The First Blabber

As we get closer to the release of Quick Draw McGraw on Blu-ray, it is appropriate that we pay tribute to someone whose name you do not see to the right.

Joe Barbera was quoted by Douglas Diltz of UPI in June 1959 that there was a dearth of voice actors in Hollywood, and Hanna-Barbera was on the lookout for people who had a unique repertoire of voices. With Quick Draw on the horizon, the studio was scouting the field. In more ways than one.

Among the people hired for the show was KFWB announcer Elliot Field.

He was part of an era when disc jockeys replaced network-style dramas and comedies, and injected their own humour with voices and sketches in between records. Elliot had been doing it on radio in Texas before he arrived in Los Angeles.

Elliot was one of two new actors hired for the Quick Draw show. The other was radio actor Doug Young, who was recommended by Daws Butler to play Doggie Daddy. Young’s career lasted for a number of years at Hanna-Barbera until he moved from California. Elliot’s didn’t. He had been picked for the role of Blabber Mouse, but after four episodes, he was replaced by Daws Butler. Elliot told me it was because he got sick.

Within a few years, his career at KFWB went sour because of a strike, and he ended up accepting a job in Detroit.

The Detroit Free Press profiled him in its Jan. 31, 1965 edition. It even mentions his work at Hanna-Barbera.

A Man of Many Voices---That’s Elliot Field
BY BETTELOU PETERSON
Free Press Radio-TV Writer
Beware of meeting Elliot Field. You may wind up in his gallery of characters. Field is proprietor of "The Elliot Field Gazette," newly introduced on WJR Monday through Friday at 2:10 p.m. The show combines music, talk, poetry and interviews in a magazine-like format.
Assisting him is announcer Charley Park and Jimmy Clark on piano and organ. An occasional guest will be heard, but the other voices, and there may be as many as 50 of them, will all be Elliot Field.
• • •
YOU ALREADY may have heard some of the various Field voices. He has worked for Stan Freberg's commercial producing company, did a "Flinstones" [sic] feature movie as Alvin Brickrock (Alfred Hitchcock) and was Blabber-mouse and Grumbleweed in early "Quick Draw McGraw" cartoons.
Elliot comes to WJR from Los Angeles where he was known as a rock 'n' roll disc jockey.
"I'm happy that I'm getting away from that with the 'Gazette,' " said Field. "This is a more mature approach to programming than I've ever been allowed to do before."
"You can really suffer from type-casting," said Field. "I did a President Kennedy voice for Freberg. A year later, he called and asked if I could do an Eisenhower. I was typed as an imitator of presidents."
(Eisenhower, said Field, is difficult to do. No distinguishing voice characteristics.)
• • •
ELLIOT FIELD'S experience has been more with the spoken word than music and disc jockeying. He started in radio at 15 in Boston, his home town, doing a CBS network show, "Youth on Parade."
At the University of Florida, he continued working radio while running up an impressive list of academic honors.
His professional radio career has taken him to Miami, Miami Beach, Boston, Houston and seven years in Los Angeles before coming to Detroit. All the time, he has worked at his second love, acting, on stage and on TV and radio.
As he traveled from city to city, Field was adding voices to his gallery. Probably his favorite is Tex. a gravelly bass who joined him in Texas. So delighted were Houstonians with Tex he received 81 votes for mayor in 1957.
"I discovered something about Tex," said Field. "I tried him once minus the accent and discovered he was character actor Eugene Palette."
• • •
WHILE IN Hollywood, Field met most of the actors whose voices speak for cartoon characters. He recalls especially making the Flintstones film.
Mel Blanc, perhaps the most famous voice in Hollywood, plays Barney Rubble in the Flintstones. Blanc was severely injured in an auto accident during the making of the movie. Rather than recast, his hospital room was turned into a recording studio and the cast gathered around Blanc's bed to do their scenes.
"I'm convinced this helped Mel get well," said Field. "He had something to take his mind from himself."
In a way, Field knows the problem. Crippled by polio when he was 3, he has had to overcome shyness about his limp. But he discovered that he gets too interested in whatever role he’s doing to worry about it.
Field, 34, and wife Norma have three youngsters. The baby, Julia Ann, was born Nov. 27 in Detroit. With David, 4, and Steven, 2, the family lives in a rambling house in Southfield.

Among Elliot’s incidental voices were the narrator who opened Quick Draw’s first cartoon, Scary Prairie, Aloysius the car in the first Snooper and Blabber cartoon, Puss ‘n’ Booty, and the witch who takes the detectives to court in their second cartoon, Switch Witch. It’s a shame he wasn’t able to stay as he was versatile.

The Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw and Yogi Bear shows all had gang credits at the close. Among the other people heard on the Quick Draw show in the first season were Peter Leeds, Vance Colvig, Jr., Jean Vander Pyl, Red Coffey/Coffee, Hal Smith and Julie Bennett. With the exception of Leeds, another one of Freberg’s regulars, all were given screen credit later on for other roles, and their work at Hanna-Barbera was known. Elliot toiled in anonymity, but it’s good we can give him recognition today.

Elliot passed away in the Palm Springs area, where he had lived for many years, on Sept. 23, 2025. He was 97.