Comedy (1946-47)
Mel Blanc voice is still heard around
the world every day, thanks to the constant replay of
the great Warner Brothers cartoons. Best known as the
voice of Bugs Bunny, Blanc did a host of other cartoon
characters as well including Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn, Tasmanian Devil, Pepe Lew Pew, Marvin the Martian, The Roadrunner ("Meep Meep"), and Woody Woodpecker.
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In radio, his talents were in high demand
for characters and vocal sound effects, and he was on
many shows in old time radio, including Burns
and Allen, Judy
Canova Show, and especially the Jack
Benny Show, where he was a regular for decades.
On the Benny show, he played a car (Benny's fabled Maxwell),
a railroad announcer (the famous Cu-ca-mongaroutine),
the parrot Polly and the Little Mexican, Sy. "Si,
Sy" and many other "soundeffects."
Mel Blanc, best known for as the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.
Mel got the chance to do his own show
at the height of his Bugs and Benny stature, and the
show sounds like it was made in the
Benny mold. Mel plays himself as a young, somewhat innocent
small town character, but because of Bugs, that really
doesn't work as well as it did for
Dennis
Day, another
Benny regular
to did his own
old time radio show. Mel makes Bugs sounds like
a street-smart wise guy, so it's hard to forget Bugs
when you're listening to Mel being an innocent nerd.
Of course, Blanc does many wacky voices
on the show, one of which is Zookie, who is the assistant
to "Mel" on the show. The "Mel"
of the show runs a fix-it shop that allows for many
strange and silly sounds in the shop, too. There's a
romantic angle, with Mary Jane Croft playing Mel's girlfriend
Betty Colby. Joe Kearns plays Betty's father as the
gruff old man. The show featured many regular characters including Hans Conried, Bea Benaderet, Alan Reed, Earle Rose, and Jim Backus.
Kooky characters tend to show up often,
and in all those funny sounding characters and objects,
we have our most satisfying Mel Blanc. He was a one-of-kind
actor, for in him, with a nod to Lon Chaney, we had
the "man of a thousand voices."
See also, Mel Blanc's quiz program: Are You a Genius? See also: Paul Frees
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