Cartoon Voices
Part 3
by Mark Evanier
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 12/14/99
Comics Buyer's Guide
Okay…third and final in this batch of columns about Cartoon Voices. Before we plunge back in, let's compile a brief glossary of some terms we introduced last time…
Session: The time period in which one cartoon's voice track is recorded. An actor is paid one fee — usually union scale plus 10% for his agent — for each session in which that actor performs. If he does four cartoons in one afternoon, that's four sessions, meaning the actor receives the current fee times four.
One-Voicer: An actor who is hired for one voice, usually a spectacular one. Most one-voicers cannot "double," meaning that they can really only play one role. (e.g., Lorenzo Music, Sterling Holloway, Gary Owens, most celebrities.)
Multi-Voicer: An actor who can sound like dozens of different people and who can fill a multiplicity of roles. (e.g., June Foray, Frank Welker, Daws Butler, Mel Blanc.)
Incidental: A non-recurring character. Every show has a certain number of regular characters and then the one-shot characters and bit parts are referred to as incidentals. If the actors cast to play the regulars are able to do multiple voices, they will generally do as many of the incidental roles as possible. Sometimes, additional actors have to be hired so that all the incidental roles are filled.
Cheap: Determined to spend as little as possible on actors. (e.g., Hanna-Barbera, Filmation, DePatie-Freleng, any other animation studio) Syn: Frugal, parsimonious, stingy, miserly, "like a comic book fan."
As noted last week, prior to 1967, the Screen Actors Guild contract for voiceovers decreed that in a session for a cartoon of under ten minutes, an actor could do as many voices as the producer requested. If the cartoon was over ten minutes, the actor would be paid one session fee for up to three voices. Then, if he did a fourth voice, he'd receive another session fee, which would also cover voice #5 and #6. Then a seventh voice would kick in yet another session fee…and so on.
This led to most studios sticking with short cartoons and with actors who could do an unlimited number of parts. To illustrate, let's look at Hanna-Barbera's Secret Squirrel show, which went on the air in 1965. Each episode consisted of three 6-minute cartoons…
Secret Squirrel (all voices by Mel Blanc and Paul Frees)
Squiddly Diddly (all voices by Paul Frees and John Stephenson)
Winsome Witch (all voices by Jean Vander Pyl and one male guest artist per episode, usually Don Messick)
Once in a rare while, a third voice was deemed necessary for one cartoon. But for the most part, this format and casting pretty much ensured that H-B could get by with paying only six session fees per half-hour of Secret Squirrel. No matter how many incidental speaking parts might have turned up a Squiddly Diddly episode, Frees and Stephenson did them all for one session fee apiece.
And you may also note that, with one or two exceptions, there are no female characters in the Secret Squirrel and Squiddly Diddly cartoons. They wrote them that way so they wouldn't have to spring for too many session fees for actresses.
I picked this series as an example because Winsome Witch was Hanna-Barbera's first female lead character. Perhaps someone woke up and realized how overwhelmingly male their films had been. The exceptions were almost all supporting characters — Wilma Flintstone, Betty Rubble, Jane and Judy Jetson — on prime-time shows.
The prime-time shows, which purportedly targeted a slightly-older audience, seemed to demand episodes that ran the full half-hour…so the "under ten minutes" rule could not apply. And as The Flintstones and The Jetsons were conceived as family situation comedies, they required female characters.
They also seemed to need actors who evoked the image and style of those starring then in live-action sitcoms. George O'Hanlon and Penny Singleton — who voiced George and Jane Jetson, respectively, were in that category and were also "one-voicers."
As a result, an episode of one might require — shudder! — 8-10 session fees. But as these shows had over-all higher budgets, I doubt that Mr. Hanna or Mr. Barbera were too upset. They still, however, kept their daytime shows to cartoons of under ten minutes, each voiced by two actors.
Then things changed.
On November 13, 1967, the Screen Actors Guild signed a new Television Animation Agreement with the companies then producing cartoons. At the time, that roster consisted of Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, Inc.; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc.; Walt Disney Productions, Walter Lantz Television, Inc.; UPA Pictures, Inc.; DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, Inc.; Hanna-Barbera Productions, Format Films, Inc.; FilmFair, and Grantray-Lawrence Animation, Inc..
The dollar amount of a session fee went up to cover cost-of-living increases. The big revolution, however, was to do away with the notion of unlimited voices for one price.
On a cartoon of ten minutes or less, the actor would thereafter receive a session fee for doing up to three voices. For each voice over three, he would receive one-third of the amount for a session. (For cartoons over ten minutes, the counting method did not change, though the session fee also went up.)
In other words, before the change, if Daws Butler did nine roles in a short, he received one session fee. After the change, he got three session fees.
Better example: Last week, I made mention of a Rocky & Bullwinkle episode I'd clocked in which William Conrad narrated, June Foray did six roles, Bill Scott did seven parts and Paul Frees spoke for nine characters. Under the pre-'67 pay scales, the whole cartoon was done for four session fees.
Had it been done after the '67 contract…well, William Conrad was the Narrator. For that, he would get one session fee. June would receive two and Paul would receive three.
Bill Scott would technically be entitled to two plus one-third but, in reality and because he was also a producer, they'd probably look the other way and pay him for two. Or they'd cut him to six and give the seventh role to Conrad, who could do it without any pay increase.
Either way, we're talking about a leap from four session fees to eight…and that's just for one cartoon in the half-hour. There were four shorts in an episode of Rocky and His Friends (aka The Bullwinkle Show). So for the whole 30 minutes, we might be moving from 14 session fees to 30 or so.
But, delving even further into reality, this situation would not likely take place after '67. An animation producer — even a generous one like Jay Ward — would not pay eight session fees (8 times scale) for a five minute cartoon. He would instead tell the storyfolks, "Write fewer speaking parts."
Which is what they did. Most of us who write cartoons have, at some point, been told, "Too many characters…take some out." On some shows, we have to be cautious about adding a character who has one line. So it changes, at least a little, the way the shows are written.
And the 1967 change had a few other effects. Previously, it had been cheaper (usually) to fill a half-hour with three cartoons. Since then, it's generally cheaper to fill the time with one cartoon, which has become the trend. Most Hanna-Barbera shows produced before that year featured three shorts. Most after that featured one long episode. Scooby Doo, whose original mystery format necessitated the longer form, started in '69.
It also became rare to do a cartoon — even a shorty — with two actors. That has meant more opportunity for the "one-voicers."
And since most shows wind up hiring 5-10 actors for a half-hour cartoon, it's more likely that the cast will include some women. Given societal evolution and advertiser trends, we might have seen more feminine characters anyway…but the '67 SAG contract eliminated a financial consideration that was keeping some ladies out.
During the seventies, the session fee was adjusted slightly upwards but the "three voice" rule went unchanged. Then, in the 1986 contract, that was altered. There was a strike that year — one which most news coverage treated as a humorous filler item, suggesting The Smurfs were walking the picket line. For the actors, it was dead serious, of course. A strike always is.
They didn't get all they wanted — few unions ever do — but they settled on several demands, one of which dealt with multiple voices. Effective with shows produced for the 1988/1989 broadcast season, an actor in a cartoon of over ten minutes received a 10% bonus for performing a third voice. So it worked like this…
1 or 2 voices — one session fee
3 voices — one session fee + 10%
4 or 5 voices — the 3 voice compensation + an additional session fee
6 voices — two session fees + 10%
…and so on. On the cartoons of under ten minutes, the earlier rule applied: A session fee entitled the producer to three voices and then each additional voice paid one-third more, so actors were being paid per voice. No actor was doing unlimited voices for one fee.
Insofar as I can tell, the main impact the new 10% bonus had on the cartoons themselves was to make producers even more wary of having someone do four voices. A show pretty much had to be cast in multiples of three. Given the talents of the actors at your disposal, you might otherwise have cast a show like this…
Actor #1: Joe, Fred, Cop, Fireman
Actor #2: Pete, Mike
And if you did, some Associate Producer or someone would come running in and say, "No, no! You must switch one of Actor #1's roles to Actor #2 so we don't have to pay Actor #1 two session fees!" I have even seen scripts rewritten — to change a character from male to female or vice-versa — to achieve this.
The most important change made in the '86 contract had to do with the length of a session. Previously, it had been defined as up to eight hours. If a studio engaged a voice artist for a cartoon, they could keep him for that long, but almost no one did. Most directors managed to record a half-hour cartoon in 2-4 hours, and shorter ones could be done in much less. When I was voice-directing Garfield and Friends, we usually did a 6-and-a-half minute episode in 20-30 minutes.
This led to most of your top voice actors booking several different sessions in a day. For instance, an in-demand guy — a Frank Welker, a Lennie Weinrib — might accept an engagement to do a cartoon at 9 AM for Hanna-Barbera. Then the actor would be booked for a 1 PM session at Marvel and maybe even a 5 PM session at Filmation. Sometimes, to get the best people, a voice director might promise the agent, "I'll get him in and out in an hour."
(Welker, it is said, once went to six different studios in one day…and at some stops, he did multiple sessions.)
Doubling, tripling or even quadrupling-up one's workday became quite customary. A session may have technically been eight hours but everyone understood that it would actually run no longer than four…everyone, that is, but for a few directors who simply couldn't — or wouldn't — complete a single cartoon in eight hours.
One fellow in particular was notably unable to do it in less, partly due to incompetence, partly because he liked to play power games in his sessions. He would order actors around, forcing them to read one line 30 times, treating them like vassals. In fact, Hour Eight would sometimes come and go without him finishing and he'd try to keep the performers longer than that.
Such behavior complicated many lives. He directed for several studios and an actor engaged for a morning session never knew: Was it safe to presume he'd be out in four hours or less? Or should he turn down any afternoon jobs, just in case Captain Bligh was in command? One could easily halve ones income, playing it safe.
So when voice actors went on strike in 1986, this was a key issue, and they won on it. Thereafter, a session was four hours, and a rate was established for automatic overtime pay if actors were kept after. (There are a few exceptions. For instance, the session for the first episode of a new series can be eight hours, since everyone's getting acquainted and key decisions are being made.)
And yes, when the new rule came in, the directors who previously needed 8+ hours to direct a cartoon suddenly, miraculously, became able to do it in four. But just barely…
That's how it is today. Most shows cast what they think are the best people, regardless of whether they can double in other roles. If they can, great. But only the utterly cheapest of studios take that into consideration. There are also roles for women.
And when the decision is made as to whether a given show should be comprised of shorts or one episode per half-hour, it's made based on what's best for the program. There is no more real financial advantage either way, at least with regard to the voice budget.
This may all seem like trivia…and unless you have a vast interest in animation voicework, you're probably feeling like you're loopy on NyQuil about now. My apologies…but insofar as I'm aware, this has never been discussed anywhere, in any article about animation.
Next time I write about cartoon voices, which will be in a month or three, I'll be itemizing some of the less-well-known credits. For instance, you all know who Mel Blanc was. How many of you know the name of Dave Barry? This is Dave Barry, the impressionist and stand-up comedian — a frequent performer on The Ed Sullivan Show — not the current syndicated columnist of the same name.
Well, Mr. Barry, who is still (happily) with us and still performing, was all through the Warner Brothers cartoons of the 40's and 50's. He's the guy who did Humphrey Bogart almost any time Bogey encountered Bugs Bunny, and he did dozens of other impressions and characters. He was Elmer Fudd briefly after Arthur Q. Bryan passed away and he even played Bluto in some of the Max Fleischer Popeye cartoons.
We'll spotlight Dave Barry and other unsung voice performers…and I'll introduce you to a brilliant gent named Keith Scott, who's playing Bullwinkle in the forthcoming Rocky & Bullwinkle movie.
That's all coming up in the future. Next week, we discuss the difference between a comic book and a McDonald's hamburger. And no, it isn't because the comic tastes better…