"It was the fact that Mel was a damn good actor that made him so useful," says Jones from his home in Corona del Mar, Calif. Blanc was much more, Jones says, than a set of vocal cords. "Mel was brilliant," says director Chuck Jones, the gentleman scholar of the Warner cartoon unit and, with Freleng, the last surviving major figure of those breakneck, break-leg, break-everything days. Coyote still doggedly, or coyotily, pursues the Road Runner.
Elmer fudd laughing movie#
Even though the last Warner cartoons were made in the '60s, somewhere - on TV or in movie theater revivals or videocassettes or even on laserdiscs - Elmer still chases Bugs and Daffy, Sylvester still drools over Tweety, Porky still stammers, the Tasmanian Devil still roars, and Wile E. Mel Blanc dies and we mourn a whole mess of 'em. Laurence Olivier dies and the world mourns a great actor.
His contribution to the personalities of the characters is also his greatest contribution to American culture and laughter. But it's for his work at Warners that Blanc will be longest and most fondly remembered. Much later in his career, Blanc's voice could be heard as the panicky insects in Raid bug killer commercials. Blanc's incomparably versatile vocal cords were also put to good, hilarious use by Jack Benny, on radio and on television, with Blanc providing such sounds as Benny's ever-wheezing Maxwell and his impudent parrot. "I have more fun than people!" Behind that infectious and slightly evil giggle was the gifted giggling Mel Blanc.
Bugs takes refuge in a movie theater showing "Anthony Adverse." They chase each other all over the hall, and Bugs eventually tricks Elmer into jumping into a lion's mouth. Elmer is hunting Bugs with his wabbit detector. "Ooooh," Elmer says, "I'll get that wabbit if it's the wast thing I do!" This is in "Hare Do," a 1949 gem from director Friz Freleng. Bryan, who created that one, Blanc added Elmer's befuddled voice - the rattle of an exceedingly simple man - to his repertory. The caption is simply, "Speechless." Working with the animators, writers and directors, Blanc initiated all the major character voices except for Elmer Fudd's, and after the death of Arthur Q. that appeared in Hollywood trade papers on Thursday, the characters are shown huddled together with their heads bowed sorrowfully, while at the side a microphone stands alone in a spotlight. In a touching tribute to Blanc from Warner Bros. cartoons for whom Blanc supplied the voices: Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Sylvester, Tweety Pie, Pepe Le Pew, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn and many others. Until that unhappy moment, he was still living the characters as he had for 50 years - the great characters of the Warner Bros. He died in Los Angeles at 81 of heart disease and emphysema. "So you see," Blanc said, "I actually live these characters." Last week Mel Blanc made the obit columns for real.
So one day he comes into my room, he gets an idea, and he says, 'Hey, Bugs Bunny! How are you?' "And I answered back in Bugs' voice, 'Ehhh, fine, doc, how are you?' " The doc coaxed Porky Pig out of him, too. While I was unconscious, the doctor would come into my room each day and ask me how I was and, nothing. "I made the obit column in Honolulu - that's how bad it was. "It was a very bad accident," Blanc said. Indeed, Blanc liked to tell about the time he was injured in a traffic accident during the early '60s and emerged from his coma in character. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were made not for children but for adults - for laughers, of whatever persuasion - and in most of them, Blanc was the grown man behind the bunny, the duck, the pig, the cat, the whole gouache menagerie. During the rest of their natural lives, from that point on, most will lavish some of that laughter on the antics of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and Sylvester the Cat, and at the sassy, wacky voices Mel Blanc put into their cwazy wittle mouths. Humans start laughing at about the age of 6 weeks.
0 kommentar(er)
