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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 1, 1988)
mm Page 8B/The Battalion/Thursday, September 1, 1988 Man behind voices of Tweety, Bugs Bunny refuses retirement Thufferin’ NEW YORK (AP) thuccotash! Mel, ah-say-Mel Blanc, the voice behind Bugs, Daffy, Tweety, Porky, Woody and almost every cartoon character from here to Cuc-amonga, is 80 years old and has just written an autobiography. Blanc, in a warm-hearted and fas cinating new book, “That’s Not All Folks: My Life in the Golden Age of Cartoons and Radio” says Warner Bros, produced 1,003 cartoons, and he voiced 848 of them. His favorite character? Reached by telephone at his Los Angeles home, Blanc answered in the voice of Brooklyn’s most famous bunny: “ ‘Everybody knows who I am, doc. I don’t cayuh where dey are or who dey are. Even up in Mars dey know about me. HEHEHEHEH!’ “Bugs: that’s my favorite charac ter. I even have him tatooed on my shirt.” The “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies” churned out by Warner Bros, in a dank office dubbed Ter mite Terrace by Blanc and his car tooning co-workers had their heydey from the 1930s to the mid-’50s. Their reruns are arguably still the funniest things on television. They parodied film stars from Humphrey Bogart to Katharine Hepburn, tweaked politicians and contained salty, hilarious characters that are a far cry from the phoney, unfunny “Everybody knows who I am, doc. I don’t cayuh where dey are or who dey are. Even up in Mars dey know about me. HEHEHEHEH!” — Mel Blanc, the voice of numerous cartoon characters goody-goodies and baddy-baddies that populate today’s junk-food TV cartoon shows. The box-office success this sum mer of “Who Framed Roger Rab bit,” a mystery-fantasy in which car toon characters must contend with the human world, proves that the public still eats up good animation. Blanc, in fact, did the voices of Daffy Duck, Tweety Bird, Bugs Bunny and Sylvester the Cat in “Roger Rabbit,” but he says he hasn’t seen the film yet. Cartoon connoisseurs will find plenty of tidbits to relish in Blanc’s autobiography, co-written by Philip Bashe. A few samples: • The theme music for Warner Bros, cartoons is a tune called “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down.” • Voice characterizations are done first, not the pictures, to the surprise of many. • A single six-minute Warner Bros, cartoon took four or five art ists sketching about 16,000 pictures and 60 backgrounds. • Bugs Bunny in his earliest in carnation in the late ’30s was called “Happy Rabbit.” Blanc hated the name, and in 1940 he changed it to Bugs. He decided to give him a tough-guy Brooklyn accent, even though Blanc grew up in San Fran cisco and Portland, Ore., and has never set foot in Brooklyn. • The hardest voice characteriza tion for Blanc was Yosemite Sam since it had to be done at a constant holler. Sylvester was the easiest be cause he sounded closest to Blanc’s natural voice, except for the exag gerated lisp. After the demise of Termite Ter race, Blanc went on to do more mod ern cartoon characters, from The Flinstones’ Barney Rubble to the Frito Bandito. Blanc gained more fame than for tune from his cartoon characteriza tions. The most Warner Bros, ever paid him for being the voice behind their cartoons was $20,000. The only hint of bitterness in his autobiography is about the way Warners copyrighted the voices of the cartoon characters Blanc made famous. It means he can’t publicly say, “What’s up, Doc?” or “I tawt I taw a puddy-tat” or other taglines he coined without getting the studio’s permission. He did considerably better finan cially as a radio and TV personality. For years on the Jack Benny pro gram he did the sound effects for the wheezing old Maxwell that the skinflint comedian supposedly drove. He played the train depot caller who broke up audiences with, “Train leaving on track five for Ana heim, Azusa and Cuc-amonga!” Age and the emphysema that forces him to use oxygen at night have fortunately not impaired the gifted larynx of “the man of a thou sand voices.” Well, maybe he’s down to a few hundred now. The thought of retiring is, as Daffy would say, deth-picable. “You know, I don’t think I’ll ever stop until I’m dead,” he says. “I have to have a driver now. He drives me to work, either to Warner Bros, or one of the studios in town. I allow two hours for them to record me. It never takes that much, because they still call me ‘one take Blanc.’” Mothers can give normal childbirth after Caesareans NEW YORK (AP) — Women can go through labor and normal childbirth after three or more Caesarean sections, even when delivering twins or facing other complications, an obstetrician says. Labor and normal delivery af ter multiple Caesarean sections can cut the nation’s skyrocketing Caesarean section rate by 30 per cent, Dr. Jeffrey Phelan of Los Angeles said. “At the present time, Caesa rean delivery is the No. 1 most common hospital-based operative procedure,” Phelan said. About one in four children in the United States are born by Caesarean section, Phelan said in a recent interview. About 455,000 of the 906,000 Caesareans performed in 1986 — the last year for which figures were available — were unneces sary, according to the Public Citi zen Health Research Croup in Washington. It said adherance to the out dated policy of “once a Caesa rean, always a Caesarean one of the main reasons the ber was so high. Surgical deliveries — at r was mm- arh MUSIC EXPRESS &» W.E.A. RECORDS “BACK TO SCHOOL” 9 M. wJl%.Jly ww KMJKj oo OFF MFC. LIST *8.98 up Rm OAYS OlVT Vtf? 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Women with two prior Caesa- reams have a 70 percent chanceof normal childbirth if they attempt it, Phelan reported in Bostonata recent m eetingof the ACOG. Phelan is now analyzing data from more recent studies in which he has found that women can have normal childbirth after (laesareans even when carrying more than one fetus or when the fetus is turned in the so-called breach nosition. I IN Y ADS, BUT REAL HEAVYWEIGHTS WHEN RESULTS REALLY COUNT. 'o matter what you've go to say or sell, our Classi fieds can help you do the big job. Battalion ph op iClassified g OPEN 10-10 725-B UNIVERSITY DRIVE “Behind Skaggs McDonalds” 846-1741 845-2611