Man of a Thousand Voices, Speaking Literally (original) (raw)
Arts|Man of a Thousand Voices, Speaking Literally
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/24/arts/man-of-a-thousand-voices-speaking-literally.html
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- Nov. 24, 1988
Credit...The New York Times Archives
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November 24, 1988
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Section C, Page
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Sputtering, spitting, spraying and stuttering, Mel Blanc sits on the couch in his son's Beverly Hills home.
In 1961, encased in a full body cast after an automobile accident, Mr. Blanc listed all the radio and movie cartoon voices he had created -more than 400. The number is closer to 1,000 now, including Jack Benny's wheezing Maxwell automobile (''P-tui, p-tui, b-lit, b-lit, p-tui'') and Fred Flintstone's Speedy Buggy. He is responsible for 500 barnyard animals and assorted human beings in Warner Brothers cartoons alone, including Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Sylvester and Tweety Bird.
He says a doctor shoved a camera down his throat a few years ago to gaze at his larynx and said the only thing close to Mr. Blanc's musculature was in the throat of Enrico Caruso.
Now, a few months past his 80th birthday, Mr. Blanc is being seen as well as heard. He has just published his autobiography, ''That's Not All, Folks'' (Warner Books). And he stole the show this fall when the New York Film Festival opened with a new Warner Brothers cartoon, ''Night of the Living Duck,'' with Mr. Blanc as the voice of Daffy Duck. Capsule Comments
Wearing a shirt with a Bugs Bunny patch on the pocket, the rumpled black-and-white checked suit of a vaudeville comic and blue Reeboks, Mr. Blanc twirls his lips and twists his tongue into an album of voices.
Bugs Bunny: ''My favorite. They told me the character was a real little stinker, tough. He had to have a tough small voice because he was a small character. What was the toughest accent I knew? Brooklyn and the Bronx. So I put the two of them together. Bugs is so popular because other men would like to do what he does but don't have the guts.''
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