Mel Blanc

Birth Name: Melvin Jerome Blank

Famous for doing Bugs Bunny, although ironic that he had a dislike of raw carrots. Thus he often did the eating sounds last in a recording session and had the sound technicians edit them in the soundtrack as needed.

Widely recognized as the voice of virtually every major character in the Warner Bros. cartoon pantheon, including Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety & Sylvester both, Yosemite Sam et al.

Since Blanc's death, his son Noel has taken up some of his father's mantle.

Was in an almost fatal car accident in 1962, while many of the productions that required his services were still in production. He did the voices of his characters in both his home bed and his hospital bed, in a full body cast, and with all his Flinstones co-stars and recording equipment crowded into the same room.

Shortly before his death, the executives of Time-Warner (owners of Warner Brothers) asked Mel Blanc if there was anything, literally anything, that they could give him to thank him for his life's body of work. He asked for, and received, a Ford Edsel.

While in a coma after a cataclysmic automobile accident, doctors unsuccessfully tried to get Mel to talk. Finally, a doctor, who was also a fan of his cartoon characters, asked Mel, "Bugs? Bugs Bunny? Are you there?". Mel responded, in Bugs Bunny's voice, "What's up, Doc?" After talking with several other "characters", the doctors eventually led Mel out of his coma.

He appeared in a television commercial for the American Express charge card, where he performed several character voices in quick succession. After his death, American Express began running the commercial again, showing his name with birth and death years on the bottom of the screen at the end of the commercial, both to promote their card, and pay tribute to the vocal genius.

Originally, voice artists were not given screen credit on animated cartoons. After Blanc was turned down for a raise at Warner Brothers, they added his name as "Vocal Characterizationist" to the credits as a compromise. Not only did it give greater recognition to voice artists from then on, it helped to bring Blanc to the public eye.

Epitaph on headstone at his burial site in Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood reads, "That's All Folks!"

Blanc legally changed his last name from Blank to Blanc because of a nasty school teacher who used to make fun of it.

Many of the voices he did for Looney Tunes were sped up after being recorded. Examples are Tweety, Speedy Gonzales, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. Porky's voice sounds a little like Bugs' voice before being sped, and Daffy's is Sylvester's sans the slobbering.