Mel Blanc

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Melvin Jerome Blanc (May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) was an American voice actor and radio presenter.

He began his over 60-year career in radio as the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and many of the other Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoons during the golden age of American animation, including Barney Rubble on The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely on The Jetsons.

Blanc was also the original voice of Woody Woodpecker for Universal Pictures and performed vocal effects on the Tom and Jerry cartoons directed by Chuck Jones for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, replacing William Hanna.

Blanc was also on the radio programs of comedians from the 1970s, including Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello, Burns and Allen, The Great Gildersleeve and Judy Canova, one of the most popular people in the voice acting industry.

Early life

Blanc was born in San Francisco, California, on May 30, 1908, to Eva (née Katz), a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant, and Frederick Blank, the younger of two children. He grew up in San Francisco's Western Addition neighborhood and then moved to Portland, Oregon, where he attended Lincoln High School. He had a fondness for voices and dialects from the time he began to practice at the age of 10. When he was 16 years old, he claimed to change the spelling of his name, from Blank to Blanc because a teacher told him that he would do nothing and be like his name, a "blank." He joined the Order of DeMolay as a young man and was later inducted into the Order of DeMolay's Hall of Fame. He divided his time between leading an orchestra, becoming the country's youngest conductor at the age of 19; and a performing shtick in vain shows around Washington, Oregon, and northern California, after graduating from high school in 1927.

Personal life

Blanc and his wife Estelle Rosenbaum were married on January 4, 1933, and they remained married until his death in 1989. Noel Blanc Blanc's son, as well as a voice actor, was a voice actor.

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Career

Blanc began his radio career at the age of 1927, when he made his acting debut on the KGW program The Hoot Owls, where his ability to provide voices for many characters attracted attention. He moved to Los Angeles in 1932, where he met Estelle Rosenbaum (1909–2003), who married a year later before returning to Portland. He and his wife Estelle began to produce and co-host his Cobweb and Nuts show, which premiered on June 15. From 11:00 p.m. to midnight on Monday, the show ran two years later, and by the time the show came to an end two years later, it had gone from 10:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.

Blanc returned to Los Angeles with his wife's assistance and joined Warner Bros. Founded in Hollywood in 1935. He appeared on The Johnny Murray Show, but the following year, he went to CBS Radio and The Joe Penner Show.

Blanc appeared on NBC Red Network's The Jack Benny Program in various capacities, including voicing Benny's Maxwell motorcycle (in dire need of a tune-up), violinist Professor LeBlanc, Polly the Parrot, Benny's pet polar bear Carmichael, and train announcer Carmichael. Blanc was forced to take the microphone and improvise the sounds himself after a mishap caused the automobile's sounds to fall short of playing on cue. The audience responded so positively that Benny decided to forego with the recording altogether and have Blanc continue in that role. "Sy, the Little Mexican," one of Blanc's radio (and later TV) shows, spoke one word at a time. He continued to work with Benny on radio until the show ended in 1955 and expanded the program into television from Benny's 1950 debut episode on NBC specials into 1970s television.

Blanc was "specialized" in over fifty-seven voices, dialects, and intricate sound effects, according to a Radio Daily magazine in 1942, and by 1946, he was in over fifteen programs in various support roles. His success on The Jack Benny Program culminated in the development of his own radio show, The Mel Blanc Show, which ran from September 3, 1946 to June 24, 1947. Blanc played himself as the hapless owner of a fix-it store as well as his young cousin Zookie. Blanc also appeared on National Radio shows as The Abbott and Costello Show, the Happy Postman on Burns and Allen, and Point Sublime on Point Sublime. On several radio shows, including G.I., during World War II, he appeared as Private Sad Sack. Journal of the New York Times. Blanc's "Big Bear Lake" was a song that was not released on the radio.

Mel Blanc joined Leon Schlesinger Productions, which was producing theatrical cartoon shorts for Warner Bros, in December 1936. Brown met with animator Thomas Avery, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, and Frank Tashlin, who adored his voices. Picador Porky (1937) as the voice of a booze-suffer bull in Blanc's first cartoon. He played Joe Dougherty as Porky Pig's voice in Porky's Duck Hunt, which also appeared by Blanc, right after he got his first acting role.

Blanc became a well-known vocal artist for Warner Bros., portraying a number of "Looney Tunes" characters. Bugs Bunny, who appeared on Blanc's debut in A Wild Hare (1940), was known for munching carrots often (especially when saying his catch is announced. doc? Blanc will bite a carrot and then spit into a spittoon to complete this sound. Blanc was allergic to carrots, which Blanc denied.

Blanc was hired to sing Gideon the Cat in Disney's Pinocchio. However, Gideon was later discovered to be a mute character (similar to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' Dopey), so much of Blanc's recorded dialogue was deleted except for a single hiccup, which was seen three times in the finished film.

Blanc also created Woody Woodpecker's name and chuckle for Walter Lantz's theatrical film, but he stopped voicing Woody after the character's first three shorts when he was signed to an exclusive deal with Warner Bros. Despite this, his humour was still present in Woody Woodpecker cartoons until 1951, when Grace Stafford introduced a softer version of the Woody Woodpecker cartoons, although his "Guess who!" says the author. In the opening titles until Walter Lantz Productions' discontinuance and closure in 1972, the signature line was used.

Blanc was the voice of the hapless Private Snafu in a series of shorts created by Warner Bros. as a way of preparing recruit soldiers through animation.

Blanc, who was aware of his abilities, secured the right to his voice representations both legally and legally throughout his career. When those rights were infringed, he and his estate never hesitated to bring civil action. Voice actors at the time rarely received screen credits, but Blanc was an exception; by 1944, his Warner Bros. deal contained a credit reading "Voice characterization(s) by Mel Blanc; a mystery. Blanc demanded and received this screen credit from studio boss Leon Schlesinger after being refused a salary increase, according to his autobiography. Blanc's initial film work was limited to cartoons in which he starred Bugs Bunny. This all changed in March 1945 when the contract was amended to include a screen credit for cartoons starring Porky Pig and/or Daffy Duck. Despite if they were released after the fact, however, all examples of this include shorts with the two characters created before the change occurred. Blanc began to appear on television in every subsequent Warner Bros. cartoon for which he appeared.

Blanc continued writing for them after the end of his exclusive deal with Warner Bros., but he also began delivering TV cartoons produced by Hanna-Barbera; during this time, he included Barney Rubble of The Flintstones and Cosmo Spacely of The Jetsons. Dino the Dinosaur, Secret Squirrel, Speed Buggy, and Captain Caveman were among his other voice appearances for Hanna-Barbera, as well as voices for Wally Gator and The Perpetual Pitstop.

Blanc also worked with former "Looney Tunes" director Chuck Jones, who by this time was directing shorts for his own firm Sib Tower 12 (later MGM Animation/Vivisual Arts), doing vocal effects for the Tom and Jerry series from 1963 to 1967. Blanc was the first representative of Toucan Sam in Froot Loops commercials.

When the studio hired Blanc to produce new theatrical cartoons in the mid- to late 1960s, he recalled some of his Warner Bros. characters. Blanc narrated Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales, the two characters with the most frequent use in these shorts (later, newly introduced characters such as Cool Cat and Merlin the Magic Mouse were voiced by Larry Storch). Blanc also performed "Looney Tunes" for the Bugs Bunny Show's bridging sequences, as well as in several animated advertisements and several compilation films, such as The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner (1979). In addition to June Foray, he also sang Granny on Peter Pan Records (1974) and Holly-Daze (1974), and in place of June Foray, the late Arthur Q. Bryan was Elmer Fudd's voice during the post-golden age era.

Blanc was driving alone when his sports car was involved in a head-on collision on Sunset Boulevard on January 24, 1961; his legs and pelvic fractured as a result. About two weeks later, one of Blanc's neurologists took a different tactic than just trying to confront the unconscious Blanc himself: address his characters. "How are you feeling today, Bugs Bunny?" Blanc wondered. Blanc answered in a weak voice after a brief pause, "Eh... just fine, Doc."

How are you?"

If he were there, the doctor asked Twitter if he was there, too. The reply was, "I tawt I taw a puddy tat." Blanc returned home on March 17. Blanc filed a US $500,000 lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles just four days later. The man's Curve, one of 26 in the preceding two years, resulted in the city funding of curves at the site's new location.

Blanc admitted that he and his son Noel "ghosted" several Warner Bros. cartoons' voice tracks for him years later. Stan Freberg had already been asked to do Bugs Bunny, but Freberg declined out of respect for Blanc. Blanc was also serving as the voice of Barney Rubble in The Flintstones at the time of the shooting. Barney's absence from the program was brief; Daws Butler narrated Barney's voice for a few episodes; the show's producers installed recording equipment in Blanc's hospital room and later at his house to encourage him to work from there. While he lay flat on his back with the other Flintstones co-stars assembled around him, some of the recordings were made while he was in full body cast. He returned to The Jack Benny Program to film the program's 1961 Christmas performance, including crutches and a wheelchair.

Blanc gave a series of college lectures around the United States and appeared in American Express commercials in the 1970s. Blanc Communications Corporation, Mel's production firm, collaborated on an initiative with the Boston-based Shriners' Burns Institute called Ounce of Prevention, which became a 30-minute television special.

Blanc performed his "Looney Tunes" characters in several Golden Age Warner Bros. films, including The Bugs Bunny Movie, Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island, and Daffy Duck's Quackbusters, during the 1970s and 1980s. In Bugs Bunny's Wild World of Sports (1989), he appeared in his last role of his "Looney Tunes" part. Blanc's last original character was Heathcliff, who appeared in Buck Rogers from 1980 to 1988 for the bulk of two seasons.

Blanc played Bob and Doug MacKenzie's father in the live action film Strange Brew (1983), which was made at the request of comedian Rick Moranis. Blanc reprised several of his roles from Warner Bros. cartoons (Bugs, Daffy, Porty, Tweety, and Sylvester), but left Yosemite Sam to Joe Alaskey (who later became one of Blanc's regular replacements until his death in 2016). Blanc was one of the few Disney projects in which Blanc was involved. Blanc died just a year after the film was released. Jetsons: The Movie (1990) was his last recording session.

Mel Mell and his son Noel formed Blanc Communications Corporation, a media firm that has produced over 5000 public service announcements and commercials since 1962, which is still in operation. Mel and Noel appeared on many television shows, including Kirk Douglas, Lucille Ball, Vincent Price, Phyllis Diller, Liberace, and The Who.

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