Search Results for: mel blanc

Frank Nelson

by Mark Evanier

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 12/1/95
Comics Buyer's Guide

Long before my time — and, perhaps, yours — there was a thing called radio. I don't mean "radio" like the thing that broadcasts Howard Stern, baseball, Top 40 countdowns, Rush Limbaugh, easy listening and news. I mean "radio" like the thing that broadcast The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, Amos and Andy, Henry Aldrich and Duffy's Tavern. Radio used to feature all of them plus many other wonderful comedy shows and dramas.

If you polled radio buffs as to which was the best show ever done, I'd be very surprised if The Jack Benny Program didn't place in the top three. It was one of the top shows for many years and, even today, when you can listen to some of the most popular shows of the day and wonder what anyone liked about them, it holds up. It really was a very funny show.

One of the reasons, of course, was Jack Benny…a wonderful man and, as we shall see, a very brave one. Another was his writing staff, widely hailed as the best in radio. And still another was his supporting cast which included Don Wilson, Dennis Day, Sheldon Leonard, Mel Blanc, Benny Rubin, Phil Harris, Mary Livingstone and the very funny, gravel-throated Eddie "Rochester" Anderson.

All of the supporting players had funny lines on the Benny show. So did the guest stars. Everyone had funny lines on the Benny show except, usually, Benny. Jack always let everyone else have the joke; his job was to react to them and, usually, be the butt of everyone else's comments.

Benny didn't care if he got the laugh or the other guy got the laugh. He knew that if the show was funny, he'd be a hit, even if the audiences did spend most of their time laughing at what Dennis Day or Don Wilson said.

Most comics, past or present, would never have done that. Comedians who are stars of shows — especially if their name is part of the title — have been known to go through scripts, circle every funny line that isn't theirs and say, "Give those to me or cut them…this is my show." And it does not a lick of good to point to Jack Benny and to note that no comedian was ever more successful.

---

Of all the wonderful characters who frequented the show — some every week, others now and then — my favorite was Frank Nelson. Nelson's character never had a name and he never had a steady job. He would just pop up wherever the storyline took Jack Benny that week. If the plot called for Jack to go to a department store, Frank Nelson worked in the department store. If the plot called for Jack to go get his driver's license renewed, Frank Nelson was the guy behind the counter giving the eye exam. One time, the story had Jack dreaming of being a condemned criminal walking the last mile. The executioner turned out to be…well, you've got the idea by now.

The best part of every Frank Nelson appearance was the "reveal." Benny would approach a clerk whose back was turned. Jack would say "Excuse me" and the man would whirl around and be revealed as Frank Nelson. And the audience — this is the Benny TV show I'm talking about now, obviously — would get hysterical in anticipation of what was to come. They were rarely disappointed.

On radio, Nelson couldn't spin around and be revealed so he was, instead, identified by his signature line…he'd say, with a huge, phony smile, "Yesssssssss?" He said it on TV, too. And in movies. And almost anywhere else people hired him.

---

As an actor, Nelson worked a lot and not just for Benny. Last evening, watching Nick at Nite, I caught him on an old I Love Lucy. The night before, while playing with my TV satellite dish, I caught a few moments on Showtime of what must have been one of his last roles. It was a film called Malibu Bikini Shop and Nelson — wearing a leisure suit and a dreadful hairpiece — actually managed to steal the scene I caught from a bevy of beauty queens, each wearing a swimsuit crocheted out of a ration of dental floss.

He also used his old radio skills and penchant for overacting to do occasional work in radio commercials and animated cartoons. One of his latter jobs was in one of the prime-time Garfield cartoon specials, back before I began working on the cat.

Jim Davis, creator of Garfield, had written and was voice-directing the special and he had included a role for a clerk who was written as a Frank Nelson type. The character first appeared, as Frank always did, intoning, "Yessssssss?" The Casting Director, assuming prematurely that the guy who did that bit on radio must be deceased, booked voice actor Hal Smith for the role. (Most folks recall Hal in his role of Otis the Town Drunk on the old Andy Griffith Show but his main line of work for years was animated cartoon voiceovers.)

Hal arrived at the recording session and Jim explained to him what the role involved, how he'd be imitating that old radio actor, Frank Nelson.

"Why didn't you hire that old radio actor, Frank Nelson?" Smith asked.

"He's dead," Jim said, for that is what he'd been told.

"Gee," Hal said. "That's shocking…especially considering we had lunch together, half an hour ago."

Jim instantly had Hal call Frank and then reapportioned the other roles in the script so that Hal had other parts to play. About a half hour later, an elderly figure shuffled into the studio. Seeing him at a distance arriving, Jim whispered to an associate, "I think I was right."

But it was just a joke because, as it turned out, Frank only looked bad at a distance. Up close — and, more importantly, at the microphone — he was his old self. Everyone was quite pleased with his performance.

---

It must have been a few months later that I wrote a CBS Storybreak…an animated special called The Roquefort Gang, based on a kids' book of the same name. The plotline called for the title characters (they were mice) to battle a snotty, sarcastic cat. This was a few years before Jim Davis and I got together and I wound up writing the Garfield cartoons for much of a decade. At the time, my main concern was how to do this fat, snide pussycat character without him coming off as a road show Garfield.

One key was to think of (and write according to) a different voice. I don't know what made me think of Frank Nelson but, once I did, everything fell into place and the script wrote effortlessly. Then came the meeting to plan out the voice casting.

Usually, for a special like this, you spend a day at a recording studio, having a number of voice actors read for each of the lead roles. Each actor is recorded reading some audition copy a few times until the director decides the applicant is as good as he's going to get. Then the best "takes" are transferred to audio cassettes and whoever's in charge can listen to them and decide which voice they want for each role. Once this decision is reached, those selected are hired and everyone goes into a studio and the voice track is recorded, very much like an old radio show, with each actor at a microphone, reading his or her script out loud.

In an office at CBS, the show's producer and I huddled to decide what actors to audition for each role. But when it came to the cat, I said, "The cat is Frank Nelson." (I knew the guy was alive, even if Jim Davis's Casting Director didn't. I'd even obtained Nelson's agent's phone number.)

The producer started to put Frank Nelson's name on the audition list. I said, "No, no…I want to just give him the role. Let's not make him audition."

"We have to have him audition," the producer said. "What if we get him into the studio and he's wrong for the role?"

"He's not wrong for the role," I said. "Trust me. I wrote it with him in mind." I even pointed out the cat's first line. It was — you're way ahead of me — "Yesssssss?"

A friendly (sort of) argument followed. The producer argued that, if we hired Nelson without an audition and then didn't like him, it would cost about a thousand dollars to replace him. I said, "Just hire him. I'm sure about this."

The producer wasn't budging so, finally, I gave in. Frank Nelson was booked to come in and read for the part of the cat. There were seven roles to cast this way and we set up audition times for around thirty actors to read, many for more than one role.

---

It was one of the hottest days in L.A. history and, as is usual for auditions, we were running way behind. Still, it was an exciting day: There are dozens of wonderfully-talented actors and actresses in Hollywood who do cartoon voices and we had some of the best coming in to try out.

The producer and I ran the auditions at the recording studio. I'd go out to the lobby, where we usually had a half-dozen auditioners waiting, and call for the next person like a nurse telling someone in the waiting room that the doctor was ready to see them. I'd explain the role to the actor, we'd put them in the booth at the microphone, give them a chance to read the script aloud a few times to "warm up" and then we'd roll tape.

I will never, as long as I live, forget summoning Frank Nelson. He was sitting in the recording studio's lobby, absently paging through a magazine older than he was, surrounded by young actors who didn't know who he was. I stepped into the lobby and said, "Mr. Nelson?"

And he turned towards me — so help me — and went, "Yessssss?" Just like on the Benny show.

I broke into laughter and the other auditioners — the younger actors sitting in chairs around him — suddenly recognized him and they all broke into applause. I have never seen another actor get applause from his peers in the waiting room.

I escorted Mr. Nelson into the recording studio, explained the role ("Try to sound like Frank Nelson") and then I walked him into the booth and put him in front of the microphone.

The producer was sitting in the next room, next to the engineer. As I returned to his side, we could hear Frank Nelson over the speakers, reading the audition script aloud, warming up. We weren't rolling tape yet but, even warming up, it was obvious that Nelson was perfect for the role.

The producer turned to me, sheepish enough to be carved up for lamb chops. "You were right. We shouldn't have wasted his time bringing him in here. Let's just give him the role." (Of course I was right. Do you think I'd be telling you this story if I'd been wrong?)

It then became my mission to get Nelson out of the studio as fast as possible. If he stayed around and read more, there was at least the slim chance that the producer would have second thoughts or heard something he didn't like. I didn't want to risk that happening.

When an actor is in the booth, you talk to them via a microphone set-up called a talkback. I pushed the talkback button and interrupted Nelson's warm-up. He was expecting me to say we were about to roll tape on his reading but instead, I said, "Mr. Nelson, we're sorry we brought you in here and wasted your time. You're perfect for this role and we want you to play it. We'll be in touch with your agent. Thank you."

Or, at least, that's what I thought I'd said. A sour look came over him, then he shuffled out of the booth and out of our studio. He sure didn't look like an actor who had just gotten a job.

It was about two minutes later that it suddenly hit me: He thinks we dumped him.

Sometimes, a rude director will make a snap decision and cut off an actor, dismissing him without letting him finish the audition. Nelson either hadn't heard me well or I'd misspoken. Whatever, he thought we had decided he was so lousy that, though we'd dragged him in here on this 101-degree day, we weren't even letting him try out.

I sprinted out of the studio, out of the building and scanned the street up and down. No sign of Frank Nelson.

Well, he couldn't have gotten far. I ran around the side of the building to a small parking lot in the rear. There, just getting into a Chrysler Imperial, I found Mr. Nelson and I rushed up to him.

"I'm sorry if I didn't make it clear. You have the role. We want to hire you. You are so perfect for this role and so good that we were just embarrassed we asked you to audition."

He smiled and thanked me. He'd assumed exactly what I feared he'd assumed. We chatted for a few minutes and he asked me, confidentially, what his agent could ask for in terms of money.

Usually, these specials paid union scale, which most folks consider decent pay for a cartoon voiceover job. Few actors ever get more. I remembered the embarrassed look on our producer's face and told Nelson, "Try for double scale. I'll see that you get it." (Well, it wasn't my money…)

Talk of double scale delighted him…not so much for the cash, I'm sure, as the prestige. And he got it.

---

A week later, our casting selects gathered in the same studio to record the show. We had some terrific voice actors in that session.

During a break, the actors got to talking and Frank mentioned something that is always a sore point with voice actors.

"On the way over," he said, "I heard a radio commercial and someone was doing me…imitating my voice. Not very well, I might add." He did an impression of someone doing a bad Frank Nelson imitation. We all laughed but Frank didn't find the matter funny. Nor would you if you made your living with your voice and someone had just made some money imitating you.

"I'm around," he said. "I'm available…they could have called me." All the other actors nodded in sympathy. "And what burns me," Nelson continued, "is that some actor didn't say no. They asked him to imitate me and he didn't have the professional courtesy to suggest they hire me instead." He told the story about Hal Smith phoning him and said Hal had acted as a pro.

All present agreed with Mr. Nelson. But as he told the story, I noticed one of our other voice actors — a very fine mimic — getting smaller and smaller, quieter and quieter. And I realized why.

I wandered over to him and whispered, "What's it worth to you for me not to tell Frank who the actor was in that commercial?"

"I'll bear you a child," he whispered back to me…and I could see he felt awful over what he'd done.

That evening, he called me to get Frank Nelson's phone number. He'd decided to call him, confess, apologize and offer to give his fee for the commercial to Frank or the charity of his choice.

He called…and Nelson was very gracious about it, even admiring of the guts it took to own up to the deed. The offer of the fee was declined. Mr. Nelson settled instead for a promise that the impressionist would never do it again.

As far as I know, the actor never has replicated another voice artist's sound since then. And even after Nelson passed away a few years later and it might have been okay, the actor declined all bookings to do "a Frank Nelson type." It just made him uncomfortable, he said. I think it speaks well of him that it did.

I want to do voices and everyone tells me I really have a flair for it. Can I make a living as an actor/actress living in Los Angeles and doing voices for animated cartoons?

Almost certainly not — and almost no one ever does. The job you covet is really that of Voice Actor or Voiceover Performer. It encompasses animation voice work, announcing, film dubbing, video games, radio commercials, voiceovers for TV commercials, etc. Work in these areas is infinitely more plentiful and often more lucrative so no one limits themselves exclusively to cartoon voice work.  This sometimes comes as a shock to someone who idolizes Mel Blanc or Daws Butler and dreams of following in their footsteps…but only envisions voicing animated cartoons. The fact is that Mel and Daws did other things and the other things were often more rewarding. (When Mel was voicing the classic Warner Brothers cartoons, animation work never accounted for more than 10% of his income.) Cartoon voicing can pay very decently if one lands steady work but no one limits themselves to just that.  In fact, if you walked into an agent's office and told him you were only interested in cartoon voicing or only showed interest in that, he'd probably turn you down then and there.

Okay…so let's say I want to do all those things?  Can I make money doing voiceover work?

Maybe. The odds are against you but it's certainly possible.

The first thing you have to keep in mind though it's that it's a very competitive business.  Regardless of your talent, there is a simple mathematical limitation: There are not enough jobs to satisfy all the folks who want those jobs.  It isn't even close.  If you were just to look at the people who already have significant credits in the business, there aren't enough jobs to satisfy just them, never mind all the wanna-bes around.

That said, new people do break in.  Casting folks like experienced professionals but they also like finding someone new.  Not everyone who wants to break in can make it.  There aren't enough openings and to be honest, some of those who try for those careers simply aren't good enough.  But it can happen and does.

Keep in mind though that the people you'll be competing against are, with few exceptions, pursuing work full-time and often with a powerhouse agent clearing the trail for them. So if you think you're going to devote an hour or so a week to it and take jobs away from them, you're probably way off-base.

I am not suggesting you quit your day job and put every waking minute into it. Do not under any circumstances put yourself in a position of financial mercy, whereby you have to begin making a living in voice work in X months or you won't be able to pay rent. As with any kind of acting, the trick is to maintain some kind of base income as you segue into the new field. Beyond that, you have to remember that even a lot of people who do get decent voice jobs do not get them consistently and can have large gaps in their income.

So how do I break into the field without starving to death?

Well, the first thing you should do is look around at the small, available jobs. This is especially important if you're living outside a major marketplace like Los Angeles, New York or Chicago. Your city has radio stations. It has advertising agencies that produce commercials. It may well have small film companies that make productions that need narration. A top L.A. voiceover agent once remarked, "When someone comes in who says they just moved here from Kansas, my first question to them is, 'How much voice work were you getting in Kansas?' Because if you couldn't make it there, you won't be able to make it here. And if you didn't bother to look there, you don't have the right attitude to make it here."

If you are in a major marketplace, you should still look for the small jobs. There are a lot of them and they give you experience and a financial base.

Doing small jobs for small companies is not an embarrassment for a beginner. Later on, it can be. But everyone has to start someplace and an agent or producer is going to be more impressed with a person who has earned money doing voice work — even a little — than they are with someone who was waiting tables at a comparable period in their lives.  The trick though is to not do small, non-union jobs to the extent they disqualify you for large, union jobs.

Do I need to study?

Yes. In fact, an enormous tip-off to some casting directors and agents that a person is not serious is that they think they can get by without lessons. It's like the old maxim about basketball players: Every time you're not practicing, some other guy is — and someday, you'll be facing that guy on the court. There are people who work steadily in the field of voiceovers but still find it valuable to take classes once or twice a week. They feel that just working and going to auditions does not sufficiently flex all their muscles and give them a chance to grow.  It's easy to get "typed" and only called in for one kind of job.  If you could do others, you need to not neglect those other areas.

Any city that has voice jobs probably has voice teachers. Even acting classes that don't specialize in the voice can be very valuable, especially those that focus on improv comedy, dialects or cold reading. The main value though is that you have someone challenging you and giving you feedback. George C. Scott once said that the only way to improve as an actor was to read opposite other actors, and this is something you can't do alone.

I'm worried about getting ripped-off by acting teachers and agents. Should I be concerned?

Absolutely. A lot of teachers and agents and other services that promise to help you get work are shameless con games, while others are basically honest but just aren't very good.

Rule of thumb for aspiring actors of all kinds: There are very few legitimate cases where you should pay money to someone to help you with your career.

You can and should pay for lessons and workshops but like anything else in this world, you have to shop intelligently. Look at what others are charging and look at what other customers have had to say. Some people teach acting because they don't know enough about it to actually do it or no one wants to hire them.  At this moment, the best teachers I see around are people who are also currently doing a fair amount of acting or even directing work.

You can and may have to pay modest, reasonable fees for someone to record and edit your demo.  It used to be that a demo made at home sounded like a demo made at home and therefore amateurish.  Lately though, computer software and hardware is advancing to the point that it is possible to record, edit and sweeten a professional-sounding demo on a home PC or Mac if the operator knows what he or she is doing.  You might also, if you're serious about voiceover work, consider investing in whatever you need to have a little home studio and to learn how to record yourself, edit and add music and effects.  It can be done with a decent microphone, less than $200 worth of software and the willingness to learn that software well.

And if you need a good headshot photo, which some voiceover agents consider a necessity, you need to pay for that, too. A little investigation will show you that there are huge variations in what some folks will charge you for this.

You can and should pay for things like books on acting and instructional CDs. There are some good CDs out that will coach you on accents if you're going to do that kind of work.

And that's about it. Do not ever pay someone who claims to be an agent or to be able to help you get an agent.  Agents take 10% from those who wish to hire you.  Do not accept any other sort of arrangement.

Be wary of someone who claims to be a manager. A manager is not an agent and while some perform the same functions, they're not supposed to.  Lately, a lot of people who call themselves "managers" seem to be unlicensed entrepreneurs who want to become producers.  Instead of working on their clients' careers, they're putting together their own projects to sell and trying to fold their clients into them…so you don't get paid unless your manager sells his or her project.  That's probably not what you want.

Do not pay for "access."  Do not pay someone who claims they can get you into a showcase where agents or casting directors will see and hear you.  Do not pay for classes with someone because you think that person will hire you.  Be very wary of someone who wants to charge you to "evaluate" your demo.

How can I tell a good voice coach from a bad one?

Generally speaking, the best voice coaches are the ones who are currently or recently working in the field either as actors or directors. The bad voice coaches are the ones who never made it as either and are now coaching to make money and retain some peripheral attachment to the business. There are exceptions to this but not many.

There may be no way for you to determine this but (again, generally speaking) the good voice coaches are the ones who sometimes turn down a student who has money. The bad ones may act like they're being selective and that you need to convince them you have potential before they'll take you on. But really, they'll take anyone who can pay and even if you're lousy, they'll promise they can shape you into the next Frank Welker or Rob Paulsen.

As for how you find the good ones: The easiest way is to attend a comic convention or other gathering where star voice artists appear and sign autographs. Go up to one who works a lot, buy a signed photo and ask them to recommend a good teacher. Everyone in the business gets this question so just about everyone has an answer. Just don't expect them to know a great teacher in Billings, Montana or someplace outside of their home area. If you can't get to a convention, you can perhaps find an e-mail contact on the Internet, maybe on Facebook or Twitter.

I live in Jerkwater, Alabama and I have access to a real good recording studio and digital phone lines. I've heard that there are people who live outside Los Angeles and New York who manage to have thriving voice careers by phone. So I can do this, can't I?

Not that long ago, the answer to this would have been, "Absolutely not." Today, due to technological advances, the answer is more along the lines of: "It's possible to get work in the major markets from out of town though you're certainly putting yourself at an enormous competitive disadvantage." There are some experienced actors who, having proven their worth and established themselves as the voices of certain characters or ad campaigns, have managed to relocate outside of L.A. or N.Y. and continued working, though not as often.

There are also occasional newcomer exceptions and in the future, working with out-of-town voice talent will become more feasible but at the moment, such cases are the exception. Remember, you have to convince them not only that you're better than the 3,000+ actors in the L.A. area who are actively seeking voice work, but that you're so much better that it's worth the inconvenience of working with someone who can't come in at a moment's notice. Generally speaking, the kind of L.A. and N.Y. jobs you can phone in are the non-union ones that pay very little.  On the other hand, you may be able to service non-major markets.  There are some good, lucrative jobs not in New York and Los Angeles with less local-based competition.

I'm about to prepare my voice demo. How long should it be?

Shorter than you'll probably make it. A top voice agent recently told me, "It's getting so that if I don't hear something fabulous in the first 20 seconds, I turn it off and throw it in the reject pile." That is probably not uncommon, given how many thousands of demos get submitted to agents and casting directors. You need to be absolutely ruthless in omitting all but your absolute best work. Lead with those one or two unique voices you may have and then keep the whole thing down to three minutes. Two is better…and if that seems impossible, remember that they'll probably make up their minds about you in the first minute.

Agents and casting directors are sick of hearing men imitating Joe Cipriano, Beau Weaver and Don LaFontaine. Women seeking character work all seem to imitate June Foray's witch voice, Gail Matthius's valley girl voice and Nancy Cartwright's Bart Simpson voice. Replicating those does not prove you're as good as those actresses. It demonstrates that you have nothing to offer that many others can't do…including June, Gail and Nancy, all of whom are still around and available to be hired.

But I do so many different voices! All my friends tell me I can sound like a hundred different movie stars…and I have three hundred of my own character voices. Shouldn't I put them all on my demo so the agents and casting directors can hear everything that I can do?

First off, your friends are holding to you a different standard than is employed by professional agents and casting directors…who, by the way, are never going to listen to a demo with 50 voices on it, let alone 300.

The truth is that few voice actors are as versatile as they think they are, and a casting director doesn't need someone who can do 300 voices. He or she needs someone who can do the one or two specific voices they need to cast…so show them only your best work. (Also, there's this: To emphasize quantity over quality is generally a sign of amateurism. Most agents, when they hear someone say, "I can do 300 voices" automatically assume they're in the presence of a pushy neophyte.)

One other point: Beginners often tout their talents by saying things like, "I can do a great Homer Simpson and a terrific SpongeBob SquarePants." What they don't get is that there's a very limited market for those who can imitate classic voices and virtually none when the original voice actor is still around. The guys who do Homer and SpongeBob are alive and well and there is no need for anyone to imitate them. When a voice actor dies or becomes otherwise unavailable, there are often jobs for "sound-alikes" but most of these go to folks who are already at the top of the profession. In any case, casting agents are always much more impressed by a good original voice than by your ability to mimic someone else's creation.

I want to break into voice work but I know that there's an "inner circle" of people who hire their friends and keep outsiders out. Is there any way I can break into that clique?

Not with that attitude. First off, those who get work are hired because the folks doing the hiring believe that these are the people who can give them what they want. Yes, they often hire the same people over and over. That's how it is in every business. If you employ someone and find they're good at what they do, you hire them again, or at least give them preference over utter strangers. That's not favoritism; that's experience. One of the skills that casting directors and voice directors are supposed to bring to the job is to know good people and to be able to cast quickly and without doing hundreds of auditions. The notion that there's any sort of clique or inner circle is just "sore loser" talk by folks whose work, rightly or wrongly, failed to click with those who do the hiring.

Do I have to belong to the union to get work doing voice work? Once I join, will the union get me work? Do I have to have an agent?

You don't have to belong to the Screen Actors Guild to get your first job. You will have to join when you qualify for membership, which usually occurs with your second. But I've never heard of a casting person saying, "I won't hire that person because he isn't in the union." (Of course, those who cast non-union projects like it if you're not in the union. Having seen a number of performers get exploited and cheated on non-union films, I am of the opinion that it is foolish to venture too near them. It can also make you look a lot less desirable for the decent-paying union gigs.)

The union does not get you work. They have nothing to do with that end of the process except to stop its more abusive practices.

The problem with not having an agent is that it's difficult to let the casting folks know you exist if you don't have an agent. They get so many submissions from accredited, known agents that they can barely deal with them, let alone the unagented actors. As a result, they tend to view voiceover agencies as a kind of pre-screening process, assuming that if someone doesn't have an agent, they probably aren't worth considering. That is not necessarily an unfair assumption. Most of the submissions that come from non-agented performers are pretty awful and even if yours is an exception, it's likely to get lost among the chaff.

So: No, having an agent is not an absolute necessity. But it sure makes the odds against you a little more tolerable.

Is it possible these days to have a career as an on-camera actor and as a voiceover performer? I see all these celebrities doing cartoon voices lately…

Yeah…and those particular people would probably not be considered for those jobs if not for their on-camera credits. With some exceptions, they're being hired for their celebrity by a production that feels, for either marketing or personal reasons, they want to work with "name" actors.

Most of the current voiceover performers who are working steadily are ones who have made a conscious decision to subordinate on-camerawork to voice work. There is, in fact, an agent who says to potential new clients, "If you had a chance tomorrow to audition for a regular part on a sitcom that might be the next Seinfeld or a regular part on a cartoon series, and you couldn't go to both, which would you choose?" The actor who'd pick the sitcom is, to the agent, much less appealing for representation.

I hear about this thing called "Financial Core" and it sounds to me like a great deal. It enables me to not be a member of the union, to pay reduced dues and to accept non-union work? Why shouldn't I take advantage of this?

There are a number of reasons. "Financial Core" (sometimes called "Fiscal Core") is a special category that enables one to opt out of a union but still work in its area of jurisdiction. The person must pay the portion of union dues that go to actual enforcement of the union's contract but is under no legal obligation to obey certain of its rules, including the usual prohibition of working for non-union shops.

You might not want to do this for moral reasons. Mainly though, Core status is probably a bad idea just as a career move if you want to work in the majors. It's tantamount to announcing to the industry that you're desperate…and the only folks who want to hire desperate actors are those who are looking for talent that will work cheap and not complain if the check bounces.

Okay, I've read all the questions and answers. I want to do cartoon voices. Can you just give me a straight answer as to what I have to do to get that job? And please be honest with me.

Okay, here it is: On each project, the decision as to who does the voice(s) is done by a small group of people — usually a casting director and a voice director (often, those are the same person) and a boss or two. On a commercial, the boss may be the client — i.e., the maker of the product — or it may be the advertising agency. On a cartoon show, it may be a producer and maybe a studio head or two. Once in a while, writers and directors can effectively recommend someone. So what you have to do is to get those people to decide you're the right person for a given role.

If you already have a personal relationship with one of these people, they might consider you. That doesn't mean they'll hire you but they might give you a real consideration. It is rare that one person can make a casting decision for regular roles. Even if your uncle is the casting director and he decides you're the best-possible choice for a certain part, he still has to convince his co-workers. On a cartoon show, a network may also have approval rights and there may also be merchandising people and folks who have ownership rights in the property who have to sign off on major casting decisions. Sometimes though, one person can cast a minor, non-recurring role.

If you don't have a personal relationship with one of these people and you approach them directly, you will almost surely do yourself more harm than good, and could really anger them. They get bombarded by a lot of amateurs and expect the agent system to protect them from that, and to weed out the new people with talent.

Getting an agent is difficult but the process is pretty straightforward.  You work up a demo recording of your work and you submit it to the various agencies. Submissions used to be done by mailing them tapes and then CDs.  Now, it's more likely done online.  If they all turn you down, your only real option is to keep submitting samples of your talent to them. There really is no other route.

I'm sorry I can't give you any magic shortcut and I'm sorry that this may not sound fair to you, or that 98% of all those who want to do voice work will never get the opportunity. But that's the way it works.

For reasons you can probably guess, it has become necessary to institute the following policy: Please do not send me voice demos or requests to hear your samples or to hire you or to refer you to an agent. I get way too much of this and have had to vow never to hire or refer anyone who approaches me this way. If you saw my e-mailbox, you'd understand.

Warner Brothers Cartoons

by Mark Evanier

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 1/20/95
Comics Buyer's Guide

Between 1930 and 1969, the Warner Brothers Cartoon Studio made around a thousand short cartoons. A few are dreadful and some are simply boring, especially in the early years, when they were still learning what they were doing, and the later years, when they seemed to have forgotten most of what they'd learned.

But the overwhelming majority — an amazingly-high batting average — was entertaining and funny, even holding up after umpteen-zillion reruns, decades after they were made. The studio even made some that define brilliance in animation and —

Cut. Hold it. Start over. I just realized I made a mistake that bothers me when committed by others. The studio didn't make those films. Talented human beings did.

And it wasn't even the Warner Brothers Cartoon Studio for some of that time. At first, it was the Leon Schlesinger Studio, and Warner Brothers distributed its output. Mr. Schlesinger didn't make cartoons. He left his employees alone and the only thing he drew was the largest paycheck.

WB later purchased the whole operation and, after that happened, Jack L. Warner didn't start sketching gags or painting cels, either. Warner, it is alleged, barely knew they even had a cartoon division. In anecdotes so absurd and unlikely that they're probably true, he is said to have repeatedly spoken of that department as cranking out Mickey Mouse shorts.

Hey, even when I was six, I knew better.

Anyway, the point is that Leon and the freres Warner didn't "make" those films any more than the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was painted by the Pope who hired Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. Creative works are created by creative people with creative talents. Here's just a sampling of relevant names:

Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Michael Maltese, Rod Scribner, Tex Avery, Ken Harris, Mel Blanc, Robert McKimson, Tom McKimson, Charles McKimson, Tedd Pierce, Carl Stalling, Friz Freleng, Manny Gould, Phil DeLara, Art Davis, Ben "Bugs" Hardaway, Ben Washam, Lloyd Vaughn, Pete Alvarado, Robert Gribbroek, Warren Foster, John Carey, Bea Benaderet, Virgil Ross, Hawley Pratt, Stan Freberg and Norm McCabe. There are many others.

These folks made the so-called Warner Brothers cartoons. Those films are now owned, along with almost everything else in the known free world, by the Time-Warner conglomerate.

The TV rights were, for a time, bifurcated…or maybe even trifurcated or more. In 1956, some exec at Warner's made a deal which one of his successors, being charitable, described as "boneheaded." Failing to foresee how long the films would remain popular — and certainly not dreaming of cable or home video — he sold off all the color Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies that were copyrighted before September 1, 1948.

An outfit named Associated Artists Productions bought and syndicated them to TV stations everywhere. That's why you see "A.A.P." logos on the front of some prints. There was another, even dumber transaction that sold a batch of vintage shorts to the Metromedia company for roughly the amount I spent last week at the Warner Store.

Warner Brothers Television, in the meantime, effectively marketed what they had left. In 1960, they sold the best of what they'd retained to ABC for a prime-time Bugs Bunny show, which later migrated to Saturday morn. The rest of their library was carved up into "packages" of cartoons. Some were syndicated to local stations. Others were used in '64 to form a Porky Pig show, also on ABC Saturday (or Sunday) mornings. Two years later, another package became a Road Runner show on CBS.

Apart from openings, closings and some interstitial segments, no new animation was done. They just ran the same cartoons over and over. In 1968, when there was some softening in the ratings, ABC bosses concluded that the material had been overexposed and let Bugs and his pals go.

CBS pounced like Pepe LePew on a cat with a white stripe on her back. They folded it in with their Road Runner show to make The Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Hour.

Big hit. Most seasons, these endlessly-recycled antiques outrated whatever new/hip/contemporary programming the studios could cobble together. From 1968 through 1986, they were the spine of CBS's Saturday A.M. sked, and they spawned a series of prime-time outings.

Each year though, CBS was cautious about committing for another season. There was always the fear that, at some point, viewers would weary of seeing the same cartoons, time and again. They kept saying to WB, "Don't you have anything else we can put in there to freshen this thing up?" That's when WB began adding in cartoons from other packages, as they became unencumbered by other deals. This meant, generally, adding weaker and weaker cartoons to the rotation.

They also tossed in some previously-withheld cartoons. Saturday morn animation has its restrictions and they were uncommonly harsh in the late-70's/early-80's. (I'm being nice; actually, they were uncommonly stupid and based on the premise that children were even stupider.)

At first, some cartoons were excluded because they were deemed "unacceptable," which usually meant that someone shot someone else — or themselves — or there was a reference to sex or beer. As CBS became more desperate to include something that the kids might not be sick of, they began pulling cartoons off that "unacceptable" list and chopping scenes as necessary to make them, at least in one sense, "acceptable."

Don't we all love this practice? Isn't it just dandy to watch cartoons with the funny stuff cut out? Some of the excisions were really cerebrum-numbing…leaving in the set-up, omitting the punch line. The deletions became more and more obvious. It's a tribute to those who made the cartoons that they still attracted large audiences even after this kind of sabotage.

They attracted so many that, in 1976, CBS broke out a batch of the films to make The Sylvester and Tweety Show. After a year, they folded those films back into The Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Hour, renamed it The Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Show and expanded it to ninety minutes. I think it even went to two hours for a time, always pulling big numbers.

NBC coveted those digits. In 1978, they went to the Warner people, waved hefty bucks and said, "Give us one of those." The result was a Daffy Duck show, made up of almost everything in color that the studio still owned that wasn't already licensed to CBS or elsewhere. In other words, the bottom of the barrel was scraped.

This angered CBS. They wanted those cartoons, however frail they may have been, to bolster their Bugs/Road Runner show. When Daffy's show was dropped in 1982, they snatched up those films, as well.

Eventually, in 1986, the suits at CBS made the not-unprecedented error of assuming that all those Bugs-Daffy-Road Runner cartoons had been rerun into stagnation. They dropped the franchise and, to the industry's shock, ABC immediately snapped it up. Ratings were terrific for The Bugs Bunny-Looney Tunes Comedy Hour and, later, The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show.

In fairness, letting the wabbit go was not quite as ill-advised a move as it might seem. The show's audience was "skewing older," as they say, and CBS was then basing its advertising rates wholly on the 2-12 age bracket. If five million pairs of eyes were fixed on Bugs and half belonged to folks aged 13 or over, that was 2.5 million viewers, insofar as the commercial buyers were concerned. ABC, on the other hand, had a whole different rate formula — one that was a bit more favorable to shows that drew an older audience.

Two quick stories about the transition from one network to another: One is what CBS did when they found out that ABC was grabbing the show they were dropping. The program still had around six months to go on CBS so they took out all the weak cartoons.

I don't know if anyone noticed but this was quite deliberately done. CBS yanked all the later, poorer films out of rotation, as well as most of the heavily-laundered (and therefore, less entertaining) ones. For the last half-year, they ran only the primo stuff. An exec at the network actually said to me — and, I swear, this is a quote — "By the time ABC gets hold of this show, those kids are gonna be absolutely sick of What's Opera, Doc? and One Froggy Evening."

That's the first story. The second will probably be denied by anyone who was involved but, as reporters say, we stand by our story.

When ABC got the show, WB offered to make all new prints of the cartoons…to go back to the negatives and strike off, on tape, spanking-fresh copies of all those cartoons. This was so ABC wouldn't have to run videotapes that CBS had run dozens and dozens of time, to their eventual decay.

ABC said no. "Give us the CBS prints."

At the time, the Standards and Practices Department at ABC (read: censors) prided itself on having the strictest standards and practices in the business. This was probably true.

The folks there didn't want to do all the work to go back and cut all the stuff that CBS had slashed. They also didn't want to be caught leaving in anything that CBS had omitted. The second reason was probably more important than the first but the solution to both was to requisition the reels that CBS was going to discard. Then they made a point of chopping further. They removed bits that CBS had aired, ad nauseam, without reported damage to the youth of America.

Eventually, those tapes wore out, the political climate changed, "standards" were eased…and the personnel at ABC changed. New prints crept in and some punch lines returned.

The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show is still on ABC on Saturdays, still doing well. Nevertheless, many assume it won't be there much longer. Disney now owns the network and can't be wild about paying cash to a competitor and promoting characters that vie with Donald and Mickey in the marketplace. The WB people would probably prefer to see the WB cartoons on the WB Network. They now seem to have the broadcast rates to everything else.

Remember those cartoons that were sold to A.A.P.? Well, Dick Tracy in his prime — or even Duck Twacy — would be hard-pressed to track custody of them through a flurry of sales and acquisitions. Eventually, M.G.M.-U.A. wound up with the early color films. Then Ted Turner wound up with M.G.M.-U.A. Then Ted Turner folded his empire into Time-Warner. Somehow, the Metromedia films came home, as well.

They really don't need to sell to anyone outside the building. They can put them on the WB Network and the Cartoon Network and on Turner Classic Movies and TNT and all the other outlets that Time-Warner owns. (I recently found out that my gardener has been acquired by Time-Warner. But that's okay because my cleaning lady is a division of The Walt Disney Company.)

So once they reclaim the ABC package, it'll all be under one roof. Eventually, you'll be able to turn on those Time-Warner channels and see every last Looney Tune, every Merrie Melodie, right?

Maybe not. The programmers are still, like most TV programmers, timid about old, black-and-white film.

Well, maybe "timid" is the wrong word. There does seem to be empirical evidence that younger viewers are less open to watching a good black-and-white cartoon than a mediocre color one. The vaults of the Cartoon Network are crammed with both but those that lack hues only turn up at non-prime times, most often on a series entitled Late Night Black & White.

(It's no different at Toon Disney, Nickelodeon during the day, and any channel that runs animation. They all have great black-and-white cartoons that they treat like a baseball manager treats his worst pinch-hitter.)

This is not a new problem. In the sixties, the studio tried to solve it by "colorizing" the early WB cartoons — mainly those featuring Porky Pig, their first recurring star. This was before the computer process was invented. The films were shipped to Korea where they were hand-traced into color by minimum-wage laborers, many of them not even artists. I hate to think what minimum wage was in Korea back then…

It was the cheapest possible way to do it and they got what they paid for. Wonderful fully-animated cartoons were converted into ugly, badly-animated cartoons. They just look cheap. Any time there's a title card or sign in these films, you can tell it was rendered by someone who didn't know English.

But people still watch them.

And the removal of punch lines and supposed violence continues. It's not nearly as bad as it was once was, but scenes are still omitted, jokes are still tempered, humor is still lessened.

And people still watch them.

Not next week, but in some future column, I want to expand on the black-and-white issue, and the "editing." I also want to talk about the dozen-or-more cartoons that never turn up anywhere, at any time, in any Time-Warner venue, because of racial stereotypes.

What I want to close with for now is this point: You can't kill these films.

They've sure tried. They've cut them and hidden them and traced them and chopped them into little pieces. Over and over, business-types have given up on Bugs; over and over, they've been proven wrong. Like Lazarus, Jason or even Bill Clinton, he keeps coming back, ever stronger. And always will.

The WB cartoons may be the most lucrative things ever put on celluloid. They returned their initial investments when they were first exhibited, and all the thousands of reruns since have yielded almost pure profit. That's not even looking at the billions (with a "b") grossed from toys and comics and other merchandise featuring Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Tweety and the gang.

Whether you measure success by income or critical acclaim or just endurance, the Warner Brothers cartoons have been phenomenal successes. How did this come about? How did magic happen? Easy…

They hired talented folks like Clampett and Jones and Avery and McKimson and all the rest. Then they gave them money to do a good job, and they left them alone to do it.

Sometimes, that's all it takes.