"ANAHEIM...AZUZA...AND CUC....AMONGA1"
THE MAN OF 1,000 VOICES
Fourteen year old Melvin Blank liked his Portland high school - especially after hours. The Oregon teenager could walk the empty halls of Lincoln High in 1922 and hear the echo of the silly, “Hoo, hoo, hoo, ha, ha!” laugh he had developed while he contemplated such matters as giving up the violin for the tuba so he could join the school’s marching and dance bands and changing his surname to “Blanc” because a teacher taunted him for having a “blank mind to match his name.”.
He followed through with both decisions after high school graduation, becoming a singing tuba player named Mel Blanc with regional dance orchestras. Young Mel enjoyed making friends laugh, too, with his growing repertoire of funny voices and dialects and his silly laugh from high school that eventually became the vocal signature of Woody Woodpecker. It all came in handy when he joined the cast of The Hoot Owls. a Friday night comedy show on KGW/Portland in 1927.
His 18 month stint on The Hoot Owls gave Blanc the opportunity to develop his comedic and ad-lib skills, so he left Portland for San Francisco to join KPO’s house band, The Trocaderans, and introduce himself to producers at the NBC station. Nothing turned up, however, so he returned to Portland to lead the Orpheum Theater’s house band in 1930.
But his rounds of introductions in San Francisco paid off when a producer from KPO’s sister station called and offered him the host’s role on The Road Show, KGO’s Tuesday night variety hour for the 1931-32 season.
When it was over and with a successful season of major market experience behind him, the 24 year old Blanc headed for Los Angeles to make the rounds of producers’ offices looking for network or studio jobs. Instead, he found a wife - a vivacious 22 year old blonde, Estelle Rosenbaum.
Mel and Estelle eloped in January, 1933, and remained a devoted couple until his death 56 years later. Unfortunately, he didn’t have that much luck finding work in LA except for recurring dialect bits on Al Pearce’s Happy Go Lucky Hour on KECA that paid a mere five dollars a week. But six months later Blanc got his own hour long show six nights a week - in Portland.
Producers hadn’t forgotten one of their favorite sons from his Hoot Owl days and hired Mel to host the late night Cobweb & Nuts on KEX. Blanc later credited this show for his development of character voices. With Estelle voicing various straight roles to Mel’s growing roster of characters the show was a success. Cobweb & Nuts was moved to 6:00 p.m. on the more powerful KGW in 1934, yet for their six shows every week the couple only took home $60 a month, ($1,100 in today’s money).
Mel was offered a much higher paying job with a Portland insurance agency in 1935, but Estelle insisted that they give Los Angeles one more shot. To their surprise Mel caught on immediately with KFWB’s local show Johnny Murray Talks It Over for $150 a month. KFWB was owned by Warner Brothers and located on the studio’s lot, so it was only natural that Blanc would call on its animation branch, Leon Schlesinger Productions, seeking an audition - but he was repeatedly turned away at the front desk. Meanwhile, he auditioned for The Bakers’ Broadcast on CBS and landed his first Network Radio job as the voice of Joe Penner’s duck, Goo Goo.
On his way home from a KFWB broadcast in late December, 1936, Mel again stopped by Schlesinger’s dilapidated animation studio, affectionately known as Termite Terrace, and found a Christmas party in full swing with the studio‘s four directors - Fritz Freling, Frank Tashlin, Bob Clampett and Tex Avery - all in attendance. Blanc’s ad-lib audition became the party’s entertainment. When Mel finished his routine of silly voices and dialects, Avery and animator Chuck Jones asked him what a drunken bull would sound like. Immediately responding with a barrage of snorts and hiccups that left everyone laughing, Mel was told to report the following Tuesday for his first cartoon voice job.
Leon Schlesinger also heard the performance and invited Blanc into his office, confiding that he was looking for a new voice for the studio’s star attraction, Porky Pig. As Mel recalled in his 1988 autobiography, That’s Not All Folks, he responded to the producer’s request with, “Me? A nice Jewish boy do the voice of a pig?”
But Schlesinger was in no mood for joking - he need a new voice for Porky for the same recording session on the following Tuesday.
Mel gave it some thought and rehearsed the voice in his car, (his favorite place to privately develop voices), and returned with his interpretation of Porky’s voice with a twist:
Mel's stuttering Porky would attempt to pronounce a particular word without success, then switch to several unsuccessful alternatives then finally settle on a completely different word to express the original thought. Blanc used the concept to close his audition for Schlesinger and say, “Goodbye,” with, “Bye-b-uh-bye-b....so lo-uh-so lon....auf Wiede-auf Wiede.... Toodle Loo! Th-uh-th-uh-uh-th-That’s All, Folks!” A running gag was born as well as the closing signature for all Warner Brothers’ cartoons produced by Schlesinger.
Blanc received $200 for that first recording session. It became the voice track for Tex Avery’s Picador Porky a Loony Tunes cartoon released by Warner Brothers in March, 1937. (1) It was the first of 848 Warner Brothers animated shorts that Mel would voice. A month later Porky’s Duck Hunt was released in which Blanc played Porky Pig and introduced Daffy Duck with his familiar lisp, worked into Daffy’s often repeated, frustrated phrase “You’re despicable,” to become, “You’re dessth…picable!” (2) By this time the Schlesinger staff recognized Mel’s comedic talents and welcomed his creative participation in the recording sessions which were the first step in the animation production process.
In early 1938 Blanc gave the first voice to a nameless rabbit in Porky’s Hare Hunt. The character was known around the Schlesinger studio as Happy Rabbit until Blanc suggested the name Bugs Bunny. Two years later the star was born. In July, 1940, Warner Brothers released Bugs Bunny’s first starring cartoon, A Wild Hare, for which Blanc coined his familiar greeting, “What’s Up, Doc?” (3)
Blanc wasn’t limited to Warner Brothers’ cartoons in his early film work. In 1937 he created Woody Woodpecker’s voice for the Walter Lantz animation studio and gave Woody his trademark laugh that Mel had created in the halls of Lincoln High School. He recorded the first of an eventual 30 Woody Woodpecker cartoons and received another $800 for voicing Gideon the cat in Walt Disney’s Pinocchio while increasing his workload with Leon Schlesinger. Yet, he later divulged that even in his busiest years, he never made more than $20,000 a year for his work in cartoons.
Schlesinger was notoriously tight fisted. When Mel asked for a raise the producer countered with an offer to give him the screen credit, Voice Characterizations By Mel Blanc, in every cartoon he performed. It was a first in the animation industry and Blanc later cited the screen credit as worth its weight in gold for attracting radio and commercial work where the bigger money was found.
An immediate result came in the fall of 1938 when Mel joined the cast of Al Jolson’s Top Ten show on CBS. That gig ended when Jolson left the air in March, 1939. But on March 3rd Blanc debuted as the voice of Jack Benny’s polar bear, Carmichael. Shortly afterwards he jumped into the breach when a sound effects recording failed and began his impersonation of the sputtering, choking engine in Benny’s 1924 Maxwell automobile. He did nothing but the bear and car for six months until he told Benny, “Y’know, Jack, I can talk, too.”
Then the fun began as Benny‘s writers began putting his character voices to work with appearances in running gags. Getting ahead of our story for a moment, a sampler of these voices - Polly Parrot, Professor LeBlanc, the nameless train annoncer and Benny's 1924 Maxwell - was heard in Benny's final broadcast of the 1948-49 season on May 29, 1949.
Another of Mel’s characters came to life in October, 1942, when he joined the cast of the Top 25 Burns & Allen Show which had moved from NBC to CBS and was re-formatted as a situation comedy. The new format employed a host of Hollywood’s top radio actors but Blanc caught the brass ring with a regular role as The Happy Postman who could deliver the happiest of news in tears. A sample of Mel’s mournful mail carrier who drew laughs out of sorrow is heard in the Burns & Allen Show of December 29, 1942.
Two more famous characters - in different applications - were born in July, 1943, when the new Judy Canova Show debuted on CBS. (4) With Canova cast as proprietor of Rancho Canova in Cactus Junction, Blanc gave voices to handyman Sylvester - the cartoons’ lisping Sylvester The Cat four years later - and Mexican gardener Pedro creator of the catchphrase, “Pardon me for talking in your face, Senorita". Pedro would morph into Sy, The Little Mexican on Jack Benny’s show in 1949 and Speedy Gonzales of cartoon fame in 1953. The Canova broadcast of October 19, 1943, with Sylvester and Pedro is also posted below. (5)
Simultaneous with his weekly Burns & Allen and Judy Canova roles Mel appeared as Bugs Bunny on NBC’s new Abbott & Costello Show on Thursday nights. By his estimate, he was appearing on as many as 18 prime time shows a week with a total weekly income of over $2,000. A sample of Abbott and Costello’s nonsense is posted from November 18, 1943 in which Bugs is a department store elevator operator, (!).
In addition to his heavy load of over a dozen Network Radio shows a week, Blanc was also busy volunteering his talents to Armed Forces Radio series Are You A Genius, Command Performance, Mail Call, Jubilee and his weekly role as Private Sad Sack for the variety show G.I. Journal, performed in Army fatigues for military audiences at the Hollywood Canteen. Mel appears in several characterizations in the G.I Journal posted below from June 15, 1945. His busy schedule earned him Radio Life magazine’s Distinguished Service Award.
January 6, 1945, was the beginning of Blanc’s “French Period” with Warner Brothers’ release of Odor-Able Kitty, which introduced the amorous Parisian skunk, Pepe LePew, one of only five cartoons produced by the studio during the year due to the shortage of plastic needed for animation cels. (6) Then on April 29, 1945, Blanc made his first appearance as Professor Pierre LeBlanc, Jack Benny’s long suffering violin teacher.
In their frequent routines, Benny sawed awkwardly through an eight-note Kruetzer etude exercise, while frustrated teacher LeBlanc muttered lyrics under his breath, for example:
“Mr. Benny, when you’re playing,
It sounds like a jackass braying”
Or
“Make the notes a little thinner,
I don’t want to lose my dinner”
Blanc's "big break" came a year later when Colgate-Palmolive-Peet took notice of Mel and fashioned a sitcom around his talents. The Mel Blanc Show debuted on CBS Tuesday, September 3, 1946 at 8:30 with Mel playing the proprietor of a “fix-it“ shop in his normal voice and - in his stuttering Porky Pig/Sad Sack voice - his bumbling cousin Zookie.
A sample of The Mel Blanc Show from November 5, 1946, demonstrates how much it leaned on Mel’s talents. Not even support from seasoned radio actors Mary Jane Croft, Joe Kearns, Hans Conried, Alan Reed and Bea Benaderet could help their friend’s doomed effort in a timeslot opposite A Date With Judy, the lead-in to NBC’s powerhouse Tuesday comedy lineup of Amos & Andy, Fibber McGee & Molly and Bob Hope. The Mel Blanc Show never got into double digit ratings, scoring a season high of 9.1 in February, 1947. (7)
Mel's sitcom was cancelled at the end of the season but his busy schedule on other shows continued for the remainder of Network Radio‘s Golden Age, one example being the return of Professor LeBlanc to Jack Benny's house on December 5, 1948, posted below. Benny and Mel were close personal friends and like George Burns, Mel had the ability to send Benny into fits of helpless laughter. A prime example was the star's exchanges with Blanc's Little Mexican.
Written by George Balzer, The Little Mexican debuted in a short bit that was part of a Treasure of Sierra Madre parody on the show of May 1, 1949, posted below. The character was expanded into the famous “Si, Sy, Sue” routine that usually took place in a railway or bus waiting room with Benny leading it off:
“Excuse me, sir, are you waiting for this train?”
Deadpanned, Blanc answers, “Si.”
Benny: “And you’re meeting someone on the train?”
Blanc: “Si.”
“A relative?”
“Si.”
“And what’s your name?”
“Sy.”
“Sy?”
“Si.”
“This relative you’re waiting for - is it a woman?”
“Si.”
“Your sister?”
“Si.”
“What’s her name?”
“Sue.”
“Sue?”
“Si.”
“Does she work?”
“Si.”
“She has a regular job?”
“Si.”
“What does she do?”
“Sew.”
“Sew?”
“Si.”
There were many twists of this classic routine on both radio and television over the years, always guaranteed to break Benny up at some point.. For example, on the Benny broadcast of December 9, 1951, posted below, Blanc’s character appears as the manager of the Guadalajara Trio. (8)
Jack Benny's program was built upon running gags and he was the first to credit his writers and supporting cast. In his next to the last show in his series of original performances on May 15, 1955, Benny brings back Artie Aurerbach, Sheldon Leonard, Frank Nelson and Mel Blanc for curtain calls. This is much like the first broadcast on this post and Mel is still looking for passengers to take his train for "Anaheim, Asuza and Cu....camonga"
Postscript: Mel Blanc's career extended another 35 years after Network Radio's Golden Age ended in 1953. He was on his way to an evening recording session in January, 1961, when his Aston Martin roadster was demolished by a much heavier Oldsmobile 98 in a freak accident at the infamous "Deadman's Curve" on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard.
Mel lay near death for several days and was comatose for almost six weeks at UCLA Medical Center as Estelle and their son, Noel, tried gently to rouse him from his coma. Finally, one of his doctors asked, "How are you feeling today, Bugs Bunny?" and Mel responded weakly, "Eh, just fine, Doc... How are you?"
He spent nearly a year in an assortment of casts and resumed his career for another 25 years before succumbing to heart disease in 1989. The epitaph on Mel Blanc's tombstone at Hollywood's Forever Cemetery reads, as you might expect: That's All Folks!
(1) Leon Schlesinger released two series of six-minute cartoons through Warner Brothers: Looney Tunes, produced in black & white, and Merrie Melodies in Technicolor. Blanc used variations of his Porky voice for Moonie on the West Coast show Point Sublime, Private Sad Sack on G.I. Journal and Zookie on The Mel Blanc Show.
(2) Blanc recalled that the greatest number of separate characters he voiced in one cartoon was 14.
(3) For authentic sound effect Blanc bit into carrots when the scripts called for it but he disliked the taste and spit them out.
(4) Singer/comedienne Judy Canova enjoyed a ten year Network Radio run - one season on CBS followed by nine on NBC. Her first eight seasons, five in the Annual Top 30, were sponsored by Colgate Palmolive Peet.
(5) Sylvester Cat and canary Tweety Pie appeared together in the first of their 39 cartoons on May 3, 1947, for which Blanc gave Tweety the catch phrase (and hit record title) “I Taught I Taw a Puddy Tat!” and the very heavily lisping Syvester the line, “Thufferin’ Thsuccotash!”
(6) While Blanc became increasingly busy with his radio work Warner Brothers was gearing up its animation plans for the coming postwar period. In May, 1945, cartoon tough guy Yosemite Sam with Blanc’s voice was introduced as Bugs Bunny’s foil in Hare Trigger. A year later in August, 1946, Blanc did double duty in the debut of boisterous rooster Foghorn Leghorn and Henery Hawk in Warner Brothers’ Walky Talky Hawky, In 1945 and 1946 Blanc voiced over three dozen Warner Brothers cartoons and another dozen Private Sad Sack animated shorts for Armed Forces audiences at the Walter Lantz studios.
(7) The Mel Blanc Show finished in 106th place for the 1946-47 season with a 7.4 average rating. A Date With Judy won the time period with a 13.1 rating in 21st place, followed by The Falcon on Mutual with an 8.6 rating in 86th place.
(8) Two years later, on August 29, 1953, Blanc gave a variation of the Pedro/Little Mexican voice to Speedy Gonzales, (“The Fastest Mouse In All of Mexico”), in his first Warner Brothers cartoon, Cat-Tails For Two. During this period he also filled in for his friend Harry Lang who was convalescing from a heart attack during his run as Pancho on Ziv’s syndicated series, The Cisco Kid. Blanc instructed Ziv to send talent checks for this work to Lang.
Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
Fourteen year old Melvin Blank liked his Portland high school - especially after hours. The Oregon teenager could walk the empty halls of Lincoln High in 1922 and hear the echo of the silly, “Hoo, hoo, hoo, ha, ha!” laugh he had developed while he contemplated such matters as giving up the violin for the tuba so he could join the school’s marching and dance bands and changing his surname to “Blanc” because a teacher taunted him for having a “blank mind to match his name.”.
He followed through with both decisions after high school graduation, becoming a singing tuba player named Mel Blanc with regional dance orchestras. Young Mel enjoyed making friends laugh, too, with his growing repertoire of funny voices and dialects and his silly laugh from high school that eventually became the vocal signature of Woody Woodpecker. It all came in handy when he joined the cast of The Hoot Owls. a Friday night comedy show on KGW/Portland in 1927.
His 18 month stint on The Hoot Owls gave Blanc the opportunity to develop his comedic and ad-lib skills, so he left Portland for San Francisco to join KPO’s house band, The Trocaderans, and introduce himself to producers at the NBC station. Nothing turned up, however, so he returned to Portland to lead the Orpheum Theater’s house band in 1930.
But his rounds of introductions in San Francisco paid off when a producer from KPO’s sister station called and offered him the host’s role on The Road Show, KGO’s Tuesday night variety hour for the 1931-32 season.
When it was over and with a successful season of major market experience behind him, the 24 year old Blanc headed for Los Angeles to make the rounds of producers’ offices looking for network or studio jobs. Instead, he found a wife - a vivacious 22 year old blonde, Estelle Rosenbaum.
Mel and Estelle eloped in January, 1933, and remained a devoted couple until his death 56 years later. Unfortunately, he didn’t have that much luck finding work in LA except for recurring dialect bits on Al Pearce’s Happy Go Lucky Hour on KECA that paid a mere five dollars a week. But six months later Blanc got his own hour long show six nights a week - in Portland.
Producers hadn’t forgotten one of their favorite sons from his Hoot Owl days and hired Mel to host the late night Cobweb & Nuts on KEX. Blanc later credited this show for his development of character voices. With Estelle voicing various straight roles to Mel’s growing roster of characters the show was a success. Cobweb & Nuts was moved to 6:00 p.m. on the more powerful KGW in 1934, yet for their six shows every week the couple only took home $60 a month, ($1,100 in today’s money).
Mel was offered a much higher paying job with a Portland insurance agency in 1935, but Estelle insisted that they give Los Angeles one more shot. To their surprise Mel caught on immediately with KFWB’s local show Johnny Murray Talks It Over for $150 a month. KFWB was owned by Warner Brothers and located on the studio’s lot, so it was only natural that Blanc would call on its animation branch, Leon Schlesinger Productions, seeking an audition - but he was repeatedly turned away at the front desk. Meanwhile, he auditioned for The Bakers’ Broadcast on CBS and landed his first Network Radio job as the voice of Joe Penner’s duck, Goo Goo.
On his way home from a KFWB broadcast in late December, 1936, Mel again stopped by Schlesinger’s dilapidated animation studio, affectionately known as Termite Terrace, and found a Christmas party in full swing with the studio‘s four directors - Fritz Freling, Frank Tashlin, Bob Clampett and Tex Avery - all in attendance. Blanc’s ad-lib audition became the party’s entertainment. When Mel finished his routine of silly voices and dialects, Avery and animator Chuck Jones asked him what a drunken bull would sound like. Immediately responding with a barrage of snorts and hiccups that left everyone laughing, Mel was told to report the following Tuesday for his first cartoon voice job.
Leon Schlesinger also heard the performance and invited Blanc into his office, confiding that he was looking for a new voice for the studio’s star attraction, Porky Pig. As Mel recalled in his 1988 autobiography, That’s Not All Folks, he responded to the producer’s request with, “Me? A nice Jewish boy do the voice of a pig?”
But Schlesinger was in no mood for joking - he need a new voice for Porky for the same recording session on the following Tuesday.
Mel gave it some thought and rehearsed the voice in his car, (his favorite place to privately develop voices), and returned with his interpretation of Porky’s voice with a twist:
Mel's stuttering Porky would attempt to pronounce a particular word without success, then switch to several unsuccessful alternatives then finally settle on a completely different word to express the original thought. Blanc used the concept to close his audition for Schlesinger and say, “Goodbye,” with, “Bye-b-uh-bye-b....so lo-uh-so lon....auf Wiede-auf Wiede.... Toodle Loo! Th-uh-th-uh-uh-th-That’s All, Folks!” A running gag was born as well as the closing signature for all Warner Brothers’ cartoons produced by Schlesinger.
Blanc received $200 for that first recording session. It became the voice track for Tex Avery’s Picador Porky a Loony Tunes cartoon released by Warner Brothers in March, 1937. (1) It was the first of 848 Warner Brothers animated shorts that Mel would voice. A month later Porky’s Duck Hunt was released in which Blanc played Porky Pig and introduced Daffy Duck with his familiar lisp, worked into Daffy’s often repeated, frustrated phrase “You’re despicable,” to become, “You’re dessth…picable!” (2) By this time the Schlesinger staff recognized Mel’s comedic talents and welcomed his creative participation in the recording sessions which were the first step in the animation production process.
In early 1938 Blanc gave the first voice to a nameless rabbit in Porky’s Hare Hunt. The character was known around the Schlesinger studio as Happy Rabbit until Blanc suggested the name Bugs Bunny. Two years later the star was born. In July, 1940, Warner Brothers released Bugs Bunny’s first starring cartoon, A Wild Hare, for which Blanc coined his familiar greeting, “What’s Up, Doc?” (3)
Blanc wasn’t limited to Warner Brothers’ cartoons in his early film work. In 1937 he created Woody Woodpecker’s voice for the Walter Lantz animation studio and gave Woody his trademark laugh that Mel had created in the halls of Lincoln High School. He recorded the first of an eventual 30 Woody Woodpecker cartoons and received another $800 for voicing Gideon the cat in Walt Disney’s Pinocchio while increasing his workload with Leon Schlesinger. Yet, he later divulged that even in his busiest years, he never made more than $20,000 a year for his work in cartoons.
Schlesinger was notoriously tight fisted. When Mel asked for a raise the producer countered with an offer to give him the screen credit, Voice Characterizations By Mel Blanc, in every cartoon he performed. It was a first in the animation industry and Blanc later cited the screen credit as worth its weight in gold for attracting radio and commercial work where the bigger money was found.
An immediate result came in the fall of 1938 when Mel joined the cast of Al Jolson’s Top Ten show on CBS. That gig ended when Jolson left the air in March, 1939. But on March 3rd Blanc debuted as the voice of Jack Benny’s polar bear, Carmichael. Shortly afterwards he jumped into the breach when a sound effects recording failed and began his impersonation of the sputtering, choking engine in Benny’s 1924 Maxwell automobile. He did nothing but the bear and car for six months until he told Benny, “Y’know, Jack, I can talk, too.”
Then the fun began as Benny‘s writers began putting his character voices to work with appearances in running gags. Getting ahead of our story for a moment, a sampler of these voices - Polly Parrot, Professor LeBlanc, the nameless train annoncer and Benny's 1924 Maxwell - was heard in Benny's final broadcast of the 1948-49 season on May 29, 1949.
Another of Mel’s characters came to life in October, 1942, when he joined the cast of the Top 25 Burns & Allen Show which had moved from NBC to CBS and was re-formatted as a situation comedy. The new format employed a host of Hollywood’s top radio actors but Blanc caught the brass ring with a regular role as The Happy Postman who could deliver the happiest of news in tears. A sample of Mel’s mournful mail carrier who drew laughs out of sorrow is heard in the Burns & Allen Show of December 29, 1942.
Two more famous characters - in different applications - were born in July, 1943, when the new Judy Canova Show debuted on CBS. (4) With Canova cast as proprietor of Rancho Canova in Cactus Junction, Blanc gave voices to handyman Sylvester - the cartoons’ lisping Sylvester The Cat four years later - and Mexican gardener Pedro creator of the catchphrase, “Pardon me for talking in your face, Senorita". Pedro would morph into Sy, The Little Mexican on Jack Benny’s show in 1949 and Speedy Gonzales of cartoon fame in 1953. The Canova broadcast of October 19, 1943, with Sylvester and Pedro is also posted below. (5)
Simultaneous with his weekly Burns & Allen and Judy Canova roles Mel appeared as Bugs Bunny on NBC’s new Abbott & Costello Show on Thursday nights. By his estimate, he was appearing on as many as 18 prime time shows a week with a total weekly income of over $2,000. A sample of Abbott and Costello’s nonsense is posted from November 18, 1943 in which Bugs is a department store elevator operator, (!).
In addition to his heavy load of over a dozen Network Radio shows a week, Blanc was also busy volunteering his talents to Armed Forces Radio series Are You A Genius, Command Performance, Mail Call, Jubilee and his weekly role as Private Sad Sack for the variety show G.I. Journal, performed in Army fatigues for military audiences at the Hollywood Canteen. Mel appears in several characterizations in the G.I Journal posted below from June 15, 1945. His busy schedule earned him Radio Life magazine’s Distinguished Service Award.
January 6, 1945, was the beginning of Blanc’s “French Period” with Warner Brothers’ release of Odor-Able Kitty, which introduced the amorous Parisian skunk, Pepe LePew, one of only five cartoons produced by the studio during the year due to the shortage of plastic needed for animation cels. (6) Then on April 29, 1945, Blanc made his first appearance as Professor Pierre LeBlanc, Jack Benny’s long suffering violin teacher.
In their frequent routines, Benny sawed awkwardly through an eight-note Kruetzer etude exercise, while frustrated teacher LeBlanc muttered lyrics under his breath, for example:
“Mr. Benny, when you’re playing,
It sounds like a jackass braying”
Or
“Make the notes a little thinner,
I don’t want to lose my dinner”
Blanc's "big break" came a year later when Colgate-Palmolive-Peet took notice of Mel and fashioned a sitcom around his talents. The Mel Blanc Show debuted on CBS Tuesday, September 3, 1946 at 8:30 with Mel playing the proprietor of a “fix-it“ shop in his normal voice and - in his stuttering Porky Pig/Sad Sack voice - his bumbling cousin Zookie.
A sample of The Mel Blanc Show from November 5, 1946, demonstrates how much it leaned on Mel’s talents. Not even support from seasoned radio actors Mary Jane Croft, Joe Kearns, Hans Conried, Alan Reed and Bea Benaderet could help their friend’s doomed effort in a timeslot opposite A Date With Judy, the lead-in to NBC’s powerhouse Tuesday comedy lineup of Amos & Andy, Fibber McGee & Molly and Bob Hope. The Mel Blanc Show never got into double digit ratings, scoring a season high of 9.1 in February, 1947. (7)
Mel's sitcom was cancelled at the end of the season but his busy schedule on other shows continued for the remainder of Network Radio‘s Golden Age, one example being the return of Professor LeBlanc to Jack Benny's house on December 5, 1948, posted below. Benny and Mel were close personal friends and like George Burns, Mel had the ability to send Benny into fits of helpless laughter. A prime example was the star's exchanges with Blanc's Little Mexican.
Written by George Balzer, The Little Mexican debuted in a short bit that was part of a Treasure of Sierra Madre parody on the show of May 1, 1949, posted below. The character was expanded into the famous “Si, Sy, Sue” routine that usually took place in a railway or bus waiting room with Benny leading it off:
“Excuse me, sir, are you waiting for this train?”
Deadpanned, Blanc answers, “Si.”
Benny: “And you’re meeting someone on the train?”
Blanc: “Si.”
“A relative?”
“Si.”
“And what’s your name?”
“Sy.”
“Sy?”
“Si.”
“This relative you’re waiting for - is it a woman?”
“Si.”
“Your sister?”
“Si.”
“What’s her name?”
“Sue.”
“Sue?”
“Si.”
“Does she work?”
“Si.”
“She has a regular job?”
“Si.”
“What does she do?”
“Sew.”
“Sew?”
“Si.”
There were many twists of this classic routine on both radio and television over the years, always guaranteed to break Benny up at some point.. For example, on the Benny broadcast of December 9, 1951, posted below, Blanc’s character appears as the manager of the Guadalajara Trio. (8)
Jack Benny's program was built upon running gags and he was the first to credit his writers and supporting cast. In his next to the last show in his series of original performances on May 15, 1955, Benny brings back Artie Aurerbach, Sheldon Leonard, Frank Nelson and Mel Blanc for curtain calls. This is much like the first broadcast on this post and Mel is still looking for passengers to take his train for "Anaheim, Asuza and Cu....camonga"
Postscript: Mel Blanc's career extended another 35 years after Network Radio's Golden Age ended in 1953. He was on his way to an evening recording session in January, 1961, when his Aston Martin roadster was demolished by a much heavier Oldsmobile 98 in a freak accident at the infamous "Deadman's Curve" on Hollywood's Sunset Boulevard.
Mel lay near death for several days and was comatose for almost six weeks at UCLA Medical Center as Estelle and their son, Noel, tried gently to rouse him from his coma. Finally, one of his doctors asked, "How are you feeling today, Bugs Bunny?" and Mel responded weakly, "Eh, just fine, Doc... How are you?"
He spent nearly a year in an assortment of casts and resumed his career for another 25 years before succumbing to heart disease in 1989. The epitaph on Mel Blanc's tombstone at Hollywood's Forever Cemetery reads, as you might expect: That's All Folks!
(1) Leon Schlesinger released two series of six-minute cartoons through Warner Brothers: Looney Tunes, produced in black & white, and Merrie Melodies in Technicolor. Blanc used variations of his Porky voice for Moonie on the West Coast show Point Sublime, Private Sad Sack on G.I. Journal and Zookie on The Mel Blanc Show.
(2) Blanc recalled that the greatest number of separate characters he voiced in one cartoon was 14.
(3) For authentic sound effect Blanc bit into carrots when the scripts called for it but he disliked the taste and spit them out.
(4) Singer/comedienne Judy Canova enjoyed a ten year Network Radio run - one season on CBS followed by nine on NBC. Her first eight seasons, five in the Annual Top 30, were sponsored by Colgate Palmolive Peet.
(5) Sylvester Cat and canary Tweety Pie appeared together in the first of their 39 cartoons on May 3, 1947, for which Blanc gave Tweety the catch phrase (and hit record title) “I Taught I Taw a Puddy Tat!” and the very heavily lisping Syvester the line, “Thufferin’ Thsuccotash!”
(6) While Blanc became increasingly busy with his radio work Warner Brothers was gearing up its animation plans for the coming postwar period. In May, 1945, cartoon tough guy Yosemite Sam with Blanc’s voice was introduced as Bugs Bunny’s foil in Hare Trigger. A year later in August, 1946, Blanc did double duty in the debut of boisterous rooster Foghorn Leghorn and Henery Hawk in Warner Brothers’ Walky Talky Hawky, In 1945 and 1946 Blanc voiced over three dozen Warner Brothers cartoons and another dozen Private Sad Sack animated shorts for Armed Forces audiences at the Walter Lantz studios.
(7) The Mel Blanc Show finished in 106th place for the 1946-47 season with a 7.4 average rating. A Date With Judy won the time period with a 13.1 rating in 21st place, followed by The Falcon on Mutual with an 8.6 rating in 86th place.
(8) Two years later, on August 29, 1953, Blanc gave a variation of the Pedro/Little Mexican voice to Speedy Gonzales, (“The Fastest Mouse In All of Mexico”), in his first Warner Brothers cartoon, Cat-Tails For Two. During this period he also filled in for his friend Harry Lang who was convalescing from a heart attack during his run as Pancho on Ziv’s syndicated series, The Cisco Kid. Blanc instructed Ziv to send talent checks for this work to Lang.
Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
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