Mel Blanc

Melvin Jerome Blanc (born Blank blæŋk; May 30, 1908 - July 10, 1989) 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. However, he became known worldwide for his work in the Golden Age of American Animation as the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd (before and after Arthur Q. Bryan voiced Elmer, and even during Bryan's lifetime), Tweety, Sylvester, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, the Tasmanian Devil, and numerous other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoons. 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, 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), 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 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.