Daws Butler
|
|
Charles Dawson "Daws" Butler (November 16, 1916 – May 18, 1988) was a voice actor, who created and played the voices of many famous animated cartoon characters, including Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound.
His road to stardom came in the mid 1940s at MGM. Tex Avery hired Butler to provide narration work for several of his cartoons. In many cartoons there was a nameless Wolf who spoke in a southern accent and whistled all the time. Butler provided the voice for this Wolf. While at MGM, Avery wanted Butler to try to do the voice of Droopy Dog, a character that Bill Thompson regularly gave voice to. Butler did the voice for a few cartoons but then told Avery about Don Messick, a soon-to-be-legendary voice actor and Butler's life-long friend. After Messick got his foot in the door, like Butler, it was all uphill from there.
In 1949 Butler landed a role in a televised puppet show created by Warner Brothers cartoon director Bob Clampett called Time for Beany. 33-year-old Butler was teamed up with 23-year-old Stan Freberg and together did all the voices for the puppet show. Butler was "Beany Boy" and "Captain Huffenpuff". Freberg was "Cecil" and "Dishonest John". An entire stable of recurring characters were seen. The show's writers were Charles Shows and Lloyd Turner, whose dependably funny dialog was still always at the mercy of Butler's and Freberg's ad libs. Time for Beany ran from 1949 to 1954 and won several Emmy Awards.
Butler turned his attention to TV commercials. This did not last very long because he soon giving the voice to many nameless Walter Lantz characters on the Woody Woodpecker program. His notable character was the penguin "Chilly Willy" and his side-kick, the southern speaking dog Smedley. Also in the 1950s, Stan Freberg asked Butler to help him write comedy skits for his Capitol Records albums. Their first collaboration, "Saint George and the Dragonet", was the first comedy record to sell over one million copies. Freberg was more of a satirist who did song parodies but the bulk of his "talking" routines were co-written and co-starring Daws Butler. Freberg's box-set, Tip of the Freberg on Rhino from 1999, chronicles every aspect of Freberg's career except the cartoon voice-over work and it showcases his career with Daws Butler.
In 1957 Hanna-Barbera left MGM. Daws Butler and Don Messick were on-hand to provide voices. The first, The Ruff & Reddy Show, set the formula for the rest of the series of cartoons that the two would helm until the mid 1960s.
It was in the 1957–1965 era that Daws Butler gave voice to the following characters:
- Reddy the dog
- Huckleberry Hound
- Yogi Bear
- Snagglepuss
- Quick Draw McGraw
- Baba Looey
- Loopy De Loop
- Dixie Mouse
- Mr. Jinks
- Super Snooper and Blabber Mouse
- Fibber Fox
- Aesop's Son (in the "Aesop and Son" segment of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show)
- Wimpy
- Augie Doggie
- Hokey Wolf
- Wally Gator
- Alfie Gator
- Peter Potamus
- Lippy the Lion
- Elroy Jetson
- Cogswell
- Henry Orbit
- Captain Skyhook
- among others
Butler would voice most of those characters throughout the decades to come whenever they happened to appear on TV shows or in commercials. "Cap'n Crunch" became an icon of sorts on Saturday morning TV through many cereal commercials produced by Jay Ward. Butler gave voice to the Cap'n from the 1960s to the 1980s. He based the voice on an old character actor named Charlie Butterworth (who was also the inspriation for the voice of Quick Draw McGraw (with a Western twang added). In the 1970s he was the voice of "Hair Bear" and a few characters in minor cartoons such as C.B. Bears. On Wacky Races Butler was a few of the racers. On Laff-a-Lympics, Butler was virtually the entire "Yogi Yahooey" team.
Butler based some of his voices on popular celebrities of the day. Yogi Bear began as an Art Carney impression (Butler had done a similar voice in several of Robert McKimson's films at Warner Bros and Stan Freberg's comedy record "The Honey-Earthers). However, Butler soon changed Yogi's voice making it much deeper and more sing-songy, thus making it a complete original voice. Hokey Wolf began as an impression of by Phil Silvers, and Snagglepuss as Bert Lahr. But again, Butler redesigned these voices, making them competely his own inventions.
Huckleberry Hound was inspired many years earlier, in 1945, by the North Carolina neighbor of Daws's wife's family. (SOURCE: Daws Butler himself).
When Mel Blanc was recovering at home from a motor vehicle accident, Butler stepped in to do Barney Rubble—another rather Carney-esque voice—in four Flintstones episodes.
Aside from the Jetsons, Butler remained somewhat low-key in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1975, Butler began an acting workshop that spawned such talents as Nancy Cartwright (The Simpsons), Corey Burton (Old Navy, Disney), and Joe Bevilacqua (NPR, XM Radio, www.comedyorama.com.
In the year of his death was released The Good, the Bad, and Huckleberry Hound, a tour-de-force featuring most of his classic early characters.
Daws Butler died in 1988 at the age of 71. Many of his roles were picked up by Greg Burson, who had personally studied with Butler for years.
For further information
- The video Daws Butler: Voice Magician is a 1987 documentary of Butler's career from his pre-MGM days on up through his teaming with Freberg in 1949 and the teaming with Don Messick in 1957.
- Former Butler protege Joe Bevilacqua hosts a radio series on XM Satellite Radio's Sonic Theater Channel (163) called THE COMEDY-O-RAMA HOUR which features a regular segment called What the Butler Wrote: Scenes from the Daws Butler Workshop, with rare scripts of Daws performed by his students, including Nancy Cartwright (the voice of Bart Simpson), and rare recordings of Daws himself.
- Joe Bevilacqua has co-authored the autorized (with Ben Ohmart) biography book: DAWS BUTLER, CHARACTERS ACTOR, and edited the book SCENES FROR ACTOR AND VOICES written by Daws Butler, both published by Bear Manor Media.
External links
- The Official Daws Butler Website (http://www.dawsbutler.com)
- Template:Imdb name
- Books by or about Daws Butler (http://bearmanormedia.bizland.com/id20.html)