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 Mel Blanc - Los Angeles, CA
N 34° 05.313 W 118° 19.204
11S E 378217 N 3772760
The grave of Mel Blanc "The Man of a Thousand Voices" in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Los Angeles, CA
Waymark Code: WM6R60
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 07/11/2009
Views: 22
"That's All Folks" Mel Blanc's grave is in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery ( visit link) 6000 Santa Monica Blvd. Hollywood, CA 90038 To visit his grave enter the cemetery from Santa Monica Blvd, go past the fountain and follow the road straight ahead. His grave is next to the road on the left. We found other famous people buried in the cemetery including Rudolph Valentino, Tyrone Power and Douglas Fairbanks (Sr. & Jr.)
Description:
"That's All Folks"
Known in Hollywood as "The Man of a Thousand Voices" Mel Blanc (1908-1989) was the versatile cartoon voice creator of such unforgettable characters as Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Daffy Duck.
Blanc's voices have become standard-bearers for American popular culture throughout the world. Each of his characters is distinctive and many developed a trademark line that became famous, like "I tawt I taw a puddy tat!" (Tweety), "What's up, Doc"" (Bugs Bunny), "Thhhhufferin' Thhhhuccotash!" (Sylvester), and "Beep-beep!" (Road Runner). Blanc did the majority of his work for Warner Bros., performing in over 3,000 cartoons for that studio in a career that spanned more than 50 years, but he also worked for other animated film makers and as a memorable radio actor.
Born Melvin Jerome Blank in San Francisco, California, to Jewish parents, he grew up in Portland, Oregon, attending Lincoln High School. At 16, he changed the spelling of his last name from “Blank,” to “Blanc” reportedly because a teacher told him that he would amount to nothing and be, like his last name, “blank.” After marrying and working for a short time as a radio actor, Blanc moved to Los Angeles and joined Leon Schlesinger Productions, a cartoon workshop that eventually developed the Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies characters for Warner Bros. While playing the part of a drunken bull in "Porky Picador," Blanc relates in his autobiography That's Not All Folks, the actor who was then portraying Porky actually did stutter. When Blanc was later asked to play Porky, he left the stutter in the act, and his first major character was born. Blanc next developed the character who was to become his favorite, Happy Hare, in another Warner Bros. short. He lent a brash, Bronx accent to the wiseguy rabbit that eventually became Bugs Bunny. More famous characters followed, including Pepe LePew, Wile E. Coyote, Elmer Fudd, Speedy Gonzales, and Yosemite Sam.
Despite his proficiency, Blanc did not own the rights to any of his characters and never earned more than $20,000 in a single year from Warner Bros., so he, was forced to pursue other activities. In the 1960s he was co-producer and voice animator for ABC's "The Bugs Bunny Show," a Saturday morning series that featured Looney Tunes characters in new cartoons designed for television. He also provided the voices for Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone's pet dinosaur, Dino, for the first prime-time cartoon series, "The Flintstones."
On January 24, 1961, Blanc was involved in a near-fatal car accident on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Hit head-on, Blanc suffered a triple skull fracture that left him in a coma for three weeks, along with fractures of both legs and the pelvis. The accident prompted over 15,000 get-well cards from anxious fans, including some addressed only to "Bugs Bunny, Hollywood, USA", according to Blanc's autobiography.
His last cartoon contribution came in the popular 1988 mixed-animation film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," in which he performed the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety, and Porky Pig. In assessing why his characters have become so endearing to all age-groups, Blanc told the New York Times: "What we tried to do was amuse ourselves. We didn't make pictures for children. We didn't make pictures for adults. We made them for ourselves."
Blanc's death from cardiovascular disease in 1989 was considered a significant loss to the cartoon industry because of his skill, expressive range, and sheer volume of continuing characters he portrayed. As movie critic Leonard Maltin once pointed out, "It is astounding to realize that Tweety Bird and Yosemite Sam are the same man!"
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Blanc
http://www.bookrags.com/biography/mel-blanc/
Date of birth: 05/30/1908
Date of death: 07/10/1989
Area of notoriety: Entertainment
Marker Type: Headstone
Setting: Outdoor
Fee required?: No
Web site: [Web Link]
Visiting Hours/Restrictions: Not listed
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