Mel Blanc.

He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Radio at 6385 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on February 8, 1960.

Sylvester the Cat was modeled after Blanc’s character Sylvester on CBS Radio’s The Judy Canova Show during the early 1940s.

He appeared in a television commercial for the American Express charge card, where he performed several character voices in quick succession. After his death, American Express began running the commercial again, showing his name with birth and death years on the bottom of the screen at the end of the commercial, both to promote their card, and pay tribute to the voice actor.

Originally, voice artists were not given screen credit on animated cartoons. After he was turned down for a raise by producer Leon Schlesinger, Blanc suggested they add his name as Vocal Characterizationist to the credits as a compromise and omitted the name of any other voice actor that worked on the cartoon. This gave greater recognition to voice artists from then on and brought Blanc to the public eye, quickly bringing him more work in radio.

The sound Bugs makes while munching a carrot is actually Mel Blanc munching on a carrot. He tried using celery, raw potatoes, and a lot of other things, but only a carrot would make that carrot crunching sound. According to Noel Blanc, Mel’s son, Mel was not in fact allergic to carrots as was previously thought by many. People who worked in the sound studios believed this because they would see Mel spitting out the carrot after taking a bite. Mel did this because he could not speak with the carrot in his mouth and that was the only reason he spat it out.

January 24, 1961: Was in a near-fatal car accident while The Flintstones and other shows were still in production. He did the voices of his characters in both his home bed and his hospital bed, in a full body cast and with all his Flintstones co-stars and recording equipment crowded into the same room.

Had a collection of over 300 antique watches as of 1979 including a watch dating back to 1510 that only had one hand and chimed every hour.

He was open to people, especially children, knocking on his door and asking for an autograph. He used post cards that he had by the front door. The cards had all of his Warner Bros. cartoon characters on the front and was blank on the back.

1966: Received the French Legion of Honor.

During World War II, he provided the voice of Private Snafu in training films for the soldiers. Some of these training films were written by Theodor S. Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss.

Created the voice of Walter Lantz’s Woody Woodpecker, whose laugh was a version of a laugh Blanc had been performing since high school. He only performed the voice in the first four Woody cartoons: Knock Knock 1940; Woody Woodpecker 1941; The Screwdriver 1941, and title unknown; after which Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies producer Leon Schlesinger signed him to an exclusive contract. Lantz used Ben Hardaway to record Woody’s dialogue for subsequent cartoons until 1950, but since no one could properly imitate Blanc’s laugh at the time, a sound clip from Woody Woodpecker 1941 was edited into these later cartoons’ soundtracks. In 1948, Blanc sued Lantz for using his voice in subsequent cartoons without compensation and settled with him out-of-court. However, Blanc saying Guess who? can be heard at the beginning of every Woody Woodpecker short.

His son Noel Blanc voiced many of the Warner Brothers cartoon characters for a time shortly after Blanc’s death.

1961: He was the voice of Speedy Gonzalez sic in the hit record of the same name by Pat Boone. Blanc actually ad-libbed most of his dialogue, since the record was Boone’s version of a song recorded by another artist earlier that year, in which the character had very little dialogue.

Was in the DeMolay, a Masonic youth group. When he reached the age of maturity, he joined the Masonic Lodge.

In one of his last interviews Third Los Angeles International Animation Celebration, January 1989 Blanc said that Bugs Bunny was always his favorite character. He was a tough little stinker, he told the interviewer.

April 27, 1987: Inducted into the DeMolay Hall of Fame.

He has appeared in five films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically or aesthetically significant: Porky in Wackyland 1938, Pinocchio 1940, Duck Amuck 1953, What’s Opera, Doc? 1957, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit 1988.

Raised in Portland, Oregon, he worked at KGW Radio as an announcer and as one of the Hoot Owls in the mid-1930s, where he specialized in comic voices. It took him a year and a half to land an audition with Leon Schlesinger’s company, where he began in 1937 on a per-picture basis until 1941. He also worked for Walter Lantz, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Columbia, and Walt Disney until Schlesinger signed him to an exclusive contract.

Mel, who was raised in Portland, Oregon, became friends with the Big Band singer Kay St. Germain Wells who was born and raised in Portland.

Blanc lived in Pacific Palisades, on Toyopa Drive, next door to Walter Matthau and around the corner from William Schallert, who lived on Ramos Place.

Profiled in Old-Time Radio Memories by Mel Simons BearManor Media.

Shared first name as well as voice booth time with friend Mel Tormé.

In the late 1930s, Daffy Duck was an audience favorite, in part because of the silly voice Blanc gave him. Animator Chuck Jones often told the story of how Daffy’s voice was based on the speech patterns of studio boss Leon Schlesinger.

As a child, he dove with two other boys into a river and although Mel and one boy came up for air, the third did not. Mel was restricted to the house for two weeks to think about what he’d done. This was the one great mistake Mel Blanc ever made in his entire life, as he appeared to have no enemies as an adult.

Biography in Smith, Ronald S., ‘Who’s Who in Comedy’, pp. 54-55. New York: Facts on File 1992. ISBN 0816023387.

Biography in The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Volume Two, 1986- 1990, pp. 112-113. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1999.

Had played boarder Tiffany Twiggs in the radio series Major Hoople, which debuted on NBC’s Blue Network on June 22, 1942. Based on Gene Ahern’s comic strip Our Boarding House, the radio series starred Arthur Q. Bryan as Major Hoople and Patsy Moran as the Major’s wife, Martha Hoople, who ran the boarding house Bryan would later become the voice of Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny’s nemesis. The 30-minute program, which aired on Mondays at 7 pm, went off the air on April 26, 1943.

1925: Was initiated into DeMolay at the Sunnyside Chapter in Portland, Oregon.

Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century 1953 takes place in the 24th century, the same century as Star Trek: The Next Generation 1987. Peak Performance 1989#2.23 was the last episode to air before his death, so he could have had a cameo or even guest star appearance in that series.

Ex-father-in-law of Larraine Zax and Martha Smith. Father-in-law of Katherine Hushaw.

He was originally supposed to voice the character of Gideon the Cat for Pinocchio 1940 and even recorded the dialogue. However Walt Disney decided to make Gideon a mute character but kept the hiccups Blanc did for the character.

Blanc had German Jewish descent on his father’s side of the family, and his mother was a first-generation Lithuanian Jewish emigrant.

In the early 1960s, he made a new re-recording of the Road Runner’s beep-beep sound meant to replace the old recordings used by Paul Julian for the cartoons, but it was eventually unused, since the Warner Bros. cartoon studio shuttered in 1963, although his unused recordings eventually saw use in the 1964 Greeting Card Record, the two LPs The New Adventures of Bugs Bunny 1973 and Four More Adventures of Bugs Bunny 1974, one beep in Bugs Bunny’s Magic World, Mel Blanc Voice Watches, and the Looney Tunes Talking Character Wall Clock.

After graduating from high school in 1927, Blanc joined an orchestra. He reportedly became the youngest American orchestra conductor at the age of 19.

Known as the man of 1,000 voices.

The professional relationship between him and Bea Benaderet was so close that he playfully referred to her as the other woman in his life in his autobiography.

He was considered to play Scrappy Doo on the Scooby Doo and Scrappy Doo show 1979-1984 and he auditioned for the role. He was interested in doing it but wanted more money than the studio was willing to pay, so he dropped out and was replaced by Lennie Weinrib.