Why No Daws

Daws Butler was Hanna-Barbera’s premier voice actor through the 1950s. And then things changed. “The Flintstones” came along. Although Daws cut a dialogue track for Fred Flintstone on a demo reel using a Ralph Kramden-like voice he put in a number of cartoons, he was not on the roster of stars when the series debuted in 1960.

Joe Barbera explained why in a feature story in the Philadelphia Enquirer of October 9, 1960. He went into the casting of the show, though some details are maddeningly absent, and talked about the studio in general.

Interestingly, the story touches on the “Hairbrain Hare” series mentioned in the trade press around the same time. Hairbrain, though, seems to have gone through a name change. The story calls him “Harebreath Hare,” and if you look reaaaally closely at the drawing to the right in a blown-up Life magazine photo published in November, you’ll see it’s labelled “Harebreath Hare.” There’s a mention of Lippy and Hardy but nothing of Wally Gator. Instead, the article refers to “Ribbons and Rosie.” And, for whatever reason, there’s no mention of “Top Cat” in this or other contemporary stories. Surely it must have been in development as it was sold to ABC in December 1960.

In reading about the volume of shows the studio was producing, it’s no wonder not all the cartoons were gems. I’m presuming the “72 Quick Draws in nine months” and “five Huckleberry Hounds in five days” refer to Mike Maltese and Warren Foster, respectively.

‘Flintstones’ Cartoon Series Is Aimed Squarely at Adults
BY HARRY HARRIS
HUCKLEBERRY HOUND, Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Jinx, Augie Doggie, Boo Boo, Pixie and Dixie, Snooper and Blabber . . .
To that distinguished assembly of ultra-popular TV personalities have just been added several more—Fred and Wilma Flintstone and Barney and Betty Rubble, the stars of ABC's “The Flintstones,” Fridays at 8:30 P. M. (Channel 6).
Later recruits may include characters tentatively tagged Lippy the Lion, Hardy Har Har (a sad hyena), Harebreath Hare and a couple of gals, Ribbons and Rosie. Slated for movie house stardom: Loopy the Loop.
Despite the diversity of their monickers and species, all share the same parents: Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, the creative dynamos whose Hollywood cartoon factory manufactures merriment wholesale.
When we visited it last month, ideas—and puns—were popping all over the place. A mile-a-minute rundown of past, present and future TV projects by partner Barbera, a dark, handsome, fast-talking man who looks more like an actor than a tycoon, left us convinced the Emmy-winning Hanna-Barbera organization is capable of miracles.
Some they've already performed.
Singlehandedly (or should it be double-handedly, considering there's two of them?), Bill and Joe have proved that animated cartoons needn't be prohibitively expensive either as TV or movie house fare.
This they've managed through application of their “planned animation” concept, which has added jet propulsion to what used to be a tedious process.
“It’s a method we used at M-G-M when we were doing the ‘Tom and Jerry’ cartoons,” Barbera explained. "We’d do a mock version with a minimum number of drawings, To show our cartoonists before they started animating. We developed it to such a point that we didn’t need any additional cartoons to tell the story. Instead of 17,000 individual drawings, we could show a complete picture in 600 or 700.
“When we suggested this technique to M-G-M, they never even answered. Thank heavens! Wouldn’t it be awful to be working there yet, saluting everybody, waiting six weeks for an answer!
“We used to do eight shows a year; now, on the phone, Screen Gems orders 78, or 104, or ‘500 as quick as you can!’ Men who used to do eight shows a year now do one a week. Even three doesn’t faze them. One turned out 72 ‘Quick Draw McGraws’ in nine months; another, five ‘Huckleberry Hounds’ in five days. “In television, something comes up and you do it. Even the impossible!”
Another thing Hanna and Barbera have demonstrated is that grown-ups can flip over what used to be considered strictly kid stuff. “Huckleberry Hound” testimonials, for instance, come from college students, GIs, businessmen, professionals, even atomic scientists. “The Flintstones” is TV's first animated cartoon series scheduled in prime time and deliberately aimed at adults.
One reason for adult enthusiasm is the canny use of “funny” voices. Bob Smith, explaining the recent demise of his “Howdy Doody,” complained that sponsors now want double-duty children’s shows with pictures to amuse youngsters and sounds to amuse oldsters—“like ‘Huckleberry Hound.’”
Barbera acknowledges that stress is placed on “sound” in the Hanna-Barbera shows. “We sit around listening to voices," he said. “If we laugh just listening, fine; if not, we’re in trouble.
“To get the right voices for ‘The Flintstones,’ we interviewed people for a solid year. We auditioned 12 teams of voices daily, explaining the characters and having everybody read the same lines for a tape recorder.
“We thought of using Daws Butler, who’s great, but we were afraid we were starting to spread him too thin. He’s already the voice of Yogi, Huck, McGraw, Jinx, Augie Doggie, Dixie, Bobo-looie, Snooper and Blabber. What would we do if anything happened to him? We keep him locked up in a box!
“We listened to 60 or 70 of the best voices in the United States. We didn’t want a gimmick voice that would wear down, because ‘The Flintstones’ is a situation comedy with people. We brought in everybody: Andy Devine, Maxie Rosenbloom, Jack Oakie.

“We had the first five ‘Flintstones’ completed, and then we threw out and recast the voices of Fred and Barney. They just didn't fit!”
Fred and Barney are being portrayed vocally by Alan Reed and Mel Blanc; their wives, Wilma and Betty, by Philadelphia-born Jean Vander Pyl and Bea Benadaret. “We had had Alan in nine months earlier, reading with somebody else,” said Barbera, “and, that way, he didn’t sound right. Strangely enough, he tooks something like Fred Flintstone. Mel wasn’t available when we started casting.
“When we were up to the 12th show, Alan developed cataracts in both eyes. He couldn’t see. We prepared his scripts with bigger type and more space until, fortunately, his eyesight improved.”
Barbera doesn’t minimize the importance of the visual element in the Hanna-Barbera shows.
“We cast the characters as if we were interviewing real people. We look at all sorts of drawings before approving characters, wives, kids, dogs.
“At first, when we thought about a satirical thing, we considered a hillbilly character, but decided that might be downbeat, because such people live poor. Suburban cave men in the Stone Age gave viewers a chance to identify and still have fun.”
It also provided ample opportunities to “sneak in” some of the visual and verbal “extra pluses” grown-up Hanna-Barbera fans have come to look for.
Examples in “The Flintstones”: autos with dragging-foot brakes; a record player containing a bird with a long-playing beak; cameras containing tiny sculptors; “Own your own cave” commercials.
One major problem accompanying success has been where to get the necessary personnel.
“For 15 years cartoons have been on a downward slide,” said Joe, “and no new people have been developed. We’ve brought people out of retirement, tracked down second generations, arranged for people to work at home. My two daughters were here all summer, and Bill’s daughter is working here now.
“Each of our people is an artist, an individual, and we’ve got to think of their quirks. After all, we’re not turning out cars. There are no time clocks, and if anybody comes up with a fresh idea, he has a check in his hand within a half hour.
“As a result, we get the beat people. We’re not cornering the market—we’ve just dropped two people, because they weren’t good enough. We have a standard now; we’re stuck with a quality. Somebody has said that in the field of cartoons we’re doing for television now what Disney did for motion pictures 25 years ago.”
Like Disney, Hanna and Barbera are planning expansion into feature-length cartoons and are even considering a Disneyland-like amusement center—“Huckleberry Houndsville, maybe, or Jellostone Park.”
Since entering the TV field with “Ruff ‘n’ Reddy,” they’ve been going in heavily for merchandising. At last count, assorted novelty items numbered 280.
“In the 20 years we did ‘Tom and Jerry,’” Barbera noted, “there were only comic books. Nothing touches the impact of television!”

Just Another Day at Hanna-Barbera

Recognise this scary face?



Why, of course you do. It’s Carlo Vinci, animator of some of the funniest drawings in the early days of the Hanna-Barbera studio. And you may recognise the picture as being similar to one which opened a story on the studio in Life Magazine published on November 21, 1960. You can read it HERE.

Amid over at Cartoon Brew was nice enough to point out that all the photos taken in the shoot by Allan Grant for that story are now on-line. Allow me post a few of them (for non-commercial purposes, naturally, as this is a fan site).

Fans of the Modern Stone Age family should recognise the drawing the anonymous inker is working on. Thanks to the DVD of “The Flintstones,” we’re able to see the original opening of the first two seasons of the show where Fred is driving through Bedrock, running errands and then going home. He is stopped by a cop for a fire truck, designed by the great Ed Benedict. The inker is working on a drawing of the “truck.” The dino’s legs would be on separate cels as the animal is running. I have no idea who animated the opening and would accept any and all educated guesses (several people have sent me the same answer; see Mike Kazaleh’s note in the comment section). You can spot a piece of the Flintstones’ size chart in the corner. Inkers and painters were the unsung heroes of old cartoons.



The brilliant Mel Blanc is at the centre of this photo of a break in (or just prior to the start of) a voice session for “The Flintstones.” Bea Benaderet has her back to the camera, and the others are Jean Vander Pyl, Joe Barbera, Alan Reed and associate producer Alan Dinehart. In the corner of the shot, that’s John Stephenson with the pencil; he appeared on several cartoons as early as the first season in 1960. I gather from Tony Benedict’s interview with Mark Evanier at this year’s Wonder Con that this session was recorded at the Columbia Pictures studio. Remember that the Hanna-Barbera studio at 3400 Cahuenga hadn’t been built yet; H-B started in the Kling studio on La Brea in 1957 and then moved to a building at 3501 Cahuenga (a block from their future home and a block and a half from Jack Kinney Productions) by August 1960. Incidentally, those Ampex tape machines in the booth were great. I imagine the studio recorded the reels at 15 ips and then cut reference discs for the animators to use when drawing mouth movements; there’s another picture in this set of Carlo at his drawing board with a turntable and record nearby.



Here’s Joe Barbera paying rapt attention to his secretary.

And here’s a gag picture of Joe Barbera after being kicked out of his office. Alan Dinehart is passing in the hallway. Life doesn’t have the pictures captioned so I don’t know exactly what's going on here.

You’ll notice in picture with the secretary (Scott Shaw! tells me she’s Maggie Roberts), the table has an Emmy (for The Huckleberry Hound Show), a wooden key and little models of Huck, Quick Draw and a wooly mammoth, as well as Tom and Jerry, who were still property of MGM. Someone, maybe it was Jerry Eisenberg, described the window-less studio where H-B was located when he arrived in 1961 as “the bunker.” Those painted brick walls sure leave you with that impression. The building is still there today. It’s still without windows and still has painted bricks.



Look at the talent in this room for what may have been a development meeting. The greatest cartoon writer in the world, Mike Maltese, is on the right side of the picture talking to Alex Lovy (the bald chick-magnet to the right). From left to right in the photo are: Arnie Carr (studio flack), Dan Gordon, Alan Dinehart, Joe Barbera, Bill Hanna and the marvellous Warren Foster to Hanna’s left. Maltese is blocking production supervisor Howard Hanson, who you can’t see. The drawings on the blackboard we’ll discuss in a post next week.



A recording session. No, that’s not Hoyt Curtin conducting. Curtin was a beefy guy with a rum nose; he looked like a character out of Guys and Dolls. Hanna has his foot up on the step. Listen to some of the orchestra’s work by clicking on the button.





“You must live in a hole if you don’t like to bowl! Hey, hey, hey, hey!” The studio had a bowling team. Could the third person in the shot be Tony Benedict? By the way, this building is still there but this side entrance is different today.



And here’s one more of the stars of “The Flintstones” and their cardboard cut-outs. You can see the old-time network radio influence as they’re all gathered around one mike. There must have been a lot of bobbing in and out to read lines but all of them worked in radio in the ‘40s, so they’d be used to it.

We’ve captioned more photos in this post. If you want to look at all the photos, click HERE. There are others of Carlo; one of them shows layout drawings for “The Golf Champion.” My thanks again to Amid for the link.

I Hear Voices

You hear their voices on cartoons but, of course, you never see them. They’re the great voice actors that Hanna-Barbera hired. Most of them had training in the days of radio drama and comedy before television bludgeoned it to death. Some did live action television, so their faces may be familiar.



We’ve posted pictures of some of them here before—Daws Butler, Don Messick, Doug Young, the casts of The Flintstones, The Jetsons and Top Cat. And you’ve seen others elsewhere on the internet. But I’ve got a file folder with photos and clippings that I don’t think have been posted, so I’m doing it now.

This is not intended as a complete, definitive photo gallery, so don’t ask “Why isn’t there a picture of Lennie Weinrib?” and then list every cartoon role he ever played. I’m just putting up a miscellany of graphic files I’ve accumulated. Some are trade ads, others are publicity head shots.



Daws Butler improved every cartoon he appeared in, and some needed a lot of help. This shot must be from the early ‘50s when he was working with Stan Freberg, and comes from a biography about him broadcast years ago on PBS. Daws had so many great voices, it’s impossible to pick a favourite. I do have a favourite one-shot voice, though. It’s when Daws did his Fred Allen impression in the Huckleberry Hound cartoon “Skeeter Trouble.” My dad came into the living room when the cartoon was on and remarked that it was Fred Allen. “No, dad, it’s Daws Butler,” I replied. It’s the only time I ever corrected my father; kids didn’t do that back then. But this was important. We were talking cartoons, after all. (You can also hear Daws as Fred Allen in the August 1956 CBS Radio Workshop production “An Analysis of Satire”).



Mel Blanc was the King of Theatrical Cartoon Actors. There was no one better. He was a tremendous actor, yet he failed when handed a starring role in a radio sitcom in 1946, though the one-dimensional characters and trite concept were the reasons. He didn’t work for Hanna-Barbera until The Flintstones came along. He was Secret Squirrel and, well, a bunch of other characters that didn’t do a lot for me. This trade newspaper ad is from 1950, which gives you an idea what roles Mel thought were his most important at the time.



I love Howie Morris. One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen is Howie as Uncle Goopy on the This is Your Life send up on Sid Caesar’s show. His first H-B role, to the best of my knowledge, was Jet Screamer on The Jetsons, though he was pretty funny as Harlan, Cogswell’s lackey. He starred as Atom Ant, tried to enliven Magilla Gorilla cartoons as Mr. Peebles and got a Kellogg’s cereal gig as the voice of Hillbilly Goat, pushing Sugar Stars. He also told off Joe Barbera in language not fit for television, thus resulting in a change of cartoon addresses to the Filmation studio.



Know who this is? He’s in character as Solomon Levy on The Goldbergs radio show. It’s Alan Reed. This trade ad shot is from 1943. He carved out a good radio career before being hired as Fred Flintstone. His best role was probably that of hammy poet Falstaff Openshaw on Fred Allen’s show; the Falstaff voice got recycled as “Frederick” in the first season of The Flintstones. Reed did dialects on radio as well; Pasquale on Life With Luigi may be his best-known one.



This is the guy that Reed replaced as Fred Flintstone because he couldn’t keep enough gravel in his voice during recording sessions. It’s a picture of a young Bill Thompson, who theatrical cartoon fans will know as Droopy (MGM) and J. Audubon Woodlore (Disney). Old radio fans remember his long stint on “Fibber McGee and Molly” starting in the late ‘30s, interrupted by a stint in the U.S. Navy during the war. He was billed as “Jackie Coogan’s Double” at age five and went into vaudeville at 12. The Fibber gig dried up about the time MGM closed its cartoon studio, so Thompson got a job in 1957 as a community relations executive for Union Oil. That’s what he was doing when he arrived at Hanna-Barbera. He starred as Touché Turtle but didn’t do a lot of work for the studio. He died in July 15, 1971 at age 58.



Paul Winchell entertained audiences on radio, TV and cartoons. His sneering Dick Dastardly on Wacky Races was great, though I suspect his first H-B “appearances” were on The Banana Splits Show (both of which debuted in 1968). Winchell, of course, was Gargamel in the studio’s take on The Smurfs and popped up on other series, and made a fine Tigger for Disney. He was born Paul Wilchinsky and he, his father Sol (a tailor by trade), mother Clara and sister Rita were in Los Angeles by 1940 where Paul was acting in what was left of vaudeville. As you likely know, he was an energetic ventriloquist. You should check out a What’s My Line show where Winchell is on the panel and the mystery guests are Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. You can read Mark Evanier’s remembrance of Paul Winchell HERE.

Since we’re on the topic of ventriloquists, Yakky Doodle’s voice is still with us. Jimmy Weldon’s fame from his television appearances in California in the 1950s with his puppet Webster Webfoot. This photo is from 1959. Weldon had replaced Shari Lewis on “Hi Mom,” shot in New York, and would very soon be back on the West Coast. Red Coffey had been doing the voice of a little duck in the earliest Hanna-Barbera cartoons but when the duck was given his own series in 1961, Weldon won the role. He’s spent time in retirement, if you want to call it that, as a motivational speaker.

Hanna-Barbera’s utility man was John Stephenson, who came on board after The Flintstones went to air in 1960. Besides Mr. Slate, he grumbled a lot about “if it wasn’t for those meddling kids and their dog,” started out playing Dr. Benton Quest until Joe Barbera or someone decided to replace him with Don Messick, tried out his Cary Grant voice on Top Cat, had supporting roles on Breezly and Sneezly and Squiddly Diddly (yeah, I know, not exactly two of H-B’s greatest), used Paul Lynde-inspired voices in a couple of series and even voiced later incarnations of Doggie Daddy when Doug Young left California in 1966. He seems to have been in every one of those mid-1970s Tom and Jerry TV cartoons, the stiff-looking, talky ones where the cat and mouse are friends. I always enjoyed watching him on Hogan’s Heroes because I recognised his voice from cartoons. He was still doing commercials up to a few years ago as part of Dick Orkin’s stock company and is apparently doing well in his late 80s. The bio is from a mid-‘50s Radio-Television Mirror magazine when Stephenson was on the sitcom The People’s Choice.



I’m not a fan of the Cindy Bear character, but here are some publicity photos of the young woman who played her, Julie Bennett. The first one is from 1950, the second from 1951. I suspect Cindy’s voice was inspired by magnolia-scented Leila Ransom on radio’s The Great Gildersleeve, voiced by Shirley Mitchell (imitating Una Merkel), who had the misfortune of appearing in Hanna-Barbera’s Roman Holidays. Bennett’s first role for the studio was on “Masking For Trouble” (1959), a Quick Draw McGraw cartoon. Her whereabouts today, unfortunately, are unknown.



Okay, I’m cheating now. Gil Mack never appeared in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. But he voiced a number of H-B characters on Golden Records recorded in New York City. Gil racked up credits on some great shows, as you can see by this 1940 trade newspaper ad, but imitating Daws Butler and Don Messick’s characters wasn’t exactly his forte.



And I’m cheating again. Jack Shaindlin and John Seely never voiced characters but their music was prominent behind the voices on the soundtracks of H-B cartoons from 1957 until Hoyt Curtin started writing underscores in 1960. Biographies of both Shaindlin and Seely have been posted elsewhere on the blog. These are trade ads; Seely’s is from 1961 and Shaindlin’s from probably a decade earlier. This is as good a post as any to put them on the blog.



This is a funny photo I grabbed off Facebook. You know who it is. But someone didn’t. The caption reads:

Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland.

One of the joys of being an archivist is finding mistakes and correcting them. We found this photo in the Imogene Coca file, but it's not her. Students of 1950s television or fans of voice actors, might recognize the face as that of Arnold Stang. But when and where did he dress up in drag?

One Google search later and we learned that the picture is from an episode of the "Red Skelton Show," broadcast on April 2, 1957. One of Skelton's recurring sketch characters, "Cookie," is in the Navy and there's a chance for shore leave in Japan as the prize in a drama contest. So Red became a six-foot-three Romeo to shipmate Stang's five-foot-three Juliet.

Arnold Stang had to be a great comedian to be able to hold his own on TV with hammy scene-stealers like Skelton and Milton Berle. Here’s Stang with his alter ego in a more familiar photo you’ve seen here before.



Of course, there were many more actors who settled in front of the microphones at the Hanna-Barbera studios. All of them were talented. All of them made fans laugh, even though they couldn’t see us and, in a case of tit for tat, we couldn’t see them.

The Accident

Anyone even mildly acquainted with the stellar and incomparable career of Mel Blanc knows it almost ended—along with his life—in a car accident in 1961. Mel told the story over and over again on TV talk shows. A full chapter and the introduction of his autobiography are devoted to it.

All of this was long after the fact. In a moment, you’ll get to read what was reported in the press at the time it happened. And it happened at a pretty inopportune time.

Mel was very busy as 1960 became 1961. Not only was he still doing voices for Warner Bros. cartoons and appearing occasionally on Jack Benny’s TV show, he was a co-star on Hanna-Barbera’s smash hit The Flintstones. As the studio expanded beyond its seven-minute shorts to half-hour shows, it expanded its voice talent beyond reliance on Daws Butler and Don Messick. Neither were given major roles on Hanna-Barbera’s biggest show to date. Mel explained in his book:

I received a call from Joe Barbera about playing Barney Rubble, one of the four leads.
“What is he supposed to sound like?” I asked.
“A pre-historic Art Carney.”
“Interesting,” I said, “but I don’t think so. I don’t believe in impersonating others.”
“Let me try to change your mind.” Barbera supplied some more details about Barney: that he was an easy-going kind of Cro-Magnon and the ideal counterpoint to Fred Flintstone, who had a big mouth as well as a propensity for putting his unshod foot in it.
The pairing sounded full of comic potential. It also sounded an awful lot like Jackie Gleason’s Ralph Cramden and Carney’s Ed Norton from TV’s “The Honeymooners.”
“Listen, Mel, you don’t have to copy Carney. Tell me: How do you think Barney Rubble would talk?”
“Well, I dink he’d talk like dis, Joe, with a silly hiccup of a laugh.” And I broke into “A-hee-hee, a hee-hee-hee.”
“Love it. The part’s yours if you want it,” said Joe.
I wanted it.

Mel’s story could very well be true, but it’s also true that there were auditions for the part. A mystery Barney voice can be heard on the short “pilot” film that sold the show—I keep reading it’s Daws Butler but it doesn’t sound like Daws to me—then Hal Smith had the part for five shows before Barbera decided to recast the two male leads and scrapped the soundtracks. And writer Tim Hollis states that Jerry Hausner was Barney opposite Bill Thompson’s Fred at one point. And, given Mel’s complaints that he was underpaid for years at Warner Bros., I’m sure he didn’t just instantly accept a deal over the phone; Mel’s agent would have set up some meetings to make sure his client got the money he wanted.

The Ultimate Flintstones Site reveals recording sessions for the first season started on from April 1, 1960. The last one was January 23, 1961—one day before The Accident.

Here is how the two major wire services handled the story the next day. And, yes, there were some newspapers where it was front-page news.

Mel Blanc, of Thousand Voices, Seriously Hurt in Auto
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 25 (AP) — Mel Blanc, the man with a thousand voices known to millions, was in critical condition today, suffering from multiple injuries resulting from a head-on collision that demolished his car.
Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker, received compound fractures of both legs and head lacerations Tuesday night when his hardtop sports car collided with an auto driven by a college student.
Attendants at the UCLA Medical Center said he would undergo leg surgery.
Blanc, 51, was pinned in his car and had to be freed by police and ambulance attendants.
The accident occurred on Sunset Boulevard, not far from the UCLA campus.
ARTHUR ROLSTON, 18, driver of the other car, suffered only minor knee injuries. He is a student at Menlo College on the San Francisco Peninsula.
Police said Rolston’s car went out of control on a curve and hit Blanc’s after crossing the center line. There were six fatal accidents on the same curve last year.
Blanc’s vocal creations have ranged from the impertinent “What's up, doc?” of Bugs, the roguish rabbit, to the wheezing and hacking of Jack Benny’s ancient Maxwell car.
Blanc has been associated with Benny more than 20 years and has played many featured roles on the comedian’s radio and television shows.
His voice has been dubbed into scores of Warner Brothers cartoons. He has estimated his voice has been used in more than 1,000 films.

Mel Blanc, 52, Critically Hurt In Head-on Crash
WEST LOS ANGELES, Jan. 25 (UPI)—Comedian Mel Blanc, creator of the “what’s up, doc?” voice of Bugs Bunny and many other cartoon characters, was in critical condition today at UCLA Medical Center from injuries received a head-on car crash on Sunset Boulevard.
Blanc, 52, a frequent guest star on the Jack Benny show and called the “man of a thousand voices” because of his extraordinary mimic talents, sustained compound fractures of both legs, a broken left arm, a head injury and internal injuries.
His wife, Estelle, and their son Noel, 22, arrived at the hospital Tuesday night after the crash and tearfully listened to Dr. Tracy Putnam tell them they should pray for Blanc. The physician said the injuries were so severe that it would be several days before he could predict whether Blanc would survive.
Blanc was driving his sports car on a winding section of Sunset Boulevard when Arthur Rolston, 18, a Menlo College student, failed to guide his auto around a curve and smashed head-on into Blanc’s car, police reported. Both drivers were alone in their autos. Blanc was driving to a studio to do a commercial.
Rolston received minor injuries. He told police the wheels of his auto failed to turn with the steering wheel.
Blanc was a veteran performer on radio, TV and in the movies but he was probably best known for the estimated 1,000 cartoons for which he supplied comic voices but never appeared personally.
Sometimes Blanc made all the voices for Warner Bros. cartoons speaking the parts of five or so characters.

Remarkably, neither story mentions that Mel was in a coma so I can only presume that information had not been made public.

The wires pumped out little progress reports on Mel every once in awhile. Here are a few of them:

Badly Injured Comedian Mel Blanc Improves
HOLLYWOOD, Jan. 26 (AP) — Comedian Mel Blanc, seriously injured in a headon auto collision Tuesday night, is showing definite improvement although he remains in critical condition.
A spokesman at the UCLA Medical Center said Blanc was not fully conscious but his heartbeat was strong and he was breathing regularly. Wednesday morning, the spokesman said, doctors “did not give him a chance.”
Blanc, 52, the voice of such cartoon characters as Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig, suffered head injuries and fractures of both legs and the pelvis when his sports car collided with another auto on Sunset Boulevard near the UCLA campus. The other driver was not seriously hurt.

Mel Blanc Improving; Hurt in Auto Crash
LOS ANGELES, Feb. 1 — (AP)— Attendants at the UCLA Medical Center say comedian Mel Blanc is progressing satisfactorily and “gradually regaining orientation.”
Blanc, 52, is widely known as the voice of Bugs Bunny and other cartoon characters. He suffered multiple fractures, head and internal injuries in a two-car collision Jan. 24.

Mel Blanc No Longer on the 'Serious List'
LOS ANGELES — Feb. 15 (AP)— Comedian Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and other cartoon characters, has been taken off the serious list at the UCLA Medical Center. Hospital attendants, announcing this Wednesday, said he was making a satisfactory recovery from head injuries and multiple fractures received in an auto accident Jan. 24.

Blanc Out of Hospital
HOLLYWOOD, Fri. Mar. 17 (AP) — Mel Blanc, the voice of “Bugs Bunny” and other comic characters, is home after six weeks in the hospital.
When his ambulance rolled up to the house in nearby Pacific Palisades, escorted by two motorcycle policemen, Blanc found 150 friends waiting to welcome him Friday.
Blanc had been hospitalized since Jan. 24, when he suffered grave injuries in an automobile accident.

Now that Mel was home, he wanted to do two things—recover and work. Not necessarily in that order. Here’s the first of two columns:

Mel Blanc Scorns Injuries
By VERNON SCOTT
HOLLYWOOD, Mar. 27 (UPI) — Mel Blanc, in a cast from his chest to his toes, will be immobilized for another 90 days at home but he still is talking for Bugs Bunny.
Unable to leave his bed, the whispy [sic] haired Blanc is doing sound tracks for the screwball rabbit at home.
“I broke just about everything a guy can break in that wreck,” he said, referring to the automobile accident which almost took his life early this year.
“I fractured bones in my spine, arm, legs, chest and even my head. One of the firemen who extricated me from the car said he could have put me in a sack. But I don’t remember much about it.
Voice Not Affected
“They kept me in the hospital 70 days. That's a long time. But I’m grateful the accident didn’t hurt my voice.”
During his long siege in the hospital Mel was visited by Jack Benny and other friends. To his surprise he received thousands of letters from fans he never knew he had.
“Most of them were from Bugs Bunny fans,” he grinned.
Famous as he is for the voice of Bugs, Mel has some 200 other voices at his command, one of which is that of Barney in the new TV hit, “The Flintstones.”
“One of the jobs that keeps me busiest is doing voices for television commercials,” he said. But I will have to slow down on my work load for a long time to come.
Break In Monotony
“In a few weeks the ‘Flintstone’ company will come out to the house while I record my part. At least that will help break the monotony.
“It’s very dull lying here. I have to stay flat on my back. But I have a nice view of Santa Monica Canyon and the ocean. So I just look at the view and read the get-well letters. There are still about 4000 letters I haven’t had a chance to read yet.”
Mel is grateful the accident has accomplished something.
“They’ve already started plans to fix ‘Dead Man’s Curve’ on Sunset Boulevard where the crash occurred,” Mel explained. “It’s one of the most dangerous stretches of road in Los Angeles.”

On April 2, Los Angeles County supervisors approved an additional $206,500 to straighten the curves on Sunset Boulevard.

Mel relates in his book about how Friz Freleng called in March to see if Mel was up to recording a scratch track so animators at Warners could have something to work from. Four days after returning home, two semis from the studio unloaded sound equipment and Mel recorded a track, lying on his back, in a studio set up by his son Noel.

In the meantime, work had already begun on the second season of The Flintstones. Daws Butler had been brought in to do Barney and voiced five episodes: “The Hit Song Writers”, “Droop-Along Flintstone”, “Fred Flintstone Woos Again”, “The Rock Quarry Story” and “The Little White Lie.” The sessions were on January 30, February 7 and 24 and March 23. Joe Barbera obviously got his way about Barney sounding like Ed Norton, because Daws provides a Carney-esque voice. But now, Daws was out and Mel was in. The first taping was April 9 (‘The Soft Touchables’). Mel’s book explains:

The first time we taped the show at my home, it was quite a chaotic scene. Tangles of wires were scattered all over the floor, and chairs and microphones were arranged around my hospital bed. A speaker had been mounted on the wall so that Noel and producer Joe Barbera could communicate to the actors from the makeshift control room.
Sitting to my left were [Bea] Benaderet and Vander Pyl. Jean was a pretty gal who commuted to taping sessions from her home in San Diego, two and a half hours away. Sitting to my right was [Alan] Reed, gulping down spoonfuls of honey and lemon in preparation for his trademark exclamation, “Yabba dabba doo!” Director Alan Dineheart [sic] cued us from across the room, gesturing frantically as if he were Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic.
“Hope you’re comfortable, Mel.” Barbera’s voice came cracking over the speaker, “We’re in for a long evening.” He wasn’t kidding. Every couple of hours Joe would ask if I was too tired to carry on, but I insisted on completing the show.
We recorded more than forty “Flintstones” episodes this way. Thankfully, by September my doctors allowed me to sit up a bit, elevated by way of a pulley-cable system to a semi-sitting position. It was no more than a few inches’ difference, but as I laughingly told my colleagues, “How nice is it to be able to look at your faces instead of at the damned ceiling.”

“Forty” is an exaggeration. Only 32 episodes were shot in the second season. Daws Butler was Barney on five of them, and the last four were done starting in December when Mel was mobile. Still, it was an amazing feat for any actor—something recognised by the Associated Press TV columnist in a feature piece which ran in papers beginning November 15:

Mel Blanc Feels Saved By Miracle
By Bob Thomas
Of the Associated Press
HOLLYWOOD (AP)—“I know it is miracle that I am still alive. That's why I thank God every day for His help.”
A serious Mel Blanc—“man of a thousand voices”—was talking about the car crash that by all rights should have taken his life. His car was struck head-on by another car on Sunset Boulevard last January.
One of the firemen who cut Mel out of the wreckage said later: “We should have just put him in a sack.”
Hearing recovery at his Pacific Palisades home, Mel said, “When asked my doctor what bones I had broken, he told me: ‘If someone tells you he broke a bone, you can say you broke the same one—unless it's a left arm.’”
Leg Still In Cast
Blanc pointed to his right leg, still in a plaster cast: “This is the one that’s slow to heal—21 breaks from the knee to the foot. One of them was compound, and that’s what slowed me down.
“The knee cap was torn off my left leg, but somehow it was sewn back on. The other breaks included most of my ribs, six vertebrae, both sides of the pelvis and three skull fractures.”
Mel remembers nothing from the time he saw the oncoming car until he regained consciousness 21 days later. What did he think about first?
“My voice,” he said. “I realized my mouth and throat were undamaged and I could talk. I thanked God for that.”
Mel's voice is his fortune; without it he would have been lost. During the long, painful months of recovery, he was encouraged to use his voice—“so I would feel useful.”
Rigs Up Recorder
His son rigged up a recording studio at home so Mel could make scratch tracks—preliminary recordings to aid animators—for the two cartoon shows he does on TV. He's the voice of Bugs Bunny and Barney Rubble on “The Flintstones.”
“I was glad that the shows could keep going and nobody was put out of work,” he said.
Now he is able to get around in a wheelchair and has made some recordings in the studios. Next week he’ll make his grand return to Jack Benny’s show, taping the Christmas Eve telecast.
“Jack has been just wonderful,” Mel remarked. “He has been out to see me at least every 10 days.
“Everybody has been wonderful, in fact. On the night I was hurt, 18 of my son's fraternity brothers at UCLA came to the hospital to offer blood.
Knows Prayer Helped
“I have received 15,000 cards and letters, mostly from people I don’t even know. They offered me their prayers, and they were Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Mohammedan and even Buddhist. I am sure their prayers helped.”
Mel said that his recovery—he expects to be walking and back at active work after the first of the year—is still a wonder to the medics and to himself.
“One of them said I must have been in excellent shape,” he remarked. “Me, who never exercised in his life! I smoke a lot and I will take a drink—never miss before dinner. I’ve always worked hard, racing from one job to another.
“So how do you figure it? It’s got to be God.”

One story that Mel told over and over in later years, and it’s in his autobiography, too, is that he emerged from a coma only when his doctor addressed him as Bugs Bunny and he responded as Bugs. Yet you can see nowhere at the time does he relate this amazing piece of information to the two top wire service TV reporters. Or to Louella Parsons, who wrote about him in her column of October 11th.

Alan Reed told Mel he had thought he was a “a conceited little jerk” but the painful recording sessions changed his opinion. And Mel did much work for crippled children (he was a Shriner). So it’s unfortunate The Accident brought out the litigious side of Mel Blanc. You’ll recall Mel sued Walter Lantz because he wanted a cut of anything with the Woody Woodpecker laugh, despite claiming Lantz was a friend. As a friend, he must have known Lantz was in a precarious financial situation. By the time there was a court decision (against Blanc) in October 1949, the Lantz studio had shut down due to a lack of cash flow, and never reached anywhere near the same quality of cartoons when it eventually reopened.

So it was that Mel Blanc, the man kept alive by God, sued an 18-year-old junior college student for $350,000, claiming the young man was negligent in colliding with Blanc’s souped-up Aston Martin (the parents were sued for good measure). The suit was announced in the press the day Mel left hospital. That wasn’t enough. Seven months later, he sued the city of Los Angeles for half a million dollars, claiming it should have done something about the dangerous road earlier. The case dragged on until 1965 when it finally ended out of court (Mel settled for $120,000).

Mel, of course, got well. But the animation business got sick. A good indication of his career is that a tamer version of his beloved signature Jack Benny ‘Maxwell’ sound was infused into something called Speed Buggy. Millions of laughs didn’t follow. As Mel himself put it, Hardy Har Har and Yak Yak were no Bugs and Tweety. And, eventually, even his Bugs and Tweety didn’t sound right. Age and all that smoking he told Bob Thomas about caught up with him. Mel spent the last few years of his life with a tube up his nose, hauling around an oxygen tank. Emphysema and related heart disease claimed him on July 10, 1989.

Mel Blanc was the greatest cartoon voice actor who ever lived. But I’ll bet Daws Butler wouldn’t have sued a teenager.