When Mel Blanc passed away, the folks at Warner Brothers ran a touching double-truck color ad showing Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn, Tweety, Sylvester, Yosemite Sam and a few others, all with heads bowed and voices stilled. They, along with the Flintstones' Barney Rubble, were the most famous of his much publicized "thousand voices."
In truth, Mel probably didn't have a thousand voices or even a hundred. But he had plenty and an amazing percentage of them gave breath to classic cartoon characters in very funny films. The great skill of Mel Blanc was as an actor: It is one thing to affect a funny voice — quite another to mold a coherent, believable characterization with it and to wring every drop of humor out of every line.
He had to be good. When he wasn't doing cartoons, he was dashing from mike to mike in the studios that broadcast the top network comedy radio programs. Appearing on The Jack Benny Program, as Mel did for a couple of decades, was like playing second for the Yankees at their prime.
Mel was the first great cartoon voice actor and, in many ways, the best. Daws Butler perhaps had superior technique, and Paul Frees may have been more versatile — but Mel was the guy who made it an art. He showed everyone how it should be done, back when nobody knew how it should be done. There are around fifty good reasons why those classic WB cartoons will live forever, and Mel Blanc is at least a dozen of those reasons.
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