Daws Butler
Part 1
by Mark Evanier
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 2/2/01
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Cedric Hardwicke once told an interviewer, "Good actors are good because of the things they can tell us without talking. When they are talking, they are servants of the dramatist. It is what they can show the audience when they are not talking that reveals the fine actor."
Not to contradict Sir Cedric but there are two things wrong with that assertion. One is, of course, that when he made it, he was talking.
And the other quibble is that the best actor I have ever known was nothing when he was not talking. His name was Daws Butler and he was a cartoon voice actor — not as famous as Mel Blanc but certainly in the same class. Blanc himself acknowledged this, calling Daws "my only rival."
That Mel is today better known is understandable. He was one of the first vocal thespians in animation and, for a long time, the only one to receive screen credit. He also spoke for more famous and enduring characters, and had a bountiful career in front of the cameras, as well. By contrast, Daws had little flair for self-promotion and virtually no interest in on-camera acting.
And yet, of the two, Daws may have faced the greater challenges. Blanc's essential works were done in full animation where the voice was a key part of bringing life to a character, but not the overwhelming majority. His Bugs Bunny "acted" not just with his voice but with gestures, facial expressions, even body language.
Daws, by contrast, did his most important roles in the era of limited animation where, if the character was only speaking, they only animated the mouth with an occasional eye-blink. His Yogi Bear could neither move like Bugs, nor react. By default, the bulk of his characterization and emotion had to be conveyed via the vocal performance.
That Yogi overcame his budgetary-limitations to become a beloved star had a lot to do with Daws Butler. The same could be said of his many other characters: Huckleberry Hound, Mr. Jinks, Snagglepuss, Augie Doggie, Quick Draw McGraw, Hokey Wolf and many more. They were funny, in large part, because Daws was funny. He was also bright and compassionate and the best breeder and stimulator of talent I have ever known.
Charles Dawson Butler was born November 16, 1916 in Toledo, Ohio. He grew up just outside Chicago, though he didn't grow up very much. He topped out at around 5'2" but put him in front of a microphone and he could be any height, any age, even any species. Even just before his death at age 72, he could still turn himself into 8-year-old Elroy Jetson.
"Like everyone at the time, I used to listen to the radio," he once explained. "I loved the voices, the stories, the sheer creative energy, but for years, it never occurred to me to become an actor. It all made me want to become a writer or a cartoonist and create my own stories." Soon though, the young man found he was better at sounding like odd folks than drawing them.
"Maybe it was because I was so short, but I was extremely, almost fatally introverted. I was always the kid in the back of the crowd, never at the center, and because I was short, I couldn't see or be seen. So I started to make some noise, doing voices, doing impressions of movie stars and our teachers. The kids loved it — especially the girls — and I suddenly had status and stature."
Before his 16th birthday, he was entering local talent contests, wowing audiences with impressions of Rudy Vallee, George Arliss, President Roosevelt and other well-known voices from the radio. Initially, he did it as a discipline, forcing himself to get up on stage to overcome his shyness. After winning a half-dozen competitions, the notion of a performing career was inevitable.
Working the talent show circuit, he met two other young imitators and they decided to work up an act. Since all were lacking in the height department, they called themselves "The Three Short Waves" and mimicked their way through the Midwest, replicating popular radio programs of the day.
Their closer — the bit that got them booked into many a nightclub — was Butler's dead-on simulation of comedian Fred Allen. It wasn't so much that Daws could sound like the great Allen but that he could deliver a joke line with the same precision timing.
The Three Short Waves lasted until Daws went into the Naval Reserve in World War II. When he was discharged, he decided it was time to try for a career in radio-acting. He relocated to Hollywood, where he was soon heard on many of the top shows of the day, including The Whistler and Suspense. But as good as Daws was, he lacked a certain pushiness that paid off for other radio performers. "I wasn't good at badgering people to give me work," he later admitted. "As a result, I didn't work as much as I might have."
One day in 1946, he had the same thought that had occurred to another radio actor, Mel Blanc, ten years earlier: "I thought, along with auditioning for every radio job where they'd hear me, I might also try getting work in animated cartoons." Just as Mel had, he went to the studio on Fernwood Avenue in Hollywood where they made Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies and asked for an audition.
The receptionist directed him to Johnny Burton, who was then running operations. "I did two dozen voices and dialects for him and when I was done, he said, 'You're great, but Mel does everything here.' I was disappointed and ready to leave when he said, 'Listen, I want you to go over to MGM and see a fellow named Tex Avery.'" Four years earlier, Avery had moved from directing cartoons at Warner's to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but he still kept in touch with his old pals and welcomed Burton's recommendation.
The next day, Butler drove to the MGM Studios in Culver City where he did 40-some-odd minutes of voices and impressions for Avery. The very next morning, he got a call that he was booked for the following day. "I wasn't even a member of the Screen Actors Guild," he recalled. "I called them up and said I had a firm commitment for work and they said, 'Come down and pay your dues.' So I did, that afternoon, and the next day, I recorded my first cartoon."
In later years, Daws was hard-pressed to recall what he'd done in that…the first of thousands of sessions. Most likely, it was the role of the city wolf — his George Sanders impression — in one of Avery's funniest cartoons, Little Rural Riding Hood. Pinto Colvig, who was renowned as the voice of Walt Disney's Goofy, performed the country wolf, with Colleen Collins as the gangly rural Riding Hood and Imogene Lynn singing for the comely city version.
Tex used him again and again, for Daws was an endless fount of interesting and funny voices. He had an "annoyed businessman" that Avery liked, but the director especially loved a deadpan, southern drawl that Daws had cribbed from a dentist neighbor of his wife, Myrtis, who grew up in North Carolina. "Tex was sure a star would be born if only he could find the right character for the voice," Daws explained.
Avery never did. The voice turned up in many of his films but never quite got into the proper mouth. Years later, when a version of it gave life to Huckleberry Hound, many took it for an impression of Andy Griffith. In point of fact, Daws was doing it in the late-forties, long before the world had heard of Mr. Griffith.
He did it for Tex and he did it for other studios, for word soon got around town about the new Voice Wizard. In the coming years, Daws would work for Jerry Fairbanks on his "Speaking of Animals" shorts, for Walter Lantz on most of his cartoons (especially, Chilly Willy), along with roles for MGM and any other studio he could squeeze in. He was also engaged by Capitol Records, which was producing childrens' records with full orchestras and top voice actors.
One of the few Hollywood animation firms that didn't seek his services — at least, not often — was Disney, especially in later years, after he became the vocal star of their main competitor, Hanna-Barbera. Daws did a few educational films for Disney but his only work for them in a mainstream film was years later — in Mary Poppins, for which he recorded two bit parts, as one of the penguins and as the turtle that carries Mary across a pond.
He even, eventually, made it into Warner Brothers cartoons. Mr. Burton had exaggerated a bit: Mel Blanc didn't do everything there. The films often had supporting roles, and Daws joined the stock company that provided them — a group that included, among others, Frank Graham, Bea Benaderet, June Foray, Dave Barry and a tall (compared to most voice actors) and clever gent named Stan Freberg.
Butler's first WB job was a 1952 Tweety and Sylvester film entitled, Gift Wrapped and he appeared in many that followed. Most often, he voiced the gang of cats with which Sylvester palled-around, but was also heard in several Bugs Bunny cartoons, often as the antagonist or providing some celebrity impression.
Among historians and Daws's disciples, there is a controversy over whether he was ever, on-screen, the voice of Elmer Fudd. That he recorded at least one cartoon is undeniable: Daws was scrupulously honest and had a fine memory, which vividly recalled being brought in to simulate the Fudd voice after its originator, Arthur Q. Bryan, passed away. The question then arises of what film, if any, features Daws as Fudd.
Some insist that's him in Pre-Hysterical Hare (1958). Others say that no, that's Mel…or Dave Barry, who took over as Fudd for the Capitol Records. Later Fudds were unquestionably the work of Hal Smith…so where, if anywhere, was Daws's performance? This argument has spawned an amazing amount of discussion…which is to say, any at all.
Eventually, Daws even did some WB cartoons that didn't include Mel Blanc at all, or had him working in support of Daws. Most notable were the "Honeymousers" shorts that featured rodent versions of the TV series, The Honeymooners. Daws supplied imitations of both Jackie Gleason and Art Carney, with June Foray simulating Audrey Meadows.
It was a long-time source of resentment for all who provided voices for WB shorts that only Blanc ever received screen credit. As Daws put it, "I found out that what Johnny Burton had told me — that Mel 'did everything' was only true, insofar as the credits were concerned." (The name of Daws Butler appeared only once on a WB cartoon — on an educational short.)
He also appeared in hundreds of radio and animated TV commercials, many of which he wrote and/or produced. That he was so prolific is especially amazing since for much of the fifties, Daws had two other careers, one of which involved "starring" on a very funny TV show…
In 1949, one of the great cartoon directors, Bob Clampett, had left Warner Brothers and was moving into the production of live, low-budget puppet shows for the then-virginal medium of television. Showing a sage eye for talent, he hired Daws, along with his fellow voice-actor, Stan Freberg, to be the puppeteer-performers of Time for Beany.
Neither of them had ever worked puppets. As Freberg once recalled, "Clampett told us what he had in mind and we figured we'd do the voices and someone else would handle the puppets. We said, 'Great! Where are the puppeteers?' and he said, 'You're the puppeteers!' It was on-the-job training, and we had to learn quick, because we were going on the air, live, in a week or two."
That was one problem. Another was that Stan was nearly six-feet tall and Daws was closer to five. If the puppet stage was built so that Daws could reach up and get his puppets into the shot, it was too low for Stan, whose head kept bobbing up into camera. They finally solved the dilemma, in a fashion: Daws wore (and hated) what he called "Frankenstein shoes," with six-inch-thick soles. Stan slouched, a continuing discomfort that has left him round-shouldered to this day.
That apart, Clampett could not have picked two better players. Until late in the show's run when a third set of hands was occasionally employed, Butler and Freberg were the entire cast. Daws employed one of his many "little boy" voices to play the title character, Beany, and also portrayed Beany's "Uncle Captain" Huffenpuff. Freberg supplied the villain, Dishonest John, and Beany's jovial sidekick, Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent. They switched off on the other roles, deftly juggling it all for five shows a week, 52 weeks a year for almost five years…and it was all done live. No tape, no film.
Viewed today via kinescopes, the shows look amazing crude but the humor holds up. Daws and Stan were such strong performers, and the scripts were so clever (and peppered with frequent ad-libbing) that the show was a smash, not only with kids but adults, as well. It is said that Albert Einstein never missed an episode and that he once adjourned a vital meeting of members of the scientific community and announced, "Pardon me, gentlemen, but it's Time for Beany!"
Butler and Freberg were not only brilliantly-talented, they were ideally-matched. Daws thought Stan was the cleverest, most gifted actor he'd ever met. Stan felt that way about Daws.
Working together every day and as closely as they did, they bonded as actors and friends, able to practically read each other's minds and finish each other's sentences. "I learned from Stan and he learned from me," Daws said on many occasions. In the years to come, everyone in the voice business would learn from both of them.
Daws Butler was too important to have his life encapsulated in 2500 words. In next week's column, we'll cover his work on comedy records with Freberg and for TV with Hanna-Barbera and Jay Ward. We'll also try and get to his work as an acting teacher — one who was invaluable to a subsequent generation of voice performers. And if there's room, I'll attempt to summarize what he meant to me personally though — I warn you — that part's gonna get mushy.
(P.S. My thanks to one of Daws's prize students, Earl Kress, for research-type help.)