The Critics Have Enough

The critics doted on Mr Magoo. They loved Gerald McBoing Boing. All hail UPA, they said.

That was in the early ‘50s. By the late ‘50s, they had enough.

Here’s a review from the magazine of the British Film Institute from 1959:

HAM AND HATTIE No. 2 (Sailing and Village Band), U.S.A., 1958
Straining to be original, UPA cartoons are in danger of toppling into preciosity. The first part of this cartoon deals with Hattie, a small girl sailing her toy boat on a pond to the accompaniment of a simple song. The drawings are simple to match, so simple that they often become dull. The second section tells the story of Ham, who, with his dog, his cat, and his bird, provides his English village with a brass band to welcome a visiting dignitary. Although the mood is, if anything, more fey than in the first half, the drawings of the flag-decorated streets are delightful. Nevertheless, the freshness and spontaneity of previous UPA work is missing; the result is forced and outré.

UPA became all about artwork. Still artwork. There was not a lot of movement in Village Band and some of it was reused. Here are the streets the author referred to. Compare these first two drawings (granted they’re not in register).



The train animation gets reused. So does the drawing below. The train station is on an overlay, the foreground characters and characters behind the station are on separate cels.



See the townsfolk on the left? This is the first of three held drawings of them. They move less than Bullwinkle moose. Come to think of it, that green cat is from a Fractured Fairy Tale, isn't it?



Fred Crippin directed this short with designs by Jimmy Murakami, and a “color” credit to Jules Engel and Jack Heiter. Only two more Ham and Hatties were made. UPA lost its distribution deal with Columbia in 1959 then tried to peddle some Magoos on its own until the studio was bought in 1960.

Mother-in-Law of Tomorrow

“This king-size station wagon will comfortably seat every member of the entire family,” says the narrator in Tex Avery’s Car of Tomorrow (released in 1951). The station wagon has a front grille and side body portholes of a Buick.



The narrator lists the occupants of ersatz Buick. The husband, the wife (powdering herself), the maid, the kids (fighting), the dog (with its head out the window, tongue out), cat (the standard Avery design), canary...



Cue the mother-in-law joke.



By the way, the gag was borrowed for an episode of The Jetsons. How much did Hanna-Barbera steal from Tex Avery anyway?



The main narrator is Gil Warren, who voiced some spot gag cartoons for Avery at Warners. June Foray is easily recognisable as the female narrator.

The Cartoon That Jack Built

The most famous Jack Benny cartoon made at Warner Bros. is a bit of a disappointment.

Celebrity spoofs and references provided story and gag material for cartoons soon after sound became popular. Sometimes, ersatz versions of Hollywood and radio stars made up whole cartoons. Jack Benny began his regular radio show in May 1932, eventually playing a phoney version of himself. Cartoons from a number of studios soon began taking advantage of Benny and his characteristics. Let’s focus on Warners (including the Leon Schlesinger studio).

In Into Your Dance (1935), Captain Benny emcees an amateur show on a boat, while in I Love to Singa (1936), the host of a radio amateur show is Jack Bunny. Benny never hosted an amateur show, though he did play a showboat emcee in the 1935 film Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round. Neither of the cartoon characters mentioned sound or look like him, but the Bunny in Singa smokes a cigar just like Jack Benny.

The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos (1937) is a parody on the Community Sing radio show starring Milton Berle but features other radio stars of the day turned into animals. Included once again is Jack Bunny, though this time an attempt is made to make him sound like Benny. And it’s not a very good one by Tedd Pierce, a writer who did voice work at the studio for a while. Mary Livingstone and Andy Bovine also appear; cowboy actor Andy Devine appeared with Benny off and on for several years. Livingstone may be voiced by Sara Berner, who later had a semi-regular role on the Benny radio show; Bovine is likely impressionist Danny Webb. They perform a one-gag play based on a film; the second half of the Benny show in the ‘30s generally consisted of a parody of a movie.

A radio host named Jack Lescoulie, later one of the originals on the Today show on NBC, used to do a Benny impersonation on his show on KFWB called The Grouch Club. Lescoulie was hired to provide the impression in several Warners cartoons. One was Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur (1939), which features a caveman that doesn’t look like Benny and is identified with him only through the voice, his attitude to some extent, and his show-ending farewell line.

But there were other cartoons which had a more direct connection. Meet John Doughboy (1941) includes a gag about “the latest war weapon: a land destroyer, 100 times faster and more effective than a tank.” When it skids to a stops, it turns out to be Jack Benny’s Maxwell containing caricatures of Benny and his butler Rochester, no doubt designed by assistant animator Ben Shenkman, who specialised in celebrity caricatures. The gag here would be obvious to any radio listener—Benny’s car was the slowest thing on Earth. Benny removes the cigar from his mouth and turns to the camera. “Hello again, folks,” he says (Lescoulie is voicing him), a play on Benny’s “Jell-O again,” greeting on the radio show (which changed to “Hello, again” when he began plugging Grape Nuts Flakes in 1942). Rochester is voiced by Mel Blanc and the scene ends with Carl Stalling playing the five-note Jell-O signature from the Benny show. Neither star is mentioned by name. Both the scene and Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur end with the ersatz Benny aping the real radio Benny and saying “Good night, folks.”

Lescoulie-as-Benny can also be heard in Slap Happy Pappy (1940), again as a cigar-smoking rabbit named Jack Bunny, greeting the audience watching the cartoon with “Hello again, folks.” Bunny is about to bash a black Easter egg to bits when a Rochester chick (Blanc) pops out. And there’s a Devine sound-alike chicken (Webb) We get another cigar-smoking Jack Bunny rabbit “Hello Again”ing courtesy of Lescoulie in Goofy Groceries (1941). In this one, the cartoon ends with a stick of dynamite exploding, turning Bunny into Rochester (Blanc), who finishes the short spouting a reference to the “tattle tale gray” ad slogan of Fels-Naptha Soap (not a Benny sponsor, but director Bob Clampett loved radio references in his cartoons).

Benny makes a cameo appearance in Hollywood Daffy (1946). He’s at a claw machine digging out an Oscar, which gets dropped when a security guard runs into him while chasing Daffy. Blanc plays Benny. The routine reflects a running gag for several seasons on the Benny show where Jack was peeved that he had never been nominated for an Academy Award.

But the studio’s best attempt to parody parts of the Benny show probably came in Malibu Beach Party (1940). This short once again features Shenkman’s celebrity caricatures but the story by Jack Miller centres around Benny, who is again named Jack Bunny even though he’s a human and not a rabbit. Bunny’s smoking a cigar and the cartoon opens with him being cut down to size by Mary Livingstone (Berner). There’s a strolling Andy Devine (Webb) shouting “Hi-ya, Buck!” just like on the radio show, a bandleader named Pill Harris (Lescoulie again), tanned, smiling and curly-haired like Benny’s orchestra front man Phil Harris, and an appearance by “Winchester” (Blanc), who engages in Rochester-like banter and typical Benny show jokes like filling drink glasses with an eye-dropper. The cartoon ends with Bunny forcing Winchester to listen to his mediocre violin playing (by sitting on him), a variation of a gag lifted right from the Benny show. Stalling again adds the Jell-O signature to the score. Why Benny’s name kept being parodied while Mary’s wasn’t is a mystery that we will likely never solve.



This brings us to the cartoon we referred to at the top of the post, and we have to jump ahead a few years to the age of network television. Bob McKimson was now directing at Warners and his storyman Tedd Pierce got the idea of satirising “The Honeymooners” by turning all the characters into mice and calling it The Honey-Mousers. This 1955 release basically took all the catchphrases from the Gleason show and had Daws Butler and June Foray provide voices reminiscent of three of the comedy’s four characters. That was about as far as the satire went. There was no attempt to send up any of plots you’d find in a “Honeymooners” episode, nor Gleason’s bug-eyed takes (which would have worked well in animation); it was a garden-variety mice-versus-cat cartoon.

The cartoon must have been popular as another one with the characters followed the next year. And it seems to have inspired what was called a “switch” in vaudeville—take the same idea and give it a different spin. McKimson told historian Mike Barrier that Benny wanted the Honey-Mouser treatment. So Pierce turned the cast of the Jack Benny show into mice and wrote The Mouse That Jack Built.

There was a difference, though. In this cartoon, members of the Benny cast agreed to provide their own voices, including Jack Benny himself. Convincing them likely wasn’t difficult. Mel Blanc was a personal friend of Benny. McKimson lived on the same street as Benny, Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills. And Pierce had a bit of a connection, too. He drank at Brittingham’s, the restaurant/bar in Columbia Square on Sunset Boulevard adjacent to where Benny had made his CBS radio shows (the Benny TV broadcasts came from Television City on Fairfax).

Pierce had a golden opportunity to do a Malibu Beach Party-type send up of the Benny show; whoever designed the characters did an excellent job so they looked like mouse versions of the cast. Unfortunately, Pierce didn’t do an awful lot original with the concept and likely didn’t get any help from McKimson. He seems to have settled for the caricature itself being the gag and that wears thin rather quickly.

There are little bits of parody that shine through and the cartoon starts off well. Composer Milt Franklyn opens the short by incorporating the Kreutzer Etude No 2 into his sub-main title theme, the same music that Benny butchered on his radio show when receiving violin lessons from Professor Le Blanc (played by Mel Blanc). After the titles, there’s a shot of a stylised version of Benny’s real house on Roxbury Drive and a sign that’s a takeoff on Benny’s claim of being “star of stage, screen and radio.” A mini-sign is attached reading “Also Cartoons.” Cut to a Benny-like mouse who is given the bent wrists and flouncing walk Benny was famous for on television. But Pierce proves to be no George Balzer or Milt Josefsberg when it comes to writing for Benny, at least when he’s not using their material. The Rochester mouse makes a crack about Benny’s baby blue eyes. The best Pierce can muster is “They are nice, aren’t they?” And the sing-song question and answer between Benny and Rochester is far more sedate than what you’d hear on radio; McKimson needed to punch up their energy to compensate for not playing in front of an audience.

Fortunately when this cartoon was released in 1959, general audiences were familiar enough with Benny that they’d get the references. There’s a vault guarded by Ed, who is unseen to save money on animation (he is voiced by Blanc instead of Joe Kearns, who was the character most of the time on radio). There’s Rochester singing off-key. There’s the Maxwell. But all Pierce does is repeat radio/TV routines, treating them straight. The one nice bit of satire, my favourite moment in the cartoon, is when Don Wilson shows up to read the commercial. While he fits in the word “lucky” as in Lucky Strike cigarettes, Benny’s radio sponsor during his last decade or so, the spot appropriately refers to Warners cartoon characters:

If you’re feeling mighty lucky,
Bugs Bunny-ish and Daffy Ducky,
And tot you taw a puddy tat
There just one thing to do for that.

The plot also revolves around a cat that wants to eat the Benny mouse troupe, and appeals to Jack’s cheapness by inviting him to a free dinner at the Kit Kat Klub. Pierce fits in a wine pun where Jack exclaims that he likes “a good mouse-catel.” Jack and Mary stroll into the cat’s mouth, which slowly closes. Suddenly, Jack realises he’s been eaten (“Yipe!” he says in true Benny fashion) and yells for help.

Now, we get a nice twist. The cartoon fades out and in fades a live-action Benny, squirming in his chair and calling for help. Oh, he realises, it was all a dream. Or was it? We and Jack hear echoing violin music. Cut to a still photo of a real cat with the cartoon Jack and Mary escaping from a superimposed drawn mouth and running away and then through a mouse hole in the wall on the next shot. Cut again to the real Jack, turning to the camera with one of those expressions he became famous for on TV. Compare how he looks to how the Mouse Benny did it earlier in the cartoon.



The sight of Jack Benny in colour would have been fairly novel for many people in 1959. It loses its impact today.

The absence of Dennis Day hurt the cartoon a bit, but there may simply have not been enough time for him. Phil Harris, of course, left the show in 1952 to its detriment.

Anyway, the cartoon was a nice try for Warners but it should have striven for more than mere Benny duplication. When it did, the cartoon was very good.

The animators of this short were Tom Ray, Ted Bonnicksen, Warren Batchelder and George Grandpré, with layouts by Bob Gribbroek and backgrounds by Bob Singer, who is the only one in the crew still alive.

Incidentally, the short had one effect that lasts even today. It was viewed by a little girl named Laura Leff. She knew nothing of Jack Benny but liked the cartoon. So she started to learn about Jack Benny and set up a fan club. Today, the International Jack Benny Fan Club has a fine newsletter and a friendly presence on the internet, especially on Facebook.

Bugs Bunny, Wartime Icon

Bob Clampett once remarked to historian Mike Barrier “Bugs Bunny ... has never been loved the way he was during those war years ... Bugs Bunny was a symbol of America's resistance to Hitler and the fascist powers.”

Clampett may have a point, judging by a series of columns that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer in early November 1942. The columnist’s subject was the war-time prosperity that hit the city; at times, his monologue reads like something out of a B detective novel. But among the things he talks about is Bugs Bunny. The press didn’t generally mention the rabbit back then, and then generally only when discussing film releases. These columns are one of very few places where there’s a reference to him relating to popular culture.

I’ve snipped out irrelevant text about crowded trolleys, tramping across city courtyards and “smoking with artificial nonchalance,” sticking instead to his copy involving Warners’ top cartoon star.

Money in Their Pockets
By FRANK BROOKHOUSER
THE PHILADELPHIA tune in tumultuous days of war is "Jingle, Jangle, Jingle."
It is a tune played on the cash registers of a city that has struck an unprecedented bonanza, a bonanza manufactured in far away countries by the evil ambitions of the world's No. 1 and No. 2 public enemies, Hitler and Hirohito.
It is a city which has a new cinema idol, an idol who is as rollicking and rambunctious as the people feel after a tough day's work, a rabbit named Bugs Bunny, who is the fair-haired boy of the cartoon shorts. A buck-toothed rabbit, who chews carrots, wants to know "What's cookin', Doc?" and is as tough and talkative as the Army and Navy will have to be to beat the Axis.
They both came in with the war, the boom and Bugs Bunny. ...
IN THE days before the little from the Land of the Rising Sun finally touched off the slow-rising tempter of America, Philadelphians waited for the good movies to reach the neighborhoods, legitimate theatre owners watched Broadway with bated breath for a big hit, and the Mastbaum was a colossal "white elephant."

Now, with money jangling in their pockets, Philadelphians hurry into the central city cinema palaces because the price differential is no consideration ...
Favorite spot of the service men is the Earle, where there are stage shows. The choice in pictures ranges from one extreme to another—something topical like "Wake Island" to genuine escape. And Bugs Bunny. Because we're not forgetting that carrot-chewing gentleman. He's the tough guy, typical of the feeling of the times. He doesn't get a cent for his work but he'll get the marquee before the cinema guys and dolls with big contracts.
"If we have to leave out an important star to make room for a 'Bugs Bunny Short', we'll do it every time," one official said.
SCORES of theatres have special 30-minute shows of Bugs Bunny cartoons periodically, presumably for the children.
"And if we advertise in advance," an official said, "the adult business always climbs."
It's all a part of changing Philadelphia, a great gold rush which resounds day and night to the tune of "Jingle, Jangle, Jingle," as the cash registers click merrily away.
And when Bugs Bunny gnaws at his carrot he has them in a fancy cigarette case now, his latest short reveals; no doubt a sign of the opulent times and asks, "What's cookin', Doc?" he isn't simply making conversation.
It's plenty, brother. Plenty in a city of plenty, a city of power, a city made lusty and loud by the evil ambitions of the gangsters Hitler and Hirohito.

Plenty of Warner Bros. cartoon characters were part of the war effort, in a way. Daffy Duck bashed Hitler with a mallet. Porky Pig blew up a “Nutzy” spy. Heads of the “Ducktators” ended up mounted on a wall thanks to an unpeaceful dove of peace. The Fuhrer fizzled against some gremlins that looked suspiciously like Leon Schlesinger’s staff. Bugs was in there, too, coming out on top of Hitler, Goering and the Japanese fleet in various cartoons. And it was about the time the war came around that he surpassed Porky Pig as the studio’s number one star and stayed that way until, well in a way, even today.

Carving the Pig

Want a surreal, unexplainable gag from a Warner Bros. cartoon? Then look no further than The Pest That Came to Dinner, from the Art Davis unit.

Porky spends the bulk of the cartoon battling Pierre the termite with “assistance” from I.M. Sureshot, the smiling dog exterminator. Pierre reduces everything wooden in Porky’s home to sawdust by gnawing on it. In one sequence, Porky ends up at the bottom of the stairs when the bannister is partially eaten, followed by crockery that bops him on the noggin.



The next scene has a truly bizarre gag. Pierre carves a replica of Porky’s head from the decorative ball at the end of the bannister—then the fake head sticks out its tongue at the pig. How? Why? Back in the early ‘30s, everything in a cartoon came to life. That had stopped by the mid-‘40s. It comes out of nowhere here. Its so unexpected and weird, it’s still funny, even if it may be disconcerting.



Davis is in too much of a hurry here. The gag is capped with a reaction from Porky, but Davis quickly fades out before the audience can get the full impact of the take.



George Hill wrote this cartoon. He arrived at Warners around February 1945 originally to help Warren Foster in the Bob McKimson unit but was transferred (with gagman Hubie Karp) when Davis became a director a few months later. Lloyd Turner, who ended up writing for the unit along with Bill Scott, related to historian Mike Barrier how Hill gave the Bronx cheer to producer Eddie Selzer and got fired (Hill had worked for the Fleischers in New York). Hill’s ending for the cartoon is superfluous and a little off-kilter. Toward the end, Porky and Pierre take revenge on Sureshot, which would have been a good way to end the cartoon; all Pierre had to do was make a wise crack to the camera. But instead Hill tags it with a scene where Porky and Pierre are in business together making furniture. What?! What brought that about? And why?

Don Williams provides some fun animation in this cartoon. Bill Melendez, Basil (Dave) Davidovich and John Carey are credited as well. The cartoon was released in 1947.

Panther Against Panzer

Norm McCabe’s a real enigma, at least when it comes to directing at Warner Bros. There’s something odd about his timing that I just can’t place. His stories trot along like one big set-up with very little payoff, and he seems to have been forced into tossing in patriotic, war-time references that are lost on people today.

Here’s an example from Who’s Who At the Zoo, a 1942 short that borrows Tex Avery’s spot-gag format and marries it with 1930s Bob Clampett-style animation (ie. not the outrageous Scribner/Gould stuff). Narrator Bob Bruce intones about a black panther finishing a hearty meal. The well-animated animal then looks into its dish, sees something, and adopts the half-closed-eye goofy look (with voice to match) you’d find in Clampett’s Porky Pig cartoons.

“Alum-a-lim-alah-lum-um,” he says dopily, pointing to a star at the bottom before tossing it into a scrap pile to help win the war (“Dixie” plays in the background, but we presume the reference isn’t to the Civil War).



Whether theatre audiences cheered or stuck out their chests or swore at “Huns” under their breaths when watching this, I don’t know. I doubt that they laughed, though. Said one small-town theatre owner to the Motion Picture Herald in August 1942: “If another cartoon is produced trying to create funny expressions by various animals, we certainly will not use it. This had only one laugh and that seemed strained.” However, Showmen’s Trade Review (April 1942) declared it “funny,” so what do I know?

John Carey gets the sole animation credit here. Vive Risto, Cal Dalton and Izzy Ellis were also in the McCabe unit. McCabe was gone by November, making military films for FMPU.

A Postman, A Pig and 998 More

He was hired on March 23, 1931 to head an 11-member band at the RKO Orpheum in Portland, Oregon. Little did he know that within a decade, he would be famous as the world’s number-one cartoon voice.

He’s Mel Blanc. And he would have turned 110 today.

Blanc had been the musical director at KGW radio. For a time, he hosted a variety show that was heard up and down the West Coast that brought him to the attention of radio people in California. Blanc made his name in network radio before he was hired at the Leon Schlesinger studio to become part of what amounted to a stock company of cartoon voice actors. His versatility and acting abilities quickly put him at the top. The canny Schlesinger realised what he had and sewed up Blanc in an exclusive contract.

The deal didn’t involve anything to do with radio, so Blanc continued to add more big network comedy shows onto his resumé. The great publication Radio Life profiled him in its issue of January 2, 1944. Unfortunately, a copy isn’t available on-line. However, the magazine wrote another article about his career in its March 11, 1945 edition. There’s nothing about Al Pearce, which was probably his first big network show. “Sad Sack” was simply Blanc’s Porky voice. Columnist Carroll Van Court apparently hung the man-of-a-thousand-voices moniker on Blanc, but the writer here chooses to play on the Heinz 57 varieties slogan.

57 Variety Blanc
By Betty Mills
BECAUSE Mel Blanc is fifty-seven other people most of the time, nobody believes it's he when he portrays—Mel Blanc.
On a recent Jack Benny show, "the man from Esquire" made his air debut. "It was me all the time," grinned Blanc, "talking in my natural voice. The payoff came when I was asked a million times who did the part—and when I told 'em, they wouldn't believe me. They still don't."
But it doesn't surprise Mel that his natural voice isn't recognized on the air. It pleases him. For a man who specializes in at least fifty-seven voices, dialects, and intricate sound effects, he's surprised that he, himself, can remember what it sounds like.
On a recent Thursday afternoon, busy Mr. Blanc again showed rare ingenuity. Not only did he sandwich a chat with Radio Life into his hectic schedule, but he located the only quiet spot, in the form of Dinah Shore's empty dressing room, at NBC. You might sum Mel Blanc up by saying that he's probably your favorite radio character. Remember "Moony" of the old "Point Sublime"—and of course, you're familiar with Burns and Allen's "Happy Postman," and Judy Canova's "Pedro"—and then there's that wonderful fellow, "Sad Sack," whom you civilians haven't had a chance to meet. But "Sad Sack" is the new favorite of all G.I.'s and is featured on the transcribed "G.I. Journal."
There are the voices of lovable little Chinamen, and hated Japs, sputtering engines, and even hysterical women. Blanc can do 'em all—and does.
Its Cartoon Character

His versatility doesn't stop with his ether performances. When he isn't "making like" somebody else on the airlanes, he's busy putting saucy words into the mouth of Warner's "Bugs Bunny"—or sputtering for "Porky Pig "—or whooping it up for "Daffy Duck." Tuesday—his usual day off in radio—is ofttimes devoted to bringing the above renowned cartoon characters to life.
If you've ever watched the fabulous Mr. Blanc at work, you're probably struck with one thought—what would happen if he got his characterizations mixed up? He switches from one dialect to another, from a character to a sound effect with rapid-fire succession—and never misses.
"Um, once I almost read a big, bad wolf's lines with 'Porky Pig's' voice, but I caught myself just in the nick of time," he said. He may fluff a line but he never misinterprets a character.
He has no formula for developing a new type of voice. From a picture of the character in mind, he experiments until he finds a voice to fit. He likes to outline his various parts in a script with different colored pencils—"That's how I keep from getting confused." And he's superstitious about signing his own name to his script.
"Woops," exclaimed Mel pulling out the gorgeous pocket watch with which his wife had gifted him last Christmas. "I'm late for rehearsal. Come on in and I'll tell you about my watch."
"Santa was good to me," he laughed, pulling out his round, solid-gold time-piece, an antique Pedek-Philippe. "All I have to do is press this button and it chimes the hour and minutes. Like to have people ask me the time of day because I don't have to look but can just listen. They think I'm wonderful."
Even Wears Carrots
People asking the time of day aren't the only ones who think Mel is wonderful. In tribute to his voice portrayal of that number-one cartoon character, "Bugs Bunny," his admirers have sent him real carrots to be autographed. In his coat lapel he now sports a plastic carrot, a gift from a fan—"Guess I'll never have to worry about starving."
Mel thinks one of the nicest tributes paid to his radio work concerns "Sad Sack." It seems that the most-played portion of the "G.I. Journal" record the world over is that one spot featuring the Army's favorite character. In some instances the records have been so badly worn that from across the globe will come a request for another. Mel was genuinely touched that "Sad Sack" contributed so much pleasure to the boys in service.

Blanc’s ability led Colgate-Palmolive to take a chance in 1946 and put him in his own sitcom called The Mel Blanc Show. It lasted only one season. The show had a problem from the start. All Mel could do was voices. How could he, as Mel Blanc, be fit into the plot? The answer was to surround him with radio clichés; Mel was turned into an earnest, somewhat bumbling guy that you could find in all kinds of sitcoms. The clichés didn’t work and Mel, as Mel, was dull and predictable. And the producers felt obligated to tell the radio audience at the start of each show all the famous voices Mel did, just in case they had no clue who he was.

Here’s Radio Life again, from November 17, 1946. I’m still a little sceptical about this whole “fix-it store in real life” business. What well-paid radio actor opens a hardware store as a hobby? And in a town where he doesn’t live? It just doesn’t sound right. If you don’t know, Scotty Brown was one of his characters on Abbott and Costello. You’ve probably heard Blanc use his Scottish voice in cartoons at Warners and Lantz.

Radio Draws a Blanc
By Jean Meredith
THAT old axiom about "Be yourself!" is wise advice. But if Mel Blanc ever took it seriously, he'd probably starve to death!
Because even when he's being Mel Blanc (on the CBS "Mel Blanc Show" every Tuesday evening), he's being somebody else, too. That is ... we mean ...
Oh, you know about Mel Blanc if you've ever listened to a radio. You know about his Bugs Bunny voice, his Porky Pig voice, his Happy Postman voice, his train-caller voice, his Private Snafu voice, his Pedro voice, his Scottie Brown voice and all the rest. You know that he does some ninety per cent of the cartoon character vocalizing out at Warner Brothers, too.
But Radio Life has an exclusive on the Mel Blanc voice. Yep, we caught him being Mel Blanc between rehearsals for his new Columbia Network comedy show ... and that's not easy!
"The first time I heard an announcer introduce me as Mel Blanc," says this modest, likable comic, "I almost missed my cue. I was that surprised!"
But the "Mel Blanc Show" is more than just a pleasant surprise to its star ... it's a career-long dream come true. There is nothing unusual about a supporting actor hankering for his own show, but there's something distinctly unusual about his getting it. Probably no other new star had the complete and heartfelt support of his fellow radio actors that Mel had when he began his own show. Somehow, every supporting player in town felt that Mel's success was his own success—and the invisible applauders in each "Mel Blanc Show" audience include literally every actor in the business. And that, dear listener, is the beginning of real success.
Pride of Venice

When the discussion arose to decide a locale for the comedy- drama, Mel suggested a natural in the form of a "fixit shop"—natural because Mel, on his own time, is the owner and proprietor of a hardware store in Venice, California. "You'd be surprised how many suggestions for scripts we get from just the everyday happenings around the store," Mel says. "And the folks out there are wonderful! You'd think they were part of the show, they're so willing and anxious to offer suggestions and encouragement." Mel says his customers are turning the hardware store into a ticket agency, with most of the population of Venice wanting to be in the studio audience on Tuesday nights when their home-town boy takes to the mikes.
In addition to the fixit shop atmosphere, Mel also included in the new show a couple of voices that are favorites of his... Zooky and Doctor Crabbe, for instance. Zooky is the stuttering, stumbling vocalist who is Mel's "helper" in the shop (on the air, that is), and Doctor Crabbe is the dog doctor (consulting veterinarian, if you don't mind) with a slight Dobermann- Pinscher in his throat.
Where does he dream up all these voices? That's a question Mel is called upon to answer a hundred times a week. The answer is imagination, plus vocal gymnastics. Mel creates a character in his own imagination, and then experiments until he finds a voice that fits it.
"My main difficulty is finding a place to rehearse," he says. "After all, a guy can't bark and stutter and giggle and burble in public without causing some slight disturbance!" The answer to that dilemma is his car. Mel just gets in his automobile, drives to some deserted spot, rolls up the windows ...and lets go with the voice tricks.
But that's the top-of-the-ladder Mel Blanc. There was another ... a very subdued character actor who tried to talk Hollywood into appreciating his talents a number of years ago, without results. Aside from the fact that he began entertaining his grammar school pals with vaudeville shows at the age of seven, learned to play the concert violin and the tuba when he was still in his teens and became the youngest pit orchestra conductor in the country when he led a theater band at the age of twenty-two ... still Hollywood was unimpressed. So Mel went back to Portland, Oregon. where he wrote, produced and starred in his own radio shows after making his original mike debut in San Francisco. After a few seasons as literally a one-man show, he came back to Hollywood and auditioned for a host of comedy-show producers. "Why," was their unanimous lament, "haven't you been around before?" Well, of course, the only answer to that one, if you're a guy like Mel, is a Mona Lisa smile and a slight, a very slight, grinding of the teeth!
Mel's first network radio appearance was with the Al Pearce gang, and since that time he's gained undisputed title to the reputation of being the busiest funnyman in town.
And possibly for the first time in history, radio is mighty glad it drew a Blanc!

The article above briefly mentions Blanc’s “train caller voice.” That’s one of the things he did on the Jack Benny show. As the late ‘40s wore on, Blanc was getting more and more work with Benny, with more and more new characters to do. For the last several years before the show left radio in 1955, Blanc was on almost every week, though he was never credited as part of the regular cast.

Blanc appeared occasionally with Benny on TV. Jack wasn’t close to his cast but he was with Blanc. When Mel got into the accident that almost killed him in 1961, Benny visited him every day for weeks.

Mel Blanc’s been dead for almost 30 years and his old Warners cartoons aren’t seen as much on TV these days despite almost uncountable numbers of channels. But the best way to celebrate his birthday is to hunt around on-line and watch Bugs and Daffy argue about rabbit season, or listen to Jack Benny’s frustration as he vainly tries to fire up his old sputtering, coughing Maxwell car. Blanc was a unique talent and the very best at what he did in many ways.