At Home With Bob and Ray

Timing can be crucial if you’re a publisher of puffery.

A fan magazine can invent a lovey-dovey story about your favourite couple, only to see it evaporate when they split up before the presses can get it into newsstands. We’ve posted a story about Jack Benny’s great relationship with writer Harry Conn which not only didn’t exist, the two engaged in a I-quit-no-you’re-fired routine soon after it was published. We’ve also put up a piece about Bill Cullen and his wife who would soon divorce.

And then there’s this story about the home lives of Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding. It has a cover date of March 1953. That’s the same year Elliott divorced the wife you see in the photos below. He’s quoted in Dave Pollock’s book Bob and Ray, Keener Than Most Persons that his marriage “was grinding to an end” even as Radio-TV Mirror printed this feature article. The photos below accompanied the story.

BOB and RAY — SPICE OF OUR LIFE
By CHRIS KANE

ONE IS slight and blonde. (That's Bob Elliott.) The other's larger, darker, with an upper lip where his moustache used to be. (That's Ray Goulding.)
Instead of two minds with a single thought, they have half a mind between them. At least that's the impression they try to give.
"Bob's good on the ukulele," Ray says.
"Ray's good on the elevator," Bob says.
They came from Boston—full of beans, naturally—to take over NBC, which still hasn't recovered from the shock. The boys often introduce their show by announcing simply: "Bob and Ray take great pleasure in presenting the National Broadcasting Company."
Before they presented the National Broadcasting Company, with its glorious network facilities, they labored on a local show where they depicted the activities of Mary Backstage, Noble Wife. Mary was a girl from a deserted mining town out west who came to the big city to find happiness as the wife of Handsome Harry Backstage, idol of a million other women. Something like that, anyhow. All the characters were played by Bob and Ray—the scripts completely ad-libbed as they went along.
The boys are still satirizing anything and everything—but that ain't all. They'll even make fun of themselves. Ray claims he has a Shetland pony, Bob claims he designs his own socks.
"I own the Empire State Building," Ray goes on. "When my friends see me coming, they say, 'Here's old Money-Bags!'" "I get horse-hives," Bob mutters. "I look at a horse, and my nose runs."
"Bob was voted Most Likely To Succeed," Ray cries.
"Ray was voted Most Likely To," Bob parries.



Ask them to tell you a few simple facts about themselves, never mind the clowning, and they look pained. "Nothing to tell," they say. Then Ray's phone rings. "Joe's on the phone," says somebody. "My brother Joe?" says Ray. Then he turns to the interviewer with a simple fact. "I have a brother Joe."
Besides a brother Joe, he's got a wife and three children. He met his wife Liz (née Mary Elizabeth Leader, of Springfield, Ohio) in the Army. It sounds like a joke, but isn't. She was a dietitian, he was an instructor at the Officers Candidate School in Fort Knox, Kentucky.
"We got married on a three-day pass," Ray says. "At a little spa in Indiana. A sweet little church around the corner —around the corner from an arsenal."
As he warms to his story, he embroiders, "General Patton was riding down the street outside crying, 'Blood and Guts!'" "Their song," butts in Bob, "is 'Stars and Stripes Forever.'"

Ray hangs his head. "Every time we hear 'Reveille,' we look at each other tenderly—"
Ray and Liz were married in '45, came to Boston in 1946, after Ray's discharge from the Army. He'd been a radio announcer in Lowell, Massachusetts (where he was born and raised), after he got out of high school, so it was logical that he'd go back to being a radio announcer. He ended up at Station WHDH in Boston, where, by a laughable coincidence, one Bob Elliott was also announcing. More properly, Bob Elliott was disc-jockeying.
Bob was a Boston boy who'd had a fling at New York. Went to acting school there, and got a job at NBC. He was a genuine NBC page boy. Escorted studio visitors to their seats. As a lifework, this left something to be desired, so 1941 found the pride of Boston back home at WHDH.
In 1943, Bob married Jane Underwood, who was on the air for WHDH, too. Ask Bob what Jane did on the air, and he says vaguely, "Oh, women's stuff—"
From 1943 to 1946, Bob spent in the Infantry.
In 1946, he met his other half—professionally speaking. As we said, Bob was disc-jockeying over WHDH. This Ray Goulding used to come in and read the newscasts. After the news they'd kid around a little, and soon proper Bostonians were howling improperly at the wit and jollity and fun and games.
New York was their next stop.

Bob and Jane now live in a three-room-and-terrace apartment in the East Sixties. They have two cats—live—and one sailfish—stuffed—over the mantel. That is, the fish is over the mantel, the, cats are not. Speaking of cats—to which Ray, by the way, is allergic—Bob and these animals are on positively intimate terms. Bob once broke his leg, went to bed with the cast on it, and woke up the next morning to find that a lady cat had had kittens all over his splints.
His sailfish, while not as imaginative as his cats, has an interesting history, too. Bob was in Miami last summer, had never been sailfishing before, engaged in mortal combat with this monster fish, brought it all the way home to New York to gape over the fireplace, and now decries the whole affair. "That?" he says. "Oh, I just happened to go fishing—"
The Elliotts, though comfortably settled in New York, still hang on to their house and Ray—Spice of Our Life in Boston—or, rather, Cohasset. Bob literally hangs on, weekends. He goes up and shingles the place, though it looks as though he's going to be much too busy ever to spend much time in it any more.
Ray and Liz and their kids live in a rented house in Harbor Acres, which is out on Long Island, near Port Washington. Raymond, Jr., is seven, Tommy's going on four, and the baby, Barbara, is a year-and-a-half old.

All are healthy, good-natured types and, besides health, Raymond's got ingenuity. Father Ray's been buying handsome tools for a long time—a good shovel, a stout hammer—and one by one they disappear.
He suspects Raymond of swapping them for Buck Rogers guns and atomic chemistry sets.
"Where are my pick and shovel?"—or words to that effect—he'll say to his son and heir.
Raymond will favor him with a pleasant smile. "I don't know."
"I bet the next-door neighbors' kids have a fine set of tools," Ray says bitterly.
"They go to bed at seven," he tells you about his sons. And adds, "They're still running around the bedroom at eleven."
Tommy, who's exhausted from staying up so late, has developed a new trick. He gets up in the morning, has his breakfast, goes back to bed around nine, and sleeps till noon. Then he rises, prepared for the night's festivities. Barbara's too young to know what's going on, but both boys get upset if anything happens to Ray on TV. The night Bob "shoved Ray out of a fifteen-story window," Raymond and Tommy tore out of the room screaming. "It was," says Ray, "a pretty hectic night at my house."
Ray's hobby is photography (he doesn't develop his own stuff, doesn't have the time); Bob's is painting.

Bob is, in fact, a frustrated artist. He never studied the craft particularly, but, if he hadn't had a radio job when he got out of the Army, he might have turned into another Winslow Homer. He likes to do seascapes, and he once exhibited. Well, that is, not exactly exhibited ... it seems there was an ad club show in Boston. ...
Anyhow, if that fish wasn't over the mantel, a seascape would be.
Bob also plays the ukulele, bringing to this effort the same lack of training, and the same gusto, with which he paints.
Ray can get a few notes out of a small toy trumpet, but they all sound like "Taps," even when he's doing "White Christmas." And, besides, the only time he really gets any pleasure out of trumpeting is when Bob's talking to somebody, and he, Ray, sees an opportunity to confuse an issue or two.
Which is one reason why venturing into their NBC office is an act of recklessness. They sit behind their desks looking more or less normal, but don't let that fool you. Ray's nameplate is upside down. "For people who come in upset," he says. Bob's feet are waving in the breeze. "I was wearing these shoes when I got into show business," he says. "Three weeks ago."
"We're getting a new sponsor," Ray says gravely. "His products are right out of this world."
"Available only on Mars," adds Bob, "and perhaps Neptune. Our show will be out of this world, too."
That's the way it goes—and so do you. As you reel out, the tinny music of a toy trumpet follows you. It's playing "Taps."

What's Zoo in the World of Puns

Tex Avery made some of the greatest cartoons of all time. And then there are some others that...well, they’re full of something you associate more with Nebraska than Texas—corn.

There was a temptation in the 1930s and into the ‘40s to engage in the most obvious puns possible when coming up with spot gag cartoons. Tex and writer Mel Millar fell for it in A Day at the Zoo (1939). Here are five. I probably don’t even have to say what they are; you’ll get it looking at the drawing.



A pack of camels. Carl Stalling gets into the punny mood by underscoring the scene with The Campbells Are Coming. Camel. Campbell. Get it?



A North American Greyhound. (Note the Greyhound bus logo on the side). Stalling plays California, Here I Come in the background.



Two bucks.



And five sense. Stalling hokes it up with We’re in the Money in the background.



Here are two friendly elks, played by Mel Blanc and (I think) Danny Webb. Background tune: For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow. The rotund member of the Elks Club has an elk’s tooth on his watch chain; teeth and watch chains were standard any time there was an elk gag on radio.

At least we don’t get a dog/tree gag.

Gil Warren is the narrator and if you ever see a version of this with original titles, it’ll say that Ham Hamilton was the animator.

In the Money, Out of Frame

A couple of characters disappear for a frame in the Warners cartoon We’re In The Money (1933).

The head and arm of a little girl doll vanishes when blowing a tuba.



And a pair of long underwear bapping its flap to the title song hides for a frame.



As this is a Harman-Ising cartoon, one of the toy men does the same slide-step dance as Bosko (twice).

Friz Freleng and Larry Martin get the animation credits. Friz’ status in the business is legendary. Martin isn’t as well known. He was a member of the Los Angeles Times Junior Cartoon Club in 1926 and ’27. A Mary J. Martin lived at the same address as given in a 1926 edition of the Times. Martin’s claim to fame was being the model for Dishonest John of the Beany and Cecil puppet show/cartoons. Beany’s creator, Bob Clampett, once explained how he worked under Martin when Harman and Ising worked for Leon Schlesinger, drew caricatures of Martin as an 1890s melodrama villain and labelled them Dirty Dalton. Clampett said Martin later came to work for him at Snowball in 1961 and when asked about model sheets for Dishonest John was told to look in the mirror. Martin moved with Harman and Ising to MGM, but was at the Schlesinger studio in 1937 (Variety reported Martin’s wife was seriously ill). I haven’t been able to find any other information about him.

No Benny Ban In Boston

Jack Benny made more money out of vaudeville when it was dying than when it was living.

During the early years of his radio show, Benny would pack up his cast and take it on location to some city and do a broadcast. But the real reason for the visit was to bring his tour company to town, appear for several days at a local theatre and rake in the Depression dollars. In Benny’s last real vaudeville gig before radio in 1932, he got paid a lot less than headliner Lou Holtz. Now, his popularity on radio allowed him to charge a theatre as much as he could get away with, and record crowds showed up, adding even more cash to his bank account. As the song goes, “Ol' Man Depression, you are through, you done us wrong!”

So it was the Benny entourage stopped in Boston at the end of April 1936 where Jack talked to reporters. The Boston Globe’s story is interesting in what it doesn’t say. A good portion of the interview is about Mary Livingstone, who isn’t even there. She couldn’t be bothered to wake up early enough to catch the train to Boston. If you think about how often he toured in his later years, Jack spent an awful lot of his life away from Mary; at home, they had separate rooms. Yet, as far as anyone knows, they were in love for the rest of their lives. The other interesting comment is the one about not depending on an author and writing a lot of radio material himself. Benny had plenty of highly-paid writers he depended upon through his career. But when Jack made this particular comment, his writer, Harry Conn, had walked out on him only weeks before. The “official” reason was Conn was sick, but soon he surfaced in someone else’s employment, telling anyone who would republish his comments that he made Jack Benny, a claim that proved ridiculous.

Jack talked of retiring. He never did. He worked until he died. Mary, of course, pulled out when she finally convinced Jack to let her.

This story appeared on April 24, 1936, two days before the broadcast.

Jack Benny Can’t “Take It Easy”
Radio Topnotcher Finds Movies Relief
By MARJORY ADAMS
Jack Benny would like to take a vacation from being “radio’s funniest comedian.” He is surfeited with being elected the most popular radio attraction on the air, and he thinks he would enjoy a year away from the ether waves. Motion pictures seem to him a welcome relief—a real holiday—after the “mental agony” of putting on a successful radio program every week.
And Mary Livingston, his wife, who is considered one of the most amusing and popular personalities on the air, admits that she would like being just Mrs Jack Benny for a change. If Jack Benny decided tomorrow that his charming little wife should retire to private life, to be merely the mother of little Joan Benny, Miss Livingston wouldn’t say a word in objection. Her idea of being on the radio is merely to please her husband.
Mary Still Surprised

Yesterday afternoon Mr Benny received the press at his Ritz-Carlton suite. Mary hadn’t been able to get up early enough to make the train, so she wasn’t due in Boston until many hours later. However, Mr Benny did all the talking for the Benny duo. And he was insistent upon one thing—that Mary Livingston Benny never was a show person, and still hasn’t any idea what being a celebrity is all about. Each time she comes to a new city and people press about her admiringly, she is enchanted anew. It is like becoming a fairy princess overnight, and Mrs Benny can’t quite realize that appearing briefly on her husband’s radio hour has won her this delightful acclaim.
This week, commencing this morning, Jack and Mary are starring in a revue at the Metropolitan Theatre. Mary enjoys the excitement very much. But she would be just as happy at home, listening to her husband expound his theories on entertainment. In other words, Mary Livingston is just a home girl who has become a public character and can’t quite realize it yet.
Can’t “Take It Easy”
Mr Benny says that being on the radio, and trying to life up to being a star, is the hardest job a man can have. He would rather be “among the first few headliners,” since it would mean less worry and trouble for him. If you stand at the top you must try to stay there, and it is always very difficult.
Eventually you are going to topple over and some one else will take your place as radio’s most popular star. That will make news, too, and it is the first step toward oblivion.
“I can’t take it easy,” complained Mr Benny, “and that is one of the reasons why I’d like to go into pictures. The film stars may tell you how hard they work, but it is all bunk. The hardest work is mental, as everybody knows. And there’s no mental agony connected with a film role. It would be just another vacation for Mary and me.”
When Jack’s radio author is ill it is Mr Benny himself who must step into the gap. “If I depended upon an author then my act would be weak,” he said. “A star must write a lot of his stuff himself if he expects to remain a star very long. Otherwise, his author can switch to a new personality, at an increased salary, and make a bum out of the former headliner.”

On the evening of the 23rd, Jack and Mary were apparently expected to appear at the Kirkland House Spring Dance where Cab Calloway was playing but weren’t spotted, according to the Harvard Crimson.

Not all of Jack’s radio cast was in his stage show. Orchestra leader Johnny Green found a way to make some extra cash by spending time at a Boston department store autographing his Brunswick 78s for customers who bought them. Mary wasn’t generally in the show and, more often than not, Benny employed a vocalist other than whomever was on the radio show. The Chicken Sisters, a hardy concept that Benny utilised in television and years later in Vegas, included Blanche Stewart, who was a regular secondary player on the radio show through most of the ‘30s and then again in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. Who assembled the act? Did Jack audition people, such as the acrobats? Questions I can’t answer.

This review of the opening night of the revue was published in the Globe on April 25th.

Jack Benny’s quiet humor, his engaging personality, and the delightfully “dizzy” poetry of Mary Livingston hit the spot in superlative vein with audiences at the Metropolitan Theatre yesterday where a record for attendance was equalled only by the record of enthusiasm with which these stars of the radio were greeted.
The fact that Mr Benny and his “poetess” wife were in Boston a comparatively short time ago has not the least dimmed their drawing power nor the responsiveness of their devoted and loyal boosters.

At any rate, Jack was right at home, cavorting with the very clever Liazeed troup of Arabian tumblers and acrobats; playing his beloved violin, acting as “straight” man for the famous Chicken Sisters, and praising the singing of golden voiced Kenny Baker. Mary Livingston had a poem about Boston for her local audiences, in which she managed to combine beauties of fish cakes and Boston girls, Harvard University and Boston baked beans and other lyrical outbursts. She also sang “Eeeny Meeny Miny Mo”—which is just the sort of song one would pick out for this fluffy-minded young woman.
Opening with the spectacular Stuart Morgan dancers, the revue this week is a masterly presentation of first rate entertainment and excellent showmanship. Jack Benny doesn’t make his admirers wait until the final number of appear, but strolls out earl to act as master of ceremonies and to wise-crack throughout the remainder of the revue. There is no doubt but that Jack understands what audiences like, and he gives it to them with as little flurry as possible, to their gratifying appreciation.

One person’s name that is noticeable by its absence is Don Wilson’s. All that was mentioned on the show was that “Don Wilson couldn’t make it;” no reason was given. Someone else filled in for him, and therein is an interesting tale. The fill-in is Pat Weaver. Yes, the same Pat Weaver who later became president of NBC. In 1932, Weaver had been a continuity writer (including comedy) at KHJ Los Angeles before moving into producing shows. He was transferred to KFRC San Francisco where he did the same thing. In October 1935, he arrived at Young & Rubicam in New York where he was soon supervising its radio shows. He was directly involved with the Fred Allen show but oversaw Benny’s programme for General Foods. That means Weaver was the man at the agency in charge of Benny when Harry Conn walked out. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Weaver reacted to help protect Y&R’s investment by taking the train to Boston, helped Benny write the April 26th show on an emergency basis, then, as he had been on the air in California, filled in for Wilson that evening. It’s the only time the man later credited with creating NBC’s Today and Tonight shows had any direct, on-air involvement with one of NBC’s top radio comedians.

Praise For Silent Cartoons

Cartoons are better than live action films? That’s what Creighton Peet posited in The New Republic in 1929.

Peet blamed the sorry state of live action films—and we’re talking silent films—on the dictates of the Hays Office where right must triumph in the end and irreverence of any kind was forbidden. On the other hand, Peet appreciated the inventiveness of cartoons where question marks that sprouted above heads could be used as props, and trees with huge grins could grow fruit, pick it and eat it. Felix the Cat comes in for special praise.

In some ways, Peet’s article was already out of date by the time it was published. Sound had come in and it changed the narrative and focus of both live action and animated films. Within a few years, Popeye would never grab a question mark and use it as a hook. Walt Disney got hung up on “the illusion of life.” Felix himself disappeared, as did the studio where he worked. And while cartoons were subject to censorial review, the situation was nothing like it became in the TV age, where studios and networks were shamed and pressured to protect stupid children from themselves by eliminating anything that could possibly be duplicated in real life (a character hitting another with a hammer, for example).

Snippets of Peet’s article have been reprinted in Leonard Maltin’s Of Mice and Magic and Norman Klein’s 7 Minutes. I can’t find a copy of The New Republic containing it, but here’s a version reprinted in the Baltimore Sun of August 19, 1929. Whether it’s complete, I don’t know.

The Cartoon Comedy
A Spirited And Spritely Defence Of Screen Dramas Involving The Remarkable Adventures Of Felix Cat
(By Creighton Peet, in the New Republic)
When it comes to “pure cinema,” “visual flow,” “graphic representation,” “the freedom of the cinematic medium,” and all the other things learned foreign cinema enthusiasts talk about, nothing that Jannings or Lubitsch or Murnau or Greta Garbo or Rin Tin Tin can do has more of a roll of celluloid’s chance in hell beside Felix Cat and the other animated cartoons. . . .
Unhampered by any such classical limitations as dramatic unities, or even such customary necessities as the laws of gravity, common sense and possibility, the animated drawing is the only artistic medium ever discovered which is really “free.” And this in spite of the fact that it is only an eight-minute tid-bit thrown in at the end of an epic love drama while the audience is being changed. . . .

Careening wildly through three dimensions of space—or even four or five, for all I know—skating on the furthest edge of plausibility, the little black cartoon cat is undismayed by any of the facts of life which might worry a more substantial feline of fur and claws. Gayly, impertinently, he chins himself on the vacant air, hoisting himself into a world of innumerable and elastic dimensions and limitless possibilities, in which every tree and stone has not only a potential life but a complete set of emotions. . . .
To give you a better notion of the freedom with which the cartoon characters slip from one element to another, it may be to the point to sketch a few of these feline scenarios.
For instance, playing in a football game, the little cat finds himself about to be overtaken by a horde of immense animals; he pulls of his ears, sticks them on his tail as the blades of a propeller and soars away to a triumphant touchdown . . . .
In one of Oswald’s fluid dramas, he appears as a very, very love-sick cat. His lady, however, will have none of him and so his little heart swells up to the bursting point, standing out from his chest like a balloon. At last it does break, falling in a shower of little pieces at his feet. Is this the end of Oswald? Certainly not! Philosophically gathering up the scraps, he opens up a little door in his chest, drops the pieces back in place and all is well again. . . .
The ordinary film is now unusually an adventure in propriety, if such a thing is possible. You, the audience, know—and with what tedious certainty--that the familiar and much published “stars,” make and female—the press agent so made he them—will survive at the end, and they will be rich and that they will be united in lawful wedlock. You even know that Virtue will triumph, that Motherhood, Religion and the Government will triumph. You further know that the Irish, the Jews, the Baptists, the British, the French, the Christian Scientists, the Mexicans, the Osteopaths, the Chinese and all other groups capable of supporting press agents who will send out severe letters will be represented in a sweet and noble light. The result of all this is a pretty stiff and formal genuflection in the direction of Mohammed Will Hays’ minaret.
Yes, the cartoon comedy seems to be the only pungent, impertinent and sudden thing that ever reaches the average screen, and the little black cat, bouncing about in his fantastic cosmos, one of the few sparks of vitality in a world of insistent proprieties.

Holiday Highlights

The new year is being celebrated at the start of the Warners cartoon Holiday Highlights, directed by Tex Avery and narrated by KFWB announcer Gil Warren. We’re greeted with double-exposure shots.



Here’s the little New Year. “Hey, little man! Can’t you say something to the folks here?”



The infant obeys the narrator’s order, standing up and screaming out “Happy New Year” over and over in a very adult voice (provided by Mel Blanc). His job done, he toddles off again.



A year later, Tex would likely be celebrating as he was at MGM and away from weak spot gag cartoons like this one.

Gil Warren was identified through the research of Keith Scott. Warren narrated two other cartoons for Avery at Warners, then joined him at MGM, as the trades announced he had been signed for You Auto Be in Pictures, which was renamed Car of Tomorrow.

Gilman Colin Warren Rankin was born on April 17, 1911 at 8 Fenelon Street, Boston. His family relocated after World War One to Nogales, Arizona and then to Santa Monica. His father, also named Gil, was convicted of first degree robbery in a high-profile case in 1928 and sentenced to seven years in San Quentin. That’s likely why he took a new surname when he went into professional acting.

He was a graduate of Santa Monica High School and Los Angeles City College. He had been acting at the Gateway Players Theatre when he arrived at KFWB in December 1936, the same month as Arthur Q. Bryan, the voice of Elmer Fudd.

Warren left the station in September 1942 to join the OWI-affiliated shortwave station KWID in San Francisco. He entered the U.S. Marine Corps in February 1943 and served in the South Pacific and Phillipines with the 1st Marine Air Wing. Warren rejoined KFWB in May 1946. He landed the lead in the TV Western The Man in Black in August 1950, but his career was suddenly interrupted when he was recalled into service with the rest of the U.S. Marine, albeit briefly. The last reference I can find to him as Gil Warren is in late 1954 when he went back into television. It was at this point he decided to go professionally by his real name. He appeared in movies (including Midnight Cowboy), stage plays, and was doing commercial voice-overs as late as 1979. Warren died on October 31, 1993.

My Skeleton is You

Like any good silent Max Fleischer character, Koko the Clown morphs in front of a mirror in Koko’s Haunted House (1928).



He becomes a cat.



Then he becomes a skeleton and collapses from fright.



No matter. His skeleton takes over his body.



Max Fleischer is the only one to get credit on these imaginative Inkwell films, other than producer Alfred Weiss.

Mel Blanc on Mel Blanc

It seems odd that there was a time when people had to be told who Mel Blanc was. It was a time before there were adults who had watched Warner Bros. cartoons daily on TV, over and over again. It was a time before Blanc almost died in a car crash (an event which brought him his first front-page publicity).

September 4, 1960 fell during that time. And that’s the date when the New York Herald Tribune profiled him in an unbylined article in its weekend entertainment magazine. Cartoons were for kids, so the feature story only touched briefly on animation. In fact, the pictures of Blanc accompanying the article hearken back to an earlier time—when Blanc played the Train Conductor (Jack Benny), Pedro the Mexican (Judy Canova) and the Happy Postman (Burns and Allen) on radio.

It’s interesting Mel would tell the writer he wasn’t interested in starring in a sitcom. Blanc had already done that—in radio—and the show was a failure. And despite his claims he had more work than he could handle, it didn’t stop him from accepting a regular role on The Flintstones, which hadn’t debuted when this article was written (though the show was already on ABC’s schedule and Blanc had cut soundtracks for it).

By the way, the “sound of a giraffe” was no sound at all. The January 9, 1955 Benny script, after some silence, had Blanc pipe up and declare that giraffes don’t make any noise.

Mel Blanc
“Man Of Many Voices”
THE name of Mel Blanc means little to readers of television news, and his face, seen only on the Jack Benny program in minor comedy roles (see photos opposite page), has just a vague and passing familiarity.
But while there is little likelihood that Blanc would stop any traffic on the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street, chances are that you can’t turn on your radio or TV set a single day without hearing his voice.
For Mel Blanc is one of those rare, gifted, behind-the-scenes specialists whose forte is unusual voices and sound effects. He’s the screech of brakes, the bark of a dog, the crunch of celery, along with dozens of assorted, anonymous voices. It is a talent possessed by few and is the result of a keen “photographic” ear, an exceptional knack for mimicry and a versatile acting talent.
His Job is Headache-proof

“No,” said Blanc in answer to a question, “I wouldn’t rather have my own show. I don’t have time for it and besides, who needs the headaches? Sure, once in a while I get a sense of frustration when I walk into a dime store and no one recognizes me, but my compensation is in knowing that I’ve got more work than I can possibly handle.”
As to how busy Blanc is, well, he’s the voices of 97% of all the Warner Brothers cartoons including Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and Woody Woodpecker. He is called on to do as many as 500 radio and TV commercials a year and he’ll work on approximately half the Benny shows on CBS-TV this season, playing a variety of insulting characters. In addition, he’ll be the voice behind the new Bugs Bunny ABC-TV series which comes on in the fall.
It is Blanc’s unmatched ability to imitate animals sounds that keeps him particularly busy. Producers have found that regardless of how well an animal is trained, it is almost impossible to get them to make noises at the right time. Instead of taking weeks to train a horse to whinny on cue, they found it simpler and cheaper to employ Blanc.
Where there are many pressures, there is also a lighter side. In particular, Blanc delights in telling of the running challenge that has been going on for years between the Jack Benny writers on one hand, and himself.
“In the rehearsal scripts,” says Blanc, “they usually write in cue lines like Mel does the sound of a giraffe or Mel whinnies like an English horse, and then it’s up to me to come up with something. It’s given us a lot of laughs over the years.
On another occasion during a rehearsal, the sound record of Jack Benny’s famed old Maxwell breaking down, broke down and Blanc stepped in with such a realistic vocal sound effect that Benny insisted it be kept in the show.
“To this day,” he said, “whenever you hear the Maxwell sputtering and coughing, it’s always me. When it runs smoothly, that’s a record.”
Blanc never started out to be a sound effect or behind-the-scenes voice. He was a musician who eventually gravitated to radio where his unusual talent was discovered.
When Blanc isn’t busy being everything and everyone else, he’s a mild-mannered fifty-two-year-old man who lives quietly in Pacific Palisades, California with his wife and twenty-one-year-old son, Noel, a senior at U.C.L.A. For what it’s worth, he’s honorary mayor of the two as well as one called Big Bear Lake.
Hobbyist
Whatever time can be taken away from his unusual profession is spent with a business he’s developed where he prepares ideas for commercials on radio and TV, and his hobby of collecting antique watches. He has more than two hundred and fifty which are insured for $50,000.
And while Blanc’s profession may not make him the best known personality outside of the industry, there’s nothing bashful or anonymous about his income. He admitted that he earns over $100,000 a year.
Would he care to say how much over?
“Well, I’m superstitious about pinning it to an exact figure,” he laughed. “Let’s just leave it at that.”