Gadz00kers! It is so rare to meet people like you and Greg who are into voice talent. Most rare! I liked Hans Conried as one of Luigi’s pals in the radio series “Life With Luigi.” Another great charactor voice in the show was J. Caroll Nash (spelling?). I do believe he did cartoon voiceovers. But can’t exactly recall. And Allan Reed was the voice of Luigi’s nemesis friend Pasquali, who was always trying to get his daughter Rosa hitched up to Luigi. Allan Reed did a lot of radio acting. He appeared as Sally Tomato, the mobster in Sing Sing Prison who passed on messages to Holly Golightly when she visited him. 🙂
Allan Reed, of course you know, was the voice of Fred Flintstone. Joe Barbera credited Reed with the expression “Yabba Dabba Dew! when Reed asked if FF could utter that excited phrase in the show. And June Foray must have told you that she was miffed that Mel Blanc didn’t credit her as the cute voice of the lady skunk in the Pepy Le Pew cartoons. Did you know that June was the Mexican lass in one of those “farm sitcoms.” It was either “Green Acres” or “Petticoat Junction.” I forget which. But she was s0000000 cute in that show!
Jim 🙂
I do declare, I am going to try to sleep now. But I am so wound up as I have a writing deadline. But it is also 0113 hours here in Minneapolis. Who the heck wants to work when I can talk about cartoon voice talent!!!
I read an article, where June was interviewed. I think she was more miffed at Warner Bros., than at Mel Blanc. But I was surprised to learn, from her interview, that Daws Butler and Stan Freberg were ALSO not that happy, at all, that they weren’t credited for their voice work.
In the case of Daws, at least, I was quite surprised, that he was upset, because he had tried, for a very long time, to work for Warner Bros. He pretty much knew the score, that Mel Blanc was the one to do ALMOST all their stuff, and that they just couldn’t hire him. So when they finally did break down, and hire him for a few shows, after all those years, one would think that Daws would have been completely grateful, to be able to work for them, AT ALL. I always assumed that, BY THAT TIME, he didn’t even care about the voice credit, when they finally, FINALLY, were willing to use him.
The article, in which June said these things, was entitled THE QUEEN OF CARTOONS, and it was published in an animation journal called ANIMATO, in 1994. The author was Michelle Klein-Häss. June also told Ms. Klein-Häss that she would like to see voice credit given to her, Daws, etc., NOW, when the Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies are shown “THEATRICALLY”.
That actually does not sound like too much to ask, does it? I am sure that they could superimpose their names, somewhere over the film (or there could be a voice-over indicating “Additional Voices: June Foray and Daws Butler”) when these cartoons are shown in movie theaters.
You are probably correct, however, that June Foray has been miffed at (or at least “displeased with”) Mel Blanc, himself. In Keith Scott’s book THE MOOSE THAT ROARED, which chronicled Jay Ward cartoons, I read that Mel Blanc worked for Jay Ward Productions ONE TIME, AND ONE TIME ONLY!!……….And that was enough for all of them!……..ALL the voice actors!….They did not really enjoy working with him, much at all.
Mel Blanc did not work for Jay Ward and Bill Scott on an episode of one of their regular shows. He worked for them, ONCE, on a pilot, for a show that they were trying to sell. Bill Scott said that he was rather UNIMPRESSED, with working with “the great Mel Blanc”. Then Keith Scott went on to say that, the other voice-over actors, at Jay Ward Productions, all seemed to echo Bill’s sentiments.
So what was the problem that they all had with Mel Blanc? Well, according to Keith Scott, Mel was such a PROFESSIONAL, that he did not know how to have fun. The Jay Ward voice gang just LOVED, cutting up, and clowning around, during the recording sessions…….. especially PAUL FREES………who was THE “ALL-TIME CLOWN”, always trying to make others laugh…….always trying to get in one last joke………even if the only person, whom he could tell the joke to was the studio janitor!!
Anyway, Bill Scott, June Foray, Daws Butler and Paul Frees just LOVED showing up to work, because, in a sense, it was like ONE BIG PARTY………even like a CLUB! For the most part they all shared a similar sense of humor. When Mr. Blanc was there, MR. SUPREME PROFESSIONAL, he, apparently, absolutely REFUSED, to feed into their jovial banter, laughing and merry-making. It appears that he put a great damper, on their sessions, and recording was just not the same.
As a brief digression, Keith Scott also said that Hans Conried was another one of those “professionals” from the old school (he was Snidely Whiplash, from Dudley Do-Right and Uncle Waldo, from Hoppity Hooper). Conried had even been a stage actor.
Apparently Hans was nowhere near as bad, as Mel Blanc, and he was capable of “letting his hair down”, at least a little bit. There was one person, from Jay Ward’s cast, who rubbed Hans the wrong way, sometimes, and that was Paul Frees.
Paul was just a little TOO WILD, and WACKY, for this ex-stage actor’s taste (on the other hand, EVERYONE——not just Hans Conried—–was trying to tone Paul Frees down a bit; THE MOOSE THAT ROARS indicated that the other Jay Ward cast members would tell Frees, from time to time: “Oh, Paul, Shut up!!!!”).
June was in GREEN ACRES, and I think the name of her character was Carlita, right? The character was a phone operator, from what I recall reading, right? She did not make many appearances on that show, did she? Didn’t she play that role only one time and that was it?
I read, in another article, that she also played a regular character, for 13 weeks, on THE JOHNNY CARSON SHOW: “The Little Mexican girl”…………Interesting that she has played Hispanics, a number of times; she is not even Hispanic, is she? The accent part would be no problem, for her, of course. But interesting that people thought she had the Mexican look.
This was a LONG, LONG time ago, I think…….Probably way back in the early 60s, when THE TONIGHT SHOW first started. I vaguely recall that she had the chance to extend her contract, with Carson, but she just did not like, AT ALL, the great amount of time, that on-camera work required: hair styling, make-up, wardrobe, etc. Her feelings about this, were emphasized, later, in her 1973 letter to me. She said that she could make more money, in LESS TIME, doing off-camera work.
I think that Alan Reed also starred in a TV show, back in the early 50s; possibly the title of the show even had that name, Pasqauli, in it. It was a failure, however; it lasted only one season. I found that in his filmography.
I have seen Alan Reed in that movie, where he plays Sally Tomato; you’re talking about BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S. It’s a shame that most of his movie roles are VERY, VERY TINY.
He was in another movie, with Frederic March and Humphrey Bogart, from around 1955 (the title escapes me, right now) and I looked and looked and looked for him (he was credited as a detective) and I just could not find him anywhere! I even watched the video twice, and rewound it, and could not identify him, at all. It appears that he had an incredibly small, bit part, in that movie.
I was amazed, in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, that his voice sounded quite a bit different, from his Fred Flintstone voice (at least as the Italian Sally Tomato character). Granted, I knew that he was putting on an accent, bu t I could barely hear a trace, of Fred Flinstone, at all! I was also amazed at what a short man he is!
It is interesting that he appeared in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, at the same time that he was doing THE FLINSTONES (I think that he was in the first or second season of that show—–back in 1961).