Search Results for: foray

I'm doing several panels at Comic-Con about folks who supply voices for animated cartoons and other media. Saturday at 1 PM in Room 6BCF, we'll be talking with Alicyn Packard, Gregg Berger, Phil LaMarr, Shelby Young, Brian Hull and Townsend Coleman. Later that afternoon at 4 PM in Room 23ABC, I'll be doing an in-depth one-on-one interview of Phil LaMarr. I will interrogate him so ruthlessly, he may confess to felonies and misdemeanors.

On Sunday at 11:45 AM in Room 6A, I'll do another Cartoon Voices Panel — this one with Jim Meskimen, Rosemary Watson, Zeno Robinson, Kaitlyn Robrock and Fred Tatasciore. Later, at 3 PM in Room 25ABC, I'll be hosting The Business of Cartoon Voices, which is the panel about how to get into the voiceover business. We do this panel each year because there are some unscrupulous teachers and voice coaches out there who charge a fortune for semi-worthless advice on how to have a career in voiceover. We'll give you a lot of advice for absolutely nothing.

On that panel, I will be joined by Alicyn Packard, Gregg Berger and agent Sam Frishman, who's with C.E.S.D., one of the best agencies in the field. As usual, a lot of working voice actors will be there in the audience also because you can never learn too much about your profession.

I forget who but someone a few months ago in e-mail asked me if I had a list of everyone who'd ever been on one of my voice panels. I don't but someone compiled this list. It's not complete — Howard Morris and June Foray are among those missing from it — but it's pretty good. And here's another list this person made, just of the folks on this year's panels along with links to their credits.

Brian Dreger sends a follow-up question to this earlier one…

I have to ask this, and I need an answer…if you can, please!

When you had an opportunity, as a Voice Director to hire people that you admired previously in other works that you had nothing to do with, did you have to force yourself to refrain from bombarding them with "fan" questions? I mean…Howard Morris? You could've annoyed the hell out of him just asking questions about his career! If I'm not mistaken, at the time you started doing voice directing you were a "seasoned" (a dopey description, but you get what I mean) professional writer, but new at being a Voice Director and maybe meeting — for the first time — artists you admired? Or maybe that was never a thing with you…you just saw them as people who are simply talented and then moved on to the work…?

I'm going to expand your question a little to answer it. I've spent a lot of my life meeting and often working with people whose work I'd admired when I was younger. It's not just as a director of cartoon voices. It was meeting Jack Kirby and Groucho Marx and George Burns and Sid Caesar and Stan Freberg and Steve Ditko and Charles Schulz and June Foray and Jay Ward and Carl Barks and Jerry Siegel and Joe Barbera and Daws Butler and legions of others in comic books, comic strips, animation and other creative fields.

Darn near 100% of these people (if not every last one of them) were pleased that I knew who they were and what they'd done. Now, it is possible to make a fool of yourself with some such folks by slobbering and pestering and asking stupid questions…and I know I did that at times and probably did it many times when I didn't know it. But there is a way to talk with such people, especially when — as in the case of Howard Morris — the meeting would or could lead to a job they welcomed.

(I told the story of meeting Howie in this message. That was the second time I met him. The first was on the set of an episode of The Andy Griffith Show that he was directing and I probably made a fool of myself then. But I had a good excuse then: I was eleven years old.)

As an adult, you need to respect their personal space and not "crowd" them, physically or emotionally or at an inappropriate time. Remember that they are human beings and they weren't put there, wherever they are, for your personal amusement and gratification. Remember that they often get asked the same questions over and over and over.

And if they're a performer and you fancy yourself a performer, they're probably not all that interested in you performing for them or trying to equate what you do to what they do.

Chuck McCann once told me that when people met Stan Laurel, around 99% of them started by asking him how he and Oliver Hardy met. Maybe it would have been refreshing for someone to save that question for later (if ever) and ask about something else. If they have one towering credit in their life, maybe they'd be pleased to be asked about something else for a change. When I met Robert Morse, I did not start off our very-short-term relationship by talking just about How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. I asked him about other shows and movies he'd been in. I sensed that he liked that I didn't think he'd only done one thing in his lifetime.

Basically, it's like the way you'd approach someone who wasn't famous but just someone you wanted to get to know: Don't come on too strong. And I've also found that most famous people don't like being told how awesome and legendary you think they are. If you give them a compliment, don't make it a clichéd one and make sure it's at human scale.  I personally think the word "legend" has been so devalued by constant application that it's hollow and meaningless. It's like a standing ovation on a talk show. They give them to everyone.

Bottom line: Just don't be a jerk.  That's all it takes.  And if you can't manage that, try not to be too big a jerk.

Here's a piece of animation history. It's July 7, 2000 and June Foray is getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame…

Johnny Grant, a local TV personality who was some sort of unofficial Mayor of Hollywood, is officiating at the ceremony, which was on the south side of Hollywood Boulevard about half a block east of La Brea. Among the speakers are Steve Allen and Stan Freberg. I'm somewhere in that mob behind the platform with Keith Scott, Leonard Maltin, Frank Welker, Carolyn Kelly and all sort of other interesting people.

Here — let's watch the video and then I'll tell you what I remember about that day…

People wonder how someone gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The rules are here and a lot of potential applicants and nominators are scared off by the hefty fee that comes with it. I don't recall what it was in 2000 but today, it's $55,000. Sometimes, the honoree or his/her fan club comes up with the dough but I suspect it's usually paid by some TV or movie studio that has a show or film about to open starring the honoree. Agents have been known to say, when an in-demand star is in demand for a movie, "My client wants ten million dollars plus it would be nice (i.e., mandatory) if your studio would use all its clout to get him/her a star on Hollywood Boulevard and/or his/her footprints in the courtyard of Grauman's Chinese."

In June's case, she didn't have that kind of clout but Chuck Jones apparently did. He told Warner Brothers that he wanted it to happen and, sure enough, it happened.

Odd story about how I was present for the unveiling. At the time, I had written the script for a Scooby Doo videogame and although I was not voice-directing, I was required to be present at the session when the cast came in to record my script. Unfortunately, the session was the same day and hour as the star ceremony and I had promised June I would be there for the dedication.

I asked the studio to reschedule the recording session. They said no. I asked them to allow me to not be present for it. They said no. I stopped asking when I realized that — by one of those amazing coincidences in which my life abounds — the star ceremony was in front of a big office building on Hollywood Boulevard and the recording session was at a studio in that building commencing an hour before the ceremony. So we recorded for an hour, then took a break and all went out to watch June get her star, then we went back in and finished the recording. That's why Frank Welker was there.

(That Scooby Doo videogame, by the way, was never finished or released. I'll get someone very mad at me if I post the whole story about it. Let's just say a person involved in its production who did not work for Warner Brothers did something that rightly pissed-off the studio and they killed the whole project.)

Also present at the star ceremony was Larry Harmon, the proprietor of Bozo the Clown. Larry wasn't there because of June. Larry's office happened to be in that building and I ran into him in the lobby. When I told him what was happening outside, he came out, talked his way into the V.I.P. area with us, and spent the whole time telling me and everyone how unfair it was that he hadn't gotten a star on the sidewalk despite years of lobbying. Larry never worked for Chuck Jones.

But it was overall a very happy occasion with a lot of happy people. At one point in the video, Johnny Grant spotted Chuck McCann in the crowd and give him a big introduction…which was nice but it wasn't Chuck McCann. It was just a guy who looked a lot like him. One of those Chuck McCann impersonators you hear about all the time.

That's about all I remember. Thanks to Tom Knott, who I believe was the person who shot this video, and to Kamden Spies, who I know is the person who told me it was online.

Rob Rose read this post here and then sent the following my way…

I had to watch a few minutes of the video you linked just because that was one hell of a cast.

When you mentioned that June Foray was unavailable, my first thought was "Well, if you can't get her, Tress MacNeille is the obvious next choice." But I hadn't taken the dates into account until I saw someone asking in the YouTube comments if it was her first voice acting role, and someone else answered "Yes." I quickly checked IMDB, and if it is to be believed, while it was not her very first voice acting job, it is the first for which she is credited as something besides "Additional voices." Since she has gone on to become such a giant in the field, I wouldn't mind hearing anything about how you came to pick her and whether it was clear from the start that her name would one day seem perfectly at home next to those of folks like Daws Butler and Frank Welker.

(I also had no idea she was the lady who played Lucy in Weird Al Yankovic's "Hey Ricky!" video…)

When you add in the rest of the cast, you have a list that really spans several generations of voice-acting greats.

If I had a specific question, it would probably be to wonder how intimidating that would be, to have such talent in front of you on your first voice directing job. On the one hand, as you say, it surely makes your job easier; you wouldn't have to push anyone to get great performances. On the other hand, if you *did* find yourself in a place where you needed to give some direction, I can imagine you might feel like you really had no place telling some of these people how to do their jobs. (I am reminded of your story of having to ask Mel Blanc to read the line "What's up, Doc?" again more slowly…) I don't know if that kind of thing would get easier over time. At least I suspect that, whatever the actors you worked with may have thought of your directing (or writing) talent, they couldn't really get the "This kid doesn't even know who I am!" feeling for very long.

Anyway, fun story, and it gave me an excuse to send this email instead of doing some other things I probably ought to be doing.

I first met Tress via The Groundlings, the great L.A. based improv company from which came Phil Hartman, Laraine Newman, Paul Reubens, Jon Lovitz and a whole lot of other folks you know and have enjoyed. You would often see someone on the Groundlings stage and instantly think, "Hey, that person's going to have a great career!" So it was with Tress…and it didn't take any experience at talent-scouting to think that. Pretty damned obvious if you ask me.

Before I made my voice-directing debut with that Wall Walkers special, I asked Gordon Hunt at Hanna-Barbera if I could sit in on some recording sessions and observe. There was briefly a policy at the studio that writers and story editors could not attend recording sessions because they had a tendency to slow things down by asking to change lines or to usurp the director's authority. Also, I think Bill Hanna wanted us in our offices writing and editing as much as possible.

This was not Gordon's decree but he had to follow it…but he said I could sit in on recordings of shows I didn't write. That was fine with me and I think the first one I attended was a Scooby Doo in which Tress did guest star voices. My recollection is that by the time I cast her in the Wall Walkers show, she'd done a fair amount of animation even if she hadn't done lead characters…and I'm not sure she hadn't.

I didn't give a moment's thought to whether "her name would one day seem perfectly at home next to those of folks like Daws Butler and Frank Welker." I just knew she'd do a good job in the show…and she did.

I was not intimidated by having such a stellar cast on my first directing job. On the contrary, I thought they were so good that I couldn't possibly botch things up…and that is not false modesty or any other kind. I actually thought that. As I quickly learned, the secret to voice-directing was to hire actors who were so good, they didn't need much directing…if any.

Brian Dreger wrote me a little while ago…

Just finished watching episode two of Anna "Brizzy" Brisbin's Podcast. It made me think: How does somebody become a voice director…the person who gets to pick who does the voice, the person who tells them "You're not saying it right" (or whatever, etc). How did you get to do that the first time? Did you know what you were doing? Were you scared? Or did you just think "I've been studying this stuff for years — I know I can do this!" When you consider the history of voice acting, and all the different people who've done it, it's puzzling to think that somebody is in charge of all that…and their decisions could possibly make or break a show/movie.

I've told this story several times on panels but I guess I've never told it here. In 1983, I wrote a prime-time cartoon special for NBC which was produced by an in-house producer at NBC. They hired an animation company based in New York to do the animation but they needed to hire someone to direct the voice track in Los Angeles.

Today, there are dozens of professional voice directors around but at the time, there were probably around eight or nine…and the good ones were all under contract to studios not involved with this project. The folks at NBC handed me a list of the three experienced voice directors they could get and I thought all three of them were terrible. On an impulse, I said to the NBC execs, "I can't do a worse job than these guys. If you'll let me voice direct it and pick the actors I want, I'll do it for nothing."

At the time, I think if I or anyone had told NBC, "If you'll fire Johnny Carson and let me host The Tonight Show, I'll do it for nothing," they might have jumped at the chance to save money. Anyway, they agreed on the proviso that I audition at least three people for each part — which I did and then I got most of my picks. The major players were Daws Butler, Frank Welker, Tress MacNeille, Howard Morris, Marvin Kaplan, Bill Scott (in what I think was his first non-Jay Ward voice job in a long time), Peter Cullen and a few others. We needed a young boy so I picked Scott Menville, who grew up to be a very fine adult voice actor.

And before anyone asks: June Foray was in Europe at the time.

I kinda/sorta/somewhat knew what I was doing, mostly from watching Gordon Hunt voice-direct shows at Hanna-Barbera. I'd also studied another voice director who was on that list of three and from him, I learned a lot of what not to do. He seemed to be on what some would call a "power trip," finding fault with perfectly fine performances just because he could.

The late Lennie Weinrib, who had worked for this director and fought with him to the point where they no longer worked together, told me, "He's perpetually mad that he can't do what we can do so he takes it out on us." One of the things I think I've had going for me as a voice director is that I am well aware I can't act as well as the worst person I would ever hire. I'm not saying a good voice actor can't direct — some do and do it well. I'm saying that there's usually trouble when a director resents being only on his or her side of the glass.

The day we recorded that special, I was a little scared but I figured that with the cast I'd selected, even I couldn't muck it up that much. The final show was not exactly what I'd wanted for a number of reasons but I did not think the voice track was one of them.

I did make some mistakes and I got a fair amount of help from Frank Welker, who by now had become a good friend of mine. On two occasions during the recording session, he asked if I could come out of the director booth and speak to him one-on-one so he could ask me some questions about certain lines in the script. That was a fib on his part. When I called a short break and went over to talk with him, he told me — making sure no one else could hear — of a couple of directing errors I'd made. I was grateful that he told me when I could still correct them and especially grateful that he did it the way he did.

Since I've come this far, I might as well link you to the show which, as I said, I wasn't that happy with. It was a prime-time special called Deck the Halls with Wacky Walls. I did not come up with that name, nor did I create the characters, nor did I have anything to do with the songs…

The end credits are mostly missing from this video but the producer was Buzz Potamkin and most of the character designs were done by Phil Mendez. The special was a pilot for a Saturday morning series and it was well-received and almost got on the NBC schedule. Why it didn't is a long, brutal story of how sometimes, a big and powerful studio can crush a small newcomer.

I was just happy that I got to work with such a fine cast, including Howard Morris, who soon became one of my favorite people of all time. And it did get me other offers to voice-direct, though I declined most where I'd only be doing that and not writing the show.

Someone named Mike wrote to ask…

First of all, I'm a big fan of your blog. Your recent post about voice actors that you wanted to have guest star on productions got me wondering… what voice actors auditioned to lend their voices to the Garfield projects you worked on? Were there auditions for Jon, Roy and Binky before Thom Huge decided to voice those characters? Were there any voice actors who auditioned for characters, didn't get the roles, but still wound up guest-starring on Garfield and Friends? Were there auditions at all, or did the crew just call up various actors they liked and offer them the roles?

Well, the first Garfield project with which I was involved was the Saturday morning series, Garfield and Friends. Jim Davis, the cat's creator, selected the voices before I came along. Garfield's first voice was, briefly, a radio personality named Scott Beach and you can read about him here. He did the voice for a short segment in a 1980 CBS special called The Fantastic Funnies.

That segment more or less served as the pilot for a series of prime-time animated Garfield specials, kicking off with Here Comes Garfield!, which aired in October of 1982. For that special and all that followed, Jim decided Garfield needed a different voice and the answer to the question, "Who did they audition?" would be "Who didn't they audition?" Just about every voice actor in L.A. read for the part and some of them read several times before Lorenzo Music tried out and got it. (Lorenzo, by the way, redubbed the Fantastic Funnies clip for when it was later shown here and there.)

One of the people who auditioned for the role of Garfield was Gregg Berger. Jim liked Gregg tremendously and while he felt Gregg was wrong for the cat, he found out Gregg could make dog sounds and awarded him the role of Odie. To this day, Gregg has been Odie in every case where Odie has had a voice.

Sandy Kenyon (you can read about him here) was the voice of Jon in that first special. With the second special, Garfield on the Town, Jim decided to give the role of Jon to a friend of his who'd been working for his company and had a background in radio and voice work. That was when Thom Huge became Jon…and he also picked up other roles, including Binky. For that special, Jim also selected Julie Payne to voice Jon's lady friend, Liz. As far as I know, Liz was the last role for which auditions were done. In other specials, Jim just cast actors he'd heard of or who had auditioned for other roles.

When Garfield and Friends started, Jim was originally the Voice Director but I took over casting new roles and eventually took over the voice direction when Jim got too busy to fly out here and do it. Thom Huge, who lived back in Indiana and worked for Jim there, flew out for voice sessions so we ganged-up recording dates so Thom could do several shows while he was out here. He turned out to be quite versatile so he did a lot of other roles in the show, plus he played Roy in the U.S. Acres segments. Gregg Berger also turned out to have an endless supply of other voices.

To cast the other regular characters in U.S. Acres, we did the only other auditions ever done for the Garfield and Friends series. We decided that since they were already part of the show, we'd have Julie Payne voice the character of Lanolin, and we'd assign Gregg one of the male roles and I brought in about eight of my favorite voice actors to audition. I directed the auditions, Jim listened to the tapes and he picked Gregg to be Orson, Howie Morris to be Wade Duck, and Frank Welker to play Bo, Booker and Sheldon.

And that was that. Thereafter, when we needed a new voice for a recurring or one-shot character, I might be able to have Gregg, Thom, Howie, Julie or Frank — or even Lorenzo, once or twice — do it but otherwise, I'd just hire someone I knew could give me what I wanted. A few of the actors who auditioned for U.S. Acres, like Chuck McCann and Lennie Weinrib, wound up doing guest voices.

Over the 121 half-hours we did of that series, we hired a lot of people who were new to the voice business. We also hired a lot of actors who'd voiced cartoons I'd loved as a child including Stan Freberg, June Foray, Larry Storch, Don Messick, Gary Owens, Dick Beals, Shep Menken, Paul Winchell, Julie Bennett, Marvin Kaplan and Arnold Stang. I certainly didn't need to audition any of those people.

This is from Ed Sullivan's TV program on September 27, 1953. The video says it's from The Ed Sullivan Show but in '53, it was still called Toast of the Town. It emanated from New York and back then, it was very common to refer to California — as Ed does here — as "The Coast." Something could happen in the Mojave Desert but to New Yorkers, it was happening on "The Coast," as if the Eastern United States didn't have a coastline of its own.

Stan Freberg and Daws Butler then had a best-selling comedy record. Both sides parodied Jack Webb's popular series, Dragnet, which was a radio series from 1949 to 1957, and which added a TV version in 1951. One side of the record was "St. George and the Dragonet" (Dragnet in medieval times) and the other was "Little Blue Riding Hood" (a Dragnet version of the children's story). Here's the latter with Ed assuming the announcer role done on the records by Hy Averback.

June Foray, who also appeared on both sides of the record, plays Little Blue Riding Hood and her grandmother. Daws Butler plays the other cop back at the station. It took a certain amount of ingenuity to do this live on stage with no sets or props and minimal costuming. On Ed's show that night, they also did the flip side of the record with the same no-budget staging.

The records were very popular and Jack Webb — who as Ed says, gave permission for it all — was delighted and felt that the parody upped the popularity of his series. But he was a bit annoyed that it planted in many minds that "We just want to get the facts, ma'am" or similar lines were heard often (or even at all) on his show. That was a Freberg/Butler invention which became part of Dragnet lore.

I was privileged to know and work with Stan, Daws and June…three people of awesome talent, amazing careers and vast amounts of sheer niceness. I miss all three of them very much…

The article you're about to read ran here originally on January 3, 2013. I later answered some requests by rerunning a truncated version of it but here's the whole thing for the first time since its first upload. It will be followed tomorrow by a repeat of the ghastly tale of the caregivers that preyed on my mother…and after that, I hope to be back to regular posting with few reappearances. Thank you for bearing with me…

During the last decade of my mother's life, her eyes and legs increasingly failed her. In-between those parts of her anatomy, there were occasional problems like Congestive Heart Failure but the eyes and the legs were the ongoing problems.  There were long stretches when her heart was fine but her eyes and legs were awry every waking minute.

Her doctors told her that if she would just stop smoking, both would get better…or at least, wouldn't continue to worsen at the pace by which they were worsening. She cut back on the Marlboros but didn't stop until a few months before her passing, by which point it almost didn't matter. One wrenching day about a year before she passed, I took her to an optician appointment where she was asked, rather matter-of-factly, if she had or needed a document certifying that she was legally blind.

I can still hear her soft, stunned voice as she repeated, as if the term had never occurred to her, "legally blind." She could see but not much more than about two feet in front of her…and not well enough to read a book or make out my face unless our noses were practically touching.

Her eyes had been deteriorating for some time. Macular degeneration, they told her. And then one day while out with our mutual cleaning lady, my mother fell and sustained a big scratch on the retina of what had up until that moment been her "good eye." From that point on, she had to rely on her "bad eye" and worry that it would fail and leave her totally without sight.

Still, hearing those words — "legally blind" — came as a shock. Well, why wouldn't they?

She had what seemed like a most competent ophthalmologist at Kaiser Hospital and he struck me as properly balancing compassion with honest assessment of her situation. Some of the other eye doctors she saw there were a bit clumsy with their wordage but they told her the same thing; that her vision would continue to deteriorate. Certain treatments (like shots in the eye, which she hated) might slow things down but if she lived long enough, she would one day be totally, not just legally, blind. One of the things that tempered my sorrow at her death was the knowledge that she was approaching that day and she dearly wanted to go before it arrived.

The only thing I didn't like about her main ophthalmologist wasn't his fault. It was how little attention he could spare us as he handled some ridiculous number of patients per hour. We always had to spend long stretches in the waiting room, well past her appointment time. Then we'd finally be shown into Examining Room A while he was examining a patient in Examining Room B. Then he'd come into our room and attend to my mother while nurses loaded his next patient into B. Back and forth he'd go between the rooms, unable to spend enough quality time with anyone. At the end of each examination, he'd ask my mother, "Any questions?" And if she didn't come up with one in two seconds, he'd be out the door and on his way to the next patient.

How I dealt with this: By blocking the exit.

I'm 6'3" and something of a wide load. When the doctor came into the room, I'd subtly move to a spot between him and the exit, the better to prevent his escape before my mother had a chance to ask all her questions. The doctor knew exactly what I was doing and didn't really mind it.  Once when I finally let him go, I heard him tell the patient in the adjoining room, "Sorry to keep you waiting but the patient I was just with…her son was blocking the door and wouldn't let me out."

But once he got past me. I wasn't in position and he gave my mother a half-second to ask him anything before he said, "Exit, stage left!" and headed for the room next door.

"Oh, a Snagglepuss fan," I remarked.

He stopped and said, "You know Snagglepuss?"

My mother said — in a dry delivery that Walter Matthau would have envied — "My son knows every cartoon ever made."

The doctor eyed me with skepticism. "Oh, yeah? What was the name of Jonny Quest's dog?"

I said, "Bandit. Hey, do you think my mother should be taking Lutein?"

He said, "Can't hurt to try" and he recommended a dosage. Then he asked me, "What was the name of the Jetsons' dog?"

I said, "Astro and his real name was Tralfaz. Hey, how about Vitamin D? You think that would do anything for her?"

That was how it went, not only on that visit but every one after that. Instead of giving us the minimum time, he'd keep others waiting and we'd talk about two topics: Cartoons and my mother's eyes. I'd trade him info for info.  Sometimes, he had actual questions about the industry.  Other times, he just wanted to see if he could stump me.  Once, he tried the latter by asking, "On the Dungeons 'n' Dragons cartoon show, what was the name of the blonde kid who was their leader?"

I told him it was Hank. He told me I was wrong and that it was Frank. I told him it was Hank and added, "By the way, if you watch that show, you'll see my name in the end credits. I wrote the pilot for it."  Whack!

But that wasn't my favorite exchange. My favorite was when he asked me where Bullwinkle Moose went to college. I told him it was "Wottsamotta U." He told me I was wrong. "Aha! I finally got you! It was Moosylvania University!"

I told him he was wrong. He told me he was right. I told him he was wrong. He told me he was right. I told him he was wrong. He told me he was right. I offered to bet him.

The offer was this: If he was right, I'd give him a DVD of any cartoon show he named. Any one. If I was right, he'd give my mother a half-hour of his time. We'd come back at the end of the day after all his other appointments and he'd spend thirty solid minutes discussing things we might try to help her vision. He said, "It's a deal…but how are you going to prove it?"

Easy. I whipped out my cell phone and dialed a number. A woman answered and I asked her, "May I speak to Rocky the Flying Squirrel, please?" The ophthalmologist stared at me like I was…well, trying to phone an imaginary cartoon character about ten fries short of a Happy Meal. When a very familiar voice came on the line, I said, "Hi, Rocky. It's Mark Evanier. How's the weather in Frostbite Falls, today? Great. Hey, listen. I have a friend here. Would you please tell him where your friend Bullwinkle went to college? Here he is —!"

And I handed the phone to the eye doctor. You should have seen his face when Rocky said, "Hokey Smokes! Everyone knows Bullwinkle was a proud graduate of Wottsamotta U!" There are many advantages to knowing June Foray and that was one of them.

My mother, who understood exactly what was going on, got hysterical. I used to make her laugh a lot but I think that was the all-time best. And the doctor was not displeased about losing our little wager. He stumbled around his office for some time after in a happy daze, telling everyone, "You won't believe who I just talked to!"

He made good on the half-hour but unfortunately, there wasn't much that could be done…by him. I took her to an outside specialist — a man my own ophthalmologist said was the best retina man in the field. The best retina man in the field said there wasn't anything that could be done. After that, my mother asked me to stop. All she was going to hear from additional doctors was that there was nothing that could be done and she didn't need to hear that over and over. So I stopped.

She became increasingly reliant on paid caregivers. She could, of course, no longer drive and her walking capabilities were such that she couldn't even leave her home without considerable aid. The house had a large, beautiful back yard and she loved to stare out at the birds splashing about in the two birdbaths or feasting at a feeder I'd installed. She couldn't see them very well but she could hear them and her imagination could fill out whatever imagery she could see.

Still, even with help, she could not physically get down the back steps and so couldn't actually venture out into her own back yard. There were fewer steps in the front and I had a banister installed to help her there. In the house, she got around with a walker. When out, she was pushed around in a wheelchair. I had a good, heavy-duty one in the trunk of my car and I also bought a lightweight one that was employed when caregivers took her to the market or the beauty salon…or to the kind of doctor appointments that didn't require my presence.

The caregivers came from an agency that had been highly-recommended. It was licensed and bonded and the people there were awful nice. So were the caregivers…until one day, I went online to check my mother's bank accounts and I found some mysterious charges. The next time I write one of these, I'll tell you what happened.

Ever since I learned there was a Garfield & Friends channel on PlutoTV, I've been watching occasionally. They're running shows I wrote in 1991 and 1992 and haven't seen since. One or two, I'm not sure I ever saw at all. So I sit here, occasionally amusing myself or more often thinking, "Why the hell did I write that?" Yesterday, I heard a minor character speak and I thought, "Who was that? We had such fine actors in the cast, I can't believe one of them gave that bad line reading or that I let it through."

And then I realized who it was. It was me. Yeah, I occasionally did a bit part…and when Garfield's creator Jim Davis was in town, so did he.

It's fun and educational to watch these now. I can't look back on old work without learning something. I learn it too late but at least I learn. I also have an emotional response that I'm not sure I can describe to hearing the voices of actors who worked on the show but are no longer with us. Lorenzo Music, Gary Owens and Howard Morris — three great actors and great friends — were in every episode. I'm also hearing Stan Freberg, June Foray, Rip Tay;or, Don Knotts, Paul Winchell and a few others we've lost.

I'm relatively new to Pluto TV and I still don't understand some things about it. Although they presumably have access to all 121 half-hours of Garfield and Friends, they only run a select chunk of shows at a time. I'm not keeping close track but it seems like yesterday, they were running thirteen or fourteen shows over and over, not always in the same order. Today, it seems like they're running a limited number of shows — probably the same number — but some were in yesterday's rotation and some weren't.

But I may be wrong about this. I'm not making a close study.

Each show is interrupted several times with a little "we'll be right back" message which is like a commercial break only it isn't a commercial…though Friday, I did see one actual commercial in there. For some reason, they don't put these little "time out"s between cartoons. They stick them in the middle of a cartoon or near the end. So a character says the next-to-last line of the cartoon and there's a funny end line coming but you have to wait a minute or so for that last line.

I don't understand why they do this. Perhaps I would if I understood the business model of PlutoTV. Is there any revenue stream apart from the occasional few bucks from the occasional commercials? I have a feeling that when I get my cut of what they're paying to run these shows day and night, it'll be about enough for an order of McDonald's french fries. A small order of McDonald's french fries.

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.

Bill Turner sent me this…

I know in previous years you have posted about Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. I watched it again this year, for probably the 50th time, and am wondering whether you can tell who sang which singing parts, particularly on the Plunderer's March ("We're despicable"). My family still remembers my high school buddies and me belting that out back around 1968.

Sure. Let's go through all the voices…

As we all know, Jim Backus played Quincy Magoo and Jack Cassidy played Bob Cratchit and they sang for those characters. Les Tremayne played The Ghost of Christmas Present and he didn't sing but Jane Kean, who played Belle did. That's the same Jane Kean who took over as Trixie, wife of Ed Norton, when Jackie Gleason brought The Honeymooners back to television in the sixties.

Laura Olsher played The Laundress, the kid with the turkey, Peter Cratchit, Mrs. Cratchit and she supplied the speaking voice of the daughter in the Cratchit family. Marie Matthews played Scrooge as a young boy. She sang as him and also she did the singing for the Cratchit daughter. John Hart, who was The Lone Ranger for one season on TV, played Mr. Billings and the Stage Manager. He didn't sing in the show.

Royal Dano played Marley's Ghost who had no songs but Dano did do the singing for the Junk Shop Owner. Paul Frees did the speaking voice of the Junk Shop Owner and also voiced The Director, Fezziwig, The Undertaker and the hapless gent who asked Scrooge for a donation.

Joan Gardner played Tiny Tim, The Charwoman and The Ghost of Christmas Past. She is often confused with voice actress Joanie Gerber who was not in this show. Neither was June Foray, who used to be credited all over the place as being in it, including in some TV Guide listings and on the box for the Beta and VHS releases of Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol.

Morey Amsterdam — Buddy Sorrell from The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Human Joke Machine — played two tiny parts as the gents on the street discussing the death of Ebenezer Scrooge. Why only two tiny roles? Because he was hired for a larger part which was recorded and cut out of the finished show.

So the speaking voices of the four Plunderers (as you call them) were Olsher, Gardner and then Frees spoke for both men. Since even the great Paul Frees couldn't sing two parts at the same time and they wanted to record the four characters together, he only sang for the Undertaker. Mr. Dano sang for the Junk Shop Guy.

I verified these credits in Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol: The Making of the First Animated Christmas Special by Darrell Van Citters. This is the only book that focuses on the special and since it's so well-researched and exhaustive, it's the only one you'll ever need. Here's a link to buy the paperback edition. There was a beautiful hardcover edition but it's beastly hard to find and I ain't parting with mine. Hope this helps.

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.

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…

Quite a few folks who own a copy of Fantastic Four #1 responded to my public appeal. I think we have what we need and when this project gets closer to its publication date, I'll tell you what this was about. Thanks to all of you.

Last night, Turner Classic Movies ran The Hospital, the 1971 movie which starred George C. Scott and Diana Rigg…but really starred a killer script by Paddy Chayefsky. I meant to record it on my TiVo but forgot. I haven't seen it since it came out and I recall liking it a lot…so I wanted to see if I still did and I wanted to check something else out. The late/lovely June Foray told me that she was called in to do a fair amount of dubbing and looping on the film including a couple of lines for Diana Rigg. I wanted to see if I could recognize June at all in the film and especially impersonating Ms. Rigg, who was back in England and unavailable when dialogue replacement was needed. It's not a big thing but did anyone notice June?

---

My buddy Gerry Conway has written a lot of great comic books over the years and a lot of great other things. He recently penned an essay about what he thinks has to happen for the comic book industry to thrive or at least survive. The attention-grabbing headline says he wants them to "Cancel Every Existing Superhero Comic." Actually, he says he'd cancel 'em and reshape that genre as "a limited new line for a Middle-Grade readership" with simpler characters and storylines and…

Why am I summarizing it? You can read the whole thing in his own words here.

I don't disagree with any part of it unless Gerry thinks that (a) DC and Marvel are likely to try it, (b) that if they did try it, their sales forces would know how to begin reaching that yearned-for New Audience and (c) the companies would give this approach a fair shot at establishing itself before they panicked at the first sales figures, declared the whole thing a failure and went back to the old approach. And then if they behaved as folks running comic book companies have in the past, they'd (d) blame the writers and artists for giving them a non-commercial product, rather than their own inability to sell anything except what they're currently selling (not very well) and their hurry to surrender.

But Gerry's a smart guy. I don't think he believes (a) and he certainly knows how the rest of the story goes.

As long as I've been in comics, which is about the same amount of time as Gerry, I've heard endless discussions and panels and meetings about "reaching a new audience with different kinds of comics." The 2% of the time all that talk has led to an actual attempt, it's been half-assed…and you can kind of sense the sighs of relief when they get in some early numbers that justify saying, "Well, we tried and it didn't work so let's give up on this."

Also, no one is suggesting that if you put out different kinds of comics, the mere fact that they're different will in and of itself attract an audience. They have to be different and good…or at least different and compelling. Sometimes, it's like if you had a pizza business and I suggested you might be able to sell some other kind of food as well. Then you go and put Baked Gopher Guts in Hollandaise Sauce on the menu and when they don't sell, you say, "You were wrong. People only want pizza."