Micki Dee St. James writes to ask…
You may well have answered this before but my memory is not what it once was. Seems to me voice actors are scrupulous about claiming they never steal someone else's voice completely — that would be theft. They always introduce subtle differences.
So Yogi Bear does not have the same voice as Art Carney (I couldn't tell you what the difference is) and Fred Flintstone dies not have the same voice as Jackie Gleason (these do sound audibly distinct to me). Kermit's had several voices, all sort of the same but noticeably different from Jim Henson. He got to use his own voice which seems only fair.
Could you comment on some of the differences between a cartoon voice and the voice it's
stealingborrowing and how voice actors fashion these differences?
Well, you're talking about a couple of different situations here. Jim Henson owned Kermit. In fact, he owned the whole danged company before it was sold to Disney. He could and did dictate the terms of what would happen to Kermit after there was no more Jim Henson to perform him. As far as I know, that was done as he directed with others hired to play the character and do their best Jim Henson imitations. There's no ethical squabble there. There have been disputes over who was doing the imitation but there's no argument that it's wrong to imitate Jim Henson.
I don't know that any recording exists of it but Daws Butler used to demonstrate the difference between Yogi Bear's voice and Art Carney's, Hokey Wolf's and Phil Silvers', the voice of Snagglepuss and Bert Lahr and so on. There were definite differences. The cartoon characters' voices were inspired by the celebrities', not copied.
Bert Lahr did sue but that was because of the commercials Snagglepuss appeared in for Kellogg's Cocoa Krispies. Lahr's line of work then was doing commercials for Lay's Potato Chips and other products and he didn't like that people thought he was selling Cocoa Krispies. As I understand it, the suit was settled with some money changing hands and the addition of a screen credit for Daws Butler on those spots. You can see it at the end of this example if you look fast…
When a voice actor says "I would never steal someone else's voice," what he or she probably means is that they wouldn't steal a job by imitating someone. When Lorenzo Music was alive and voicing Garfield, he was very well-paid and we got offers from guys who claimed they could and would imitate Lorenzo for less money. That's the kind of thing no self-respecting voice actor would do.
There are grey areas…cases where it's arguable that someone has a proprietary claim on some voice. Two or three times now I've been asked to weigh in on a specific case. In one matter, the studio decided — as they have the right to — that they wanted a different actor in a role and the new person sounded a little like the old person. It can then be argued as to whether the second actor is imitating the first. But basically, if someone originated a unique voice — or in the instance of Lorenzo, was using his or her natural voice — it's wrong to imitate them as long as they're still around to provide it.
One time, I was walking into a restaurant with a veteran voice actor and I spotted another veteran voice actor also waiting to be seated. Wrongly assuming they had to be friends, I pointed the second guy out to the first guy and some yelling ensued. #1 had been holding out for higher pay on a job and #2 had stepped in and taken the gig and done an imitation of #1. Both men have passed away but to their dying days, you couldn't have them in the same room.
