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110-446: None of the voice actors were credited on screen. Mel Blanc performed most of the voices, while Billy Bletcher sang "In the Garden of My Heart" as Sleepy Lagoon. Richard Bickenbach received screen credit as animator, but other animators working on the film were Jack Bradbury , Gerry Chiniquy , Phil Monroe and Manuel Perez . Owen Fitzgerald was the layout artist, Paul Julian painted

220-578: A Lithuanian Jewish immigrant, and Frederick Blank (born in New York to German Jewish parents ), the younger of two children. He grew up in San Francisco's Western Addition neighborhood, and later in Portland, Oregon , where he attended Lincoln High School . He had an early fondness for voices and dialect, which he began practicing at the age of 10. He claimed that he changed the spelling of his name when he

330-548: A mass hysteria from the (entirely fictional) radio presentation of The War of the Worlds , which had been presented as a faux newscast. The sponsored musical feature soon became one of the most popular program formats. Most early radio sponsorship came in the form of selling the naming rights to the program, as evidenced by such programs as The A&P Gypsies , Champion Spark Plug Hour , The Clicquot Club Eskimos , and King Biscuit Time ; commercials, as they are known in

440-483: A radio network 's studios, or at the facilities of a network-owned or affiliated station, which might have four or more lathes. A small local station often had none. Two lathes were required to capture a program longer than 15 minutes without losing parts of it while discs were flipped over or changed, along with a trained technician to operate them and monitor the recording while it was being made. However, some surviving recordings were produced by local stations. When

550-400: A "hill and dale" vertically modulated groove, rather than the "lateral" side-to-side modulation found on the records being made for home use at that time. The large slow-speed discs could easily contain fifteen minutes on each side, allowing an hour-long program to be recorded on only two discs. The lacquer was softer than shellac or vinyl and wore more rapidly, allowing only a few playbacks with

660-635: A Puddy Tat (shown with Happy Feet Two ) and Daffy's Rhapsody (shown with Journey 2: The Mysterious Island ). For his contributions to the radio industry, Blanc has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6385 Hollywood Boulevard . His character Bugs Bunny was also awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on December 10, 1985. Blanc trained his son Noel in the field of voice characterization. Noel performed his father's characters (particularly Porky Pig) on some programs, but did not become

770-793: A commercial. He was originally expected to recover, but doctors later discovered that he had advanced coronary artery disease after his health had worsened. He also fell from his bed and broke his femur during the stay. Blanc died at the age of 81 from complications related to both illnesses on July 10, 1989 at 2:30 p.m., nearly two months after being admitted into the hospital. He is interred in Hollywood Forever Cemetery section 13, Pinewood section, plot #149 in Hollywood. His will specified that his gravestone read " That's all folks "—the phrase with which Blanc's character, Porky Pig, concluded Warner Bros. cartoons from 1937 to 1946. Blanc

880-410: A daytime serial drama by scholars of the genre is Painted Dreams , which premiered on WGN on October 20, 1930. The first networked daytime serial is Clara, Lu, 'n Em , which started in a daytime time slot on February 15, 1932. As daytime serials became popular in the early 1930s, they became known as soap operas because many were sponsored by soap products and detergents. On November 25, 1960,

990-407: A full-time voice artist. Warner Bros. expressed reluctance to have a single voice actor succeed Blanc, and employed multiple new voice actors to fill the roles since the 1990s, including Noel Blanc, Jeff Bergman , Joe Alaskey , Greg Burson , Billy West and Eric Bauza . Golden Age of Radio The Golden Age of Radio , also known as the old-time radio ( OTR ) era, was an era of radio in

1100-436: A future when he would be around no longer to record. 15 hours of new tapes of Mel's material were discovered in 1996, with Noel Blanc expecting to find more soon. These new recordings of Blanc's voices were also given to a variety of toys, watches, video games, and websites. More recently, archive recordings of Blanc have been featured in new computer-generated imagery -animated Looney Tunes theatrical shorts; I Tawt I Taw

1210-485: A group headed by RCA , which used the assets to form the National Broadcasting Company . Four radio networks had formed by 1934. These were: In the period before and after the advent of the broadcast network, new forms of entertainment needed to be created to fill the time of a station's broadcast day. Many of the formats born in this era continued into the television and digital eras. In the beginning of

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1320-455: A guest, had his own program in 1934.) The New York Philharmonic also had weekly concerts on radio. There was no dedicated classical music radio station like NPR at that time, so classical music programs had to share the network they were broadcast on with more popular ones, much as in the days of television before the creation of NET and PBS . Country music also enjoyed popularity. National Barn Dance , begun on Chicago's WLS in 1924,

1430-416: A high-quality radio's audio output was recorded directly, rather than by holding a microphone up to its speaker, the recorded sound quality was very good. However, because the wire cost money and, like magnetic tape , could be repeatedly re-used to make new recordings, only a few complete broadcasts appear to have survived on this medium. In fact, there was little home recording of complete radio programs until

1540-496: A home could now easily listen to their radio at the same time. In 1930, 40% of the nation's households owned a radio, a figure that was much higher in suburban and large metropolitan areas. The superheterodyne receiver and other inventions refined radios even further in the next decade; even as the Great Depression ravaged the country in the 1930s, radio would stay at the center of American life. 83% of American homes would own

1650-460: A major assault when NBC carried The Goon Show in the mid-1950s. Some shows originated as stage productions: Clifford Goldsmith's play What a Life was reworked into NBC's popular, long-running The Aldrich Family (1939–1953) with the familiar catchphrases "Henry! Henry Aldrich!," followed by Henry's answer, "Coming, Mother!" Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway hit, You Can't Take It with You (1936), became

1760-436: A network of telephone lines. The development of radio eliminated the wires and subscription charges from this concept. Between 1900 and 1920 the first technology for transmitting sound by radio was developed, AM ( amplitude modulation ), and AM broadcasting sprang up around 1920. On Christmas Eve 1906, Reginald Fessenden is said to have broadcast the first radio program, consisting of some violin playing and passages from

1870-456: A radio by 1940. Although radio was well established with United States consumers by the mid-1920s, regulation of the broadcast medium presented its own challenges. Until 1926, broadcast radio power and frequency use was regulated by the U.S. Department of Commerce, until a legal challenge rendered the agency powerless to do so. Congress responded by enacting the Radio Act of 1927 , which included

1980-875: A series of one-hour adaptations of Shakespeare plays, many of which Barrymore never appeared in either on stage or in films, such as Twelfth Night (in which he played both Malvolio and Sir Toby Belch ), and Macbeth . Lux Radio Theatre and The Screen Guild Theater presented adaptations of Hollywood movies, performed before a live audience, usually with cast members from the original films. Suspense , Escape , The Mysterious Traveler and Inner Sanctum Mystery were popular thriller anthology series. Leading writers who created original material for radio included Norman Corwin , Carlton E. Morse , David Goodis , Archibald MacLeish , Arthur Miller , Arch Oboler , Wyllis Cooper , Rod Serling , Jay Bennett , and Irwin Shaw . Game shows saw their beginnings in radio. One of

2090-447: A service designed to sell radio receivers. In early 1922, American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) announced the beginning of advertisement-supported broadcasting on its owned stations, and plans for the development of the first radio network using its telephone lines to transmit the content. In July 1926, AT&T abruptly decided to exit the broadcasting field, and signed an agreement to sell its entire network operations to

2200-486: A sponsor's product. These items were offered on adventure shows. Young listeners had to mail in a boxtop from a breakfast cereal or other proof of purchase . Radio plays were presented on such programs as 26 by Corwin , NBC Short Story , Arch Oboler's Plays , Quiet, Please , and CBS Radio Workshop . Orson Welles 's The Mercury Theatre on the Air and The Campbell Playhouse were considered by many critics to be

2310-459: A substantial number of copies of an electrical transcription were required, as for the distribution of a syndicated program, they were produced by the same process used to make ordinary records. A master recording was cut, then electroplated to produce a stamper from which pressings in vinyl (or, in the case of transcription discs pressed before about 1935, shellac) were molded in a record press. The Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) had its origins in

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2420-550: A tune-up), violin teacher Professor LeBlanc, Polly the Parrot, Benny's pet polar bear Carmichael and the train announcer. The first role came from a mishap when the recording of the automobile's sounds failed to play on cue, prompting Blanc to take the microphone and improvise the sounds himself. The audience reacted so positively that Benny decided to dispense with the recording altogether and have Blanc continue in that role. One of Blanc's characters from Benny's radio (and later TV) programs

2530-497: A variety of film, advertising and theme park projects. Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Blanc performed his Looney Tunes characters for bridging sequences in various compilation films of Golden Age-era Warner Bros. cartoons, such as: The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie , The Looney Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie , Bugs Bunny's 3rd Movie: 1001 Rabbit Tales , Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island and Daffy Duck's Quackbusters . His final performance of his Looney Tunes roles

2640-595: A weekly situation comedy heard on Mutual (1944) with Everett Sloane and later on NBC (1951) with Walter Brennan . Other shows were adapted from comic strips, such as Blondie , Dick Tracy , Gasoline Alley , The Gumps , Li'l Abner , Little Orphan Annie , Popeye the Sailor , Red Ryder , Reg'lar Fellers , Terry and the Pirates and Tillie the Toiler . Bob Montana's redheaded teen of comic strips and comic books

2750-668: Is astounding to realize that Tweety Bird and Yosemite Sam are the same man!" Blanc said that Sylvester the Cat was the easiest character for him to voice, because "[he's] just my normal speaking voice with a spray at the end"; and that Yosemite Sam was the hardest, because of his loudness and raspyness. A doctor who examined Blanc's throat found that he possessed unusually thick, powerful vocal cords that gave him an exceptional range, and compared them to those of opera singer Enrico Caruso . After his death, Blanc's voice continued to be heard in newly released productions, such as recordings of Dino

2860-399: Is not only surprising given his small stature but also substantially more dramatic than any of the acts Daffy used in the pitch. However, during a high note near the end, he erupts into a long coughing fit before weakly croaking the rest of the line. Authors Michael S. Shull and David E. Wilt consider it ambiguous as to whether this cartoon contains a World War II-related reference. When Daffy

2970-424: Is regarded as the most prolific voice actor in entertainment history. He was the first voice actor to receive on-screen credit. Blanc's death was considered a significant loss to the cartoon industry because of his skill, expressive range, and the sheer number of the continuing characters he portrayed, whose roles were subsequently assumed by several other voice talents. As film critic Leonard Maltin observed, "It

3080-640: Is revealed as the pilot of the plane, he is wearing an aviator's goggles and helmet. In this guise, Daffy sings Max Steiner's main title march from Dive Bomber : "We watch the skyways o'er the land and the sea, ready to fly anywhere the duty calls, ready to fight to be free". This could be a reference to military aviation . Yankee Doodle Daffy is available officially on DVD as part of Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 1 by Warner Home Video . Mel Blanc Melvin Jerome Blanc (born Blank / b l æ ŋ k / ; May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989)

3190-484: Is the only surviving recording of a program. There was some home recording of radio broadcasts in the 1930s and 1940s. Examples from as early as 1930 have been documented. During these years, home recordings were made with disc recorders, most of which were only capable of storing about four minutes of a radio program on each side of a twelve-inch 78 rpm record. Most home recordings were made on even shorter-playing ten-inch or smaller discs. Some home disc recorders offered

3300-594: The Columbia Broadcasting System in support of America's cultural diplomacy initiatives and President Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy . Included among the popular shows was Viva America which showcased leading musical artists from both North and South America for the entertainment of America's troops. Included among the regular performers were: Alfredo Antonini , Juan Arvizu , Nestor Mesta Chayres , Kate Smith , and John Serry Sr. After

3410-450: The 1940s, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce , famous for playing Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in films, repeated their characterizations on radio on The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes , which featured both original stories and episodes directly adapted from Arthur Conan Doyle 's stories. None of the episodes in which Rathbone and Bruce starred on the radio program were filmed with the two actors as Holmes and Watson, so radio became

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3520-411: The 1950s, television surpassed radio as the most popular broadcast medium, and commercial radio programming shifted to narrower formats of news, talk, sports and music. Religious broadcasters, listener-supported public radio and college stations provide their own distinctive formats. During the first three decades of radio , from 1887 to about 1920, the technology of transmitting sound was undeveloped;

3630-711: The 1970s, Blanc gave a series of college lectures across the US and appeared in commercials for American Express . Mel's production company, Blanc Communications Corporation, collaborated on a special with the Boston-based Shriners' Burns Institute called Ounce of Prevention , which became a 30-minute TV special. In 1972, Chuck McKibben started working as Blanc's personal recording engineer/producer and studio manager. His daily responsibilities at Mel Blanc Audiomedia in Beverly Hills, California included recording Blanc's voice for

3740-556: The AFRS during the Golden Age were recorded as electrical transcription discs, vinyl copies of which were shipped to stations overseas to be broadcast to the troops. People in the United States rarely ever heard programming from the AFRS, though AFRS recordings of Golden Age network shows were occasionally broadcast on some domestic stations beginning in the 1950s. In some cases, the AFRS disc

3850-547: The Bible. While Fessenden's role as an inventor and early radio experimenter is not in dispute, several contemporary radio researchers have questioned whether the Christmas Eve broadcast took place, or whether the date was, in fact, several weeks earlier. The first apparent published reference to the event was made in 1928 by H. P. Davis, Vice President of Westinghouse , in a lecture given at Harvard University . In 1932 Fessenden cited

3960-704: The Bumblebee ", " Chica Chica Boom Chic " (as Carmen Miranda ), "Laugh, Clown, Laugh" (as Enrico Caruso as Canio in Pagliacci ), and " Angel in Disguise " (the same song Bugs Bunny and Sylvester perform in The Wabbit Who Came to Supper and Back Alley Oproar , respectively). Porky, with mounting frustration (as it is his day off), repeatedly tries to escape from the pitch. Daffy handily foils each attempt in increasingly improbable ways, including by turning out to be

4070-643: The Christmas Eve 1906 broadcast event in a letter he wrote to Vice President S. M. Kinter of Westinghouse. Fessenden's wife Helen recounts the broadcast in her book Fessenden: Builder of Tomorrows (1940), eight years after Fessenden's death. The issue of whether the 1906 Fessenden broadcast actually happened is discussed in Donna Halper's article "In Search of the Truth About Fessenden" and also in James O'Neal's essays. An annotated argument supporting Fessenden as

4180-733: The City of Los Angeles. His accident, one of 26 in the preceding two years at the intersection known as Dead Man's Curve , resulted in the city funding the restructuring of curves at the location. Years later, Blanc revealed that during his recovery, his son Noel "ghosted" several Warner Bros. cartoons' voice tracks for him. Warner Bros. had also asked Stan Freberg to provide the voice for Bugs Bunny, but Freberg declined, out of respect for Blanc. Jerry Hausner briefly filled in for Blanc as Bugs and Yosemite Sam for some commercials and spots for The Bugs Bunny Show and additional lines in Devil's Feud Cake . At

4290-836: The Dinosaur in the live-action films The Flintstones (1994) and The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas (2000). Similarly, recordings of Blanc as Jack Benny's Maxwell were featured in Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003). In 1994, the Blanc estate and Warner Bros. forged a new alliance: the Warner-Blanc Audio Library, which consisted of approximately 550 songs and voices of every character in Blanc's repertoire, which he had begun setting down at his multi-track studio in 1958 amid fears of

4400-467: The Golden Age, network programs were almost exclusively broadcast live, as the national networks prohibited the airing of recorded programs until the late 1940s because of the inferior sound quality of phonograph discs, the only practical recording medium at that time. As a result, network prime-time shows would be performed twice, once for each coast. Coverage of live events included musical concerts and play-by-play sports broadcasts. The capability of

4510-696: The Happy Postman on Burns and Allen , and as August Moon on Point Sublime . During World War II, he appeared as Private Sad Sack on various radio shows, including G.I. Journal . Blanc recorded a song titled "Big Bear Lake". In December 1936, Mel Blanc joined Leon Schlesinger Productions , which was producing theatrical cartoon shorts for Warner Bros. After sound man Treg Brown was put in charge of cartoon voices, and Carl Stalling became music director, Brown introduced Blanc to animation directors Tex Avery , Bob Clampett , Friz Freleng , and Frank Tashlin , who loved his voices. The first cartoon Blanc worked on

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4620-463: The U.S. War Department 's quest to improve troop morale. This quest began with short-wave broadcasts of educational and information programs to troops in 1940. In 1941, the War Department began issuing "Buddy Kits" (B-Kits) to departing troops, which consisted of radios, 78 rpm records and electrical transcription discs of radio shows. However, with the entrance of the United States into World War II,

4730-476: The United States where it was the dominant electronic home entertainment medium . It began with the birth of commercial radio broadcasting in the early 1920s and lasted through the 1950s, when television gradually superseded radio as the medium of choice for scripted programming, variety and dramatic shows. Radio was the first broadcast medium , and during this period people regularly tuned in to their favorite radio programs, and families gathered to listen to

4840-468: The War Department decided that it needed to improve the quality and quantity of its offerings. This began with the broadcasting of its own original variety programs. Command Performance was the first of these, produced for the first time on March 1, 1942. On May 26, 1942, the Armed Forces Radio Service was formally established. Originally, its programming comprised network radio shows with

4950-561: The age of 19 in 1927, when he made his acting debut on the KGW program The Hoot Owls , where his ability to provide voices for multiple characters first attracted attention. He moved to Los Angeles in 1932, where he met Estelle Rosenbaum (1909–2003), whom he married a year later, before returning to Portland. He moved to KEX in 1933 to produce and co-host his Cobweb and Nuts show with his wife Estelle, which debuted on June 15. The program played Monday through Saturday from 11:00 pm to midnight, and by

5060-410: The backgrounds, and Lloyd Turner was the in-between artist. The title and introductory music are inspired by the 1942 film Yankee Doodle Dandy , a major hit and a Warner release. Other than the fact of both films being about show business, they have no plot elements in common. It is one of the few Daffy Duck/Porky Pig cartoons to have entered into the public domain after United Artists failed to renew

5170-409: The blanks varied in both size and composition, but most often they were simply bare aluminum and the groove was indented rather than cut. Typically, these very early recordings were not made by the network or radio station, but by a private recording service contracted by the broadcast sponsor or one of the performers. The bare aluminum discs were typically 10 or 12 inches in diameter and recorded at

5280-408: The carpeted floor after use. Despite a general ban on use of recordings on broadcasts by radio networks through the late 1940s, "reference recordings" on phonograph disc were made of many programs as they were being broadcast, for review by the sponsor and for the network's own archival purposes. With the development of high-fidelity magnetic wire and tape recording in the years following World War II,

5390-478: The character's first three shorts when he was signed to an exclusive contract with Warner Bros. Despite this, his laugh was still used in the Woody Woodpecker cartoons until 1951, when Grace Stafford recorded a softer version, while his "Guess who!?" signature line was used in the opening titles until the end of the series and closure of Walter Lantz Productions in 1972. During World War II, Blanc served as

5500-679: The characters who received the most frequent use in these shorts (later, newly introduced characters such as Cool Cat and Merlin the Magic Mouse were voiced by Larry Storch ). Blanc also continued to voice the Looney Tunes for the bridging sequences of The Bugs Bunny Show , as well as in numerous animated advertisements and several compilation features, such as The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie (1979). He also voiced Granny on Peter Pan Records in 4 More Adventures of Bugs Bunny (1974) and Holly-Daze (1974), in place of June Foray , and replaced

5610-555: The commercials removed. However, it soon began producing original programming, such as Mail Call , G.I. Journal , Jubilee and GI Jive . At its peak in 1945, the Service produced around 20 hours of original programming each week. From 1943 until 1949 the AFRS also broadcast programs developed through the collaborative efforts of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and

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5720-451: The contract was amended to also include a screen credit for cartoons featuring Porky Pig and/or Daffy Duck. This however, excluded any shorts with the two characters made before that amendment occurred, even if they released after the fact ( Book Revue and Baby Bottleneck are both examples of this). By the end of 1946, Blanc began receiving a screen credit in any subsequent Warner Bros. cartoon for which he provided voices. In 1960, after

5830-946: The copyright by 1971. At Smeller's Productions, Porky Pig, a producer, loaded down with luggage and a golf bag, hangs a sign on his office door reading "No casting today" and leaves his office in a hurry to board an airplane. However, Daffy Duck, a talent agent , stops Porky from leaving, wanting to secure an audition for his client, droopy-eyed child performer Sleepy Lagoon. The pitch, intended to demonstrate Sleepy's allegedly wide and varied repertoire, consists of Daffy himself performing an array of musical and stage acts in his usual, absurd and unoriginal fashion. Sleepy meanwhile stays seated, nonchalantly licking an enormous lollipop and silently commenting on Daffy's ludicrous behavior using signs bearing rebuses , such as "ham" ("excessively theatrical"), "screwball" ("crazy and absurd"), and "corn" ("corny"). The songs Daffy performs include " I'm Just Wild About Harry ", " William Tell Overture ", " Flight of

5940-417: The country's stations were assigned to new transmitting frequencies. The final element needed to make the Golden Age of Radio possible focused on the question of distribution: the ability for multiple radio stations to simultaneously broadcast the same content, and this would be solved with the concept of a radio network . The earliest radio programs of the 1920s were largely unsponsored; radio stations were

6050-411: The decade of the 1920s, the purchase of radios by United States homes continued, and accelerated. The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) released figures in 1925 stating that 19% of United States homes owned a radio. The triode and regenerative circuit made amplified, vacuum tube radios widely available to consumers by the second half of the 1920s. The advantage was obvious: several people at once in

6160-399: The disc change-over points would match and result in a more seamless playback. An inside start also had the advantage that the thread of material cut from the disc's surface, which had to be kept out of the path of the cutting stylus, was naturally thrown toward the center of the disc so was automatically out of the way. When cutting an outside start disc, a brush could be used to keep it out of

6270-425: The duration of the war. In the late 1940s, wire recorders became a readily obtainable means of recording radio programs. On a per-minute basis, it was less expensive to record a broadcast on wire than on discs. The one-hour program that required the four sides of two 16-inch discs could be recorded intact on a single spool of wire less than three inches in diameter and about half an inch thick. The audio fidelity of

6380-410: The early 1950s, when increasingly affordable reel-to-reel tape recorders for home use were introduced to the market. Before the early 1950s, when radio networks and local stations wanted to preserve a live broadcast, they did so by means of special phonograph records known as " electrical transcriptions " (ETs), made by cutting a sound-modulated groove into a blank disc. At first, in the early 1930s,

6490-419: The expense of recorders and the limitations of the recording media, home recording of broadcasts was not common during this period and it was usually limited to brief excerpts. The lack of suitable home recording equipment was somewhat relieved in 1947 with the availability of magnetic wire recorders for domestic use. These were capable of recording an hour-long broadcast on a single small spool of wire, and if

6600-673: The expiration of his exclusive contract with Warner Bros., Blanc continued working for them, but also began providing voices for the TV cartoons produced by Hanna-Barbera ; his roles during this time included Barney Rubble of The Flintstones and Cosmo Spacely of The Jetsons . His other voice roles for Hanna-Barbera included Dino the Dinosaur , Secret Squirrel , Speed Buggy , and Captain Caveman , as well as voices for Wally Gator and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop . Blanc also worked with former Looney Tunes director Chuck Jones, who by this time

6710-596: The few examples of live classical music still broadcast on radio. One of the most notable of all classical music radio programs of the Golden Age of Radio featured the celebrated Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra , which had been created especially for him. At that time, nearly all classical musicians and critics considered Toscanini the greatest living maestro. Popular songwriters such as George Gershwin were also featured on radio. (Gershwin, in addition to frequent appearances as

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6820-403: The finest radio drama anthologies ever presented. They usually starred Welles in the leading role, along with celebrity guest stars such as Margaret Sullavan or Helen Hayes , in adaptations from literature, Broadway, and/or films. They included such titles as Liliom , Oliver Twist (a title now feared lost), A Tale of Two Cities , Lost Horizon , and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd . It

6930-467: The first was Information Please in 1938, and one of the first major successes was Dr. I.Q. in 1939. Winner Take All , which premiered in 1946, was the first to use lockout devices and feature returning champions. A relative of the game show, which would be called the giveaway show in contemporary media, typically involved giving sponsored products to studio audience members, people randomly called by telephone, or both. An early example of this show

7040-556: The formation of the Federal Radio Commission (FRC). One of the FRC's most important early actions was the adoption of General Order 40 , which divided stations on the AM band into three power level categories, which became known as Local, Regional, and Clear Channel, and reorganized station assignments. Based on this plan, effective 3:00 a.m. Eastern time on November 11, 1928, most of

7150-570: The gamut from the small town humor of Lum and Abner , Herb Shriner and Minnie Pearl to the dialect characterizations of Mel Blanc and the caustic sarcasm of Henry Morgan . Gags galore were delivered weekly on Stop Me If You've Heard This One and Can You Top This? , panel programs devoted to the art of telling jokes. Quiz shows were lampooned on It Pays to Be Ignorant , and other memorable parodies were presented by such satirists as Spike Jones , Stoopnagle and Budd , Stan Freberg and Bob and Ray . British comedy reached American shores in

7260-542: The heavy pickups and steel needles then in use before deterioration became audible. During World War II, aluminum became a necessary material for the war effort and was in short supply. This caused an alternative to be sought for the base on which to coat the lacquer. Glass, despite its obvious disadvantage of fragility, had occasionally been used in earlier years because it could provide a perfectly smooth and even supporting surface for mastering and other critical applications. Glass base recording blanks came into general use for

7370-473: The home radio in the evening. According to a 1947 C. E. Hooper survey, 82 out of 100 Americans were found to be radio listeners. A variety of new entertainment formats and genres were created for the new medium, many of which later migrated to television: radio plays , mystery serials, soap operas , quiz shows , talent shows , daytime and evening variety hours , situation comedies , play-by-play sports, children's shows , cooking shows , and more. In

7480-538: The information-carrying ability of radio waves was the same as a telegraph ; the radio signal could be either on or off. Radio communication was by wireless telegraphy ; at the sending end, an operator tapped on a switch which caused the radio transmitter to produce a series of pulses of radio waves which spelled out text messages in Morse code . At the receiver these sounded like beeps, requiring an operator who knew Morse code to translate them back to text. This type of radio

7590-724: The last four daytime radio dramas— Young Dr. Malone , Right to Happiness , The Second Mrs. Burton and Ma Perkins , all broadcast on the CBS Radio Network —were brought to an end. The line-up of late afternoon adventure serials included Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders , The Cisco Kid , Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy , Captain Midnight , and The Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters . Badges, rings, decoding devices and other radio premiums were often linked to

7700-508: The late Arthur Q. Bryan as Elmer Fudd 's voice during the post-golden age era. On January 24, 1961, Blanc was driving alone when his sports car was involved in a head-on collision on Sunset Boulevard ; his legs and his pelvis were fractured as a result. He was in a coma and completely non-responsive. About two weeks later, one of Blanc's neurologists at the UCLA Medical Center tried a different approach than just trying to address

7810-514: The late 1920s and early 1930s. Local stations often had staff organists such as Jesse Crawford playing popular tunes. Classical music programs on the air included The Voice of Firestone and The Bell Telephone Hour . Texaco sponsored the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts ; the broadcasts, now sponsored by the Toll Brothers , continue to this day around the world, and are one of

7920-590: The lodge for 58 years. Blanc was also a Shriner . Blanc began smoking at least one pack of cigarettes per day at the age of nine and continued up through 1985, having quit smoking after being diagnosed with emphysema . He was later diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), after his family checked him into the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on May 19, 1989 when they noticed he had been coughing profusely while shooting

8030-411: The modern era, were still relatively uncommon and considered intrusive. During the 1930s and 1940s, the leading orchestras were heard often through big band remotes , and NBC's Monitor continued such remotes well into the 1950s by broadcasting live music from New York City jazz clubs to rural America. Singers such as Harriet Lee and Wendell Hall became popular fixtures on network radio beginning in

8140-472: The networks became more open to airing recorded programs and the prerecording of shows became more common. Local stations, however, had always been free to use recordings and sometimes made substantial use of prerecorded syndicated programs distributed on pressed (as opposed to individually recorded) transcription discs . Recording was done using a cutting lathe and acetate discs . Programs were normally recorded at 33 1 ⁄ 3 rpm on 16-inch discs,

8250-414: The new medium to get information to people created the format of modern radio news : headlines, remote reporting , sidewalk interviews (such as Vox Pop ), panel discussions , weather reports , and farm reports. The entry of radio into the realm of news triggered a feud between the radio and newspaper industries in the mid-1930s , eventually culminating in newspapers trumping up exaggerated reports of

8360-412: The only medium in which audiences were able to experience Rathbone and Bruce appearing in some of the more famous Holmes stories, such as " The Speckled Band ". There were also many dramatizations of Sherlock Holmes stories on radio without Rathbone and Bruce. During the latter part of his career, celebrated actor John Barrymore starred in a radio program, Streamlined Shakespeare , which featured him in

8470-436: The option of the 33 1 ⁄ 3 rpm speed used for electrical transcriptions, allowing a recording more than twice as long to be made, although with reduced audio quality. Office dictation equipment was sometimes pressed into service for making recordings of radio broadcasts, but the audio quality of these devices was poor and the resulting recordings were in odd formats that had to be played back on similar equipment. Due to

8580-534: The other Flintstones co-stars gathered around him. He returned to The Jack Benny Program to film the program's 1961 Christmas show, moving around by crutches and a wheelchair. On January 29, 1962, Mel and his son Noel formed Blanc Communications Corporation, a media company which produced over 5,000 commercials and public service announcements, which remains in operation. Mel and Noel appeared with many stars, including: Kirk Douglas , Lucille Ball , Vincent Price , Phyllis Diller , Liberace and The Who . In

8690-418: The pilot of Porky's plane and then turning out to be the parachute Porky uses to escape the plane. After Daffy finally takes it upon himself to harass Porky with an outrageous finale, Porky decides to just get it over with by allowing Sleepy to audition. Sleepy calmly leaves his seat and begins to sing the song, "In the Garden of My Heart" (a WB-owned song by Roma and Ball), in a strong, operatic baritone that

8800-403: The standard format used for such " electrical transcriptions " from the early 1930s through the 1950s. Sometimes, the groove was cut starting at the inside of the disc and running to the outside. This was useful when the program to be recorded was longer than 15 minutes so required more than one disc side. By recording the first side outside in, the second inside out, and so on, the sound quality at

8910-513: The then-standard speed of 78 rpm , which meant that several disc sides were required to accommodate even a 15-minute program. By about 1936, 16-inch aluminum-based discs coated with cellulose nitrate lacquer, commonly known as acetates and recorded at a speed of 33 1 ⁄ 3 rpm, had been adopted by the networks and individual radio stations as the standard medium for recording broadcasts. The making of such recordings, at least for some purposes, then became routine. Some discs were recorded using

9020-507: The time of the accident, Blanc was also serving as the voice of Barney Rubble in The Flintstones . His absence from the show was relatively brief; Daws Butler provided the voice of Barney for a few episodes, after which the show's producers set up recording equipment in Blanc's hospital room and later at his home to allow him to work from there. Some of the recordings were made while he was in full-body cast as he lay flat on his back with

9130-504: The time rarely received screen credits, but Blanc was an exception; by 1944, his contract with Warner Bros. stipulated a credit reading "Voice characterization(s) by Mel Blanc". According to his autobiography, Blanc asked for and received this screen credit from studio boss Leon Schlesinger after he was denied a salary raise. Initially, Blanc's screen credit was limited only to cartoons in which he voiced Bugs Bunny. This changed in March 1945 when

9240-588: The time the show ended two years later, it appeared from 10:30 pm to 11:00 pm. With his wife's encouragement, Blanc returned to Los Angeles and joined Warner Bros.–owned KFWB in Hollywood in 1935. He joined The Johnny Murray Show , but the following year switched to CBS Radio and The Joe Penner Show . Blanc was a regular on the NBC Red Network show The Jack Benny Program in various roles, including voicing Benny's Maxwell automobile (in desperate need of

9350-519: The title character of Speed Buggy , and Captain Caveman on Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels and The Flintstone Kids . Referred to as " The Man of a Thousand Voices ", he is regarded as one of the most influential people in the voice acting industry, and as one of the greatest voice actors of all time. Blanc was born on May 30, 1908, in San Francisco , California , to Eva (née Katz),

9460-402: The unconscious Blanc—address his characters instead. Blanc was asked, "How are you feeling today, Bugs Bunny?" After a slight pause, Blanc answered, in a weak voice, "Eh ... just fine, Doc. How are you?" The doctor then asked Tweety if he was there, too. "I tawt I taw a puddy tat", was the reply. Blanc returned home on March 17. Four days later, Blanc filed a US$ 500,000 lawsuit against

9570-406: The voice of the hapless Private Snafu in a series of shorts produced by Warner Bros. as a way of training recruited soldiers through the medium of animation. Throughout his career, Blanc, aware of his talents, protected the rights to his voice characterizations contractually and legally. He, and later his estate, never hesitated to take civil action when those rights were violated. Voice actors at

9680-814: The voices of Bugs Bunny , Daffy Duck , Tweety , Sylvester the Cat , Yosemite Sam , Foghorn Leghorn , the Tasmanian Devil , and numerous other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoons . Blanc also voiced the Looney Tunes characters Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd after replacing their original performers Joe Dougherty and Arthur Q. Bryan , respectively, although he occasionally voiced Elmer during Bryan's lifetime as well. He later voiced characters for Hanna-Barbera 's television cartoons, including: Barney Rubble and Dino on The Flintstones , Mr. Spacely on The Jetsons , Secret Squirrel on The Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show ,

9790-637: The war, the AFRS continued providing programming to troops in Europe. During the 1950s and early 1960s it presented performances by the Army's only symphonic orchestra ensemble—the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra . It also provided programming for future wars that the United States was involved in. It survives today as a component of the American Forces Network (AFN). All of the shows aired by

9900-417: The way by sweeping it toward the middle of the disc. Well-equipped recording lathes used the vacuum from a water aspirator to pick it up as it was cut and deposit it in a water-filled bottle. In addition to convenience, this served a safety purpose, as the cellulose nitrate thread was highly flammable and a loose accumulation of it combusted violently if ignited. Most recordings of radio broadcasts were made at

10010-568: The world's first radio broadcaster was offered in 2006 by Dr. John S. Belrose, Radioscientist Emeritus at the Communications Research Centre Canada, in his essay "Fessenden's 1906 Christmas Eve broadcast." It was not until after the Titanic catastrophe in 1912 that radio for mass communication came into vogue, inspired first by the work of amateur ("ham") radio operators. Radio was especially important during World War I as it

10120-528: Was Picador Porky (1937) as the voice of Porky's drunken friends who dress up as a bull. He soon after received his first starring role when he replaced Joe Dougherty as Porky Pig's voice in Porky's Duck Hunt , which marked the debut of Daffy Duck, also voiced by Blanc. Following this, Blanc became a very prominent vocal artist for Warner Bros., voicing a wide variety of the Looney Tunes characters. Bugs Bunny, as whom Blanc made his debut in A Wild Hare (1940),

10230-462: Was "Sy, the Little Mexican", who spoke one word at a time. He continued to work with Benny on radio until the series ended in 1955 and followed the program into television from Benny's 1950 debut episode through guest spots on NBC specials in the 1970s. Radio Daily magazine wrote in 1942 that Blanc "specialize[d] in over fifty-seven voices, dialects, and intricate sound effects", and by 1946, he

10340-561: Was 16, from Blank to Blanc, because a teacher told him that he would amount to nothing and be like his name, a "blank". He joined the Order of DeMolay as a young man, and was eventually inducted into its Hall of Fame. After graduating from high school in 1927, he divided his time between leading an orchestra, becoming the youngest conductor in the country at the age of 19; and performing shtick in vaudeville shows around Washington, Oregon and northern California. Blanc began his radio career at

10450-490: Was an American voice actor and radio personality whose career spanned over 60 years. During the Golden Age of Radio , he provided character voices and vocal sound effects for comedy radio programs, including those of Jack Benny , Abbott and Costello , Burns and Allen , The Great Gildersleeve , Judy Canova and his own short-lived sitcom . Blanc became known worldwide for his work in the Golden Age of American Animation as

10560-477: Was appearing on over fifteen programs in various supporting roles. His success on The Jack Benny Program led to his own radio show on the CBS Radio Network , The Mel Blanc Show , which ran from September 3, 1946, to June 24, 1947. Blanc played himself as the hapless owner of a fix-it shop, as well as his young cousin Zookie. Blanc also appeared on such other national radio programs as The Abbott and Costello Show ,

10670-623: Was broadcast on August 31, 1920, on the station 8MK in Detroit ; owned by The Detroit News , the station covered local election results. This was followed in 1920 with the first commercial radio station in the United States, KDKA , being established in Pittsburgh . The first regular entertainment programs were broadcast in 1922, and on March 10, Variety carried the front-page headline: "Radio Sweeping Country: 1,000,000 Sets in Use." A highlight of this time

10780-535: Was directing shorts with his own company Sib Tower 12 (later MGM Animation/Visual Arts ), doing vocal effects for the Tom and Jerry series from 1963 to 1967. Blanc was the first voice of Toucan Sam in Froot Loops commercials. Blanc reprised some of his Warner Bros. characters when the studio contracted him to make new theatrical cartoons in the mid- to late 1960s. For these, Blanc voiced Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales ,

10890-539: Was even made by the FCC to ban them (as an illegal lottery) in August 1949. The RCA Type 44-BX microphone had two live faces and two dead ones. Thus actors could face each other and react. An actor could give the effect of leaving the room by simply moving their head toward the dead face of the microphone. The scripts were paper-clipped together. It has been disputed whether or not actors and actresses would drop finished pages to

11000-481: Was eventually decided to have Gideon be a mute character (similar to Dopey from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ), so all of Blanc's recorded dialogue was deleted except for a solitary hiccup, which was heard three times in the finished film. Blanc also originated the voice and laugh of Woody Woodpecker for the theatrical cartoons produced by Walter Lantz for Universal Pictures , but stopped voicing Woody after

11110-455: Was heard on radio's Archie Andrews from 1943 to 1953. The Timid Soul was a 1941–1942 comedy based on cartoonist H. T. Webster 's famed Caspar Milquetoast character, and Robert L. Ripley's Believe It or Not! was adapted to several different radio formats during the 1930s and 1940s. Conversely, some radio shows gave rise to spinoff comic strips, such as My Friend Irma starring Marie Wilson . The first program generally considered to be

11220-809: Was in Bugs Bunny's Wild World of Sports (1989). After spending most of two seasons voicing the diminutive robot Twiki in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century , Blanc's last major original character was Heathcliff , who he voiced from 1980 to 1988. In the live-action film Strange Brew (1983), Blanc voiced the father of Bob and Doug McKenzie , at the request of comedian Rick Moranis . In the live-action/animated movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Blanc reprised several of his roles from Warner Bros. cartoons (Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Tweety, and Sylvester ), but left Yosemite Sam to Joe Alaskey (who later became one of Blanc's regular replacements until his death in 2016). The film

11330-407: Was known for eating carrots frequently (especially while saying his catchphrase "Eh, what's up, doc?"). To follow this sound with the animated voice, Blanc would bite into a carrot and then quickly spit into a spittoon . One often-repeated story is that Blanc was allergic to carrots, which Blanc denied. In Disney 's Pinocchio , Blanc was hired to perform the voice of Gideon the Cat. However, it

11440-492: Was on Mercury Theatre that Welles presented his celebrated-but-infamous 1938 adaptation of H. G. Wells 's The War of the Worlds , formatted to sound like a breaking news program. Theatre Guild on the Air presented adaptations of classical and Broadway plays. Their Shakespeare adaptations included a one-hour Macbeth starring Maurice Evans and Judith Anderson , and a 90-minute Hamlet , starring John Gielgud . Recordings of many of these programs survive. During

11550-462: Was one of the few Disney projects in which Blanc was involved. Blanc died just a year after the film's release. His final recording session was for Jetsons: The Movie (1990). Blanc and his wife Estelle Rosenbaum were married on January 4, 1933, and remained married until his death in 1989. Their son, Noel Blanc , was also a voice actor. Blanc was a Freemason as a member of Mid Day Lodge No. 188 in Portland, Oregon . He held membership at

11660-1113: Was picked up by NBC Radio in 1933. In 1925, WSM Barn Dance went on the air from Nashville . It was renamed the Grand Ole Opry in 1927 and NBC carried portions from 1944 to 1956. NBC also aired The Red Foley Show from 1951 to 1961, and ABC Radio carried Ozark Jubilee from 1953 to 1961. Radio attracted top comedy talents from vaudeville and Hollywood for many years: Bing Crosby , Abbott and Costello , Fred Allen , Jack Benny , Victor Borge , Fanny Brice , Billie Burke , Bob Burns , Judy Canova , Eddie Cantor , Jimmy Durante , Burns and Allen , Phil Harris , Edgar Bergen , Bob Hope , Groucho Marx , Jean Shepherd , Red Skelton and Ed Wynn . Situational comedies also gained popularity, such as Amos 'n' Andy , Easy Aces , Ethel and Albert , Fibber McGee and Molly , The Goldbergs , The Great Gildersleeve , The Halls of Ivy (which featured screen star Ronald Colman and his wife Benita Hume ), Meet Corliss Archer , Meet Millie , and Our Miss Brooks . Radio comedy ran

11770-455: Was the 1939 show Pot o' Gold , but the breakout hit of this type was ABC's Stop the Music in 1948. Winning a prize generally required knowledge of what was being aired on the show at that moment, which led to criticism of the giveaway show as a form of "buying an audience". Giveaway shows were extremely popular through 1948 and 1949. They were often panned as low-brow, and an unsuccessful attempt

11880-429: Was the first Rose Bowl being broadcast on January 1, 1923, on the Los Angeles station KHJ . Broadcast radio in the United States underwent a period of rapid change through the decade of the 1920s. Technology advances, better regulation, rapid consumer adoption, and the creation of broadcast networks transformed radio from a consumer curiosity into the mass media powerhouse that defined the Golden Age of Radio. Through

11990-560: Was used exclusively for person-to-person text communication for commercial, diplomatic and military purposes and hobbyists; broadcasting did not exist. The broadcasts of live drama, comedy, music and news that characterize the Golden Age of Radio had a precedent in the Théâtrophone , commercially introduced in Paris in 1890 and available as late as 1932. It allowed subscribers to eavesdrop on live stage performances and hear news reports by means of

12100-445: Was vital for air and naval operations. World War I brought about major developments in radio, superseding the Morse code of the wireless telegraph with the vocal communication of the wireless telephone, through advancements in vacuum tube technology and the introduction of the transceiver . After the war, numerous radio stations were born in the United States and set the standard for later radio programs. The first radio news program

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