July 23, 2024 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, if you added up all the hours from your childhood, chances are, the voice of Mel Blanc made up the majority of dialogue spoken to you. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety, Sylvester, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, Elmer Fudd, Barney Rubble, Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, and the Tasmanian Devil—to name just a few of Blanc’s voice contributions.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.
And our next story is an unforgettable tale about an
American icon whose voice everyone recognizes.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Here's Greg Hangler.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
If you added up all the hours from your childhood,
chances are the voice of Mel Blank made up the
majority of dialogues spoken to you. Bugs, Bunny, Daffy Duck,
Porky Pig, Tweety, Sylvester, Yosemite, Sam Falkhorn, Leghorn, Marvin, the Martian,
pepe Le Pew, Speedy, Gonzalez, Wiley, Coyote, Roadrunner, Elmer Fudd, Barney,
(00:45):
Rubble Tom and Jerry Woody Woodpecker, and the Tasmanian Devil,
to name just a few of Blank's voice contributions. This
man embodied a sense of innocence and good nature, and
was so adored and respected that all who knew him
had something to say about him. For the sake of time,
I won't be introducing all those who contributed to this story.
(01:08):
They are fellow animators, inkers and painters from Warner Brothers, Disney,
and Hannah Barbera animation and film historians, director's voice artists
like Hank Azaria from The Simpsons. Mel's former agents, film critics,
his son Noel, and friends such as Kirk Douglas. Without
any further ado, let's jump right into the story of
(01:30):
Mel Blanc, the Man of a Thousand Voices.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Allow me to introduce myself, Mel Blank. What amazing guy,
What camp guy?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Oh.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
You can't look at the Warner Brothers characters without hearing
his sound.
Speaker 6 (01:51):
His voice.
Speaker 7 (01:55):
There's such a delight to the sound of his voice
in every character he did.
Speaker 8 (01:58):
What I think about it today that everybody imitates these characters.
He created the gosh.
Speaker 9 (02:08):
Grooy duck that my little chub is strictly I'm not
her of opinion.
Speaker 6 (02:14):
Mel was so unique at what he did.
Speaker 8 (02:19):
Mel had the range that everyone wishes for.
Speaker 10 (02:28):
Great horny coas I'm up North, gotta burn my boots.
Speaker 6 (02:33):
They touched Yankees Oil.
Speaker 9 (02:35):
I think it was a shock when I got older
to discover all those voices were one man.
Speaker 11 (02:39):
His voice was like more powerful than a human body
could contain, so it seemed to be coming out of
every part of them.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Mel Black had this phenomenal voice box.
Speaker 12 (03:02):
As the only way I can explain it, he just
did all kinds of things that were just amazing.
Speaker 13 (03:08):
Wow.
Speaker 8 (03:10):
He didn't just do voices. He played characters, and there's
a difference.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
He was just able to do that to just totally, like,
you know, animate with his voice, to create a complete
three dimensional character, just with his voice alone.
Speaker 6 (03:26):
No chickensn I I'm a chicken roast.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
How can you beat a pair of vocal chords that
had an eight octave range, perfect pitch, great singer and
an incredible actor. There's Melon, there's like everybody else, there.
Speaker 8 (03:39):
Was nobody better than mel Blank's nice.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
You know what is it?
Speaker 6 (03:44):
A cat?
Speaker 9 (03:44):
Howdy do.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
About that?
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Age?
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Melvin Jerome Blank was born the youngest of two children,
on May thirtieth, nineteen oh eight, in San Francisco, to
Russian Jewish parents, Frederic and Eva. After leaving New York
to seek his fortune prospecting for gold in the Klondike
region of the Alaskan Yukon, his father eventually settled the
family down in Portland, Oregon. As a young boy, growing
(04:20):
up in the melting pot of the American West, mel
Blank would forever be affected by the medley of foreign
accents in the way voices defined personalities.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
My dad was always interested in voices and in music,
and in singing and entertaining. He started to entertain in
grammar school.
Speaker 14 (04:39):
From around about the age of Tan Mill Blank was
very interested in dialects, Yiddish, dialects in Chinese and Japanese dialects, Russian, the.
Speaker 15 (04:46):
School of ev An Assembly, the grammar school. I would
entertain the kids with a dialect story or one of
a different dialect each time, and the kids loved it,
and they got such a big kick out of it.
They laughed, and the teachers life and then gave me
lousy marks.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Here's what Mel wrote in his autobiography, that's not all folks,
except for music class. I loathed school to be truthful.
Report cards c's and d's had little to no effect
on me, But that applause. What an impression it made
on a twelve year old.
Speaker 6 (05:24):
Now where'd that boy go? You got to be a
magician to keep a kid's attention more in two minutes.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Nowadays, my talents weren't appreciated by all, in particular a
crotchety old teacher by the name of Washburn. When I
broke up a classroom discussion by giving an answer in
four different voices, she reprimanded me sternly. Too sternly if
you ask me, you'll never amount to anything, she said, scornfully.
(05:55):
You're just like your last name Blank. Her stinging insult
so shamed me that when I was sixteen, I started
spelling my surname with a C, B, LA, n C
instead of a K. Later, as an adult, I changed
it legally. I often wondered if missus Washburn associated Mel
(06:18):
Blank with the young student she had ridiculed so many
years before.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
He dropped out of high school in about the ninth grade.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
I used to say, I got lousy grades, but I
developed some great voices because of the echo in his
school in the hallways.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
He started leading orchestras. He was an orchestra conductory, and
the orchestras moved all around the Oregon area, in the
Washington area, northern California area. In between, when he was
conducting the music, he would do shtick. He'd do different
voices and different comedy routines. Mel was the youngest orchestra
leader in the country at that time, at seventeen.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
And you've been listening to the story of Mel Blank
and it all we all starts in radio. Mel was persistent,
by the way, all those turndowns, all those times people
telling him no, and he kept pushing and pushing and
finally gets paired up with the legendary Chuck Jones. It
starts with Porky Pig and then a bunny named Bugs.
(07:19):
When we come back, more of the story of Mel
Blank here on our American Stories. This is Lee Habib,
host of our American Stories, the show where America is
the star and the American people, and we do it
all from the heart of the South Oxford, Mississippi. But
we truly can't do this show without you. Our shows
(07:42):
will always be free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love what you hear, consider
making a tax deductible donation to our American Stories. Go
to our American Stories dot com. Give a little, give
a lot. That's our American Stories dot com. And we
(08:09):
continue with our American Stories and the story of Mel Blank,
the man behind three thousand cartoon voices, the man behind
Looney Tunes, and so much else. Let's pick up where
we last left off.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
I think my dad never thought of Hollywood when he
was young. He thought of going on the radio when
radio was quite new at that time.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
And of course radio is ideal for a schooling for
someone who was going to do cartoon voices. In nineteen
thirty two, with the blessing of his parents, he jumped
into his nineteen twenty Ford Model A convertible and drove
south to Los Angeles, hoping to find a break. Instead,
he met a young woman named a Stelle Rosenbaum, a
(08:54):
bright and attractive girl with a radiant smile who would
become as big as supporter for the rest of his life.
She also shared Mell's deep interest in radio. Mel twenty
four in Estelle twenty two married that spring and then
proceeded up Route one oh one back to Portland to write, produce,
and perform their own sketch radio show called Cobwebs and Nuts.
(09:18):
To maintain audience interest six hours a week, Mel had
to come up with countless voices and lots of material,
which was then presented to Mell's one woman audience for approval.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
My dad played one hundred different male characters, my mother
played all the different female characters, and they had a
great time. Although they were only paid fifteen dollars a
week to write it, produce it, and voice it.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
The show failed to provide a livable wage for the blanks,
so Mel seriously considered quitting in order to become an
insurance salesman at a whopping fifty dollars a week. Thanks
to Estelle's encouragement, he rejected the offer and followed his
dreams and talents back to Los Angeles in nineteen thirty five.
(10:04):
Here are Estell's exact words, Mel, if we're going to
be broke, at least let's be broke someplace where it's warm.
Speaker 15 (10:14):
I had seen some of the Warner by the voice
or sort, or heard some of the voices in the cartoons,
and I thought, geez, they're missing out on awful lot.
Speaker 6 (10:23):
Their voices are pretty bad.
Speaker 15 (10:24):
Usually Norman Spencer was there to greet him. I said,
I'd like to audition for you and show you what
I can do. He says, sorry, We've got all the
voices we need. I said, but mister Slussinger said that
you were the one, and he says, no, I'm sorry. Well,
I was as stubborn as he was, and I went
beck in two weeks and I said, look, won't you
just listen to me? He says, I told you we
(10:44):
have all the voices we need. So I was still
as stubborn. As him, and I went to him every
two weeks asking him to please listen to me, and
he says, I told you a hundred times, I've got
all the voices we need.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
So he kept knocking on the door for two years.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Finally, in March of nineteen thirty seven, Mel's perseverance paid off.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
It was probably the week before Christmas.
Speaker 15 (11:10):
He came looking for a job, and that day Treg
Brown was sitting there.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Treg Brown brilliant sound effects man for the Warner's cartoons.
He happened to take over when this fellow passed away
that wouldn't let my dad in the door.
Speaker 15 (11:24):
And I said, mister Brown, I've been trying to get
in here to audition.
Speaker 6 (11:28):
Just have him hear me.
Speaker 15 (11:29):
The guy kept saying, no, I've got all the voices
what you need. He said, let me hear what you do.
So I auditioned for him and he got a big
kick out of it. He said, would you do it
again for the directors? I said gladly.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Warner Brothers decided to give Mel a shot in a
supporting role for Picador Porky, a new cartoon animated by
a twenty five year old lanky kid named Chuck Jones,
featuring the studio's latest character, Porky Pig.
Speaker 15 (11:57):
He said, I've got a cartoon coming up with a
drunken bull. Do you think you can do the voice
of a drunken bull? So said, yeah, I think I could.
He says, how would he talk?
Speaker 6 (12:10):
I have her talk like a.
Speaker 15 (12:15):
Look look off for a sour Max. He says, great. Great, says,
what are you doing next Tuesday? I wasn't doing the thing.
I said, I think I can make her.
Speaker 10 (12:29):
Cocker cocker rtch playing on the or guitar cocker rut
play this yarn y playing on the under darn cocker
run plan rury Alchemy.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Warner Brothers quickly recognized Mel's talent and offered him the
prize role of Porky Pig.
Speaker 15 (12:48):
He says, he's a timid little character. I told him,
all I want to be real authentic about it. So
I went out to a pig farm and wallered around
with the pigs for a couple of weeks. And I
come back and they kicked me out, So go home
and take a bath. When I did, I back, I said,
if a pick could talking talk with a grunt, you know.
Speaker 6 (13:05):
That's parking talk with a grunt. It is an all
great great.
Speaker 9 (13:16):
Don't worry, he's making it at.
Speaker 16 (13:17):
It in the moment launch.
Speaker 14 (13:21):
In that same cartoon, he introduced a kind of embryonic
version of Daffy Duck.
Speaker 15 (13:26):
No matter worry, I'm just crazy.
Speaker 12 (13:28):
Don't pull now.
Speaker 14 (13:30):
He's a guy suddenly doing the craziest most energetic voices
they've ever had in one cartoon. And I think, but
that's when they suddenly threw it. I think we're going
to hang on to this guy.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
It was Porky Pig and Daffy Duck that put Leon
Slessinger's Warner Brothers Cartoon Company and Mel on the map.
But it was another character, a cool, sly in wise
cracking rabbit with a flair for survival named Bugs Bunny,
who would become his most famous and unforgettable creation. Bugs
(14:01):
made his cartoon debut on July twenty seventh, nineteen forty,
in an eight minute and fifteen second short titled A
Wild Hair.
Speaker 15 (14:10):
They showed me a picture of this little rabbit, and
he's going to say, hey, what's cooking? I said, instead
of him saying hey, what's cooking, why don't you have him.
Speaker 6 (14:18):
Say hey, yeah, what's up yank. That's the new expression
that was being so popular.
Speaker 15 (14:24):
And I said to Mistress Lessons, I said, why don't
you name him after the guy who.
Speaker 6 (14:27):
Drew the first picture of him? His name was Bugs Heartaway.
Speaker 15 (14:31):
Why did you call him Bugs Bunny?
Speaker 6 (14:41):
Watch up, Doc, it's a rabbit down here and I'm
trying to catch him.
Speaker 15 (14:46):
Well, he told me that Bugs was a tough little stinker,
and I thought, what kind of a voice can I
give him?
Speaker 6 (14:52):
The tough character? Maybe Brooklyn of the Bronx.
Speaker 9 (14:55):
So I put the two of him to get it, doc,
And that's how Bugs Bunny came out.
Speaker 16 (15:00):
But you know you would just why like a rabbit
and gime here listen, doc, Now don't spread this around, but.
Speaker 6 (15:12):
Confidentially, I am a wabbit.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best
Short Subject Cartoons. Over the next twenty years, mel would
give life to nearly the entire cast of Looney Tunes characters.
Speaker 6 (15:36):
They have pretens, hummish, I am, I might.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Be the.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
Daffy is not a list? People say, daffy listening spraying
the water out of the film lit not a list.
By the way, Tweety was a little baby bird, so
I gave my will you tiny baby voice?
Speaker 9 (15:56):
Oh, I could I go a putty tad?
Speaker 17 (15:58):
And Sylvester was a big slot cat, so I gave
him a big, sloppy voice. Speedy Gonzales was a little
tiny mouse and he had to talk fast because his
name was Speedy. So I gave him a very fast
little voice and said, my name is Speedy. Gonzelle said.
When I came to give me you the mind, I
(16:19):
think you can understand what the shit I think.
Speaker 9 (16:22):
Just to think, radiant flower, you do not have to
come with me to the gas bar.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
We are already.
Speaker 18 (16:31):
He chased the pussy cat and catched them and kissed them.
I gave him are or less of a French voice,
like so a voiler, and I said, only French, what's wrong?
Speaker 16 (16:43):
You know?
Speaker 14 (16:44):
All?
Speaker 6 (16:44):
You skunk's clear hair, Yosemite Sam.
Speaker 17 (16:48):
They showed me it was a little cowboy and he
was only two feet tall with long red hair and
had to be recognized. So I had to give him
a recognizable voice, so I.
Speaker 6 (16:57):
Gave a real loud lay, Oh, my name's yo seventy zion.
This is one that almost gets me every time I
use it.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
And you've been listening to the story of Mel Blank,
and we learned that he wasn't just a great voice man.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
He didn't just create great characters.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
He didn't just have great timing, nearly perfect comic timing
and comic pitch. But he really was one of the
great actors to ever come out of Hollywood. And by
the way, he got this compliment about being a great
actor from none other than Jack Benny and Bud Abbott
and lu Costello, and anyone who's ever acted knows comedy
(17:36):
is the hardest because you've got to play it straight.
You don't play it for laughs. When we come back
more of Mel Blank, his story, the man behind three
thousand cartoon voices. Here on our American stories, and we
(18:08):
continue with our American stories and the story of Mel Blink.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Arriving on the screen shortly before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Bugs became a symbol of American strength in the face
of the enemy.
Speaker 14 (18:23):
The tall man with.
Speaker 9 (18:25):
High had we'll become a down your way, get your
savings out. When you hear him shout any bunch today,
come on and get them folks, Come on, skip kind of.
Speaker 14 (18:35):
Gump because of what was happening in Europe and the
sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Audience has just found his
sassy control of the situation just so heroic coolness in
the face of danger.
Speaker 6 (18:46):
Damn what chip gack? What's up?
Speaker 10 (18:50):
Doc?
Speaker 6 (18:52):
Listen? Stranger? This Tony big enough for the two of us?
Speaker 4 (18:56):
It ain't.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
The Blanks gave birth to their only child on October nineteenth,
nineteen thirty eight, a son named Nol. This stretched the
Blank household budget to the breaking point. At his wife's urging,
Mel decided to ask for a salary increase from the
tight fisted, savvy head of Warner Brothers Cartoons, Leon Slessinger.
Speaker 6 (19:20):
Hello, Pawky, come on in Hey hell is Yes?
Speaker 9 (19:23):
Yes, yes, Hello Leon?
Speaker 4 (19:27):
Well Paky?
Speaker 6 (19:28):
What's on your mind? What can I do for you?
Speaker 3 (19:30):
What Slessinger offered Mel was unprecedented for any voice actor
to date, soul screen credit on every cartoon produced by
the studio Paint. Mel was modest about his fame, and
he enjoyed his private life. He made friends with everyone
he worked with, but it was his friendship with Jack
(19:53):
Benny the Mel cherished.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Most Wednesday Night used to be Ping Pong night. So
ping Pong night to get all the people that were
on the radio show, Lucille Ball and George Burns, Gracey
Allen and Jack Benny and Jack Carson. They all come
out and play Ping pong. My dad would make them
soda Fountain drinks and then they go home.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Melis thought of as just a voiceman, but he was
so much more.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
His timing was outstanding.
Speaker 12 (20:20):
You know, you can be you can be a comic,
and if you can't, if you don't have the timing down,
you have the best material in the world's.
Speaker 9 (20:26):
Meaningless bipings and clumsy the world's balls gigglers be the
Spreep and his sensational Hi dining here.
Speaker 10 (20:36):
Fearless Freep, watch my boy.
Speaker 9 (20:42):
Besides Son, you bought me.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
It's the acting.
Speaker 8 (20:45):
People say, oh, Mel blank, the men of a thousand voices,
greatest voice man that ever lived, one of the best
actors to ever come out of Hollywood. People don't take
the voice person as seriously as they would like the
or Dustin Hoffman de Niro. But you know, to say,
you know, Olivia de Niro blank, It sounds weird because
(21:07):
of what genre he worked in. But no, he was
a brilliant actor.
Speaker 6 (21:14):
No, I won't be able to get the bird.
Speaker 9 (21:17):
Oh, mister put Cat, don't you like me anymore?
Speaker 6 (21:22):
I think I think, I think you're I.
Speaker 16 (21:27):
Think you're.
Speaker 7 (21:32):
We'll tell you what I think Mel Blank's most genius
achievement was. And only if you're a voice actor do
you realize how incredible this is? When Bugs and Daffy
are fighting over whether it's rabid season or duck season,
and Daffy Duck comes out dressed up as Bugs Bunny
doing a Bugs Bunny imitation. Then Bugs Bunny comes out
dressed as Daffy doing a Daffy impression.
Speaker 9 (21:56):
That haven't any it's ducks me, you know, God darn minute,
why do you get that duck completing dump?
Speaker 7 (22:06):
You know how hard that is to do, to take
your own character have it imitate another one of your
own characters. It's almost impossible because if you try to
like combine two voices that you're doing, you kind of
just land in the middle. Like if I try to
do opuo imitating Mo, it'll sound just like Mo imitating opoo.
There's no We tried it one day at the Simpsons
we were talking about who were marveling at Mel Blank's
(22:26):
play to do this, and we all tried to do
one of our characters imitating another one and have them
sound different, and we couldn't do it.
Speaker 9 (22:33):
You don't know what I'll do with that gun, Doc.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
I'd say, you know, Dad, you're an incredible actor. I said,
here's a picture signed by Bud Abbott, and Luke Costello
says to the greatest actor I know, Mel Blank, I said,
Jack Benny used to call you a great actor. Did
you know you're a great actor? He says, no, no, no,
I'm not. I'm a voice person. But he didn't realize
that was acting. He never took an acting lesson.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
In all of his cartoons. When Mel wasn't performing all
the voices, his chemistry with his fellow actors was apparent,
none more so than with Arthur Q. Bran, the voice
behind Bugs's adversary Elmer Fudd. Here's Brian and Blank rehearsing
in the studio for the sixth minute and forty nine
(23:15):
second cartoon classic released in theaters on July sixth, nineteen
fifty seven, What's Opera Doc. The short is informally referred
to as Kill the Rabbit after the line sung by
Fud to the tune of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.
Speaker 8 (23:32):
I will do it with my spear and magic helmet.
Speaker 9 (23:35):
Your spear and magic helmet, Bwin, magic helmet, magic hillmt helmet,
magic killmet magic.
Speaker 6 (23:43):
Yes, it's a shame. That was going well almost.
Speaker 12 (23:48):
I don't think I'm right yet, and I'm going to
kill the rabbit, have I That's fine, that's fine, Okay.
Speaker 13 (23:53):
Go it.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Melan Arthur acted out the combative relationship between bugs and
the tiptoing, shotgun wielding elm in over thirty cartoons over
the span of twenty years until Arthur's passing at the
age of sixty in nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 16 (24:11):
The vellye voie quiet, I'm hunting weapons.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
The classic voice of Elmer Fudd needed a replacement.
Speaker 15 (24:20):
Chris Freeling, one of the directors, said to me, no,
will you do a couple of lines for Elmer Fudd?
He says, I've tried others and they can't come close.
He so just turn to do a couple of lines.
He said, Oh, I don't t why, but I don't
know if I could do it. I'm He says, that's it.
Speaker 5 (24:38):
So I also he came over.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Fudd Whereas audiences felt sorry for the witless Elmer Fudd,
the pint size, pea brained, ornery ombre named Yosemite Sam
evoked no sympathy at all. He was conceived as a
more challenging adversary for bugs. Bunny.
Speaker 9 (25:00):
You don't say, well, come here, shorty, come here. Don't
say I told you? But the This is a guy
in the next card that says he's the meanest toughest
at centric Cent, and he's got a seven shooting to
prove it. How's about that? There is oh blast, the
moment wide open?
Speaker 5 (25:20):
Nobody, Yeah, your.
Speaker 10 (25:24):
Sbody sail the roughest, toughest he mass nubbers tombre has
ever crossed a rio grande. I'm the fastest, gone north southeast.
Speaker 6 (25:37):
West of the pecos.
Speaker 8 (25:38):
I'm the y shet up?
Speaker 6 (25:42):
Did I hear someone say?
Speaker 9 (25:44):
Shut up?
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Why are you?
Speaker 3 (25:54):
By the late nineteen fifties, Mel was on top of
the world.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
And when we come back the final installment of this
hour long celebration of the life of Mel Blank, his
story continues here on our American Stories. What have I done?
Speaker 11 (26:13):
I've killed a rabbit.
Speaker 6 (26:17):
Poor little bunny, poor little labb.
Speaker 18 (26:30):
How do.
Speaker 6 (26:33):
Welcome to my shop.
Speaker 9 (26:34):
Let me cut him up, Let me shave you crap detelydly.
Speaker 13 (26:42):
Hey, you.
Speaker 9 (26:44):
Don't look so perplexed. Why would you be mixed? Can't
you see you're next? Yes, you're next? Yes, so next?
How about a nice clo shayeacher, whiskers to be hate,
lots of leather, lots of soap, So don't be you dope.
Now already border scraping, there's no use to try escaping,
yell and screaming, writ and raid.
Speaker 6 (27:03):
It's no use to mean a shave.
Speaker 8 (27:06):
Oh, I'll drow wo out, dame.
Speaker 6 (27:11):
Nice and clean.
Speaker 9 (27:13):
I'll told you your face looks like it might have gone
through a machine.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
And we continue with our American stories and the story
of mel Blank.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Although we never personally won an Academy award, his voice
earned Warner Brothers five oscars. Then, on the night of
January twenty fourth, nineteen sixty one, this happened.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
My mom called me. I was with friends. She says,
I didn't show up the recording session. She says, wait
a minute, the other phone was ringing. We had two lines.
It was UCLA hospital, saying that he hadn't been involved
in a head on collision on dead Man's Curve right
above Ucla, and they had taken him to UCLA after
they had to use a cutting torch to get him
out of the Aston Martin. It happened that a kid
(28:18):
driving a ninety eight Oldsmobile Great Big Car ran into
a small Aston Martin sports car and it just folded up.
They didn't expect him to live for the first twelve
thirteen days.
Speaker 19 (28:32):
I went to see him and it was really I
was shocked because he was wired up with kinds of
gadgets to keep him together. Noel told me that almost
every bone in his body was broken.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
He was unconscious for a long time. Finally a doctor
got an idea because my dad had a television in
his room and it was playing bugs bunny cart tunes.
So the doctor went over to the bed and clapped
his hands and said, bugs, can you hear me? Bugs?
Can you hear me? My dad goes, why s up?
Speaker 12 (29:09):
Dad?
Speaker 4 (29:10):
The first words that he uttered were of bugs. Then
he says, Porky, can you hear me? And he would
answer me, I can hear you. So he brought him
around doing the characters' voices before my dad was fully
awake as as himself.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Blake continued working for Warner Brothers, but also began providing
voices for television cartoons produced by Hannah Barbera. His most
famous role during this time was Barney Rubble from The Flintstones.
Speaker 6 (29:46):
Oh boy, wait, ol Fred, seize my new bowling ball.
Speaker 5 (29:49):
He'll bring my score up to at least a hundred.
Speaker 14 (29:52):
And of course he was missed spicely in The Jetsons.
Speaker 18 (29:56):
Send Up Jetson, Miss Gamma, Yes, sir, ready, mister Jetson.
Speaker 8 (30:00):
Right, Well, good luck.
Speaker 14 (30:08):
But I don't think any of the characters he did
in the later years of his life had the staying
power of anywhere near of the staying power of the
immortal Looney Tune characters.
Speaker 6 (30:22):
Everywhere you go, everybody knows the bugs Bunny. They don't
know now Blank, but they know Bud's funny, And everybody
knows Dad.
Speaker 13 (30:29):
I cannot tell you the quantity of fan mail he received,
And something really really phenomenal about him That man answered
every piece, of course one personally. He would call people,
he'd get a letter, Oh it's my daughter's birthday, she's
turning twelve. Her favorite character is Tweetybird. It would be
(30:51):
so terrific, sir.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
You know, if you ever have time, could you call
my daughter?
Speaker 13 (30:55):
And Mel would call these people from all over the
world and literally wish them happy birthday or happy anniversary
or whatever the celebration was.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
When he lived in Plaude l Ray or Pacific Palisades,
kids would come over every day and say, Mal, can
we have your autograph? Do some voices? And we'd have
kids at the door. I mean literally every day Halloween,
we'd have fifteen hundred to two thousand kids and he'd
give out signed little autographs and candy.
Speaker 13 (31:23):
The kids would always go to Mel in a Cell's
house because.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
They never knew who was going to answer the door. Yeah,
bugs are poor Gy.
Speaker 13 (31:32):
Or Peppy or Daffy or Wilie or road Runner. You
never know. So it was it was great to watch that.
It was really really wonderful.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Here's legend of Hollywood's Golden Age. Kirk Douglas.
Speaker 6 (31:48):
The longer I'm in this business, the more I feel
that we we really are very lucky people.
Speaker 12 (31:57):
He goes, in a strange way, we obtained immortality, and
if you judge immortality by the pleasure that you've given
to others, I would certainly say that Mel Blank is
one of the greatest of the immortals.
Speaker 13 (32:19):
He devoted a lot of time and burn units for
Elian children, and I think he really had a great
effect in doing so, even if it made him feel
better for just a minute.
Speaker 6 (32:34):
He did.
Speaker 13 (32:36):
If he had to try to get him to leave
first of all, I mean he would spend all day
doing it. I mean there would be times I would say,
you know, well we've got to go. It's getting dark.
You know, we've got to get back on the road.
And when there were children and children, you know, in
that situation, he.
Speaker 4 (32:55):
You couldn't get him to bug away.
Speaker 5 (32:59):
If I saw and smile, that to me was payment themselves.
And if I could make them laugh when they had
been very sad, it was great payment to me.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
On May thirtieth, nineteen eighty eight, Mel Blank turned eighty,
who framed Roger Rabbit Premier that year, and Blank contributed
many voices to the Summer Blockbuster. A huge party was
thrown by Warner Brothers on its Burbank lot, and again
Mel was asked the same question he had been asked
every birthday since he turned sixty five, Mel when are
(33:36):
you going to retire. Mel's answer the day I drop,
that's when who'd want to quit making people laugh. On
July nineteen eighty nine, when he agreed to star in
a new commercial for Oldmobile, neither he nor his son
Noel would know that this would be his final performance.
(33:58):
Here's Nolan mel Bam inside the cutless Sierra. In between takes,
you'll hear Noel doing his father's characters' voices too. Growing up,
Mel train Noel on the voices so that when the
time came, he could take over for his father.
Speaker 6 (34:16):
Is that any Is that any good? We had a
new generation of oles?
Speaker 9 (34:19):
Yes, yeah, any man with the new generation of owlds.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
The director there is out pulling his hair, but we're
gonna do this commercial anyhow.
Speaker 9 (34:24):
What he oh, it's that one.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
It's not the art director? Well, how would you send
many Sam?
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Say this?
Speaker 6 (34:30):
We are a no generation of old.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
Look in the look at the dealer right there and
talk to him.
Speaker 6 (34:35):
We are the new generation of old.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
Why you heard that? You better believe it. We are,
and we're going to try to do this commercial. But
it's tough.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Anyway.
Speaker 6 (34:41):
We got this direction, he says, very simple. About twenty
seven hours.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
We had shot the osmobile commercial all day. It's not
your father's osemobile. And uh, I said, Dad, you're coughing
a little bit. Why don't you go to the doctor
and get your lungs cleared out. The doctor called me
and said, yeah, Mel's over here. And the doctor says, well,
I can keep him in the hospital overnight or just
give him an inhaler to get the cough out of it.
My dad said, no, let's stay in the hospital overnight.
(35:11):
It was a mistake, of course. He fell out of bed.
They forgot to put the bed rails up. He broke
his femur, got fed en while I into the brain
and was basically gone in forty eight hours. He was
still at the height of his career. He could still
do all the voices that he could before, and he
was still really terrific.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Mel Blank lays to rest in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery
under a star of David. The epitaph on Blank's tombstone reads,
that's all folks. Mel Blank has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame at sixty three point eighty five
Hollywood Boulevard. He is the only person to have himself
(35:52):
and two of his characters on the Walk of Fame,
with both Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker receiving at the
only others to have received this honor are Walt Disney
as both himself and Mickey Mouse, Jim Hanson as both
himself and Kermit the Frog, and Mike Myers as both
himself and Shrek. Mel Blank is one of the pillars
(36:16):
of entertainment, an actor whose talents can still be marveled
at today.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
My dad's legacy is laughter. He wanted to make people
feel good and laugh out loud. The thing I miss
most about my dad is my dad and his personality,
being the great father, listening to me, never doubting me,
asking good questions, being great to my mom. The fact
(36:45):
that he was such a marvelous human being, not only
to the world but to his family. That's what I
remember most. I can turn his voice on any time
and see one of the cartoons, so I can really
bring him back to life at any time I want
to to. I hear his voice every day.
Speaker 6 (37:05):
It's all folks, and.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
A terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling by
our own Greg Hengler.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
And what stories you heard?
Speaker 1 (37:14):
That story about what happened to him on January twenty fourth,
nineteen sixty one, an accident in his Aston Martin on
dead Man's Curve over UCLA Hospital and he's out for
a while, and then the doctor gets this idea to
talk to him and address him as bugs, bunny bugs,
can you hear me?
Speaker 2 (37:33):
And Mel Blank's first words were, what's up?
Speaker 6 (37:35):
Doc?
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Amazing?
Speaker 1 (37:38):
They don't know mel Blank is a relative, said, but
they know bugs. And my goodness, the stories about him
with the fans and with the sick children, with the
hurting children, how he just couldn't leave them. What a
heart the man had, and ultimately how he dies in
an accident falling out of a hospital bed. What the
son said was so true. His legacy was laughter. I
(38:01):
loved the line from Mel Blank. He said, when I
see a person smile, that's my payment itself. The story
of Mel Blank, the man behind three thousand cartoon voices
here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.
And our next story is an unforgettable tale about an
American icon whose voice everyone recognizes.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Here's Greg Hangler.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
If you added up all the hours from your childhood,
chances are the voice of Mel Blank made up the
majority of dialogues spoken to you. Bugs, Bunny, Daffy Duck,
Porky Pig, Tweety, Sylvester, Yosemite, Sam Falkhorn, Leghorn, Marvin, the Martian,
pepe Le Pew, Speedy, Gonzalez, Wiley, Coyote, Roadrunner, Elmer Fudd, Barney,
(00:45):
Rubble Tom and Jerry Woody Woodpecker, and the Tasmanian Devil,
to name just a few of Blank's voice contributions. This
man embodied a sense of innocence and good nature, and
was so adored and respected that all who knew him
had something to say about him. For the sake of time,
I won't be introducing all those who contributed to this story.
(01:08):
They are fellow animators, inkers and painters from Warner Brothers, Disney,
and Hannah Barbera animation and film historians, director's voice artists
like Hank Azaria from The Simpsons. Mel's former agents, film critics,
his son Noel, and friends such as Kirk Douglas. Without
any further ado, let's jump right into the story of
(01:30):
Mel Blanc, the Man of a Thousand Voices.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
Allow me to introduce myself, Mel Blank. What amazing guy,
What camp guy?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Oh.
Speaker 5 (01:45):
You can't look at the Warner Brothers characters without hearing
his sound.
Speaker 6 (01:51):
His voice.
Speaker 7 (01:55):
There's such a delight to the sound of his voice
in every character he did.
Speaker 8 (01:58):
What I think about it today that everybody imitates these characters.
He created the gosh.
Speaker 9 (02:08):
Grooy duck that my little chub is strictly I'm not
her of opinion.
Speaker 6 (02:14):
Mel was so unique at what he did.
Speaker 8 (02:19):
Mel had the range that everyone wishes for.
Speaker 10 (02:28):
Great horny coas I'm up North, gotta burn my boots.
Speaker 6 (02:33):
They touched Yankees Oil.
Speaker 9 (02:35):
I think it was a shock when I got older
to discover all those voices were one man.
Speaker 11 (02:39):
His voice was like more powerful than a human body
could contain, so it seemed to be coming out of
every part of them.
Speaker 4 (02:59):
Mel Black had this phenomenal voice box.
Speaker 12 (03:02):
As the only way I can explain it, he just
did all kinds of things that were just amazing.
Speaker 13 (03:08):
Wow.
Speaker 8 (03:10):
He didn't just do voices. He played characters, and there's
a difference.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
He was just able to do that to just totally, like,
you know, animate with his voice, to create a complete
three dimensional character, just with his voice alone.
Speaker 6 (03:26):
No chickensn I I'm a chicken roast.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
How can you beat a pair of vocal chords that
had an eight octave range, perfect pitch, great singer and
an incredible actor. There's Melon, there's like everybody else, there.
Speaker 8 (03:39):
Was nobody better than mel Blank's nice.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
You know what is it?
Speaker 6 (03:44):
A cat?
Speaker 9 (03:44):
Howdy do.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
About that?
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Age?
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Melvin Jerome Blank was born the youngest of two children,
on May thirtieth, nineteen oh eight, in San Francisco, to
Russian Jewish parents, Frederic and Eva. After leaving New York
to seek his fortune prospecting for gold in the Klondike
region of the Alaskan Yukon, his father eventually settled the
family down in Portland, Oregon. As a young boy, growing
(04:20):
up in the melting pot of the American West, mel
Blank would forever be affected by the medley of foreign
accents in the way voices defined personalities.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
My dad was always interested in voices and in music,
and in singing and entertaining. He started to entertain in
grammar school.
Speaker 14 (04:39):
From around about the age of Tan Mill Blank was
very interested in dialects, Yiddish, dialects in Chinese and Japanese dialects, Russian, the.
Speaker 15 (04:46):
School of ev An Assembly, the grammar school. I would
entertain the kids with a dialect story or one of
a different dialect each time, and the kids loved it,
and they got such a big kick out of it.
They laughed, and the teachers life and then gave me
lousy marks.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Here's what Mel wrote in his autobiography, that's not all folks,
except for music class. I loathed school to be truthful.
Report cards c's and d's had little to no effect
on me, But that applause. What an impression it made
on a twelve year old.
Speaker 6 (05:24):
Now where'd that boy go? You got to be a
magician to keep a kid's attention more in two minutes.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Nowadays, my talents weren't appreciated by all, in particular a
crotchety old teacher by the name of Washburn. When I
broke up a classroom discussion by giving an answer in
four different voices, she reprimanded me sternly. Too sternly if
you ask me, you'll never amount to anything, she said, scornfully.
(05:55):
You're just like your last name Blank. Her stinging insult
so shamed me that when I was sixteen, I started
spelling my surname with a C, B, LA, n C
instead of a K. Later, as an adult, I changed
it legally. I often wondered if missus Washburn associated Mel
(06:18):
Blank with the young student she had ridiculed so many
years before.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
He dropped out of high school in about the ninth grade.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
I used to say, I got lousy grades, but I
developed some great voices because of the echo in his
school in the hallways.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
He started leading orchestras. He was an orchestra conductory, and
the orchestras moved all around the Oregon area, in the
Washington area, northern California area. In between, when he was
conducting the music, he would do shtick. He'd do different
voices and different comedy routines. Mel was the youngest orchestra
leader in the country at that time, at seventeen.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
And you've been listening to the story of Mel Blank
and it all we all starts in radio. Mel was persistent,
by the way, all those turndowns, all those times people
telling him no, and he kept pushing and pushing and
finally gets paired up with the legendary Chuck Jones. It
starts with Porky Pig and then a bunny named Bugs.
(07:19):
When we come back, more of the story of Mel
Blank here on our American Stories. This is Lee Habib,
host of our American Stories, the show where America is
the star and the American people, and we do it
all from the heart of the South Oxford, Mississippi. But
we truly can't do this show without you. Our shows
(07:42):
will always be free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love what you hear, consider
making a tax deductible donation to our American Stories. Go
to our American Stories dot com. Give a little, give
a lot. That's our American Stories dot com. And we
(08:09):
continue with our American Stories and the story of Mel Blank,
the man behind three thousand cartoon voices, the man behind
Looney Tunes, and so much else. Let's pick up where
we last left off.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
I think my dad never thought of Hollywood when he
was young. He thought of going on the radio when
radio was quite new at that time.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
And of course radio is ideal for a schooling for
someone who was going to do cartoon voices. In nineteen
thirty two, with the blessing of his parents, he jumped
into his nineteen twenty Ford Model A convertible and drove
south to Los Angeles, hoping to find a break. Instead,
he met a young woman named a Stelle Rosenbaum, a
(08:54):
bright and attractive girl with a radiant smile who would
become as big as supporter for the rest of his life.
She also shared Mell's deep interest in radio. Mel twenty
four in Estelle twenty two married that spring and then
proceeded up Route one oh one back to Portland to write, produce,
and perform their own sketch radio show called Cobwebs and Nuts.
(09:18):
To maintain audience interest six hours a week, Mel had
to come up with countless voices and lots of material,
which was then presented to Mell's one woman audience for approval.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
My dad played one hundred different male characters, my mother
played all the different female characters, and they had a
great time. Although they were only paid fifteen dollars a
week to write it, produce it, and voice it.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
The show failed to provide a livable wage for the blanks,
so Mel seriously considered quitting in order to become an
insurance salesman at a whopping fifty dollars a week. Thanks
to Estelle's encouragement, he rejected the offer and followed his
dreams and talents back to Los Angeles in nineteen thirty five.
(10:04):
Here are Estell's exact words, Mel, if we're going to
be broke, at least let's be broke someplace where it's warm.
Speaker 15 (10:14):
I had seen some of the Warner by the voice
or sort, or heard some of the voices in the cartoons,
and I thought, geez, they're missing out on awful lot.
Speaker 6 (10:23):
Their voices are pretty bad.
Speaker 15 (10:24):
Usually Norman Spencer was there to greet him. I said,
I'd like to audition for you and show you what
I can do. He says, sorry, We've got all the
voices we need. I said, but mister Slussinger said that
you were the one, and he says, no, I'm sorry. Well,
I was as stubborn as he was, and I went
beck in two weeks and I said, look, won't you
just listen to me? He says, I told you we
(10:44):
have all the voices we need. So I was still
as stubborn. As him, and I went to him every
two weeks asking him to please listen to me, and
he says, I told you a hundred times, I've got
all the voices we need.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
So he kept knocking on the door for two years.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Finally, in March of nineteen thirty seven, Mel's perseverance paid off.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
It was probably the week before Christmas.
Speaker 15 (11:10):
He came looking for a job, and that day Treg
Brown was sitting there.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Treg Brown brilliant sound effects man for the Warner's cartoons.
He happened to take over when this fellow passed away
that wouldn't let my dad in the door.
Speaker 15 (11:24):
And I said, mister Brown, I've been trying to get
in here to audition.
Speaker 6 (11:28):
Just have him hear me.
Speaker 15 (11:29):
The guy kept saying, no, I've got all the voices
what you need. He said, let me hear what you do.
So I auditioned for him and he got a big
kick out of it. He said, would you do it
again for the directors? I said gladly.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Warner Brothers decided to give Mel a shot in a
supporting role for Picador Porky, a new cartoon animated by
a twenty five year old lanky kid named Chuck Jones,
featuring the studio's latest character, Porky Pig.
Speaker 15 (11:57):
He said, I've got a cartoon coming up with a
drunken bull. Do you think you can do the voice
of a drunken bull? So said, yeah, I think I could.
He says, how would he talk?
Speaker 6 (12:10):
I have her talk like a.
Speaker 15 (12:15):
Look look off for a sour Max. He says, great. Great, says,
what are you doing next Tuesday? I wasn't doing the thing.
I said, I think I can make her.
Speaker 10 (12:29):
Cocker cocker rtch playing on the or guitar cocker rut
play this yarn y playing on the under darn cocker
run plan rury Alchemy.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Warner Brothers quickly recognized Mel's talent and offered him the
prize role of Porky Pig.
Speaker 15 (12:48):
He says, he's a timid little character. I told him,
all I want to be real authentic about it. So
I went out to a pig farm and wallered around
with the pigs for a couple of weeks. And I
come back and they kicked me out, So go home
and take a bath. When I did, I back, I said,
if a pick could talking talk with a grunt, you know.
Speaker 6 (13:05):
That's parking talk with a grunt. It is an all
great great.
Speaker 9 (13:16):
Don't worry, he's making it at.
Speaker 16 (13:17):
It in the moment launch.
Speaker 14 (13:21):
In that same cartoon, he introduced a kind of embryonic
version of Daffy Duck.
Speaker 15 (13:26):
No matter worry, I'm just crazy.
Speaker 12 (13:28):
Don't pull now.
Speaker 14 (13:30):
He's a guy suddenly doing the craziest most energetic voices
they've ever had in one cartoon. And I think, but
that's when they suddenly threw it. I think we're going
to hang on to this guy.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
It was Porky Pig and Daffy Duck that put Leon
Slessinger's Warner Brothers Cartoon Company and Mel on the map.
But it was another character, a cool, sly in wise
cracking rabbit with a flair for survival named Bugs Bunny,
who would become his most famous and unforgettable creation. Bugs
(14:01):
made his cartoon debut on July twenty seventh, nineteen forty,
in an eight minute and fifteen second short titled A
Wild Hair.
Speaker 15 (14:10):
They showed me a picture of this little rabbit, and
he's going to say, hey, what's cooking? I said, instead
of him saying hey, what's cooking, why don't you have him.
Speaker 6 (14:18):
Say hey, yeah, what's up yank. That's the new expression
that was being so popular.
Speaker 15 (14:24):
And I said to Mistress Lessons, I said, why don't
you name him after the guy who.
Speaker 6 (14:27):
Drew the first picture of him? His name was Bugs Heartaway.
Speaker 15 (14:31):
Why did you call him Bugs Bunny?
Speaker 6 (14:41):
Watch up, Doc, it's a rabbit down here and I'm
trying to catch him.
Speaker 15 (14:46):
Well, he told me that Bugs was a tough little stinker,
and I thought, what kind of a voice can I
give him?
Speaker 6 (14:52):
The tough character? Maybe Brooklyn of the Bronx.
Speaker 9 (14:55):
So I put the two of him to get it, doc,
And that's how Bugs Bunny came out.
Speaker 16 (15:00):
But you know you would just why like a rabbit
and gime here listen, doc, Now don't spread this around, but.
Speaker 6 (15:12):
Confidentially, I am a wabbit.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best
Short Subject Cartoons. Over the next twenty years, mel would
give life to nearly the entire cast of Looney Tunes characters.
Speaker 6 (15:36):
They have pretens, hummish, I am, I might.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Be the.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
Daffy is not a list? People say, daffy listening spraying
the water out of the film lit not a list.
By the way, Tweety was a little baby bird, so
I gave my will you tiny baby voice?
Speaker 9 (15:56):
Oh, I could I go a putty tad?
Speaker 17 (15:58):
And Sylvester was a big slot cat, so I gave
him a big, sloppy voice. Speedy Gonzales was a little
tiny mouse and he had to talk fast because his
name was Speedy. So I gave him a very fast
little voice and said, my name is Speedy. Gonzelle said.
When I came to give me you the mind, I
(16:19):
think you can understand what the shit I think.
Speaker 9 (16:22):
Just to think, radiant flower, you do not have to
come with me to the gas bar.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
We are already.
Speaker 18 (16:31):
He chased the pussy cat and catched them and kissed them.
I gave him are or less of a French voice,
like so a voiler, and I said, only French, what's wrong?
Speaker 16 (16:43):
You know?
Speaker 14 (16:44):
All?
Speaker 6 (16:44):
You skunk's clear hair, Yosemite Sam.
Speaker 17 (16:48):
They showed me it was a little cowboy and he
was only two feet tall with long red hair and
had to be recognized. So I had to give him
a recognizable voice, so I.
Speaker 6 (16:57):
Gave a real loud lay, Oh, my name's yo seventy zion.
This is one that almost gets me every time I
use it.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
And you've been listening to the story of Mel Blank,
and we learned that he wasn't just a great voice man.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
He didn't just create great characters.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
He didn't just have great timing, nearly perfect comic timing
and comic pitch. But he really was one of the
great actors to ever come out of Hollywood. And by
the way, he got this compliment about being a great
actor from none other than Jack Benny and Bud Abbott
and lu Costello, and anyone who's ever acted knows comedy
(17:36):
is the hardest because you've got to play it straight.
You don't play it for laughs. When we come back
more of Mel Blank, his story, the man behind three
thousand cartoon voices. Here on our American stories, and we
(18:08):
continue with our American stories and the story of Mel Blink.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Arriving on the screen shortly before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Bugs became a symbol of American strength in the face
of the enemy.
Speaker 14 (18:23):
The tall man with.
Speaker 9 (18:25):
High had we'll become a down your way, get your
savings out. When you hear him shout any bunch today,
come on and get them folks, Come on, skip kind of.
Speaker 14 (18:35):
Gump because of what was happening in Europe and the
sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Audience has just found his
sassy control of the situation just so heroic coolness in
the face of danger.
Speaker 6 (18:46):
Damn what chip gack? What's up?
Speaker 10 (18:50):
Doc?
Speaker 6 (18:52):
Listen? Stranger? This Tony big enough for the two of us?
Speaker 4 (18:56):
It ain't.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
The Blanks gave birth to their only child on October nineteenth,
nineteen thirty eight, a son named Nol. This stretched the
Blank household budget to the breaking point. At his wife's urging,
Mel decided to ask for a salary increase from the
tight fisted, savvy head of Warner Brothers Cartoons, Leon Slessinger.
Speaker 6 (19:20):
Hello, Pawky, come on in Hey hell is Yes?
Speaker 9 (19:23):
Yes, yes, Hello Leon?
Speaker 4 (19:27):
Well Paky?
Speaker 6 (19:28):
What's on your mind? What can I do for you?
Speaker 3 (19:30):
What Slessinger offered Mel was unprecedented for any voice actor
to date, soul screen credit on every cartoon produced by
the studio Paint. Mel was modest about his fame, and
he enjoyed his private life. He made friends with everyone
he worked with, but it was his friendship with Jack
(19:53):
Benny the Mel cherished.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Most Wednesday Night used to be Ping Pong night. So
ping Pong night to get all the people that were
on the radio show, Lucille Ball and George Burns, Gracey
Allen and Jack Benny and Jack Carson. They all come
out and play Ping pong. My dad would make them
soda Fountain drinks and then they go home.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Melis thought of as just a voiceman, but he was
so much more.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
His timing was outstanding.
Speaker 12 (20:20):
You know, you can be you can be a comic,
and if you can't, if you don't have the timing down,
you have the best material in the world's.
Speaker 9 (20:26):
Meaningless bipings and clumsy the world's balls gigglers be the
Spreep and his sensational Hi dining here.
Speaker 10 (20:36):
Fearless Freep, watch my boy.
Speaker 9 (20:42):
Besides Son, you bought me.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
It's the acting.
Speaker 8 (20:45):
People say, oh, Mel blank, the men of a thousand voices,
greatest voice man that ever lived, one of the best
actors to ever come out of Hollywood. People don't take
the voice person as seriously as they would like the
or Dustin Hoffman de Niro. But you know, to say,
you know, Olivia de Niro blank, It sounds weird because
(21:07):
of what genre he worked in. But no, he was
a brilliant actor.
Speaker 6 (21:14):
No, I won't be able to get the bird.
Speaker 9 (21:17):
Oh, mister put Cat, don't you like me anymore?
Speaker 6 (21:22):
I think I think, I think you're I.
Speaker 16 (21:27):
Think you're.
Speaker 7 (21:32):
We'll tell you what I think Mel Blank's most genius
achievement was. And only if you're a voice actor do
you realize how incredible this is? When Bugs and Daffy
are fighting over whether it's rabid season or duck season,
and Daffy Duck comes out dressed up as Bugs Bunny
doing a Bugs Bunny imitation. Then Bugs Bunny comes out
dressed as Daffy doing a Daffy impression.
Speaker 9 (21:56):
That haven't any it's ducks me, you know, God darn minute,
why do you get that duck completing dump?
Speaker 7 (22:06):
You know how hard that is to do, to take
your own character have it imitate another one of your
own characters. It's almost impossible because if you try to
like combine two voices that you're doing, you kind of
just land in the middle. Like if I try to
do opuo imitating Mo, it'll sound just like Mo imitating opoo.
There's no We tried it one day at the Simpsons
we were talking about who were marveling at Mel Blank's
(22:26):
play to do this, and we all tried to do
one of our characters imitating another one and have them
sound different, and we couldn't do it.
Speaker 9 (22:33):
You don't know what I'll do with that gun, Doc.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
I'd say, you know, Dad, you're an incredible actor. I said,
here's a picture signed by Bud Abbott, and Luke Costello
says to the greatest actor I know, Mel Blank, I said,
Jack Benny used to call you a great actor. Did
you know you're a great actor? He says, no, no, no,
I'm not. I'm a voice person. But he didn't realize
that was acting. He never took an acting lesson.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
In all of his cartoons. When Mel wasn't performing all
the voices, his chemistry with his fellow actors was apparent,
none more so than with Arthur Q. Bran, the voice
behind Bugs's adversary Elmer Fudd. Here's Brian and Blank rehearsing
in the studio for the sixth minute and forty nine
(23:15):
second cartoon classic released in theaters on July sixth, nineteen
fifty seven, What's Opera Doc. The short is informally referred
to as Kill the Rabbit after the line sung by
Fud to the tune of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.
Speaker 8 (23:32):
I will do it with my spear and magic helmet.
Speaker 9 (23:35):
Your spear and magic helmet, Bwin, magic helmet, magic hillmt helmet,
magic killmet magic.
Speaker 6 (23:43):
Yes, it's a shame. That was going well almost.
Speaker 12 (23:48):
I don't think I'm right yet, and I'm going to
kill the rabbit, have I That's fine, that's fine, Okay.
Speaker 13 (23:53):
Go it.
Speaker 3 (23:54):
Melan Arthur acted out the combative relationship between bugs and
the tiptoing, shotgun wielding elm in over thirty cartoons over
the span of twenty years until Arthur's passing at the
age of sixty in nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 16 (24:11):
The vellye voie quiet, I'm hunting weapons.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
The classic voice of Elmer Fudd needed a replacement.
Speaker 15 (24:20):
Chris Freeling, one of the directors, said to me, no,
will you do a couple of lines for Elmer Fudd?
He says, I've tried others and they can't come close.
He so just turn to do a couple of lines.
He said, Oh, I don't t why, but I don't
know if I could do it. I'm He says, that's it.
Speaker 5 (24:38):
So I also he came over.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Fudd Whereas audiences felt sorry for the witless Elmer Fudd,
the pint size, pea brained, ornery ombre named Yosemite Sam
evoked no sympathy at all. He was conceived as a
more challenging adversary for bugs. Bunny.
Speaker 9 (25:00):
You don't say, well, come here, shorty, come here. Don't
say I told you? But the This is a guy
in the next card that says he's the meanest toughest
at centric Cent, and he's got a seven shooting to
prove it. How's about that? There is oh blast, the
moment wide open?
Speaker 5 (25:20):
Nobody, Yeah, your.
Speaker 10 (25:24):
Sbody sail the roughest, toughest he mass nubbers tombre has
ever crossed a rio grande. I'm the fastest, gone north southeast.
Speaker 6 (25:37):
West of the pecos.
Speaker 8 (25:38):
I'm the y shet up?
Speaker 6 (25:42):
Did I hear someone say?
Speaker 9 (25:44):
Shut up?
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Why are you?
Speaker 3 (25:54):
By the late nineteen fifties, Mel was on top of
the world.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
And when we come back the final installment of this
hour long celebration of the life of Mel Blank, his
story continues here on our American Stories. What have I done?
Speaker 11 (26:13):
I've killed a rabbit.
Speaker 6 (26:17):
Poor little bunny, poor little labb.
Speaker 18 (26:30):
How do.
Speaker 6 (26:33):
Welcome to my shop.
Speaker 9 (26:34):
Let me cut him up, Let me shave you crap detelydly.
Speaker 13 (26:42):
Hey, you.
Speaker 9 (26:44):
Don't look so perplexed. Why would you be mixed? Can't
you see you're next? Yes, you're next? Yes, so next?
How about a nice clo shayeacher, whiskers to be hate,
lots of leather, lots of soap, So don't be you dope.
Now already border scraping, there's no use to try escaping,
yell and screaming, writ and raid.
Speaker 6 (27:03):
It's no use to mean a shave.
Speaker 8 (27:06):
Oh, I'll drow wo out, dame.
Speaker 6 (27:11):
Nice and clean.
Speaker 9 (27:13):
I'll told you your face looks like it might have gone
through a machine.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
And we continue with our American stories and the story
of mel Blank.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Although we never personally won an Academy award, his voice
earned Warner Brothers five oscars. Then, on the night of
January twenty fourth, nineteen sixty one, this happened.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
My mom called me. I was with friends. She says,
I didn't show up the recording session. She says, wait
a minute, the other phone was ringing. We had two lines.
It was UCLA hospital, saying that he hadn't been involved
in a head on collision on dead Man's Curve right
above Ucla, and they had taken him to UCLA after
they had to use a cutting torch to get him
out of the Aston Martin. It happened that a kid
(28:18):
driving a ninety eight Oldsmobile Great Big Car ran into
a small Aston Martin sports car and it just folded up.
They didn't expect him to live for the first twelve
thirteen days.
Speaker 19 (28:32):
I went to see him and it was really I
was shocked because he was wired up with kinds of
gadgets to keep him together. Noel told me that almost
every bone in his body was broken.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
He was unconscious for a long time. Finally a doctor
got an idea because my dad had a television in
his room and it was playing bugs bunny cart tunes.
So the doctor went over to the bed and clapped
his hands and said, bugs, can you hear me? Bugs?
Can you hear me? My dad goes, why s up?
Speaker 12 (29:09):
Dad?
Speaker 4 (29:10):
The first words that he uttered were of bugs. Then
he says, Porky, can you hear me? And he would
answer me, I can hear you. So he brought him
around doing the characters' voices before my dad was fully
awake as as himself.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Blake continued working for Warner Brothers, but also began providing
voices for television cartoons produced by Hannah Barbera. His most
famous role during this time was Barney Rubble from The Flintstones.
Speaker 6 (29:46):
Oh boy, wait, ol Fred, seize my new bowling ball.
Speaker 5 (29:49):
He'll bring my score up to at least a hundred.
Speaker 14 (29:52):
And of course he was missed spicely in The Jetsons.
Speaker 18 (29:56):
Send Up Jetson, Miss Gamma, Yes, sir, ready, mister Jetson.
Speaker 8 (30:00):
Right, Well, good luck.
Speaker 14 (30:08):
But I don't think any of the characters he did
in the later years of his life had the staying
power of anywhere near of the staying power of the
immortal Looney Tune characters.
Speaker 6 (30:22):
Everywhere you go, everybody knows the bugs Bunny. They don't
know now Blank, but they know Bud's funny, And everybody
knows Dad.
Speaker 13 (30:29):
I cannot tell you the quantity of fan mail he received,
And something really really phenomenal about him That man answered
every piece, of course one personally. He would call people,
he'd get a letter, Oh it's my daughter's birthday, she's
turning twelve. Her favorite character is Tweetybird. It would be
(30:51):
so terrific, sir.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
You know, if you ever have time, could you call
my daughter?
Speaker 13 (30:55):
And Mel would call these people from all over the
world and literally wish them happy birthday or happy anniversary
or whatever the celebration was.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
When he lived in Plaude l Ray or Pacific Palisades,
kids would come over every day and say, Mal, can
we have your autograph? Do some voices? And we'd have
kids at the door. I mean literally every day Halloween,
we'd have fifteen hundred to two thousand kids and he'd
give out signed little autographs and candy.
Speaker 13 (31:23):
The kids would always go to Mel in a Cell's
house because.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
They never knew who was going to answer the door. Yeah,
bugs are poor Gy.
Speaker 13 (31:32):
Or Peppy or Daffy or Wilie or road Runner. You
never know. So it was it was great to watch that.
It was really really wonderful.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
Here's legend of Hollywood's Golden Age. Kirk Douglas.
Speaker 6 (31:48):
The longer I'm in this business, the more I feel
that we we really are very lucky people.
Speaker 12 (31:57):
He goes, in a strange way, we obtained immortality, and
if you judge immortality by the pleasure that you've given
to others, I would certainly say that Mel Blank is
one of the greatest of the immortals.
Speaker 13 (32:19):
He devoted a lot of time and burn units for
Elian children, and I think he really had a great
effect in doing so, even if it made him feel
better for just a minute.
Speaker 6 (32:34):
He did.
Speaker 13 (32:36):
If he had to try to get him to leave
first of all, I mean he would spend all day
doing it. I mean there would be times I would say,
you know, well we've got to go. It's getting dark.
You know, we've got to get back on the road.
And when there were children and children, you know, in
that situation, he.
Speaker 4 (32:55):
You couldn't get him to bug away.
Speaker 5 (32:59):
If I saw and smile, that to me was payment themselves.
And if I could make them laugh when they had
been very sad, it was great payment to me.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
On May thirtieth, nineteen eighty eight, Mel Blank turned eighty,
who framed Roger Rabbit Premier that year, and Blank contributed
many voices to the Summer Blockbuster. A huge party was
thrown by Warner Brothers on its Burbank lot, and again
Mel was asked the same question he had been asked
every birthday since he turned sixty five, Mel when are
(33:36):
you going to retire. Mel's answer the day I drop,
that's when who'd want to quit making people laugh. On
July nineteen eighty nine, when he agreed to star in
a new commercial for Oldmobile, neither he nor his son
Noel would know that this would be his final performance.
(33:58):
Here's Nolan mel Bam inside the cutless Sierra. In between takes,
you'll hear Noel doing his father's characters' voices too. Growing up,
Mel train Noel on the voices so that when the
time came, he could take over for his father.
Speaker 6 (34:16):
Is that any Is that any good? We had a
new generation of oles?
Speaker 9 (34:19):
Yes, yeah, any man with the new generation of owlds.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
The director there is out pulling his hair, but we're
gonna do this commercial anyhow.
Speaker 9 (34:24):
What he oh, it's that one.
Speaker 4 (34:27):
It's not the art director? Well, how would you send
many Sam?
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Say this?
Speaker 6 (34:30):
We are a no generation of old.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
Look in the look at the dealer right there and
talk to him.
Speaker 6 (34:35):
We are the new generation of old.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
Why you heard that? You better believe it. We are,
and we're going to try to do this commercial. But
it's tough.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Anyway.
Speaker 6 (34:41):
We got this direction, he says, very simple. About twenty
seven hours.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
We had shot the osmobile commercial all day. It's not
your father's osemobile. And uh, I said, Dad, you're coughing
a little bit. Why don't you go to the doctor
and get your lungs cleared out. The doctor called me
and said, yeah, Mel's over here. And the doctor says, well,
I can keep him in the hospital overnight or just
give him an inhaler to get the cough out of it.
My dad said, no, let's stay in the hospital overnight.
(35:11):
It was a mistake, of course. He fell out of bed.
They forgot to put the bed rails up. He broke
his femur, got fed en while I into the brain
and was basically gone in forty eight hours. He was
still at the height of his career. He could still
do all the voices that he could before, and he
was still really terrific.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
Mel Blank lays to rest in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery
under a star of David. The epitaph on Blank's tombstone reads,
that's all folks. Mel Blank has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame at sixty three point eighty five
Hollywood Boulevard. He is the only person to have himself
(35:52):
and two of his characters on the Walk of Fame,
with both Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker receiving at the
only others to have received this honor are Walt Disney
as both himself and Mickey Mouse, Jim Hanson as both
himself and Kermit the Frog, and Mike Myers as both
himself and Shrek. Mel Blank is one of the pillars
(36:16):
of entertainment, an actor whose talents can still be marveled
at today.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
My dad's legacy is laughter. He wanted to make people
feel good and laugh out loud. The thing I miss
most about my dad is my dad and his personality,
being the great father, listening to me, never doubting me,
asking good questions, being great to my mom. The fact
(36:45):
that he was such a marvelous human being, not only
to the world but to his family. That's what I
remember most. I can turn his voice on any time
and see one of the cartoons, so I can really
bring him back to life at any time I want
to to. I hear his voice every day.
Speaker 6 (37:05):
It's all folks, and.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
A terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling by
our own Greg Hengler.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
And what stories you heard?
Speaker 1 (37:14):
That story about what happened to him on January twenty fourth,
nineteen sixty one, an accident in his Aston Martin on
dead Man's Curve over UCLA Hospital and he's out for
a while, and then the doctor gets this idea to
talk to him and address him as bugs, bunny bugs,
can you hear me?
Speaker 2 (37:33):
And Mel Blank's first words were, what's up?
Speaker 6 (37:35):
Doc?
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Amazing?
Speaker 1 (37:38):
They don't know mel Blank is a relative, said, but
they know bugs. And my goodness, the stories about him
with the fans and with the sick children, with the
hurting children, how he just couldn't leave them. What a
heart the man had, and ultimately how he dies in
an accident falling out of a hospital bed. What the
son said was so true. His legacy was laughter. I
(38:01):
loved the line from Mel Blank. He said, when I
see a person smile, that's my payment itself. The story
of Mel Blank, the man behind three thousand cartoon voices
here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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