Name: Mel Blanc On Voicing Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and More | Letterman
Uploaded: 2024-06-18T15:00:01.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Mel Blanc On Voicing Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and More | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-06-18. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Mel Blanc On Voicing Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig and More | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-06-18. Transcript available.

Most of us grew up with the voices of my first guest, Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Sylvester,
Tweety Pie, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Barney Rubble, are just a few
of the cartoon voices that this man has immortalized.
It's a pleasure to welcome Mr. Mel Blank.
Mel, welcome.
What's up, David?
That's a great sweater you have there.
Oh, thank you very much. I like it, too.
Yeah. Now, that's not your actual voice, is it?
No, I have a very deep voice.
Do you remember the first voice that you did?
Yes, I do. I remember the first voice I did.
Now, that's your real voice right there, isn't it?
This is my real voice, yeah.
The first voice I ever did was this.
I don't remember it, but that was the first voice.
So, aside from the list of characters that we mentioned in the introduction,
what others have you been responsible for?
Well, there's Yosemite Sam.
That's a real raucous cowboy.
And, of course, there's Pepe Le Pew. He's the little French skunk.
He's the pussycat.
And, uh, Foghorn. I say, pay attention, David.
That Foghorn Lego.
That big rooster, he talks like that, you know.
You looking for chicken?
Do you see that little house over there?
It says, D-O-G. That's well, chicken.
Go get him, boy.
Now, we have some, uh, uh, I guess some clips here of, uh, some of your work.
You know, uh, it's going to be...
Oh, this is kind of a montage, isn't it?
Yeah, a montage.
Oh, yeah.
There's a few of the characters that are in the picture.
Okay.
All right.
We'll take a look at that.
And, uh, is there anything you need to explain to us before we look at it?
Well, they're just a bunch of nutty people, that's all.
Okay.
How do you go about creating a voice?
Do you get a voice and then, say, draw something to go along with us?
Or do they come to you and say...
They show me a picture of the character.
And then they say, uh, they show me a storyboard,
which shows what the character's going to do in the cartoon.
From this, I have to create the voice.
Like, Bugs, they said, was a tough little stinker.
So I thought, which is the toughest voice in this country,
either Brooklyn or the Bronx?
So, uh, you put the two of them together.
That's how I got the voice for Bugs, Doc.
And Porky, they said, was a, uh, a timid little character.
So I went out to a pig farm and wallowed around with a pig,
so I wanted to be authentic.
And, uh, when I went back to the studio,
they kicked me out and said, go home and take a bath.
Which I did want to come back.
They said, I said, if a pig could talk, he'd talk with a grunt.
You know, oink, oink, oink, oink, oink.
That's why, oink, oink, oink, oink.
That's why, oink, oink, oink.
That parking on his voice.
E, oink, oink, oink, oink, oink, oink, oink, oink, oink.
With a grunt.
Uh, now you've done 5,000 voices?
Is that possible?
No, I've worked in 5,000 different cartoons.
Uh-huh.
And, uh, actually, I do about 400 different voices.
And, uh, in each dialect, you can do many different voices.
Yeah, do you have any that, uh, there must be some that are similar in the 400
that you've done?
Uh, no.
There's, uh, they're not similar.
I mean, you can recognize each, each one differently.
Uh-huh.
Like, in one picture I show in my college speeches, uh, there's all, all
Italian.
Like, Columbus discovers America along with Bugs Bunny.
And, uh, Columbus, he talks it down here, you see.
He talks in Italian, the dialect, like it is.
In the Bugs, he talks the world, and she's around, I think.
Uh-huh.
And very, you see, you can do different, uh, voices in different, different, uh,
dialects.
Yeah.
How long does it take to make a, a cartoon?
Well, uh, to make a six-and-a-half-minute cartoon in full animation took 125
people nine months to make one single fully animated cartoon.
Uh-huh.
Uh, and even then, it cost around $50,000.
And today, it would cost around a half a million.
But Warner Brothers still do only full animation.
Uh-huh.
Now, but full animation compared to what?
Well, compared to limited animation.
Now, the films you see today, the cartoons are limited animation.
They draw maybe one in ten frames, where Warners draws every single frame.
Uh-huh.
And, uh, it's much cheaper drawing just one frame and having the mouth move a
little bit in the background on a turntable that you see over and over again.
Oh, and also for, uh, for, uh, television using cartoons, they need them a lot
more quickly than they could be produced in full animation, I'm guessing.
Yes, and the full animation actually is, uh, what makes every, every motion
believable.
Yeah.
And every, uh, synchronized lip movement equal.
And incidentally, they do the, the voice first, and the cartoon after the voice
is, is done.
Uh-huh.
They draw to the voice.
Most people don't know that.
Yeah.
What happens if you get a cold and you have to go to work?
Does it, does that, uh, goof things up?
I was gonna say I kill myself.
No, uh, I, I usually can talk over a cold, but I try to keep away from it as
much as I can.
Yeah, yeah.
How did you, uh, tell me about your relationship with Jack Benny.
How did that begin?
Well, uh, Jack finally found that I was the one doing the crazy voices in the
cartoons, and he called me in and asked me to do, uh, Carmichael, a bear that
was eating the, uh, gas man down in his, guarding his vault.
And, uh, I said, yes, I, he said, what would he sound like?
I said, maybe like this.
Roar!
Ah!
I said, good, good, you're on next week.
For six months, that's all I did was a growl of a bear.
Finally, I said to him, you know, Mr. Benny, I can also talk.
Well, Jack fell down when I told him that.
He said, I'll have the writers write something in for you.
Yeah.
So they did.
Yeah, you did, uh, you were on the show a lot, and did many other noises and
sounds and voices.
That's right.
He had a parrot there that couldn't talk.
And he asked me if I'd, uh, talk like a parrot.
I said, Roar!
Where did the shapescape?
Where did the shapescape?
Roar!
And, uh, then, uh, he had a train caller at the depot.
Right.
It's a, uh, train leaving on track fine for Anaheim, Azusa, and Coop.
Come on, go.
Well, one time, uh, they were supposed to be the sound of his, uh, Maxwell.
He had a 1926 Maxwell.
And, uh, the phonograph record that the sound effects men used, uh, had the
motor sound on
it, and they'd hold their finger on it to make it go slow and stop.
Well, when it came to that cue, I saw that they had forgot to put the electric
plug into
the socket, and I jumped up to the microphone, and I made, like, a 1926 Maxwell.
What was the, uh, what was the character, uh, was his name Sigh?
Sigh.
Yeah.
And what was that character?
Well, it was a cute character.
I came in with a sombrero on my head, a sorapi over my shoulder, and a big bass
violin.
And then, and Mr. Benny said, uh, you came all the way from Tijuana to play in
my band?
Sigh.
And, uh, I see you brought your bass violin with you.
Sigh.
What's her name?
Sigh.
Sigh?
Sigh.
And I see you brought a young lady with you.
Is that your sister?
Sigh.
Uh, what's her name?
Sue.
Sue?
Sigh.
Well, what does she do for a living?
Sigh.
That's all there was to the whole spot with Jack Lover.
Uh, we, we have, uh, some more film.
Now, this would be a, a, a new film, a new cartoon, feature length, is that
right?
No, I think, no, I think this is a gold rush.
This is, uh, Bugs Bunny, uh, third motion picture.
And it's called, uh, A Thousand and One Bugs Bunny Nights.
Uh-huh.
Or A Thousand Wild Hair Nights, something like that.
And, uh, I haven't even seen the whole thing yet.
Okay.
So this is not, this is not.
It's a new picture.
Oh, this is a new picture.
Yes, it'll be shown probably in theaters.
Okay.
Well, yeah, that'd be a good place to start.
Uh, all right, uh, One Thousand and One, what was it?
A Thousand and One Nights.
It's, uh, One Thousand One.
One Thousand One Rabbit Tales.
Rabbit Tales.
Just Bugs Bunny's third movie, A Thousand One Rabbit Tales.
Yeah, all right.
And that will be out shortly, huh?
Yes, very soon.
All right.
It was a pleasure meeting you.
Thank you very much, Dave.
Thank you very much.
Mel Blank, ladies and gentlemen.
We'll go away here for station identification, and, uh, we'll be right back
with Hunter Thompson
and Marjorie Gross.