Most of us grew up with the voices of my first gues ugs 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 Blanc. Mel, welcome... What's up David? - That's a great sweater you have there. - Oh, thank you very much, I like it too. - 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. - 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 rocket cowboy." and of course there's Pepe Le Pew... "He is the little french skunk. He kiss the pussycat..." and Foghorn... "I say pay attention David" Foghorn Leghorn the big rooster, he talks like that you know. Are you looking for chicken? You see that little house over there that says "d-o-g", that spells "chicken", go get 'em boy. We have I guess some clips here of some of your work, you know it's gonna be... A montage, isn't it? Oh yeah, there's a few of the characters that are in the picture. Ok, we'll take a look at that and is there anything you need to explain to us before we look at it? It's just a bunch of nutty people, that's all. - Pew, pew, pew. - No, no. Not "pew". Le pew. Pepe Le Pew is my name. Why can't we have a mouse like other pussycats? I'll tell you what, let's take a walk in the woods while our porridge cools. Now where have I heard that before? Good day, sir. I represent the rambling house storybook company. Come on in, stranger. We've been waiting for you. ...and the penguins, it says here, comes from the South Pole. South Pole? I'm dying. You're despicable! Th-th-th-that's all folks! How do you go about creating a voice? Do you get a voice and then say "Draw something to go along with this" or do they come to you and say... They show me a picture of the character and then they say... They show me a storyboard which shows what the character is going to do in the cartoon. From this I have to create the voice, like Bugs was a tough little stinker. I said "Which is the toughest voice in this country, the Brooklyn or the Bronx? So I put the two together, that's how I got the voice from Bugs doc. And Porky, they said, was a timid little character so I went up to a pig farm and wondered around with the pigs, I wanted to be authentic. And when I went back to the studio they kicked me out, said "Go home and take a bath." which I didn't want to come back, I said if a pig were talking it'd talk on a grunt. Now you've done 5000 voices? Is that possible? No, I've worked in 5000 different cartoons and actually I do about 400 different voices and in each dialect you can do many different voices. Do you have any that... there must be some that are similar in the 400 that you've done. No, they're not similar, I mean you should recognize each one differently. Like in one picture I show in my college speeches there's all Italian. Like Columbus discovers America along with Bugs Bunny and Columbus talks an Italian dialect like this. In various you can do different voices in different dialects. We're gonna pause here, we're gonna go away for a commercial and we'll be right back with Mel Blanc. Hi there. Mel Blanc is here now, Hunter Thompson will be with us later in the half hour, Marjorie Grose is also here tonight. How long does it take to make a cartoon? Well, to make a 6,5 minute cartoon in full animation took 125 people 9 months, to make one single fully animated cartoon. And even then it costs around 50.000 dollars, today it would cost around half a million but Warner brothers still do only full animation. Full animation compared to what? Compared to limited animation, now the films you see today the cartoons are limited animation, they draw maybe 1 in 10 frames. The Warner's draws every single frame. And it's much cheaper drawing just one frame and having a mouthful a little bit, the background on a turned table that you see over and over again. And also for a television using cartoons, they need them a lot more quickly that they can be produced in full animation, I guess. Yes and the full animation actually is what makes every motion believeable and every synchronized lip movement, and incidently they do the voice first, and the cartoon after the voice is done. 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 that goof things up? It's gonna say I kill myself. No, I usually can talk over a cold, but I try to keep away from them as much as I can. Yeah, how did you... tell me about your relationship with Jack Benny. How did that begin? Well, Jack finally found that I was the one doing the crazy voices in the cartoons and he called me and asked me to do Carmichael, a bear that was eating the ? and he's guarding his vaults I said yes, he said "What would he sound like?", I said "Maybe like this..." "We'll get you on next week." For six months all I'd do was a growl of a bear. Finally I said, "You know Mr Benny I can also talk." Little Jack filled up when I told him. He said "I'll have the writers write something in for you." 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 talk like a parrot, I said then he had a train caller that said, "Train leaving on track 5 for Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga." And one time, it was supposed to be the sound of his Maxwell, a 1926 Maxwell, and the phonograph record that had sound effects menus 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 character, was his name Sy? - Si. - And what was that character? - That was a cute character, I came in with a sombrero on my head, a sarape over my shoulder and a big base violin and Mr Benny said "You came all the way from Tijuana to play in my band?" "Si." "And I see you brought your base violin with you." "Si." - What's your name? - Sy. - Sy? - Si. "And I see you brought a young lady with you, is that your sister?" "Si." - What's her name? - Sue. - Sue? - Si. - Well, what does see do for a living? - Sew. It's all that was to the whole spot with Jack Benny. We have some more film, now this will be a new film, a new cartoon, feature length, is that right? - It's 1001... - "1001 rabbit tales". It's Bugs Bunny's third movie, "1001 rabbit tales". - Yeah, all right. And that will be out shortly, huh? - Yes, very soon. - Alright. It's a pleasure meeting you. - Thank you very much. Mel Blanc ladies and gentlemen.