Art by Zach Christy.
This episode was written and produced by James Introcaso.
Mel Blanc is a legendary voice actor who voiced more than 400 distinct characters. But in 1961, Mel was involved in a potentially fatal car accident. In this episode, we discover the unlikely source that saved him and hear how Mel spent his later years. Plus, we explore what it takes to pass the torch. Featuring interviews with Mel’s son, Noel Blanc, and voice actor Bob Bergen.
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
Tender and Curious by Sound of Picture
Requiem by Davis Harwell
The Relatively Little House by Steven Gutheinz
Redrawn by Steven Gutheinz
Open Space by Future of Forestry
You + Me by Blake Ewing
Hiraeth by Sinai
Falling in Love (Instrumental) by Cody Fry
Real Thing (Instrumental) by Danica Dora
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound and hosted by Dallas Taylor.
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View Transcript ▶︎
Before we get started, this episode is actually the second episode of a two part series on the legendary voice actor Mel Blanc. If you haven’t heard the first episode, I’d recommend quing that up and making this a nice double feature. Here’s part 2....
[SFX clip: Bugs Bunny from YouTube clip: Duck season.
Daffy Duck: Wabbit season.]
You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz.
[SFX clip continues: Bugs Bunny: “Wabbit season!”
Daffy Duck: I say, “It’s duck season,” and I say, “Fire!”
[SFX: Cartoon gunshot]
[music in]
Mel Blanc is widely regarded as the most prolific voice actor of all time. He was a key figure during both the golden age of radio and the golden age of animation. He’s most famous for voicing nearly every character in the Looney Tunes and a bunch more at Hannah Barbara. Every voice you’re about to hear is from Mel.
[music out]
[SFX clips: Bugs Bunny from YouTube clip: Eh, what’s up doc?
Wile E Coyote from YouTube clip: You are a rabbit, and I am going to eat you.
Sylvester the Cat from YouTube clip: Boy, acres and acres of Tweety Bird and its mine… all mine!
Tweety Bird from YouTube clip: I tat I taw a iddy biddy puddy cat.
Daffy Duck from YouTube clip: Buster it may come as a complete surprise to you, to find that this is an animated cartoon.
Foghorn Leghorn from YouTube clip: What’s going on, I say what’s going on here!
Road Runner from YouTube clip: Meep meep!
Yosemite Sam from YouTube clip: Get outta here rabbit!
Marvin the Martian from YouTube clip: Where’s the kaboom?
Captain Caveman from YouTube clip: Captain Caveman!]
All together, Mel Blanc created over 400 distinct voices. As far as we know, no single person has been able to come close to recreating all the voices Mel did. He had the genes, the talent, and the work ethic to completely transform the way animation sounded. Over time, the entire industry seemed to rest on Mel’s shoulders.
[music in]
So when Mel was in a really bad car accident, a lot of people were justifiably worried. Not only for Mel, but for their own livelihoods. After the accident, Mel fell into a coma, and as the days passed Warner Brothers even went as far as to consider other actors to replace Mel. But the actor who was offered Bugs Bunny refused, hanging onto hope that Mel would get better.
Noel: They tried to bring him out of the coma. It was very, very difficult because he didn't respond.
That’s Mel’s son, Noel Blanc. Noel and his mother sat with Mel in the hospital for days on end. The accident had left Mel in a coma and a full body cast.
Noel: The doctor came in about on the 13th or 14th day.
Noel: And he said, "Mel, can you hear me?" No response. "Mel." No response. I'd say, "Dad, can you hear me." No.
Noel: And he looked up and saw the television screen.
[SFX: Looney Tunes episode plays on TV in background]
It was Looney Tunes on the screen, and hearing Mel’s characters gave the brain surgeon an idea.
Noel: And he finally says, "Bugs, can you hear me? Bugs Bunny can you hear me?” And my dad went [SFX: Bugs Bunny voice], "Eh, what's up doc, yeah."
It was nothing short of a miracle. Bugs Bunny brought Mel Blanc out of a coma. By this point, Mel had been performing some of the Looney Tunes for more than twenty years. That rascally rabbit was such a part of Mel’s brain that the character brought him back from the brink.
Noel: So the doc got an idea and he said, "Porky Pig can you hear me?" He says [SFX: Porky voice], "I can hear you." He went down the list of characters, and my dad came out of the coma at that time. It was so amazing to watch this happen. My mom couldn't believe it. She started crying. He came out of the coma, and he said, "Where am I?" She says, "Look down, you're in a full body cast."
[music out]
Despite a near fatal injury… including a triple skull fracture, broken legs, and a broken pelvis, Mel got right back to work. He understood that tons of people were counting on him both for their jobs and for their entertainment.
His first job during the recovery was Barney Rubble in the Flintstones. Here’s a clip from that show. Keep in mind that Mel was literally in bed recovering while he recorded this.
[SFX clip: Barney Rubble from YouTube clip: I don’t know, but since he’s in oil, he could slide away easy!]
Noel: During the 65 Flintstones that we did, he was in a full body cast, not able to sit up of course, the microphones were extended over his bed. We'd built a studio on the other side of the house. Joe Barbera and myself would sit in the studio. I'd run the tape recorders, and the guys from his studio would come by, set it up. They put all the cables underneath the house, ran five microphones next to his bed, and the cast would gather around the bed, and he would be Barney in the bed.
[SFX clip: Barney Rubble from YouTube clip: Oh boy, what a set up Fred! [laughter]]
[music in]
Even while recovering from an accident, Mel kept busy. And that busy lifestyle didn’t stop when he was away from work.
Noel: He never spent an afternoon not signing pictures for kids that came to the door. And then their kids and then their grandkids over the 40 year period.
Noel: They'd get 2000 people there on Halloween. Because they knew where he lived and the kids would come in little buses. He’d open the door, give them each a little candy bar, do the voices for them.
Mel was also a mentor to people who wanted to make it in animation. He even helped one kid achieve his voice acting dreams. Here’s Bob Bergen.
[music out]
Bob: My thought was, if you want to be a brain surgeon, call a brain surgeon. If you want to be a baseball player, call a baseball player. I want to be a Looney Tune. I'm going to call a Looney Tune.
Nowadays, Bob is well known in Hollywood as a first-call voice actor. You’ve most certainly heard his voice, but might not know exactly from where.
[SFX clip: Bob Bergen VO montage]
But, before the success, Bob was just a kid with a dream of becoming a voice actor, and there was one particular role he wanted more than any other.
[music in]
Bob: I actually just wanted to be Porky Pig. That was my goal since I was a five-year-old child. I didn't know there was a business called voiceover. I didn't know it was acting. I had no idea how the industry worked. I just was a five-year-old kid who said, "I want to be Porky Pig."
Bob: I just found his personality and the comedy, you know when Porky is stuttering and then he takes a left turn with a whole different word. "Petunia, will you marry [stuttering] will you marry [stuttering] let's get hitched." Bob has been practicing Porky for as long as he can remember.
Bob: I was just an obnoxious kid who'd be in grammar school, and a teacher would ask me a question and I'd answer like Porky Pig.
Bob: I had Porky's stutter down by the time I was six. I knew exactly how to stutter, and I knew the comedy behind the stutter.
Bob: We’d moved to LA when I was 14, and I just thought, “I want to be Porky Pig. How do I become Porky Pig?” Well, I'll just call the guy doing Porky Pig and say, "Look, I just arrived. I'm sure you're looking for some way to retire, and I'd be more than happy to accommodate."
Bob’s dad got him a stack of Los Angeles phone books. Then Bob called every M. Blanc he could find, but with no luck.
Bob: And I thought, well, maybe it's under his wife's name. So I started all over. I knew his wife's name was Estelle, and I found E. Blanc in the Pacific Palisades, that was his house. And I got him on the phone.
And you’re not going to believe this, but Bob taped his original conversation with Mel.
[music out]
[SFX Clip:Estelle: Hello.
Young Bob from tape: Is Mr Blanc there?
Estelle: One moment please.
Mel: Hello?
Young Bob from tape: Mr Blanc?
Mel: Yes.
Young Bob: My name is Bob, and I’m interested in doing voices for cartoons.
Mel: Yes.
Young Bob. And I was wondering if you could give me any advice about how to go about it and all.
Mel: Tell me, have you created any voices, or do you just do impressions or impersonations?
Young Bob: Well, I’ve got one voice. [Doing high-pitched voice] It sounds like this. [Regular voice] It’s hard to understand.
Mel: Let me tell you something. In the first place, every voice must be understandable to be in a cartoon.]
Mel chatted with Bob for a few more minutes, talking about creating characters and finding agents.
[SFX clip continued: Mel: I tell you, it’s not an easy business to get into. How old are you?
Young Bob: Fourteen.
Mel: Fourteen… Well it takes an awful long time to get established...]
But Bob still wanted more.
Bob: He mentioned the name of the studio he was working at that week. So when I finished talking to him, I called the studio and I pretended to be his assistant and I said, "Hi, I'm Mel Blanc's assistant and I'm calling to confirm his appointment this week. We've got him down for Thursday at nine." And the receptionist goes, "We have them down for Wednesday at 11." I went, "Oh, you're right. I'm looking at the wrong day in the calendar. Sorry about that."
Bob was determined to learn by watching Mel work.
Bob: So I said to my mom, "I'm skipping school on Wednesday and we're going to go watch Mel Blanc work at this studio." And my mom said, "Cool." So when we got to the studio that Wednesday, I told the receptionist that we were invited to come watch. We were guests of Mel Blanc. And she showed me what booth he was in. And then when we walked into his booth, I said to his producer, "We're very good friends of the receptionist." And she said we could watch. And the producer said, "Sure, have a seat." I got to watch him work.
[music in]
After talking to Mel and watching him work, Bob doubled down on his dream of becoming Porky Pig. Even as a kid, he was recording himself practicing the voice.
[SFX clip: Young Bob from tape: [Stuttering] That’s all folks...]
Mel Blanc loved talking to kids like Bob. In fact, he would visit children’s hospitals as often as he could.
Noel: He did about 185 different college speeches during his lifetime, but he never went into any one of those towns that he didn't go to the children's hospital first.
By all accounts, Mel spent hours at these hospitals, giving sick kids a few moments of happiness. Most people had no idea Mel even made these trips. Publicity wasn’t the point. Mel did it because he loved making people happy.
[music out]
[SFX clip: Mel from YouTube clip: I just love it. I love my work, which I think, everybody should love before they do, before they go to work, they should love what they’re going to do or don’t take the job. And I love my work…this has worked out beautifully for me.]
Mel Blanc worked well past retirement. Even with the flu, an 81-year-old Mel Blanc made TV with his son. He was still voicing characters he created more than fifty years before.
Noel: We had done a television commercial for Oldsmobile. It was called Not Your Father's Oldsmobile. And he and I were in the Oldsmobile with the characters, Bugs, Daffy, and all the characters.
[Oldsmobile commercial: Noel, Mel, and Looney Tunes from YouTube clip: This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.
Mel: [Porky Pig voice] That’s all folks.]
[music in]
Noel: We did the entire commercial that day, it took us about eight hours. And he had just gotten over the flu and I said, "Well, why don't you go see the doctor, and he can clear out your lungs for you."
When Mel got to the hospital, the doctor’s gave him the option to stay overnight. He thought this was a good idea. So he took it.
Noel: He had fallen out of bed and broken his femur, got fat emboli into the brain, and he was literally gone within 48 hours.
Just like that, after a more-than-60-year career in entertainment, Mel Blanc was gone.
Noel: He had another few years to go that was for sure, and then passed away because of this accident. So he never retired. He worked actually that whole day before he went into the hospital and broke his leg.
When Mel Blanc died, the world lost an incredible talent. Even more devastating, was the loss of a great human being. A generous, kind person who loved to make people laugh. His voice would never be in another cartoon. It was a sudden end to an amazing life that touched generations of people all over the world.
But it wasn’t the end for Bugs, Daffy, and the rest. What does it take to replace a legend? We’ll find out, after the break.
[music out]
MIDROLL
[music in]
For more than fifty years, Mel Blanc was the voice behind hundreds of animated characters. He created the voices for Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and so many others. Even before he passed away, Mel knew he had to find someone to fill his shoes.
Noel: He thought that I was going to take over all those voices. I said, “No, nobody can take your voices cause they're not built like you. You've got this huge chest, these incredible vocal chords, this great ear, a perfect pitch, eight octave range. Nobody's going to take over for you. It's going to take really a lot of people to take over for you.”
[music out]
Noel was right. After Mel passed away, Warner Brothers scrambled to find actors who could cover his roles. Noel was able to do some of his dad’s voices, like the Tasmanian Devil.
[SFX clip: Tasmanian Devil from “You Asked for It Part 1”: Yes, bunny yummy! [Eating sounds]]
But other actors came in to help, like Bob Bergen.
Bob: [SFX: Speaking as Tweety] I've done Tweety, the little birdy who hates that bad old puddy tat. I did [SFX: Speaking as Marvin voice] Marvin the Martian in Space Jam. I've done [SFX: Speaking as Junior voice] Junior. Oh father, look! Go get them, Pop.
Bob’s taken on a few of Mel’s characters. But none are as important to Bob as Porky Pig, the character who first got him interested in voice acting.
Bob: I was a working voiceover actor doing a whole bunch of cartoons when Mel Blanc passed away. And I had a good agent who was able to get me into a dozen or so auditions and callbacks before I booked my first Porky Pig gig.
Bob: The first thing I ever did was Tiny Toon Adventures.
[Tiny Toon Adventures clip: Porky Pig from Tiny Toon Adventures: [stuttering throughout] Now class, for our cartoon prop lesson open to page 23 of your whoopie cushion instruction manual.]
But filling in for a legend isn’t easy.
Bob: It was a little daunting because I would say the first year that we would do any Looney Tunes project, they had like a 12 minute reference tape of Mel, but it was some cartoons from the 30s and cartoons from the 40s, some cartoons from the 50s, some cartoons from the 60s. And I would say to them, "Well, which one do you want?" And they're like, "Well, they're all Porky." I'm like, "Yeah, they're all Porky, but the character evolved."
Bob: Earlier, the stutter was different.
[SFX clip: Porky Pig from “Porky’s Duck Hunt”: [stuttering throughout] I got him! I got him!]
Bob: Later, he was older, his energy was not as good and you could hear the smoking in the voice.
[SFX clip: Porky Pig from “The Bugs Bunny Mystery Special” Good evening. You know who I am. Master of mystery and sus- [stuttering] oh you know, Who-done-its.]
Bob: The era where I think Mel Blanc kind of nailed it, my sweet spot for Porky is about 1952 to 1956, '57." I think that's the era where Mel Blanc really just nailed the character.
[SFX clip: Porky Pig from “Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century”: [stuttering] Why it’s very simple sir. If we follow [stuttering] those planets, we can’t very well miss Planet X.]
Bob: We did a series about 10 years ago called The Looney Tunes Show, and it was kind of like a sitcom. And the producers wanted the delivery to be a very specific golly gee way.
[SFX clip: Porky Pig from YouTube clip: [stuttering throughout] Bugs, as your friend, I think buying Geradi’s is a great idea.]
Bob: But if nobody says, "Here's what we want." I go to my sweet spot, which is early to mid 50s Mel Blanc.
[SFX clip: Porky Pig from “Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century”: I’m [stuttering] all set your hero-ship sir!]
Bob: The earlier, earlier sessions were just a committee. A lot of people I had to please, presidents and vice presidents and executives, and it was all scary. It's been quite some time where they kind of trust me, but I will tell you, I've had to re-audition for them six times.
To be fair, re-auditioning doesn’t bother Bob. He’s confident in his Porky Pig, and he understands what it means to carry Mel’s legacy. Now, Bob’s been Porky for thirty years, but Mel did it for more than fifty.
Bob: Animation brings in more box office than live action. His legacy is the industry as a whole. If you think of classic Hollywood personalities and characters, you're going to think Charlie Chaplin, James Steward, Humphrey Bogart and Bugs Bunny. I mean, I think Bugs Bunny fits in to the world of classic Hollywood as any live action actor would.
[music in]
Mel Blanc is among the greatest actors ever to grace the screen. His talent is a big part of what made him so unique.
Noel: You could watch Mel do the voices and actually transmogrify into those characters. We could turn off the sound inside the booth so it was totally silent. And I could watch him go through the different characters and you could see him becoming the different characters. It was pretty amazing. He actually looked like Yosemite Sam when he did Yosemite Sam.
[SFX Clip: Yosemite Sam from YouTube clip: A rabbit! [Laughs] A rabbit.]
Noel: He looked like Tweety. He was a little teeny Tweety.
[SFX Clip: Tweety from YouTube clip: Poor puddy tat. Forgot his parachute.]
Noel: Foghorn Leghorn, he was the big rooster.
[SFX Clip: Foghorn Leghorn from YouTube clip: Now who’s responsible, I say, who’s responsible for this unwarranted attack on my person?]
Mel’s legacy is enormous. It was his voice that took cartoons into the mainstream.
Bob: Besides 60 years of product, he basically put this industry on the map. When he was doing voices for cartoons, these were just something to put in front of a movie. Today, every major studio has a thriving animation department.
Noel: The culture became embedded with these incredible cartoon characters. And cartoon movies are still the biggest thing out there right now.
Melvin Jerome Blanc passed away at the age of 81, but in many ways his kind soul and personality live on through his characters.
His final resting place is at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery - just a few blocks from his and Bugs Bunny’ star on the walk of fame.
It was Mel himself who wrote what’s inscribed on his tombstone… which says...
That’s All Folks. Mel Blanc, Man of 1000 voices.
[SFX clip: Mel from YouTube clip: If I saw a person smile, that to me was payment in itself…If I could make them laugh when they had been very sad, it was great payment to me.]
[music out]
[music in]
Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, a sound design team dedicated to making television, film, and games sound incredible. Find out more at defacto sound dot com.
This episode was written and produced by James Introcaso...and me, Dallas Taylor. With help from Sam Schneble. It was sound design and mixed by Soren Begin, and Colin DeVarney.
Thanks to Noel Blanc for sharing stories of his dad. Thanks also to Bob Bergen. You can listen to more of the recorded phone conversation between Mel and Bob at bobbergen.com.
Many of the clips from Mel in this episode came from an amazing documentary called Mel Blanc: The Man of a Thousand Voices. You can check that out, plus a fun video of Mel’s vocal chords flexing as he does his Looney Tunes voices at 20k dot org.
Thanks for listening.
[music out]
[SFX clip: Mel from YouTube clip: [stuttering] That’s all folks!]
