5/30/15: MEL BLANC BIO!

So I've been doing these bios recently and they're pretty fun to make so I checked my sources and I found out today is Mel Blanc's 107th birthday. I've heard of him before, named the best voice actor of all time, but I don't know much about him besides that he voiced Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and many other iconic cartoon characters. So without further ado, here's my bio on Mr. Mel Blanc:

Mel Blanc (1908-1989)

Voice actor

Childhood and Early Life: Melvin Jerrome Blank was born on May 30, (the day I'm writing and hopefully finish this) 1908 in San Francisco, California to Frederick and Eva Blank. Through much of his childhood, Mel began experimenting with various voices and different dialects, which would help him become the best voice actor of all time, unbeknownst obviously to him at the time. In high school, he changed his last name from "Blank" to "Blanc" because a teacher thought he would much more successful without "Blank" as a name. Well, no one knows what would've happened if Mel kept his name "Blank" but nevertheless, he became a star student at his high school. He was indicted into the Hall of Fame of The Order of DeMolay (organization focusing on good character) after being a member for some time, and when he graduated, he led his own orchestra, becoming the youngest conductor in the country at 19, and on top of that was a shtick performer at various variety shows in the Pacific Northwest.

On the Radio: In 1927, at the age of 19, Mel began his career on the radio, providing additional and various voices to characters on the air with a few radio stations, a majority of them in Portland, Oregon. His ability to switch back and forth between multiple characters garnered attention. In 1932, now 24, moved to LA and met Estelle Rosenbaum. They fell in love and got married in 1933. In LA, Mel joined the KFMW radio station, owned by Warner Brothers and stationed in Hollywood. As his radio career strengthened, he went from Warner Brothers to CBS and then to NBC, where he became a regular cast member of The Jack Benny Show, a famous radio comedy series, where he voiced multiple characters, including Jack Benny's parrot, Polly, Jack Benny's poor-functioning Maxwell car, Jack Benny's polar bear Carmichael, and Professor LeBlanc. 

Animation Career: In 1936, Mel joined Warner Bros. and started providing voice work for animated studios under the Warner Bros. name. In 1937, he voiced his first animated character, a drunken bull in an animated short called Picador Porky. Soon after he began voicing Porky Pig in Porky's Road Race and started voicing Daffy Duck in Porky's Duck Hunt. Undoubtedly his most famous character he voiced, Bugs Bunny, debuted in A Wild Hare, an animated short in 1940. He voiced the original voice and laugh of Woody Woodpecker for Universal Pictures but it didn't last long because of his contract with Warner Bros. When World War II came along, he voiced Private Snafu in a collection of animated shorts. 
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Photo Gallery Fun Time

The cast of The Jack Benny Show, Mel is on the far right

Mel Blanc, 42, in 1950

Mel Blanc in the studio with his most famous
characters

The Mel Blanc Show: His success on The Jack Benny Show, as well as other roles on various radio programs, gave him his own CBS radio show The Mel Blanc Show, where he played himself as an owner of a fix-up shop and it ran from late-1946 to mid-1947.

Looney Tunes: Mel Blanc's work on Looney Tunes was his most famous work, voicing nearly all of the characters in all the Looney Tunes shorts and series. Throughtout his life, he's voiced Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Bird, Yosemite Sam, Marvin the Martian, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepe Le Pew, Speedy Gonzalez, Wile E. Coyote, Taz and countless others, being the original voices for all up until his death. And if you think that's a lot of voices, it doesn't stop there. 

Animation Career Expands: In 1960, his contract with Warner Bros. expired, he continued voicing characters for Warner Bros. but expanded his career into Hanna-Barbera cartoons, voicing most notably Barney Rubble and Dino from The Flintstones and Cosmo Spacely from The Jetsons. 

Car Accident: In 1961, Blanc got into a car accident that nearly killed him. He had fractures in his skull, pelvis and legs  that put him in a two-week coma. As he recovered, the studios who he worked with were able to find ways to work around his injuries, such as finding substitutes or setting up equipment in his hospital room for him to work there. Within a few months, he was back in action. 

Later Career: In the 1970s Mel continued working as a voice actor as well as doing commercials, television specials and college lectures. In the 1980s he worked his magic in Warner Bros. animated movies, which served as compilation films, such as The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie and Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island. In the 1980s Mel Blanc voiced his last original character in an animated television series Heathcliff & the Catillac Cats as Heathcliff, and it ran from 1984-1987. His last recording session was more Jetsons: The Movie before he died on July 10, 1989 from lung/heart disease after years of smoking, at the age of 81. On his gravestone it reads Porky Pig's (his first major character) catchphrase "That's All Folks" followed by "Mel Blanc: Man of 1000 Voices."

Whether changing his name made him successful like the teacher said or not, it doesn't matter because Mel Blanc has made it into the history books as the greatest and most influential voice actor of all time, from his time voicing characters on the radio, onto television, and even onto the big screen. His career spanned a lifetime and no one will be able to outlive the legacy of this talented gift. 

Mel Blanc in an interview with David Letterman in 1981.