Melvin Jerome Blanc 1908 – 1989 was an American voice actor and radio personality referred to as “The Man of a Thousand Voices” and regarded as the greatest, most influential voice actor of all time.1
Blanc began his career during the Golden Age of Radio. He provided character voices and vocal sound effects for comedy radio programs, including Jack Benny, Abbott & Costello, and Burns and Allen. Later, he expanded to animation, providing the voices of Bugs Bunny, Dadff Duck, Tweety, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Speedy Gonzales, Foghorn Leghorn, the Tasmanian Devil, Pepé Le Pew, Porky Pig, and Elmer Fudd from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons.2 Blanc voiced characters for Hanna-Barberas’ television cartoons, including Barney Rubble and Dino on The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely on The Jetsons. 3 Blanc was the voice of Woody Woodpecker from 1940 to 1941. He provided the screams for Tom & Jerry from 1963 to 1967.
Blanc was born in 1908, in San Francisco, birth name Melvin Jerome Blank. He grew up in San Francisco’s Western Addition neighborhood and later in Portland, Oregon.4 He had an early fondness for voices and dialect. He began practicing at the age of 10 and claimed that he changed the spelling of his name when he was 16, from Blank to Blanc, because a teacher told him that he would amount to nothing and be like his name, a “blank.” After graduating from high school, he divided his time between leading an orchestra, becoming the youngest conductor in the country at the age of 19 and performing “shtick” in vaudeville shows around the northwest. 3
In 1927, Blanc began his radio career. His ability to provide voices for multiple characters attracted attention. He moved to LA in 1932, where he was a regular on the NBC’s The Jack Benny Program in various roles. In 1942, Radio Daily wrote that Blanc “specialized in over 57 voices, dialects, and intricate sound effects.”3 By 1946, he was appearing on over fifteen programs in various supporting roles. His success on The Jack Benny Program led to his own radio show.
Blanc became a very prominent vocal artist for Warner Bros., voicing a wide variety of the Looney Tunes characters, including Bugs Bunny, who was known for eating carrots frequently, especially while saying his catchphrase “Eh, what’s up, doc?” To follow this sound with the animated voice, Blanc would bite into a carrot and then quickly spit into a spittoon.4 Throughout his career, Blanc, aware of his talents, protected the rights to his voice characterizations contractually and legally. Voice actors at the time rarely received screen credits, but Blanc was an exception.
In January, 1961, Blanc was driving alone when his sports car was involved in a head-on collision on Sunset Boulevard. His legs and his pelvis were fractured as a result. He was in a coma and non-responsive. After two weeks, one of Blanc’s neurologists at tried a different approach: He asked, “How are you feeling today, Bugs Bunny?” After a slight pause, Blanc answered, in a weak voice, “Eh … just fine, Doc. How are you?” The doctor then asked if Tweety was there, too. “I tawt I taw a puddy tat”, was the reply.5 His accident, one of 26 in the preceding two years at the intersection known as Dead Man’s Curve resulted in the city funding the restructuring of curves there.
At the time of the accident, Blanc was serving as the voice of Barney Rubble in The Flintstones. The show’s producers set up recording equipment in Blanc’s hospital room and later at his home to allow him to work from there. Some of the recordings were made while he was in full-body cast as he lay flat on his back with the other Flintstones co-stars gathered around him. He returned to The Jack Benny Program to film the program’s 1961 Christmas show, moving around by crutches and a wheelchair.6
Blanc began smoking at least one pack of cigarettes per day at the age of nine and continued up through 1985, having quit smoking after being diagnosed with emphysema. He was later admitted to hospital in Los Angeles in May 1989 when they noticed he had been coughing profusely while shooting a commercial.7 Blanc died at age 81 from complications related to both illnesses. He is interred in Hollywood Forever Cemetery, section 13, Pinewood section, plot 149. His will specified that his headstone read “THAT’S ALL FOLKS” 3
Blanc said that Sylvester the Cat was the easiest character for him to voice, because “[he’s] just my normal speaking voice with a spray at the end. Thuffering thuccotash.” A doctor who examined Blanc’s throat found that he possessed unusually thick, powerful vocal chords that gave him an exceptional range and compared them to those of opera singer Enrico Caruso.3
For his contributions to the radio industry, Blanc has a star on the Holywood Walk of Fame at 6385 Hollywood Boulevard, at the corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga Blvd. His character Bugs Bunny was also awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in 1985.8
in front of a Popeyes?
1 Harmetz, Aljean.“Man of a Thousand Voices.” November 24, 1988.
Retrieved July 8, 2016.
2 “Mel Blanc.”Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved: February 5, 2013.
3 Blanc, Mel and Philip Bashe. That’s Not All, Folks! New York: Warner
Books. (formerly Time Warner Book Group) 1988.
4 Lawson, Tim and Alisa Persons. The Magic Behind The Voices: A Who’s
Who of Cartoon Voice Actors. Jackson: UPMississippi. p 72. 2004.
5 Horowitz, Daniel. “What’s Up, Doc?” Radiolab. Nov 6, 2012. Retrieved
October 27, 2014.
6 “Mel Blanc is Back at Work.” The Vernon Daily Record. Associated Press.
November 24, 1961. p 3. Retrieved December 11, 2016. Newspapers.com
7 Flint, Peter B. “Mel Blanc, Who Provided Voices for 3,000 Cartoons, is
Dead at 81.” The New York Times. July 11, 1989. Retrieved June 26, 2008.
8 “Bugs Bunny.” Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Retrieved June 28, 2012
Revised from: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Blanc
