You may not know the name, but you most likely know his voice. I found this great segment over at Spike.
With so many celebrity voices in cartoons lately (I’m looking at you, Miley Cyrus) it’s nice to look back to a time when it was the norm to have real voice actors do the voices for cartoons. At that time, celebrities were pretty much only used for guest star roles or brief cameos.
You may not recognize the name, but you know his voice. Entertainment Tonight is reporting that Don LaFontaine has passed away due to complications from a collapsed lung. He was 68.
Mel Blanc radio shows are available for downloading on this page of The Internet Archive. The scripts are extremely corny, but it’s worth it to hear dozens upon dozens of voices coming out of the mouth of one of the all-time amazing audio artistes.
After making an impact playing various characters on Jack Benny’s radio show (including the voice of Benny’s car, Maxwell) Mel was given his own program and The Mel Blanc Show ran from September 3, 1946 to June 24, 1947. Blanc didn’t play all the supporting characters, as guest voices included Jim Backus (later the voice of Mr. Magoo) and Bea Benaderet (later the voice of Betty Rubble on The Flintstones).
Mel starred as the owner of a Fix-It Shop (yes, such things did once exist!) A typical episode would find Mel facing some sort of relationship complication with his girlfriend Betty (Mary Jane Croft, who appeared as Betty Ramsey on I Love Lucy). But it [Read more…]
