Search Results for: Frank Welker

John R. Troy has the following question…

You've covered Li'l Abner, Al Capp, and a lot of Hanna-Barbera stuff over the years on your blog, but I've never seen this mentioned.

As a kid, I remember a short lived series featuring The Shmoo from the Li'l Abner comic strip, called The New Shmoo, and after that he also appeared on a show where Fred and Barney were cops and had him as an assistant. They sort of reinvented him as a shape-shifting blob and had Frank Welker do the voice.

I was wondering, do you know anything about how Hanna-Barbera got the rights to this character? It seems a bit strange that they got the rights to just that character and not the Li'l Abner strip, though I also know Shmoo merchandising was a big thing in the 1950s, so I could see a separate licensing deal.

And why would they call it "The New Shmoo?" I don't believe the character was ever shown in animation before.

You've come to the right place, John. I can answer everything except that last part. I was working at Hanna-Barbera at the time and though I only had one teensy-weeny thing to do with that program, I heard a lot about it. I can answer all your questions except one in two words. Those words are "Fred" and "Silverman."

Mr. Silverman was then the Programming Chief at NBC and because of his background programming Saturday morns elsewhere, he took a special interest in that daypart at NBC. One of his aides told me Fred would have been a happier man if all he had to worry about each day was his network's Saturday morning schedule.

He was, among his other contributions to that job description, the person behind the belief that the network should not trust the cartoon studio too much creatively.  The argument for this was as follows:  If Hanna-Barbera was producing shows for your network and also for another network — and they were always producing shows for another network — they might assign their best people to the other network's programs. Based on my observations, that was not an unreasonable concern. So you had to have someone who worked for your network supervise everything, approve scripts and storyboards and voices, etc. In other words, become the real Producer of the show no matter who was credited in that position.

Joe Barbera and others at H-B complained mightily about the networks tampering with their shows…and they were right to complain because sometimes, the network person in charge was a real boob. If the studio had only been concerned with selling shows to one network, that might not have happened. But only selling to one studio was not going to happen because the firm that owned Hanna-Barbera — it was no longer Bill and Joe — loved the idea of selling as many shows as possible, preferably squeezing all the competition outta the way and outta the business.

When Bill 'n' Joe sold out, they stayed on to run the company that bore their names.  The folks who took control loved it when at any given time slot on Saturday morning, there was a Hanna-Barbera show on CBS, a Hanna-Barbera show on NBC and a Hanna-Barbera show on ABC. Thus Joe Barbera's marching orders were pretty simple: Sell as many shows as you can.

So one day, Joe was over at NBC trying to sell them as many shows as he could…and Joe was a terrific salesperson. You might not like everything he sold. Joe certainly didn't like everything he sold. But he was there trying to sell, sell, sell — and Silverman had an idea. He remembered how popular The Shmoo was in the old Li'l Abner newspaper strip. People loved those little creatures and there was a brief merchandising boom for them. Fred suggested building a show around The Shmoo.

Reportedly, Joe said — this is what he later said he said — "You want to do Li'l Abner?" and Silverman (also reportedly) said, "No, kids today won't care about those hillbillies. Just get The Shmoo. If you do, I'll buy it." Following through on that was Joe Barbera's job.

So he went back to the office and told one of his business guys to buy the rights to make a cartoon show about The Shmoo. The business guy said, "Do you have any idea who I contact?" and J.B. thought for a second and he called in his secretary and said, "Call Mark Evanier and see if he knows who the hell owns The Shmoo." She called me in my office down the hall and I gave her the phone number of Al Capp's brother.

I had a telephone friendship with Capp's brother because of a couple of projects with which I was almost involved, most of them potential revivals which never happened of the Li'l Abner Broadway show. But as I'm writing this now, I'm not sure if the brother spelled his first name Elliot or Elliott, or if his last name was spelled Kaplan or Caplin. I've seen every possible permutation. But I did know his number and that he handled business dealing for the Capp Estate. I also knew that if he didn't control the rights to The Shmoo, he'd know who did.

And the next thing I knew, H-B was developing a cartoon show of The Shmoo.  They turned it into one of their many knock-offs of Scooby Doo but I neither worked on nor ever watched the series.  Supplying that one phone number is all I had to do with it. But hey, since I never saw it and you probably never saw it, let's watch the opening title together…

Okay. That was…well, interesting. I don't have any desire to watch an episode but if by some chance you do, someone has uploaded all of them to this page on the Internet Archive. My main reaction to the opening is to wonder howcome a character who can shape-shift into any form doesn't think to maybe grow himself a pair of arms?

As for how it wound up being connected with The Flintstones: Fred Silverman was a firm believer in the concept of programming "blocks." This is the theory that if you're putting on a half-hour Scooby-Doo show and a half-hour Dynomutt show, both will do better if you splice them into The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour…and it doesn't really matter if the two shows have anything in common or connect in any way.

He did this kind of thing often and because Fred was considered an expert at programming Saturday morning, others followed his lead. One problem with it for those of us who care about credits is that when they put two shows together in an hour like that, they merge the end credits and if/when the shows are later separated, the credits usually aren't.

(Which reminds me: If you watch the credits on The New Shmoo — I'll admit I peeked at them — you'll see the names of three great comic book artists — Mike Sekowsky, Dave Stevens and Jack Kirby. The way H-B did credits, all that means is that at the time the credits were made up, there was some paperwork somewhere that said those two gents had done some drawings that were intended for this show. I suspect Sekowsky did a fair amount, Stevens did a little and Kirby did almost nothing. At the time, Jack was under contract to the Ruby-Spears animation studio, which was literally across the street and owned by the same corporation that owned H-B. During times when Ruby-Spears didn't sell much to the networks — because, for example, Joe Barbera had done his job extra-well that season — Kirby's contract allowed Ruby-Spears to loan his services to Hanna-Barbera so he had stuff to draw to earn his salary. That's why Jack's credit was on a number of Hanna-Barbera shows, even some he only worked on for a day or two.)

Okay, this next part gets tricky…

In February of 1979, a new version of The Flintstones debuted on NBC's Saturday morning schedule and it was called The New Fred and Barney Show. Around the same time is when Mr. Silverman ordered Mr. Barbera to get the rights to the Shmoo and they also worked out a deal for a new cartoon show of The Thing, using the character from Marvel's Fantastic Four property but in a whole different concept. He became a teenager who turned into The Thing and there's a whole messy and convoluted story that I don't fully understand about how that deal was brokered. At the time, Silverman had canceled the Fantastic Four cartoon series that DePatie-Freleng — a rival cartoon studio which Marvel was in the process of acquiring — had produced for NBC.

Please don't ASK me to explain that. All you need to know here is that H-B was producing more episodes of The Fred and Barney Show to run as part of NBC's Fall 1979 schedule. They were also producing the new shows of the teen version of The Thing and what would be called The New Shmoo. At some some point, Silverman decided to marry two of those three shows together and they debuted in September as an hour series called Fred and Barney Meet the Thing.

The storylines of the two shows did not crossover. The characters only "met" in some short interstitial animated segments which had Fred and Barney dancing with The Thing. These were designed by my buddy Scott Shaw! who had the unenviable assignment of deciding how tall The Thing would be in relation to those guys from Bedrock and vice-versa.

The New Shmoo debuted as a standalone half-hour but after a few weeks, Fred decided it might do better as part of one of his "blocks." So there was soon a 90-minute show called Fred and Barney Meet The Shmoo. It featured a half-hour of Fred 'n' Barney, a half-hour of The Shmoo and a half-hour of The Thing, even though The Thing didn't get mentioned in the show's title. To make the 90-minute show even more disjointed, at one point they interpolated a special H-B had produced — The Harlem Globetrotters Meet Snow White — cut into four segments aired over four weeks. Here's a promotional drawing of Fred and The Shmoo…and have you ever seen two cartoon characters who looked less like they belonged in the same drawing?

In his series, The Shmoo was much shorter than the teenage kids with whom he solved mysteries. In the promotional drawings, he was the same height as Fred Flintstone. This is the kind of thing that would have really bothered me if I'd been ten years old and watching all this. And even when I was ten, I don't think I'd have been watching all this. Or any of this.

So I think that answers all of John's questions except for "Why would they call it "The New Shmoo?" I dunno. Because it rhymed? Because Silverman thought it made the show sound more exciting? Because the people doing this thought they were reinventing Al Capp's character? A lot of TV shows have names that don't make sense. Jimmy Kimmel Live! is not live, The Daily Show is not daily and there were no laughs on any program ever called The So-and-So Comedy Hour. It's a strange business, it is.

Corey Liss sent these two queries…

I've heard that, at the beginning of his career, Jack Kirby worked briefly for Will Eisner in the Eisner/Iger shop. Is that true? More generally, what was Kirby's take on Eisner's work? Did they ever talk or was it more like what you described with Carl Barks, two people in the same field who just didn't cross paths much?

Kirby definitely worked in Eisner's shop for a time. This was very early in both their careers and Jack often cited it as a great learning experience — not only learning from Will but from the other talented artists who worked there including Lou Fine. Once Jack left there, he didn't have much contact with Eisner but they got reacquainted in the seventies on the comic convention circuit, especially the Comic-Cons of San Diego.

Jack respected Will as both a creator and as one of the few guys in the field who knew how to write and draw a good comic book and — and this was the rare talent — knew how to get paid for its publication without getting screwed. But there was absolute respect between the two men and there were a couple of joint interviews in which this was mutually expressed.

Here's Corey's other question…

You've talked about how, when writing for animation, you often have a specific voice actor in mind that you're writing for. But, as you've also observed, a good voice actor can bring something to the character you didn't necessarily anticipate. When writing a long-form series, how much does that affect your writing of the character over time?

Or, to put it another way, by the end of Garfield and Friends, how much were you writing lines for Garfield and how much were you writing lines for Lorenzo Music playing Garfield — and how difficult was it to adjust when you started writing The Garfield Show?

On Garfield and Friends, I wrote for the voice of Garfield, which happened to be Lorenzo's own voice. So to write for one was to write for the other. There was never any separation in my mind.

When we later did The Garfield Show, Lorenzo was gone and Jim Davis had picked Frank Welker as the cat's new voice. Frank could have done a dead-on replication of Lorenzo's voice but that would have meant we'd be getting an impression, not a performance. So the goal was to have Frank do a voice that wasn't horribly unlike Lorenzo's but also didn't hinder his own ability to deliver lines in his own manner.

When I wrote for the character on that show, it took me a while to stop hearing Lorenzo in my head and to hear Frank instead. I don't think I ever really got there until we had some semi-completed episodes that I could see. That would have been about two-thirds of the way through writing the first season.

Hey, here's a clip from the last season of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In when our friend Frank Welker was briefly a cast member. Frank was then still an on-camera comedian who was occasionally doing voices for cartoons. He would soon go almost-full-time into the voice world and become the most-hired-and-heard guy ever in that profession…

"Uncle Jimmy" Weldon (as he liked to be called) died last Thursday at the age of 99. Folks around my age who grew up in Los Angeles remember him as the host of Cartooneroony — I don't guarantee that spelling — a Monday-Friday afternoon kid show on KCOP Channel 13 locally. It was also known as The Webster Webfoot Show, named for a little duck puppet with which Jimmy performed a ventriloquist act. Actually, Jimmy and Webster did local kids' shows in many cities, sometimes concurrently. Webster couldn't fly but Jimmy could — in a private plane via which he sometimes commuted, doing a morning show in, say, Fresno and an afternoon show in L.A.

His Channel 13 gig gave him exposure in 1959 when Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were looking for a new voice for a baby duck character of theirs. The baby duck under various names had appeared now and then in Tom & Jerry cartoons they'd done for MGM and then when they started their own studio, the duck popped up as a supporting player usually called (though not onscreen) Iddy Biddy Buddy or Itty Bitty Buddy. A comedian named Red Coffey — often spelled "Red Coffee" — had always done the duck voice for Bill and Joe. In 1959 when they renamed the duck Yakky Doodle and planned to star him in cartoons on the new Yogi Bear Show, Mr. Coffey was too often outta town on tours.

So they needed a new duck voice and they found him on Channel 13. And interestingly, they found the guy to voice Yakky's bulldog friend Chopper concurrently on Channel 5 where Vance Colvig was starring daily as Bozo the Clown. So when The Yogi Bear Show debuted in Los Angeles, you had Mr. Weldon voicing Webster Webfoot on Channel 13 and opposite him on Channel 5 was Mr. Colvig playing Bozo while — and these were all on at the same hour — The Yogi Bear Show with both actors was on Channel 11. At the age of eight, I actually noticed this.

I also noticed Jimmy Weldon popping up all over Los Angeles with Webster making personal appearances, hosting on telethons, even apparently appearing at birthday parties for what I heard was a rather modest fee. Jimmy was a charming gent who loved to entertain and he often popped up on TV shows in guest roles. I remember him on a Rockford Files and on Dragnet and on The Waltons, among others. He usually played a flamboyant preacher or some kind of inspirational speaker.

In fact, the last decade or two of his life, that was his main line of work — inspirational speaking. In 1996 when the prolific character actor Peter Leeds (also an occasional Hanna-Barbera voice) passed away, I took Stan Freberg to the funeral and one of the speakers talked to us not so much about Peter but about coping with death and not sinking into depression over it. The speaker was Jimmy Weldon.

He addressed many groups, often with a speech he called "Go Get 'Em Tiger: Becoming the Person You Want to Be," which was also the title of his autobiography. It urged everyone to realize their full potential, never give up, grab onto that star, etc. He was also a super-patriot and very active in the American Legion. (During World War II, he served with General Patton and was involved in many heroic efforts including the liberation of the concentration camp in Buchenwald.)

Back in 1982 when I wrote a prime-time Yogi Bear special for Hanna-Barbera, Yakky Doodle had a cameo role with one or two lines. Jimmy had not worked for H-B for a while and when Yakky had recently appeared, they had Frank Welker do his voice and then Frank would also play other roles in the show. I asked them, pretty please, to bring Jimmy Weldon in to do the one or two lines plus some other roles. They did. I'm not sure I can explain why that mattered to me as much as it did but it did.

I met him briefly at the recording session and then, about eighteen years later, I was in a Hometown Buffet in Van Nuys and there, dining with some friends of his who I'm sure were army buddies, was Jimmy Weldon. I went up to him at the buffet table and told him I grew up watching him and Webster on Channel 13. Before I could even tell him about the cartoon special I wrote that he was in, he put down the plate he was filling with food, gave me a big hug and dragged me over to his friends' table to tell them, "This young man knows who I am!"

He had me repeat what I'd told him about growing up with him and Webster and he seemed so proud of that that. And his pals were responded good-naturedly, "Yeah, yeah, Jimmy. So what is this? The tenth time this week you've introduced us to someone who told you that?"

Obituaries are up for "the watermelon-smashing comedian Gallagher," who died today at the age of 76…and oh, how he would hate being referred to mainly for that one bit. He would have been much happier with this paragraph in the NBC obit…

Gallagher was the number one comedian in America for 15 years, with comedy specials airing on Showtime and MTV. In his career spanning decades, Gallagher hosted 14 Showtime specials and around 3,500 live comedy shows.

That's basically true, though he might have argued it was more than 15 years. He more or less did pioneer the concept of a stand-up comedian doing a special for cable television and his were remarkably successful. He also more or less pioneered — or maybe I should say "popularized" — the business model of the comedian touring and "four-walling" the venues in which he played, renting out the hall instead of being hired to perform in it. He packed arenas and auditoriums and made an awful lot of money that way.

Some pieces you may read will also suggest that he was not well-liked by other comedians…which is also true. It may have had a lot to do with the fact that he was not quiet in his contempt for most of them and that may have had a lot to do with his undisguised anger that he was not getting what he thought was his proper respect from them. But because of one performance one evening, I have a higher opinion of Gallagher as a comic — …or at least of him when he was new on the scene…

It was late 1979 or early 1980. The great voice actor Frank Welker was still doing his stand-up act here and there, and he invited me to see him perform at the Ice House, a comedy club out in Pasadena. It's still there, though I believe it closed for COVID and has yet to reopen…but it was a great place to see a show back then and Frank got us comps and front row seats for one evening he was there.

I took a young lady named Jody who also knew Frank. She worked at the Ruby-Spears cartoon studio (I was a writer for them) and she was about 4'11". Since I'm 6'3"…well, she looked like I should be buying her a balloon instead of taking her on a date. She also had a very strange, goofy laugh. She was sweet and lovely but she laughed like a mule.

When we got to the Ice House, we discovered that Frank was not going on at the announced time. His set would be delayed for perhaps an hour so that an opening act could perform…and the opening act was Gallagher, who at the time was pretty hot in the business and, you'd assume, way too big to be someone's opening act. (A year or two earlier, I'd been to the Ice House to see Frank and his opening act that time was a beginning comic I knew as a TV writer. His name was Garry Shandling.)

You might also assume that front row seats to a Gallagher performance would cause you to leave the club looking like the big loser in a food fight. In actuality, he actually smashed no watermelons that evening. He used no food or props at all. That was because he was there to record a record album.

Without any visual humor at all, just standing at a microphone and talking, Gallagher was surprisingly funny. Everyone had a pretty good time and Jody's distinctive laugh was heard often. Occasionally, she'd still be laughing after everyone else had stopped and that hee-haw sound she made filled the room. Since Gallagher on stage was well-lit and we were three feet from him, we were well-lit and everyone was conscious of the tiny lady who laughed like a burro. At times, they were laughing as much at the sound coming out of her as they were at the guy onstage with the microphone.

And of course, that guy started making comments about it and asking her (and me) questions. I have seen comedians, including some good ones, come up empty in a situation like this. Not Gallagher. He was fast on his feet and he was funny.

There was an intermission after Gallagher's set and before Frank's. Coming out of the men's room, I ran into Frank and he introduced me to Gallagher. I said, "I brought the lady who laughs like a hyena. I hope we didn't ruin your album." He said, "Ruin it? I pray for people like her in the audience. I almost want to hire her to go on tour with me and sit in the third row."

I don't think this record was ever released on CD but it's on Spotify at this link. I tried and failed to figure out how to embed the clip on this site so if you're a Spotify subscriber, you might want to take a listen. Jody can be heard laughing off-and-on during the first half-dozen cuts but especially in the beginning of the one called "Hair."

Below is a video of Gallagher from about that time. It's from the May 9, 1979 episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and on it, Mr. G did the kind of spot that caused other comedians to say things about him like, "He's just a prop comic…funny props, not a funny guy," Whenever I heard that kind of talk, I disagreed with them. At the Ice House that evening, I saw an hour of him without props and a lot of it — not just the parts with us — consisted of "crowd work," chatting with the audience and ad-libbing. I dunno how he was later in his career but that night in 1980, he was pretty sharp…and there wasn't a watermelon in sight.

Here's a piece of animation history. It's July 7, 2000 and June Foray is getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame…

Johnny Grant, a local TV personality who was some sort of unofficial Mayor of Hollywood, is officiating at the ceremony, which was on the south side of Hollywood Boulevard about half a block east of La Brea. Among the speakers are Steve Allen and Stan Freberg. I'm somewhere in that mob behind the platform with Keith Scott, Leonard Maltin, Frank Welker, Carolyn Kelly and all sort of other interesting people.

Here — let's watch the video and then I'll tell you what I remember about that day…

People wonder how someone gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The rules are here and a lot of potential applicants and nominators are scared off by the hefty fee that comes with it. I don't recall what it was in 2000 but today, it's $55,000. Sometimes, the honoree or his/her fan club comes up with the dough but I suspect it's usually paid by some TV or movie studio that has a show or film about to open starring the honoree. Agents have been known to say, when an in-demand star is in demand for a movie, "My client wants ten million dollars plus it would be nice (i.e., mandatory) if your studio would use all its clout to get him/her a star on Hollywood Boulevard and/or his/her footprints in the courtyard of Grauman's Chinese."

In June's case, she didn't have that kind of clout but Chuck Jones apparently did. He told Warner Brothers that he wanted it to happen and, sure enough, it happened.

Odd story about how I was present for the unveiling. At the time, I had written the script for a Scooby Doo videogame and although I was not voice-directing, I was required to be present at the session when the cast came in to record my script. Unfortunately, the session was the same day and hour as the star ceremony and I had promised June I would be there for the dedication.

I asked the studio to reschedule the recording session. They said no. I asked them to allow me to not be present for it. They said no. I stopped asking when I realized that — by one of those amazing coincidences in which my life abounds — the star ceremony was in front of a big office building on Hollywood Boulevard and the recording session was at a studio in that building commencing an hour before the ceremony. So we recorded for an hour, then took a break and all went out to watch June get her star, then we went back in and finished the recording. That's why Frank Welker was there.

(That Scooby Doo videogame, by the way, was never finished or released. I'll get someone very mad at me if I post the whole story about it. Let's just say a person involved in its production who did not work for Warner Brothers did something that rightly pissed-off the studio and they killed the whole project.)

Also present at the star ceremony was Larry Harmon, the proprietor of Bozo the Clown. Larry wasn't there because of June. Larry's office happened to be in that building and I ran into him in the lobby. When I told him what was happening outside, he came out, talked his way into the V.I.P. area with us, and spent the whole time telling me and everyone how unfair it was that he hadn't gotten a star on the sidewalk despite years of lobbying. Larry never worked for Chuck Jones.

But it was overall a very happy occasion with a lot of happy people. At one point in the video, Johnny Grant spotted Chuck McCann in the crowd and give him a big introduction…which was nice but it wasn't Chuck McCann. It was just a guy who looked a lot like him. One of those Chuck McCann impersonators you hear about all the time.

That's about all I remember. Thanks to Tom Knott, who I believe was the person who shot this video, and to Kamden Spies, who I know is the person who told me it was online.

Rob Rose read this post here and then sent the following my way…

I had to watch a few minutes of the video you linked just because that was one hell of a cast.

When you mentioned that June Foray was unavailable, my first thought was "Well, if you can't get her, Tress MacNeille is the obvious next choice." But I hadn't taken the dates into account until I saw someone asking in the YouTube comments if it was her first voice acting role, and someone else answered "Yes." I quickly checked IMDB, and if it is to be believed, while it was not her very first voice acting job, it is the first for which she is credited as something besides "Additional voices." Since she has gone on to become such a giant in the field, I wouldn't mind hearing anything about how you came to pick her and whether it was clear from the start that her name would one day seem perfectly at home next to those of folks like Daws Butler and Frank Welker.

(I also had no idea she was the lady who played Lucy in Weird Al Yankovic's "Hey Ricky!" video…)

When you add in the rest of the cast, you have a list that really spans several generations of voice-acting greats.

If I had a specific question, it would probably be to wonder how intimidating that would be, to have such talent in front of you on your first voice directing job. On the one hand, as you say, it surely makes your job easier; you wouldn't have to push anyone to get great performances. On the other hand, if you *did* find yourself in a place where you needed to give some direction, I can imagine you might feel like you really had no place telling some of these people how to do their jobs. (I am reminded of your story of having to ask Mel Blanc to read the line "What's up, Doc?" again more slowly…) I don't know if that kind of thing would get easier over time. At least I suspect that, whatever the actors you worked with may have thought of your directing (or writing) talent, they couldn't really get the "This kid doesn't even know who I am!" feeling for very long.

Anyway, fun story, and it gave me an excuse to send this email instead of doing some other things I probably ought to be doing.

I first met Tress via The Groundlings, the great L.A. based improv company from which came Phil Hartman, Laraine Newman, Paul Reubens, Jon Lovitz and a whole lot of other folks you know and have enjoyed. You would often see someone on the Groundlings stage and instantly think, "Hey, that person's going to have a great career!" So it was with Tress…and it didn't take any experience at talent-scouting to think that. Pretty damned obvious if you ask me.

Before I made my voice-directing debut with that Wall Walkers special, I asked Gordon Hunt at Hanna-Barbera if I could sit in on some recording sessions and observe. There was briefly a policy at the studio that writers and story editors could not attend recording sessions because they had a tendency to slow things down by asking to change lines or to usurp the director's authority. Also, I think Bill Hanna wanted us in our offices writing and editing as much as possible.

This was not Gordon's decree but he had to follow it…but he said I could sit in on recordings of shows I didn't write. That was fine with me and I think the first one I attended was a Scooby Doo in which Tress did guest star voices. My recollection is that by the time I cast her in the Wall Walkers show, she'd done a fair amount of animation even if she hadn't done lead characters…and I'm not sure she hadn't.

I didn't give a moment's thought to whether "her name would one day seem perfectly at home next to those of folks like Daws Butler and Frank Welker." I just knew she'd do a good job in the show…and she did.

I was not intimidated by having such a stellar cast on my first directing job. On the contrary, I thought they were so good that I couldn't possibly botch things up…and that is not false modesty or any other kind. I actually thought that. As I quickly learned, the secret to voice-directing was to hire actors who were so good, they didn't need much directing…if any.

Brian Dreger wrote me a little while ago…

Just finished watching episode two of Anna "Brizzy" Brisbin's Podcast. It made me think: How does somebody become a voice director…the person who gets to pick who does the voice, the person who tells them "You're not saying it right" (or whatever, etc). How did you get to do that the first time? Did you know what you were doing? Were you scared? Or did you just think "I've been studying this stuff for years — I know I can do this!" When you consider the history of voice acting, and all the different people who've done it, it's puzzling to think that somebody is in charge of all that…and their decisions could possibly make or break a show/movie.

I've told this story several times on panels but I guess I've never told it here. In 1983, I wrote a prime-time cartoon special for NBC which was produced by an in-house producer at NBC. They hired an animation company based in New York to do the animation but they needed to hire someone to direct the voice track in Los Angeles.

Today, there are dozens of professional voice directors around but at the time, there were probably around eight or nine…and the good ones were all under contract to studios not involved with this project. The folks at NBC handed me a list of the three experienced voice directors they could get and I thought all three of them were terrible. On an impulse, I said to the NBC execs, "I can't do a worse job than these guys. If you'll let me voice direct it and pick the actors I want, I'll do it for nothing."

At the time, I think if I or anyone had told NBC, "If you'll fire Johnny Carson and let me host The Tonight Show, I'll do it for nothing," they might have jumped at the chance to save money. Anyway, they agreed on the proviso that I audition at least three people for each part — which I did and then I got most of my picks. The major players were Daws Butler, Frank Welker, Tress MacNeille, Howard Morris, Marvin Kaplan, Bill Scott (in what I think was his first non-Jay Ward voice job in a long time), Peter Cullen and a few others. We needed a young boy so I picked Scott Menville, who grew up to be a very fine adult voice actor.

And before anyone asks: June Foray was in Europe at the time.

I kinda/sorta/somewhat knew what I was doing, mostly from watching Gordon Hunt voice-direct shows at Hanna-Barbera. I'd also studied another voice director who was on that list of three and from him, I learned a lot of what not to do. He seemed to be on what some would call a "power trip," finding fault with perfectly fine performances just because he could.

The late Lennie Weinrib, who had worked for this director and fought with him to the point where they no longer worked together, told me, "He's perpetually mad that he can't do what we can do so he takes it out on us." One of the things I think I've had going for me as a voice director is that I am well aware I can't act as well as the worst person I would ever hire. I'm not saying a good voice actor can't direct — some do and do it well. I'm saying that there's usually trouble when a director resents being only on his or her side of the glass.

The day we recorded that special, I was a little scared but I figured that with the cast I'd selected, even I couldn't muck it up that much. The final show was not exactly what I'd wanted for a number of reasons but I did not think the voice track was one of them.

I did make some mistakes and I got a fair amount of help from Frank Welker, who by now had become a good friend of mine. On two occasions during the recording session, he asked if I could come out of the director booth and speak to him one-on-one so he could ask me some questions about certain lines in the script. That was a fib on his part. When I called a short break and went over to talk with him, he told me — making sure no one else could hear — of a couple of directing errors I'd made. I was grateful that he told me when I could still correct them and especially grateful that he did it the way he did.

Since I've come this far, I might as well link you to the show which, as I said, I wasn't that happy with. It was a prime-time special called Deck the Halls with Wacky Walls. I did not come up with that name, nor did I create the characters, nor did I have anything to do with the songs…

The end credits are mostly missing from this video but the producer was Buzz Potamkin and most of the character designs were done by Phil Mendez. The special was a pilot for a Saturday morning series and it was well-received and almost got on the NBC schedule. Why it didn't is a long, brutal story of how sometimes, a big and powerful studio can crush a small newcomer.

I was just happy that I got to work with such a fine cast, including Howard Morris, who soon became one of my favorite people of all time. And it did get me other offers to voice-direct, though I declined most where I'd only be doing that and not writing the show.

Someone named Mike wrote to ask…

First of all, I'm a big fan of your blog. Your recent post about voice actors that you wanted to have guest star on productions got me wondering… what voice actors auditioned to lend their voices to the Garfield projects you worked on? Were there auditions for Jon, Roy and Binky before Thom Huge decided to voice those characters? Were there any voice actors who auditioned for characters, didn't get the roles, but still wound up guest-starring on Garfield and Friends? Were there auditions at all, or did the crew just call up various actors they liked and offer them the roles?

Well, the first Garfield project with which I was involved was the Saturday morning series, Garfield and Friends. Jim Davis, the cat's creator, selected the voices before I came along. Garfield's first voice was, briefly, a radio personality named Scott Beach and you can read about him here. He did the voice for a short segment in a 1980 CBS special called The Fantastic Funnies.

That segment more or less served as the pilot for a series of prime-time animated Garfield specials, kicking off with Here Comes Garfield!, which aired in October of 1982. For that special and all that followed, Jim decided Garfield needed a different voice and the answer to the question, "Who did they audition?" would be "Who didn't they audition?" Just about every voice actor in L.A. read for the part and some of them read several times before Lorenzo Music tried out and got it. (Lorenzo, by the way, redubbed the Fantastic Funnies clip for when it was later shown here and there.)

One of the people who auditioned for the role of Garfield was Gregg Berger. Jim liked Gregg tremendously and while he felt Gregg was wrong for the cat, he found out Gregg could make dog sounds and awarded him the role of Odie. To this day, Gregg has been Odie in every case where Odie has had a voice.

Sandy Kenyon (you can read about him here) was the voice of Jon in that first special. With the second special, Garfield on the Town, Jim decided to give the role of Jon to a friend of his who'd been working for his company and had a background in radio and voice work. That was when Thom Huge became Jon…and he also picked up other roles, including Binky. For that special, Jim also selected Julie Payne to voice Jon's lady friend, Liz. As far as I know, Liz was the last role for which auditions were done. In other specials, Jim just cast actors he'd heard of or who had auditioned for other roles.

When Garfield and Friends started, Jim was originally the Voice Director but I took over casting new roles and eventually took over the voice direction when Jim got too busy to fly out here and do it. Thom Huge, who lived back in Indiana and worked for Jim there, flew out for voice sessions so we ganged-up recording dates so Thom could do several shows while he was out here. He turned out to be quite versatile so he did a lot of other roles in the show, plus he played Roy in the U.S. Acres segments. Gregg Berger also turned out to have an endless supply of other voices.

To cast the other regular characters in U.S. Acres, we did the only other auditions ever done for the Garfield and Friends series. We decided that since they were already part of the show, we'd have Julie Payne voice the character of Lanolin, and we'd assign Gregg one of the male roles and I brought in about eight of my favorite voice actors to audition. I directed the auditions, Jim listened to the tapes and he picked Gregg to be Orson, Howie Morris to be Wade Duck, and Frank Welker to play Bo, Booker and Sheldon.

And that was that. Thereafter, when we needed a new voice for a recurring or one-shot character, I might be able to have Gregg, Thom, Howie, Julie or Frank — or even Lorenzo, once or twice — do it but otherwise, I'd just hire someone I knew could give me what I wanted. A few of the actors who auditioned for U.S. Acres, like Chuck McCann and Lennie Weinrib, wound up doing guest voices.

Over the 121 half-hours we did of that series, we hired a lot of people who were new to the voice business. We also hired a lot of actors who'd voiced cartoons I'd loved as a child including Stan Freberg, June Foray, Larry Storch, Don Messick, Gary Owens, Dick Beals, Shep Menken, Paul Winchell, Julie Bennett, Marvin Kaplan and Arnold Stang. I certainly didn't need to audition any of those people.

Not only have I not decided whether or not to watch the big Thursday Night Debate, I've almost been thinking of predicting it'll be called off because Trump is exhausted, Trump is demanding changes in the format, Trump is accusing Biden of cheating, etc. Something I haven't seen in any article about the debate is whether the candidates have to pass COVID-19 tests before it.

That was in the rules for the first one but Trump arrived late and managed to not take the test. One might assume that in light of what then happened, the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates would absolutely insist on it this time. But one might assume all sorts of things, especially in this time in our history, which do not happen.

Kristen Welker, a White House correspondent for NBC News, will serve as moderator. I think instead, it would liven things up if they brought in Frank Welker and had him ask each question in the voice of a different cartoon character.

Ms. Welker will have a button with which she can mute either debater's microphone if said debater interrupts the other too often. If Trump just stands there yelling his interruptions sans mike, I would hope — but do not expect — that Mr. Biden would turn to him and say, "You know, if you conducted yourself like a normal person does in a debate, they wouldn't have had to install those buttons." I do expect that Trump will insist that the buttons are there to rig the proceedings against him and that he was muted whenever he was about to score a devastating, election-upsetting point.

I am a professional writer (next month will be 51 years) but I'm also, kind of on the side, a professional director of cartoon voices. I also host panels with cartoon voice actors at comic conventions and online.

At every panel, I make time for a little speech cautioning aspiring V.O. performers to beware of teachers and coaches who are not very good at teaching and coaching but who are sometimes very good at convincing you that you'll have the career of your dreams if you write them a very large check — or even a series of very large checks — to take lessons.

Please read and understand the following sentence: There are some very good, very honest teachers of voiceover but there are also some very poor ones and some of them are not very honest.

It is not unusual for the latter kind to offer very cheap introductory classes as a means of getting in touch with suckers aspiring voice actors. Those beginning classes may be worth what you pay for them but too often what happens is that they function like those free seminars that turn into relentless sales pitches to purchase time-shares.

They tell you how great you are and how you have such potential to become the next Frank Welker (or Rob Paulsen or Tara Strong or Nancy Cartwright, etc.) if only you had that little bit of instruction and polish that they can give you. You will be stunned at how much they'll charge you for that little bit of instruction and polish.

Beware, beware, beware.

Voiceover is a lucrative field for — and I need to use boldface again here — some people. Like any glamorous, well-paying show-bizzy career, the vast majority of those who aspire to the field do not achieve the success they seek. That is not possible due to the simple math of X number of jobs and at least 10X the number of applicants…and some would say it's more like 100X or more. One of the good things an honest, professional coach can do for you is to give you an honest appraisal of your talents.

The honest ones I know will not take your money if they don't think you have a good shot at a career. The dishonest ones will always tell you you're so close; you just need their deluxe, even-more-expensive master class. Bank accounts — students' or their parents' — have been wiped clean by those additional deluxe classes.

How do you know who the good and honest ones are? I'm not going to name names here; just urging caution. Generally speaking, there should be a real, successful career connected with them. Either they've had one or they're recommended by folks who've had them. You should know the names of people who've had the kind of career you seek. Many of them are reachable via social media. Most of them will respond to an e-mail or D.M. asking them for a recommendation.

Don't pester him with questions but do spend some time at this page that was set up by one of the best, most in-demand voice actors working today, Dee Bradley Baker. There are coaches who will charge you thousands of bucks to give you less good advice than you can get for free on Dee's site. Some of those coaches, by the way, have real slick, professional-looking websites.

(And don't pester me, especially if you haven't studied every single page of that site. And while I occasionally participate in classes run by others, I don't teach and probably never will.)

As you might imagine, I am motivated to deliver these cautionary lectures because I have seen some horrible exploitations. We're talking about young (mostly) folks who shelled out vast sums of dough on lessons and at the end of those classes, all that resulted was that they were told they needed to pay for more lessons. In a couple of instances, a loving parent forked over money they could really not afford, trying to help their kid achieve his/her "dream" profession…and the kid got nowhere.

I am not trying to scare you away from voice teachers. Like I keep boldfacing here, there are some wonderful ones. I'm trying to scare you away from the kind that took $12,000 from one poor lady who thought she was buying her daughter a career. I heard the daughter's demo and an honest coach would have told her that she simply didn't have the talent necessary to make it in The Business and should seek out a different profession.

The last I heard, the daughter was indeed working in front of a microphone. It's the one at a Romano's Macaroni Grill and she uses it to tell waiting customers their table is ready. You can master that skill for way under $12,000.

The TV show M*A*S*H debuted on CBS in September of 1972. While it wasn't the biggest of hits at first, it did well enough that a few months later, CBS apparently wanted another series that was not unlike it. Not long before, Paramount had released the movie version of Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 and, as with most such deals, there was a clause in there allowing the studio to bring forth a TV version.

So here we have the 1973 unsold pilot for a weekly Catch-22 TV series. Richard Dreyfuss, who was not yet a movie star of note, played the role Alan Arkin had played in the film. Hal Dresner, who had written a couple of first-season M*A*S*H episodes did the teleplay. Richard Quine directed and the cast also included Dana Elcar, Nicholas Hammond (who would soon star in the first live-action Spider-Man TV show) and my buddy Frank Welker. Frank pretty much gave up on-camera performing a few years later to become the most-often-heard cartoon voice actor in the history of mankind.

I can see why this did not become a regular series and if you watch it, you'll probably come up with even more reasons. One though is one of the worst "sweetening" jobs I've ever heard on a TV show. There's a way to do canned laughter that isn't constantly reminding you that it's not genuine. They didn't get that kind…

Here's a profile of our friend Frank Welker. This article way understates how much this man has worked.

Here's our pal Bob Bergen again, now demonstrating how he might create a new voice for a new character. As I told you back in this message, Bob's great at simulating voices done in the past by Mel Blanc and others but he's also great at baking from scratch.

If you're interested in how one goes about getting a career like Bob's, ask yourself if you have a range like Bob's. There is room in the field for someone who only has one voice if it's a great one. It didn't hurt my dear friend Lorenzo Music. But I think you can see how if you were a producer looking to cast voices for a new show, it certainly wouldn't be a waste of your time to have Bob Bergen come in…and guys like Bob really can come up with ideas and new sounds this fast.

Bob will not at all mind me saying that there are a number of performers like him out there…guys 'n' gals who can do this. When I was casting and voice-directing The Garfield Show, our core cast consisted of Frank Welker (who played Garfield), Gregg Berger (who was Odie), Wally Wingert (Jon) and sometimes Jason Marsden (Nermal) or Audrey Wasilewsky (Arlene) and a few other recurring roles. All of these folks were and are that versatile and could play many other roles along with their main ones.

I did hire other actors (including Mr. Bergen) to guest in certain episodes, mostly for variety and to bring some different kinds of energy to the recording sessions. But I could have done the show forever with just a couple of those men and a couple of those ladies. When they did the classic Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, four people — Bill Scott, June Foray, Paul Frees and William Conrad — did all the voices — and I mean all.