Mel Blanc The Man of a Thousand Voices
Posted on 08/19/2020 12:31:01 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Radio Lab, broadcast over WNYC, recently aired a piece about Blanc ...featuring an interview with his son Noel Blanc, who is also a voice actor. Noel Blanc tells the story of a terrible car accident that badly injured his father in 1961 as he was driving home along Sunset Boulevard from a job in San Francisco. Mel Blanc, driving an Aston Martin, collided with another car on Dead Man's Curve. Blanc was almost killed and slipped into a coma. Blanc's son and wife spent two weeks at his bedside trying to revive him, but got no response.
One day, about 14 days after the accident, one of Blanc's neurologists walked into the room and tried something completely new. He went to Mel's bed and asked, "Bugs Bunny, how are you doing today?"
There was a pause while people in the room just shook their heads. Then, in a weak voice, came the response anyone would recognize.
"Myeeeeh. What's up doc?"
The doctor then asked Tweety if he was there too.
"I tot I taw a puddy tat," was the reply.
It took seven more months in a body cast for Blanc to recover. He even voiced Barney Rubble in the first episodes of The Flintstones while lying in bed with a microphone dangling from above...
Radio Lab features another neurologist's opinion: Blanc was such a hard-working professional that his characters lived, protected from the brain injury, deep in his unconscious mind. The doctor's question must have sounded like a director's cue.
Essentially, "Mr. Blanc, you're on."
(Excerpt) Read more at openculture.com ...
Apologies if I've muffed that graphic link.
Great story! Thanks!
“Bugs, what can you tell us about your accident?”
“I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.”
Weird sentence.
“...as he was driving home along Sunset Boulevard from a job in San Francisco.”
Very odd to say he was driving home along sunset drive from San Francisco almost 400 miles away.
Maybe he’s trying to say he’d driven down from SF and was almost home after the long drive.
Bugs Bunny could lead the fix in Washington politics. He cuts to the chase in one phrase most the time. Nothing upsets him. He carries a grudge on his terms. He redirects the hardship back to the source.
A life-long friend of mine who did Donald Duck voices almost as well as I did, wound up in a coma for three months, on his back, fed through tubes inserted in his stomach, unable to talk, or lift his arms, or do anything but follow you around with his eyes. I could talk to him and kind of imagined that he actually heard and knew what I was saying, but he really didn’t react.
Two or three times when I visited him, every so often, I talked to him like Donald Duck, and asked him if he could do the same. A few times, he kinda’ squirreled up the side of his mouth and actually made Donald Duck noises very briefly.
Not sure if I was connected with him or not, but I was so amazed and thrilled to hear him connecting with that noise, although I wondered if he was aware of anything else. He died after three months on his back from a stroke.
Joe Biden’s doctor:
“Mr. Magoo, you in there?”
A guy named Jeff Bergman from here in Pittsburgh took over the Loony Tunes voices after Blanc passed away. He was inspired to do so after meeting Blanc at a local speaking engagement and finding him kind and supportive of a young guy wanting to break into that biz.
I don’t see you...
He played a cab driver in a Beverly Hillbillies episode
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0522484/
Granny Learns to Drive
Season 2 | Episode 33
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Blanc
Also possible that he was driving back from LAX (or another nearby airport) after flying from SF.
He was an amazing man with quite an interesting career.
I recently watched this video biography. If you have an hour sometime, it’s worth watching.
Trivia Q: Do you know who the Bugs Bunny character was patterned after?
Si.
Clark Gable, his character in “It Happened One Night.” The hitchhiking scene, with Gable munching on a carrot and Ms. Colbert demonstrating that she can hail a car “and not use my thumb.”
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