Daws Butler
Part 2
by Mark Evanier
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 2/9/01
Comics Buyer's Guide
[This is Part Two of our profile of the great voice actor, Daws Butler. When we adjourned last week, we were up to the part where Daws teamed with Stan Freberg on Bob Clampett's popular kid's (and adult's) show, Time For Beany. Onward…]
The close creative alliance with Freberg led to Butler's other extra-curricular activity. Stan had previously worked with a bandleader named Cliffie Stone, who made funny records, and both he and Daws had been among the voice actors working on the classic children's albums issued on the Capitol label.
In 1950, Freberg recorded for that company, a soap opera parody called, "John and Marsha." It consisted of a man's voice and a woman's, both emanating from Stan, saying each other's name over and over with increasing passion and age.
The Capitol execs were understandably dubious but they put it out and scored a surprise hit. This led, naturally, to more Freberg records, most of them parodies of then-current records or TV shows. Sometimes, Stan worked solo; sometimes, he brought in other actors — often, his Time for Beany co-star.
In addition to performing on many of Stan's records, Daws sometimes co-wrote them. In 1953, they collaborated on a burlesque of Jack Webb's popular TV detective show, Dragnet, repositioning it to Medieval times. "St. George and the Dragonet" quickly became the fastest-selling novelty record ever released. On it, Stan emulated Jack Webb's staccato manner of speaking; Daws played three roles, including that of the dragon, who is arrested on a "412" (i.e., overacting).
Daws was delighted with the sales (and a gold record) but even more fulfilled by the critical reaction which hailed the work as hip, intelligent comedy. He was especially proud that the record was a success in English-speaking countries overseas, where Dragnet had yet to air. That was, to him, proof that it wasn't the gimmick selling the record…it was the comedy.
The success of Stan's records brought him a short-lived comedy program on the CBS radio network. That's Rich! had Freberg in the title role of a guy named Rich, and Daws working in support, along with two other gentlemen who were or would be distinguished in the art of animation voice work — Alan Reed and Hans Conried. It was a funny show and, even after it was cancelled, Stan and Daws were swamped with offers.
"We started marking time until our contracts on Time For Beany were up," Daws recalled. When that happened in 1954, both departed the puppet show. After their final broadcast, Daws hurled the despised "Frankenstein shoes" against a wall with such force, they shattered.
For the next few years, they worked constantly, both together and apart. In 1957, Stan took one more shot at radio and Daws joined him. The Stan Freberg Show — also co-starring June Foray, Peter Leeds and singer Peggy Taylor — took over the revered time slot that Jack Benny had vacated with his full-time move into television. The show was droll, satirical and funny…but only for 15 weeks, as it never managed to attract a sponsor.
Daws called it a "respectable failure," noting how many people loved it and purchased record albums of the material. (The entire run is available on CD or tape from Radio Spirits.) He and Stan shared a certain sentiment of pride in ringing down the curtain on a genre. It was the last network comedy radio show of its kind.
It was also the last real collaboration of Freberg and Butler. Stan continued making records and segued into advertising work, not merely as writer or performer but becoming a genuine ad agency. In some quarters, he is credited as the master of the funny commercial. Daws, meanwhile, became the king of TV cartoon voice work…
Around the same time that they were writing finis to network radio comedy, another form was dying out. It was the theatrical animation short. Just as the live-action comedy short had all but disappeared, the marketplace was losing interest in 7-minute cartoons.
At M.G.M., the producer-director team of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera had been making their Tom and Jerry shorts. The films had been so successful that it came as a shock when, in 1956, M.G.M. abruptly decided to close down its animation division. With other studios heading the same way, there was nothing for Bill and Joe to do but to set up their own studio and find a way to do animation for television.
Their first show, Ruff n' Reddy, was not the first cartoon produced for TV. but it set the business model for dozens to follow. The key achievement was in finding ways to radically lower the costs of production. The last 7-minute Tom and Jerry cartoons had been produced on a budget of $65,000 apiece. The first 5-minute Ruff n' Reddy TV films were made for $2700 each.
Obviously, that meant a minimum of animation…which necessitated a maximum of expert voice work. Hanna and Barbera wisely signed two men to comprise their entire cast: Daws Butler and Don Messick.
Messick was a gifted actor Daws had met years earlier while making the rounds of radio shows. It was altogether typical of Daws to help other performers — even potential competitors — and Messick was one of many who owed his career to Butler. As Don later recounted, "Tex [Avery] was making his Droopy cartoons. Usually, Bill Thompson did the voice of Droopy but he was away, and Tex asked Daws to fill in. Daws said, 'Well, I could do it, but I know a guy who would do it even better.' And that was how I got my first cartoon job."
Both Daws and Don were especially qualified for the new demands of television animation. Voice tracks for theatrical cartoons were usually recorded one line at a time, with the actors usually working in "splits," meaning that even when a scene called for more than one actor, they were recorded separately. For TV, they were recorded together — a process Daws found vastly more stimulating, for it allowed him to play off other actors.
The process resembled the performance of a radio show. To Daws, it especially resembled working with Freberg on Time For Beany, switching between multiple roles, going for long stretches of dialogue without stopping. The tracks were recorded quickly — a discipline that, Daws felt, contributed greatly to the performances. Messick — a former ventriloquist who had worked on several puppet shows similar to Beany — was facile enough to keep up with Daws and proved to be the perfect supporting player.
Between them, an entire world of characters was possible — although, to avoid having to hire anyone else, Bill and Joe kept female roles to a minimum. Messick could do a passable young woman's voice, and Daws, an elderly dowager, just so long as they didn't become major roles.
The Butler-Messick combo carried over to the second Hanna-Barbera TV production, Huckleberry Hound. Daws starred in the title role, his low-key Carolina twang helping the canine establish instant stardom. (Many of the Huckleberry Hound shorts featured Daws only, and a few featured another fine voice actor, Hal Smith, because Messick was unavailable.)
For another segment, Daws played Mr. Jinks — the cat who "hated meeces to pieces" — while he and Messick voiced the meeces in question, Pixie and Dixie. (Daws was Dixie.)
But it was in the show's third segment that true kidvid greatness was achieved. Daws created an infectious, character-filled voice for Yogi Bear, and it was expertly contrasted by Messick playing his sidekick, Boo Boo, as well as the long-suffering "Mr. Ranger, sir." Yogi was Hanna-Barbera's first superstar and, some would say, the character that put them on the map.
Their next show was almost all-Daws. He not only provided the voice of its star, Quick Draw McGraw but Quick Draw's sidekick, Baba Looey, as well. Another segment featured ace sleuths Super Snooper and Blabber Mouse and, again, Daws played Abbott to his own Costello by handling both roles. Messick, Smith, Peter Leeds and Jean Vander Pyl occasionally turn up in supporting roles but many of the shorts featured Daws and no one else.
The stars of the third feature — Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy — were derived from the characters of Spike and Tyke, who had popped up in the MGM cartoons produced by Hanna and Barbera. Daws was originally pencilled-in for both leads, but Joe Barbera had his heart set on the father pooch sounding like Jimmy Durante, just as Spike had.
Daws could have done it — he had played Spike and would later do Doggie Daddy occasionally for commercials and records — but begged off at the time. "I thought about doing Durante for all those episodes and what it would do to my throat," he explained. "I decided to recommend Doug Young, instead."
Young was another actor Daws had met doing commercials. As with Messick, he would owe his career in cartoons to a Butler recommendation, and much of his technique to working with the master. Young's gravelly Durante, played against Daws's "little boy" voice as Augie, made for some of the funniest vocal performances recorded for television animation. Another asset Daws was always quick to credit was fine dialogue written by Michael Maltese.
The Quick Draw McGraw series was a smash hit and it led to Bill and Joe expanding into other areas, including network prime-time. They even, reversing the circumstances of their studio's heritage, produced a series of theatrical shorts — Loopy DeLoop, who spoke with one of Daws's many French accents.
Yogi Bear was spun off into his own show, and his slot on Huckleberry Hound was filled by a new cartoon, Hokey Wolf, whose voice was, of course, supplied by Daws. Yogi's own show featured cartoons of Snagglepuss (Daws) and Yakky Doodle (not Daws, but he played most of those characters who attempted to eat the little duck.)
Snagglepuss was probably Daws's favorite role of all he did for Bill and Joe, and his catch phrases — "Heavens to Murgatroyd," "Exit, stage right" — were imitated by children all over America. Messick, for one, called it the best. most memorable voice characterization ever invented for television.
(Once, Daws and I were waiting to be seated at a restaurant. When the hostess led the patron before us towards a table, we heard the man give out with a bad Snagglepuss impression — "Exit, stage left into the dining room" — unaware the real Snagglepuss was standing behind him. Daws turned to me and, in the bona fide voice intoned, "Heavens to Trademark Violations! I'm being plagiarized!")
The role demonstrated Daws's ability to take even the most ordinary line of dialogue and wring out endless variations, breathing unanticipated life into the copy. With some characters and speeches, it became a matter of injecting surplus syllables into words.
Snagglepuss would do this often, even while delivering commercials. Hawking Kellogg's Cocoa Krispies, the lion would not say — as the advertising boys wrote — that it was "crunchy." He'd say it was "Ka-runchy, even." And that petite variation was as important as Robert Frost finding just the right word in any sonnet. It made the line alive and funny, and it made it Snagglepuss.
In the same way, Yogi Bear did not steal picnic baskets. He stole "pic-a-nic baskets"…and everyone remembers that, because "picnic" says nothing about the character but "pic-a-nic" says everything.
Snagglepuss had begun life as recurring character on Quick Draw McGraw, where his voice changed with every appearance. His future was assured when Daws came up with a voice based loosely on veteran character actor, Bert Lahr. Lahr, of course, was best known for having played The Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.
Daws based many of his voices on celebrities, though never to the point of outright imitation. He could do exact carbons as well as anyone but preferred to use the real person as a starting point and to then extrapolate a distinct, standalone characterization. People thought his "con man" voice — most perceptibly put into the mouth of Hokey Wolf — was a Phil Silvers impression.
It was, but only the broadest sense, as could be realized by direct comparison to the source. Hokey was what people thought Phil Silvers sounded like. Daws captured the essence of the comedian and built upon it, the same way Yogi began with the spirit of Art Carney and then veered off into uncharted, cartoony territory. To demonstrate, Daws would sometimes do his Carney impression and then do Yogi. They were clearly different people — or, in Yogi's case — animals.
Similarly, Wally Gator — another Daws role that followed — began with Ed Wynn and then diverged, as did Lippy the Lion and Peter Potamus — two more subsequent characterizations, both derived to some extent from Joe E. Brown.
Mr. Jinks owed his birthright to Marlon Brando, though Daws admitted he'd probably begun with the Brando impression in Mr. Freberg's repertoire. Super Snooper, the world's greatest detective (or "de-tec-a-tive," as Daws usually pronounced it) was an amalgam of Ed Gardner from the old radio show, Duffy's Tavern, and a character actor named Tom D'Andrea.
Baba Looey sounded nothing like Desi Arnaz, but inherited many of his distinctive sentence constructions. Quick Draw himself started as a derivation of some Red Skelton character, but moved so far from the source that even Daws admitted to having no idea which Red Skelton characterization.
Initially, Snagglepuss did not sound that much like his obvious inspiration, and with each appearance, he sounded less and less like Bert Lahr. Mr. Lahr, however, did not concur.
Perhaps because Snagglepuss was a lion — and a cowardly one, at that — Lahr took legal action against Hanna-Barbera and Kellogg's, whose cereal Snagglepuss advertised. To forestall anyone thinking that Bert Lahr would deign to sell cereal (when he was, in fact, selling Lay's Potato Chips in their commercials), every Cocoa Krispies commercial began carrying a small, superimposed line: "Snagglepuss voice by Daws Butler."
Daws was delighted: "Mel Blanc was the only guy to get credit on those Warner Brothers cartoons we all did, but I was the only one to get my name on cereal ads."
Next week: Part 3 of our profile of Daws Butler, in which we'll cover his work for Jay Ward, his teaching and the downtimes in his relationship with Hanna-Barbera. (And thanks again to Earl Kress for his help with this piece.)