Another Column About Daws Butler

by Mark Evanier

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 3/23/01
Comics Buyer's Guide

Bill Hanna, Daws Butler and Joe Barbera

A few weeks ago, I started to write of the great cartoon voice actor, Daws Butler, who gave vocal life to Yogi Bear and most of the early Hanna-Barbera stars. A brief, one-part remembrance quickly turned into two and then three parts, and I wasn't even finished then. Consider this a personal postscript…and one that I briefly considered not running at all. The last time I told it in print, one friend thought I came off as the hero of the piece, while another thought I was something of a loony.

I know the first perception was wrong. As you'll see, Daws was the hero, and all his friends and admirers were the heroes. I was, at best, the Point Man, doing the legwork in a short but emotional skirmish.

And I'd like to think the other sentiment was wrong, though I know it's closer to the mark. I've decided I can live with that, since the story demonstrates the love and respect that so many of us had for him.


Daws was, as we discussed earlier, a superb thespian — and, for a time, one of the busiest ones in town, at least throughout the fifties and sixties. He worked somewhat less in the seventies, but he was still doing voices for cartoons and teaching his classes. Then, in the eighties, a stroke forced him to suspend both for a time.

As strokes go, it was a tiny one but it thickened his speech a bit and took away the outer fringes of his peripheral vision. He could still see, but he could no longer easily glance at the end of a speech while reading the beginning. That would not have mattered to some actors, but it mattered to him.

He practiced and practiced for hours in his little studio. His performance level was good enough to work, but it wasn't good enough for Daws. When he finally felt ready to return to the mike, it was on a show that I wrote in, unfortunately, about two days.

It began one July afternoon when Joe Barbera (of Hanna and…) called me in to ask if I could or would write a Yogi Bear special to run in prime-time on CBS, come Christmas. I remember saying, "This Christmas?" Yes, it was for this Christmas — or, rather, that Christmas.

Why we had such a paucity of time was that months had been frittered away on various drafts by various writers. With everyone aware that a Christmas Special finished on December 26 ain't much good to anyone, I was chosen. I was known for being fast, I was "network-acceptable" and I knew the characters.

"Fast" was the most important. To get a half-hour written, storyboarded, recorded, animated, edited and set to music in a little over five months is pert near impossible. To complicate matters further, the Animation Union was probably going on strike on July 31. That meant that the parts of the process that had to be done locally — that couldn't be shipped off to a foreign studio — had to be completed in less than three weeks.

"We need a finished script in a couple of days," Mr. Barbera said. This cannot be done.

But, hey, I'm stupid. I said yes and rushed home to my typewriter, wishing that someone would hurry up and invent the Word Processor.

When I got home, Daws called. H-B had called his agent to open negotiations for his services and had mentioned that I was involved. He asked if I could get him a script in advance so that he could rehearse. He was concerned that, since the stroke, he would not be able to do all that he once did. I told him I'd have to write it first, but I would help him in any way I could.

That all transpired on a Tuesday. By close of business Friday, we had a script that had been approved by everyone who had to approve it, and it wasn't a bad script, given the circumstances. (The fact that my pride in everything I did for H-B had to be qualified with phrases like "given the circumstances," along with my discomfort at arguing with Mr. Barbera will all be featured prominently some day in article entitled, "Why I Stopped Working For Hanna-Barbera.")

Artists feverishly began to prep the script, while I got the okay to deliver a copy to Daws. You have no idea how weird it is to come home and find a message on your answering machine from Yogi Bear, telling you he liked the part you wrote for him.

Daws began rehearsing, and sometimes I'd go over to read the parts of Boo Boo, the Ranger and other co-stars. I thought he sounded fine but he didn't think he sounded fine. He was frustrated that it sometimes took him two or three "reads" to do a line the way he wanted.

Now, understand this: Two or three tries is not at all uncommon or incompetent. Some very fine voice actors routinely do a line five or ten times before they get it to where they want it. But Daws had set high standards for himself and he wasn't about to fall short of them. He wanted to be good the first time he read something and to only get better after that.


During all of this, his agent had been attempting to negotiate his fee with the Business Affairs department of Hanna-Barbera. Therein, alas, was then employed a gent who thought he would be doing the company a wonderful service by holding down the fees paid to talent.

What the agent was asking for was most reasonable, considering that it was a major, prime-time project and that Daws would be doing not just the starring role of Yogi Bear but, also, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, Mr. Jinks, Wally Gator, Hokey Wolf, Dixie, Snooper, Blabber, Augie Doggie and others. Despite this, Mr. Business Affairs offered a "take it/leave it" offer and, when Daws' agent left it, the order was given to recast all those roles.

Which was insane. Leaving aside the human reasons (all Daws meant to the studio), leaving aside symbolic reasons (Daws was Yogi, et al, to a few generations)…even leaving aside the fact that all the good voice people would refuse, for reasons of ethics and personal affection, to imitate Daws voices…it was insane.

We were three days from when we had to record and you couldn't replace that many voices that fast. Years later, when Daws passed away, it took months of auditions to select acceptable sound-alikes. And the man picked for Yogi was a Daws student-protégé who would never have taken the role if it had mean scabbing on his mentor.

Oh, yeah — and there was another reason it was insane: If we'd had ten years to work, we'd never have found anyone as good as Daws.

I will never forget the morning it all broke loose. Walking down the halls at Hanna-Barbera, I ran into the lady who was in charge of casting. She was crying such that I assumed someone had died.

"It's terrible," she sobbed. "They just ordered me to replace Daws."

Now, I get mad about once a year, and it rarely lasts more than five minutes…ten, tops. I operate on the theory that if you raise your voice fifty times in the course of a year, you are probably the one who's wrong in at least 48 of those instances. I honestly believe that.

Nevertheless, this was a day when I really lost it. I cannot recall a time I was angrier than I was then…maybe the time a close friend was killed by a drunk driver. That was surely a greater injustice but that anger was mitigated by the knowledge that there was nothing I could do about that.

The matter of Daws being replaced was of another stock and, fortunately, I was not alone in my ire. The casting lady and I were standing outside the recording studio as a Smurfs session was just letting out. The Smurfs had such a large cast that half the voice business, it seemed, was exiting.

First one out was Chuck McCann who asked what was wrong. We told him and he instantly announced, "No one will replace Daws. No one else will do those voices." He turned to the next person coming through the door, who was Frank Welker, perhaps the most in-demand voice actor in the field. "They're going to have auditions to replace Daws as Yogi because they don't want to meet his price," Chuck told him.

Immediately, Frank said, "I'm not auditioning for that."

Frank then turned to Don Messick, told him and Don said, "Well, they'd better not ask me to do any of Daws's characters." (Don was the voice of Boo Boo and the Ranger.)

It was one of the most amazing outpourings of principled outrage I can recall witnessing. At least a dozen top voice actors were there — the people you'd call first if you needed someone to imitate a voice. Without the slightest pause, all said they would never, under any circumstances, accept such work. Paul Winchell was talking of setting up picket lines and June Foray wanted to start phoning other actors to tell them what was happening.

Ten minutes later, I found myself in the Business Affairs guy's office, and we spent the next twenty screaming at each other. His position was that, first of all, it was none of my damn business. Second of all — and this is a quote — "This studio cannot be held hostage by the talent."

I argued back: "You're talking about recasting not only this studio's biggest star for his first prime-time appearance in years, but a dozen other characters, as well. You couldn't do that properly in two weeks, let alone two days, especially since all the good actors will boycott."

"Actors will do anything for a job," he said. "Someone will take the money."

"No one good," I said. "How much money will you be saving by destroying a dozen of this studio's most valuable properties?"

I don't recall precisely what he said in response but it was a sentence that started, "It isn't the thousand dollars…"

I interrupted: "A thousand dollars? You and Daws's agent are only a thousand dollars apart?" For a project of this importance, that was chump change.

"Yes," he yelled. "And we have to hold the line!"

It has been said that, in any company, there is nothing more expensive than someone trying to save money. Everywhere I've ever worked, I've seen some exec think he was doing something to save his employer a few bucks and wind up doing vast damage and costing the firm some staggering amount of cash. Here was a perfect example.

Four minutes later, I barged past Joe Barbera's secretary and into his office, unleashing a tirade that, in hindsight, was over-emotional by at least three notches. It ended with me proclaiming, "If nobody else here cares about doing this show right, at least I do." I pulled out my checkbook, scribbled a check to Hanna-Barbera for a thousand dollars and threw it down on Mr. Barbera's desk.

(It felt very heroic and principled at that moment. Still, I suspect that if we had film of it today, I'd look like I was declaring a grudge match at an upcoming Wrestlemania.)

Joe remained calm, if a bit taken aback. He said, "A thousand dollars? They told me Daws's guy was holding us up for a fortune."

"It's a thousand dollars," I said. "Or about what you spend in one week on cannelloni."

Joe Barbera — and I will always admire him for this — picked up the phone and called the Business Affairs Guy. His end of the conversation went like this:

"I have Mark Evanier in my office and he tells me we're only a thousand dollars apart on Daws…"

[Tirade heard from other end of call.]

"Pay Daws the money."

[More tirade.]

"Hey, I'm the one whose name is on the building. Give Daws what he's asking for."

Joe hung up, handed me back my check and said, "Bill and I should never have sold the company."


Daws got his money and the show was recorded. At his request, he worked alone, without the other actors present. He was afraid of being embarrassed if it took him a zillion takes to get each line. It didn't.

The fellow in Business Affairs got his revenge by messing up my screen credit…though I will say this for him: When I later encountered him at another studio, he apologized convincingly for the entire incident. In fact, he turned out to be a pretty decent guy.

December twenty-something, the show aired, completed at the last possible moment. The animation was passable, several of my favorite jokes were missing and, for some reason, the word "Hanukkah," spoken once by Snagglepuss, was bleeped.

I'm not kidding. I'd had Snagglepuss say, "Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Happy Hanukkah, even" and they bleeped "Hanukkah," like it's a dirty word or something. (Still don't believe me? The show's out on VHS and Lasersdisc — Yogi Bear's All-Star Christmas Caper — and it's bleeped on the tape, too. I could never find out who was responsible. Hanna-Barbera said CBS did it and CBS blamed Hanna-Barbera.)

Not the best show, but I didn't care: Daws Butler was back.

Right after it aired, he phoned me, all agiggle. "Messick just phoned," he beamed, referring to his long-time co-star. "He said that I sounded like my old self. And Paul [Frees] called before."

While we were talking, Call Waiting intervened and Daws left and came back to report that Bill Scott (the voice of Bullwinkle) had phoned. "Bill said he wasn't sure that it wasn't a rerun of a show from the sixties." Daws was jubilant to find that, the thing he did best, he could still do.

Daws did it for six more years before he died, working steadily, doing what he loved and adding to a body of work that will be heard and enjoyed forever. I tried to phone or visit him every month or three, just to keep in touch, just to find new ways of letting him know how much he meant of me. I must have said it a dozen different ways but it wasn't enough.

This, you learn the hard way. No matter how many times you say it…after they're gone, it was never enough. God, I miss that man.