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Mel Blanc made Woody zanier than ever, and also added the vocal sound of the car engine and the voice of the very dopey traffic cop. THE SCREWDRIVER (released August 11, 1941)Īgain gagged and written by Hardaway and Cosgriff, this third cartoon with the nutty Woodpecker finds him caught for speeding. Buggy (a prototypical Hardaway pun) and did the character saying, “You’re screwy!” Others heard were Danny Webb as the frog-voiced Owl, Margaret Hill as the female squirrel and bird, and Hardaway himself as the curmudgeon who yells, “Hey You…cut out that noise!”
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Mel then varied that cartoon’s annoying laugh to match a sillier musical giggle he had practised in high school “to test the echo in the school corridor.” It was five famous notes, with the fourth stressed, like “Ha-ha-ha-HA-ha!!!”įor this second appearance Blanc played him even more unhinged and was given a special song to sing called “Knock on Wood.” Mel also played the psychiatrist Dr. Lantz recalled telling Blanc, “They make a very raucous sound.” Darrell Calker suggested a noise based on a bugle call and Hardaway in turn suggested a variation of the zany voice Blanc used for one of the formative Warner rabbit cartoons, HARE-UM SCARE-UM which Hardaway had co-directed. For Woody’s voice, Hardaway was pleased to work with old Warner crony Mel Blanc, who was asked by Lantz to try something distinctive.
#Immoral ward studio change character sound series
Lantz had his new star.Īfter receiving enthusiastic exhibitor notice in the Andy Panda cartoon KNOCK! KNOCK! in late 1940, the crazy Woodpecker was deemed strong enough a character to front his own series and after writing several other cartoons for Lantz, Hardaway teamed with gag man Jack Cosgriff for the official Woody series debut. Ostensibly another entry in the Andy Panda series, the show was decisively stolen by a garishly colored and grotesque woodpecker (suggested by Lantz) who heckled, annoyed and prodded Andy’s poor Dad and ran off with the picture. After writing RECRUITING DAZE, Hardaway’s second story was KNOCK! KNOCK! which went into production just before he joined the Lantz staff in summer as head of the story department. Hardaway wrote a couple of stories freelance, teaming with writer Lowell Elliott. Over the next four years Hardaway rose to the senior story department role at Warner cartoons and when Friz Freleng departed for almost two years with MGM, Hardaway and animator Cal Dalton effectively took over his unit.Īfter two more years with Leon, Bugs Hardaway left for a job with Walter Lantz, whose long-time story man Victor McLeod had recently left. Here he worked on stories for the Buddy series, eventually becoming a supervisor of several cartoons, collaborating with Bernard Brown, who was in charge of music and preparing the animators’ exposure sheets. A World War I veteran, he had been with the old Kansas City boys in the late 1920s, then once in Los Angeles he worked for Disney, Ub Iwerks and in 1933 joined Leon Schlesinger’s new cartoon studio on the Warner Bros. Hardaway had been in the cartoon business for many years working as a gag specialist and story man. That character was Woody Woodpecker.īugs HardawayJ. His name was Ben “Bugs” Hardaway and he was crucial in the creation of the character that made Lantz’s studio a big player at last. Luckily, Lantz’s new story man had just come from Schlesinger’s where he had been in on the development of two increasingly popular characters, Daffy Duck and the early version of Bugs Bunny. Although he had enjoyed some success with Andy Panda what Lantz badly wanted was a standout star character to match the new brashness and zaniness of the increasingly popular cartoons made by Leon Schlesinger for Warner Bros. The cartoons were to be strongly gag based in order to compete with other studios, with Alex Lovy now supervising and essentially co-directing with Lantz. Crazy House, an Andy Panda entry, was the first cartoon under this new contract, made with loyal staff whose pay was deferred until three or four films were completed. This arrangement lasted, with one hiccup as we shall see, until 1972. Lantz was now forced to raise money to produce cartoons as a complete independent. But in 1940 Universal, teetering financially, cut off the advance weekly money they had been paying him for the previous four years.
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In late 1935, Walter Lantz was set up to produce cartoons independently for Universal release, still on the studio lot.
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Woody Woodpecker at last on Blu-ray! To accompany this important release I would like to provide a guide to the often obscure actors heard as voices in this cartoon collection, presented in the same format as my earlier (and upcoming) pieces on Tex Avery’s MGM voice artists.