo, Gloria DeHaven, Dolores del Río, William Demarest, Olivia de Havilland, Cecil B. DeMille, Andy Devine, Marlene Dietrich, Walt Disney, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Irene Dunne, Jimmy Durante, Deanna Durbin, Ann Dvorak, Nelson Eddy, Duke Ellington, Faye Emerson, Dale Evans, Jinx Falkenburg, Glenda Farrell, Alice Faye, Louise Fazenda, Stepin Fetchit, Gracie Fields, Barry Fitzgerald, Ella Fitzgerald, Errol Flynn, Kay Francis, Jane Frazee, Joan Fontaine, Susanna Foster, Eva Gabor, Ava Gardner, Judy Garland, Greer Garson, Lillian Gish, James Gleason, Betty Grable, Cary Grant, Kathryn Grayson, Sydney Greenstreet, Paulette Goddard, Samuel Goldwyn, Benny Goodman, Leo Gorcey, Virginia Grey, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton, Phil Harris, Moss Hart, Helen Hayes, Dick Haymes, Susan Hayward, Rita Hayworth, Sonja Henie, Paul Henreid, Katharine Hepburn, Portland Hoffa, Darla Hood, Bob Hope, Hedda Hopper, Lena Horne, Edward Everett Horton, Marsha Hunt, Ruth Hussey, Betty Hutton, Frieda Inescort, Jose Iturbi, Harry James, Gloria Jean, Anne Jeffreys, Allen Jenkins, Van Johnson, Al Jolson, Jennifer Jones, Marcia Mae Jones, Boris Karloff, Danny Kaye, Buster Keaton, Ruby Keeler, Gene Kelly, Evelyn Keyes, Guy Kibbee, Andrea King, Gene Krupa, Kay Kyser, Alan Ladd, Bert Lahr, Elsa Lanchester, Angela Lansbury, Veronica Lake, Hedy Lamarr, Dorothy Lamour, Carole Landis, Frances Langford, Charles Laughton, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Peter Lawford, Gertrude Lawrence, Peggy Lee, Pinky Lee, Mervyn LeRoy, Vivien Leigh, Joan Leslie, Ted Lewis, Beatrice Lillie, Mary Livingston, Harold Lloyd, June Lockhart, Anita Loos, Peter Lorre, Myrna Loy, Keye Luke, Bela Lugosi, Ida Lupino, Diana Lynn, Marie McDonald, Jeanette MacDonald, Fred MacMurray, Marjorie Main, Irene Manning, Fredric March, The Marx Brothers, Herbert Marshall, Ilona Massey, Victor Mature, Elsa Maxwell, Louis B. Mayer, Hattie McDaniel, Roddy McDowall, Frank McHugh, Victor McLaglen, Butterfly McQueen, Lauritz Melchior, Adolphe Menjou, Una Merkel, Ray Milland, Ann Miller, Glenn Miller, Carmen Miranda, Robert Mitchum, Maria Montez, George Montgomery, Grace Moore, Jackie Moran, Dennis Morgan, Patricia Morison, Paul Muni, Ken Murray, The Nicholas Brothers, Ramon Novarro, Jack Oakie, Margaret O'Brien, Pat O'Brien, Virginia O'Brien, Donald O'Connor, Maureen O'Hara, Oona O'Neill, Maureen O'Sullivan, Merle Oberon, Eugene Pallette, Eleanor Parker, Harriet Parsons, Louella Parsons, John Payne, Gregory Peck, Nat Pendleton, Mary Pickford, Walter Pidgeon, Zasu Pitts, Cole Porter, Dick Powell, Eleanor Powell, Jane Powell, William Powell, Vincent Price, Anthony Quinn, George Raft, Claude Rains, Vera Ralston, Sally Rand, Basil Rathbone, Martha Raye, Donna Reed, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Edward G. Robinson, Ginger Rogers, Roy Rogers, Cesar Romero, Mickey Rooney, Jane Russell, Rosalind Russell, Ann Rutherford, Peggy Ryan, S.Z. Sakall, Olga San Juan, Ann Savage, David O. Selznick, Hazel Scott, Lizabeth Scott, Randolph Scott, Toni Seven, Norma Shearer, Ann Sheridan, Dinah Shore, Sylvia Sidney, Phil Silvers, Ginny Simms, Frank Sinatra, Red Skelton, Alexis Smith, Kate Smith, Ann Sothern, Jo Stafford, Barbara Stanwyck, Craig Stevens, Leopold Stokowski, Lewis Stone, Gloria Swanson, Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley Temple, Danny Thomas, The Three Stooges, Gene Tierney, Lawrence Tibbett, Martha Tilton, Claire Trevor, Sophie Tucker, Lana Turner, Spencer Tracy, Gloria Vanderbilt, Lupe Vélez, Beryl Wallace, Nancy Walker, Ethel Waters, John Wayne, Clifton Webb, Virginia Weidler, Johnny Weissmuller, Orson Welles, Mae West, Bert Wheeler, Alice White, Paul Whiteman, Margaret Whiting, Cornel Wilde, Esther Williams, Warren William, Chill Wills, Marie Wilson, Shelley Winters, Jane Withers, Teresa Wright, Anna May Wong, Constance Worth, Jane Wyman, Ed Wynn, Keenan Wynn, Rudy Vallee, Lupe Vélez, Loretta Young, Robert Young, Darryl F. Zanuck and Vera Zorina. Guess which one of these brought along his horse…

From Mark Bosselman…

I asked Leonard Maltin if he ever met Paul Frees on live Instagram/Facebook chat Sunday and he said no. Leonard mentioned your name and he said you haven't twirked with him either. Is this true and if it's not, do you have any Paul Frees stories that you can share?

Well, I'm not sure anyone ever met Paul Frees on live Instagram/Facebook chat on Sunday but I think I know what you're asking. I "met" Paul Frees on the phone for brief (very brief) conversations twice but never in person and never for very long.

I have always felt truly fortunate that I grew up on cartoons with voices by Mel Blanc, Daws Butler, June Foray, Don Messick, Stan Freberg, Bill Scott, Jimmy Weldon, Julie Bennett, Shepard Menken, Dick Beals, Gary Owens, Chuck McCann, Frank Buxton, Arnold Stang, Marvin Kaplan and a few others…and in my alleged adulthood, got to meet and work with Mel Blanc, Daws Butler, June Foray, Don Messick, Stan Freberg, Bill Scott, Jimmy Weldon, Julie Bennett, Shepard Menken, Dick Beals, Gary Owens, Chuck McCann, Frank Buxton, Arnold Stang, Marvin Kaplan and a few others. I'm sure everyone reading this can understand why that would be meaningful on several levels.

By the time I got into the animation business, Paul Frees had largely gotten out…and had totally gotten out of Los Angeles. He'd moved up to Tiburon, California, which is near San Francisco. He said the air there was much better for him and June told me that Paul had reached the stage in his life where he had an awful lot of money and not an awful lot of desire to work.

He did work once in a while. If you offered him enough money, he might (might!) agree to go to a studio somewhere near his home and record there. June told me that on rare occasions, someone would offer Paul so much loot that he'd fly down to Los Angeles to record something, record it and then fly right back. I recall her complaining once, "He was down here last week for three hours and he wouldn't even delay his flight home to have lunch with me."

One time when I was visiting Daws Butler (one of the nicest and most talented people I ever met), we got to talking about Paul and he spent a lot of time telling me how great Paul was. Before I left, the phone rang and it was Paul…and Daws put me on the line with him for a few minutes. Paul spent most of that time telling me how great Daws was.

At the time, I was head writer for a program called The Krofft Superstar Hour which ran on NBC on Saturday mornings for not-very-long. We were taping shows and our cast included Lennie Weinrib and Walker Edmiston, who worked off-camera supplying the voices of many of the Krofft characters. Lennie and Walker were two more guys I knew from their voicework when I was younger, though both of them did more on-camera work than off. Walker, who I wrote about here and here and other places, had a great kids' show on local TV in Los Angeles for a time.

At the time, he was supplying the voice of Ludwig Von Drake for a series of educational filmstrips or recordings or something that some division of Disney was doing. Mr. Frees, of course, had originated the role of the eminent Professor Von Drake but he wasn't tempted by the scale fee that Disney was offering for these projects. Walker, who did a pretty fair imitation of Paul's voice as Ludwig, was the go-to second choice.

Most voice actors work under an unwritten Code of Honor not to imitate another voice actor while that person is alive and possibly available. Walker abided strenuously by that rule. So what would happen is that Disney would call and ask him if he could come in next Tuesday and record a few tracks for them and Walker would say — every single time — "I can but I have to check with Paul first."

The guy at Disney would say, "Walker, you don't have to check with Paul. He's fine with you doing this for us. He's said yes the last twenty-three times you asked him." Which was true but Walker felt he still had to check with Paul. He'd call Paul and Paul would say "Fine" and Walker would thank him and go in and do what Disney needed him to do as Ludwig..

A week or two after my chat with Frees at Daws' home, Walker came into my office where we were doing The Krofft Superstar Hour. We were on a break from taping and he asked if he could use my phone to call Paul Frees up in Tiburon. I said, "Yes, if I can say hello to him." Walker called, got Paul's permission to talk like him and then put me on the speakerphone.

Paul remembered me from the call with Daws and in that second (again, brief) conversation, I asked him about doing his impression of Peter Lorre on a Spike Jones record. Paul told me how he'd do anything for Spike and how when he met Peter Lorre, Mr. Lorre said, "You sound more like me than I do" and they spent some time teaching each other how to sound more like Peter Lorre.

The story was told, of course, with Paul playing both roles. He played Paul Frees imitating Peter Lorre and he also played Peter Lorre talking the way he really talked…and he even played Peter Lorre trying to sound more like Paul Frees imitating Peter Lorre. It was one of the many "Boy, do I wish I'd had a tape recorder running" moments of my life.

The call ended soon after and that was my last-ever contact with Paul Frees, who passed away in 1986. Before he went back to work that day, Walker demonstrated for me how he occasionally did Peter Lorre and said that what he (and everyone else who imitated Peter Lorre) was doing was an imitation of Paul Frees imitating Peter Lorre. Walker did that in a lot of cartoons so somewhere out there, there's probably someone who thinks they do a great imitation of Peter Lorre but they're really doing an imitation of Walker Edmiston doing an imitation of Paul Frees doing an imitation of Peter Lorre.

Here is the Spike Jones record on which Paul Frees imitated Peter Lorre. Paul's part starts around a minute and a half into it but for the full effect, listen to the whole thing…

Need something almost meaningless to take your mind off the news? Every so often, I feel the need to do the kind of post that requires one of these…

In 1990, an animated feature was released based on one of my all-time favorite cartoon shows, The Jetsons. The movie was not successful but it did mark the final performances of George O'Hanlon as George and Mel Blanc as Mr. Spacely, although a few lines by each character were done by Jeff Bergman imitating them. When it's mentioned at all these days, it's almost always because of what happened with the role of Judy Jetson, a character always voiced before that by the wonderful Janet Waldo. As I've written here before…

[Janet Waldo] continued voicing Judy Jetson in many incarnations of The Jetsons but in the 1990 animated feature, a controversy erupted. Janet recorded the speaking role of Judy and it was expected that the then-current pop sensation, Tiffany, would only supply the singing voice. Tiffany was signed but she and/or her managers reportedly insisted that Tiffany also replace the spoken lines. At the insistence of Universal Pictures, which was releasing the film, this was done. Janet was upset, though comforted by an incredible outpouring of support from her many fans. In 1997 at a retirement party for her frequent co-star Don Messick, Joe Barbera spoke and took the opportunity to apologize in front of most of the voiceover community to Janet for letting that happen. She forgave him and that more or less buried that matter.

But it didn't bury the matter, at least insofar as some Hanna-Barbera fans are considered. It keeps coming up on cartoon-related chat forums where some people treat it as a catastrophe worse than any of those that caused massive losses of actual human lives, and they curse Joe Barbera for allowing it to happen. Such talks have erupted again since the Kino Lorber company, which issues fine DVDs and Blu Ray editions, will soon release one of each of The Jetsons: The Movie. (Don't go rushing to pre-order it. It's not coming out for a while.)

About this matter, I would like to say the following…

• Joe Barbera said that if they hadn't made the change, the movie would never have been made. I believe he was probably correct. Joe loved Janet (and as I'll mention in a moment, it was mutual) and it must have upset him greatly to allow that to happen.
• He might not have been able to stop it. Hanna and Barbera had long since sold the studio that bore their names and while they stayed on to run things, their powers were limited, especially with regard to decisions that cost serious money. They kept finding themselves working for different bosses and fighting with different bosses.
• Just during the years I worked there, I saw the studio develop dozens of animated features that never got made, some of which were big Pet Projects of Mr. Barbera. He did not have the power to say, "Let's spend the X million bucks on this one." He had to find some other company with deep pockets to put up those bucks. The Jetsons movie was financed by Universal Studios and in Hollywood — as in most of the world — he who puts up the money calls most of the shots.
• It was a shame that the film was made without Janet as Judy. It would also have been a shame if it had been aborted in mid-production and George O'Hanlon's final recordings as George Jetson (and Mel's as Mr. Spacely and a few others) had been lost along with Janet's.
• Janet was paid in full for her work on the film and she was heard elsewhere in the movie in at least one other role. But her performance as Judy was replaced and she was understandably upset. I am pretty sure she would have been more upset if she saw anyone bad-mouthing Joe Barbera. She loved that man so much.
• Apart from how kind and charming he was to her personally, he was most of the reason she had a career for the last 50+ years of her life. She had never voiced animation before she was cast on The Jetsons in 1962. Hanna-Barbera then used her on other shows at darn near every opportunity.   That was mainly Joe's doing. I would guess that 80% of the work she got doing voices after her on-camera work largely ended was for H-B. And the 20% that wasn't probably wouldn't have happened if she wasn't doing all that work for H-B.

• Someone on a chat board recently wrote that "Joe Barbera should have been horsewhipped for what he did to Janet Waldo."  Again, I don't think he's the one who did it…and I think most actors would give anything to have some big producer treat them the way Mr. B treated Janet.
• As noted, Joe made a very gallant, touching apology to Janet at Don Messick's retirement party. It was the kind of apology that one rarely sees in this industry and Janet loudly forgave him. I had my quarrels with Joe Barbera to the point where I respectfully told him to his face I would not work for him any longer. But I still admired the man and thought he was a true mensch most of the time, including that time.
• If anyone was really wronged by that movie, it was my friend Dennis Marks who wrote the original screenplay. There's a long, ugly story having to do with what he was paid — he did not write that script to be a major motion picture — and what was done to his work…but I'm not sure he'd want me to share it here. Just trust me on this. Dennis passed away in 2006 and he still felt a lot more mistreated than Janet ever did.

Lastly, I don't think it was a very good movie. I don't think it would have been a very good movie even if they'd used Janet's voice tracks as Judy. We wouldn't even be talking about it.

I shouldn't even be spending this much time on it but I loved Janet and I know that even after her Judy was recast, she thought J.B. was the most wonderful man in the world and would not want him horsewhipped on her behalf. Even if you used Quick Draw McGraw's whip.

The Disney fan sites are erupting with the news that voice actress Kaitlyn Robrock has been designated to henceforth speak and sing for Minnie Mouse. She assumes this task/honor from the lovely Russi Taylor, who passed away a year ago this week.

Some of you may recall Kaitlyn from Cartoon Voices Panel 2, which we did online not long ago.  She was quite delightful on it, displaying the versatility and talent that landed her this role.  It's kind of a big deal because the Disney organization, unlike other companies that own immortal characters, tends to pick one person to voice a character for a long, long time.  Once in a while, they seem to have two gents taking turns as Mickey or Donald but, for example, Bill Farmer has been the voice of Goofy and Pluto since 1987.  (Bill is on Cartoon Voices Panel 5, which is part of ComicCon at Home and debuts online at this link on Saturday at 4 PM San Diego time.)

By contrast, Warner Animation likes to shake it up.  The guy supplying the voice of Bugs Bunny this week is just the guy supplying the voice of Bugs Bunny this week.  More than a dozen actors have tag-teamed in the job since Mel Blanc passed away.  While our friend Bob Bergen has done the overwhelming majority of Porky Pig jobs since then, most of the actors are temps.  This means that none of them "owns" a role to the extent that they can do as Mel did and command a lot of money for any given job.

My friends Greg Burson and Joe Alaskey used to do a lot of Blanc replication.  Both have joined Mel in that big recording studio in the sky.  Both used to complain mightily about being asked to audition each time some Warner exec or director wanted to personally select who'd be the wabbit or the tweety bird in his or her upcoming project.  Greg would say, "It does me no good to point out that they have hours of tapes of me doing Bugs and that I've done him in twenty cartoons.  I still have to go in and read for some director who thinks he's the only one in the place qualified to say what Bugs should sound like."  (I am not suggesting that a few of them weren't.)

But Disney does it right, as Disney so often does…and Kait may have landed not one job but decades of them.  I met her way before she was a professional and was trying to break into the field.  She attended every one of the Cartoon Voices panels I've hosted at Comic-Con, studying and listening and absorbing…and one day, she was successful enough in her goal that she was on the panel.  Everyone who knows her and knows of her is very happy at the news.

One of the fine actor-people I had on yesterday's webcast was my pal Michael Bell, who has been a performer — on-camera and off — for more years than you'd think to look at him. He's also a very powerful activist for animals. Those of you who've followed the tales of feral cats in my backyard have seen me apply lots of sound advice I got from Michael.

As you may know, I'm on the warpath against Voice Teachers and Coaches who, I think, charge unsuspecting people a lot of money for lessons that are of little use. There are some very fine voice teachers out there but there are also some terrible ones and I keep coming across stories that go something like this…

Little Jimmy (or Susie) loved cartoons and thought maybe he/she could have a career doing voices for them. It sounded like the coolest, neatest, funnest job in the world…and already, they had it wrong. No one really does cartoon voices for a living. Not exclusively. Many of these dreamers may not be aware that the job they crave is Voiceover Actor — a person who does commercials, audio books, dubbing, looping, narration, walla, dozens of other jobs where one is heard but not seen…and, in some cases, cartoon voices.

The most famous voice actor of all time, Mel Blanc, once told me he didn't think he ever had a year when cartoons — the kind Little Jimmy (or Susie) wants to do — accounted for more than about 35% of his income. These days, there may be folks who exceed that but if you get a voiceover agent, that agent is going to try to sell you in all those areas and you're not going to say no.

So somehow, Little Jimmy (or Susie) connects with a Voice Coach. It might be because of a panel at a convention or some website that offers a free seminar or evaluation. No matter how promising or unpromising Little Jimmy (or Susie) is then, the Voice Coach says they're wonderful, that they have so much potential if they'll just get the right lessons and training which, of course, the Voice Coach offers.

And the next thing you know, someone — often, the parents of Little Jimmy (or Susie) — is shelling out thousands of dollars for lessons that, to put it bluntly, aren't worth the price tag. Because the Voice Coach, while they all boast oodles of credits for their own voice work — really only makes a living getting the Little Jimmies (of Susies) of the world to pay for costly lessons.

Again: There are great coaches out there…folks who really can help you on your way to a career if you have the talent. They can't get you a career if you don't and therein lies one of the important differences between the Good Vocal Coaches and the Bad Vocal Coaches. The Good Vocal Coaches will tell you that you don't have the talent and if so, they won't take your money. Or at least they won't take a lot of it. After an introductory course or two, they'll be honest with you.

Which brings us back to Michael Bell. I don't think he's teaching now but when he did, he was great. And he made this video and put it up on YouTube to share with the world because that's the kind of guy he is. It's almost an hour and a half and as I watched it, I thought, "There are Voice Coaches who'd charge a thousand dollars for advice that isn't half as good as this." A lot of what he imparts would also be valuable for an actor of any kind…one who wasn't only interested in voice work.

It's smart, sage teaching from someone who has more experience in the field than you will ever have and it's absolutely free. All it'll cost you is one hour, twenty-five minutes and six seconds of your undivided attention…

Every so often on animation forums, I see conversations that remind me to remind the animation community that credits on old TV cartoons are often inaccurate. In many cases, they were inaccurate when they first aired because the guy who made them up did a less-than-stellar job. (The name of Gary Owens was misspelled on the first season of Space Ghost, for example.)

Also, some artists and actors for various reasons asked that their names not be in the credits. Daws Butler, because he was so well-identified with his voicework for Hanna-Barbera, asked that his name not be on some of the shows he worked on for Jay Ward…and it's misspelled on others. I don't know the precise reason but Mel Blanc's name was not on several episodes of The Flintstones where it's clearly him doing Barney Rubble and others. Bill Scott was the voice of Bullwinkle, Mr. Peabody and Dudley Do-Right and others on the various shows that featured those characters and he wrote a lot of the scripts as well…but is only credited as a producer.

Also, on shows for Saturday morning, most studios including Hanna-Barbera, liked to make up one set of end credits for the entire season and use it (the same one) on every episode. They'd list all the writers, actors, artists (etc.) who'd worked on even one episode for that season as of the moment when those end credits were made up. That moment would be when the first episode had to air, which might be about the time Show #10 was being worked on.

So if they were doing, say, sixteen episodes that season, the names of folks who worked only on episodes #11-16 would not be included at all. And of course, an actor who did a small voice part on one of the first ten episodes would have the same credit as someone who did the lead character and had tons of dialogue in all sixteen.

Later on, when it became cheaper and easier to do end credits, most studios would make up the end credits individually for each episode. In some cases though, errors still occurred. And often when shows were syndicated, someone would start swapping around which cartoons appeared in which episodes without changing the end credits.

And sometimes, they just plain lost the end credits.

When the Hanna-Barbera series Top Cat was produced, it was a prime-time series and H-B remade the end credits each week to list the writers, artists and actors who worked on each particular episode. Those episodes were later rerun in syndication and on Saturday morning…and rerun and rerun and rerun. Eventually, the film prints wore out and there also came a day when they needed new transfers so the shows could look clean and perfect when released on home video or on the new, better-quality TV sets.

I'm a little unclear on the time sequence of all this and what was done for TV release and what was done for home video. My dear friend, the late Earl Kress, could have explained it all to me because he was deeply involved with a lot of the restorations. Earl spent a lot of time searching through film vaults that housed Hanna-Barbera's past, often spending days examining unlabeled and mislabeled cans. I'm pretty sure he was the one who found the original, lost-until-he-found-it opening from the first two seasons of The Flintstones with its original theme song.

I think (note italics) he was the one who found the negative to the closing of Top Cat but it was just the animation and music before the credits had been superimposed. As far as I know, prints with the credits in place have never been located. They had the episodes themselves but all they had of the credits sequence was what Earl found. What they then had to do was reconstruct the end credits.

They took the names off a print of one episode, had someone set them in a similar typeface and combined them with Earl's find to create one (1) end credits sequence which they tacked onto the new transfers of all 30 episodes.

Here's a frame grab from the credits for one episode as they all now exist. See where it says Kin Platt wrote the episode? Well, Mr. Platt wrote a few of them but he didn't write all of them even though his name is now on all of them and so listed in a couple of online episode guides. Same with Paul Sommer who is credited as "Story Editor."  He was that on some episodes, not all.

On the card with the voice credits, it lists Paul Frees since he guested on one of two episodes, one of which was the one from which they took those credits. Frees is credited on all 30 now and there are no voice credits for Daws Butler, Don Messick, Walker Edmiston, Bea Benaderet, Sally Jones and several other folks who were heard on various episodes of Top Cat.

H-B didn't even have cast lists so the actors were identified for the studio's records by folks like Earl and me who could listen to a show and (usually) identify who did which voice. But we couldn't identify the writers or various artists…so the same guys get those credits on every episode. A similar problem seems to have happened with some (not all) episodes of The Flintstones and The Jetsons.

That's about all I have to say about this. Like I said, this kind of thing is a problem with a lot of cartoon shows, especially those made for television in the early days. So watch out. I will probably have to post this again in a few years.