The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, September 01, 1988, Image 26

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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
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twice the cost of natural deliven
— accounted for 5.5 percent of
all births in 1970, 10.4 percentii
1975 and 20.3 percent in 1983
according to f ederal statistics.
The average cost of a Caesa
rean section in 1986 was $4,270,
compared w'ith about $2,560 for
normal birth in a delivery room
and $2,450 for birth in a birthing
room, according to the American
College of Obstetricians and Gy
necologists.
In a series of studies of labor
and delivery following Caesarean
sections, Phelan found that
women who have had one Caesa
rean have an 80 percent chance
of delivering a second baby nor-
madly if they are allowed to
into labor.
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.
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