What Noise Does a Pinto Make?

Walt Disney didn’t like his cartoon voices to get credit, something to do with spoiling the illusion that the characters were like real people. Bugs Bunny is no less loved because people know Mel Blanc was his voice, but the logic at the Disney studio was otherwise.

Still, there was occasionally a newspaper feature on the voices in the studio’s animated shorts. Here’s one from November 13, 1946 about Pinto Colvig, perhaps known best as the original voice of Goofy, as he attended the premiere of Song of the South in Atlanta.

Colvig already had a full career by the time he arrived at Disney from the Walter Lantz studio in 1930. He had been a cartoonist at the San Francisco Bulletin, performed in vaudeville (clarinet a speciality). He freelanced on radio, later providing the original, pre-war, sound of Jack Benny’s car. After his cartoon career took him to Paramount and MGM then back to Disney, he starred on records and Los Angeles television as Bozo the Clown. Colvig died in 1967.

Colvig appeared at schools, hospitals and on the radio in Atlanta during the week of the premiere. Clarence Nash (Donald Duck) went with him. So did Adriana Caselotti. I don’t believe she was involved with Song of the South, but as the voice of Snow White about ten years earlier, she’d be a popular draw.

This story is self-explanatory. It’s nice to see Colvig get some ink. He was a funny man by all accounts.



Meet Film’s Noise Man Of Renown—Mr. Colvig
By KATHERINE BARNWELL
Howls, groans, barks, yelps, put-puts, pops and assorted nameless noises have blended not too harmoniously with the hum of polite conversation at most of the “Song of the South” social festivities here.
“What’s that?” has been the customary question posed by Atlanta matrons bejeweled a la premier, as these unexpected sound effects exploded in their midst. The answer, which could be swiftly supplied by Walt Disney and company, was simple:
“That’s Pinto . . . Pinto Colvig.”
Explaining who Pinto Colvig is, however, is not so simple.
Pinto is Pluto the Pup and Goofy the Hick. He is Grumpy of the Seven Dwarfs and the “soul kiss” of Snow White and the Prince. He is Dopey’s hiccups and the Practical Pig of the Three Little Pigs. He is the Hound of the Baskervilles and the belch of the bugs. He is a New York subway and an Argentine bull. He is a train or a hay bailer or a mosquito.
He is Hollywood’s soundmaker par excellence.
In Atlanta for the premier simply because he is the voice of innumerable voices in Disney cartoondom, Colvig shared his unique talent, both when requested and when not. He can’t help making queer noises, because they are part of him, he said.
A tall, loose-joined, ex-circus performer, Colvig has an elastic face. He can blow it up or sink it in. He can stretch it vertically or horizontally. He does all of these things while producing sound effects, and the cartoonists, he explained, copy many of his expressions in drawing the animals he speaks for.
How did he get that way?v “When I was a little child,” quipped he, “my mother put a crazy quilt over me, and I’ve been crazy ever since.”
Colvig claimed he has no favorites among the animated characters for which he speaks. But he said that “Goofy,” who is the epitome of all the “hicks” in the world, is the easiest to portray, explaining:
“Guess that’s because I’m a cornfed hick myself.”
Pluto the Pup is probably the most popular animal for which Colvig vocalizes. Being able to bark like a dog has its advantages, Pluto’s voice added, since “it scares the burglars away.”
“My cocker spaniel and I both bark when we suspect burglars are around,” Colvig barked. “But there’s no professional jealousy between my dog and me. My dog figures that the more his master barks, the more kennel rations we’ll both have.”
Colvig is 54 years old—a self-styled “juvenile delinquent in my second childhood.” Contrary to Hollywood custom, he has been married for 31 years to one wife and he’s one up on Crosby when it comes to boys. He has five.
Although Colvig makes most of his sounds with his lips, breath and voice, he has a battered old trombone, for which he gave $2 in a Los Angeles hock shop, that he uses to produce metallic sounds if needed. He figures the $2 instrument alone has grossed him $22,000 to date.
Colvig thinks his job is one of the easiest in the world. He has no difficulty producing the wildest facial contortions or the weirdest sounds.
“The hardest thing for me to do,” he gulped, “is at act natural.”