Daws Butler

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Daws Butler in 1976.
Daws Butler in 1976.

Charles Dawson "Daws" Butler (November 16, 1916 – May 18, 1988) was a voice actor born in Toledo, Ohio. He originated the voices of many famous animated cartoon characters, including Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound.

One of his first voice roles was that of Snap, one of the Rice Krispies elf mascots Snap, Crackle and Pop. His first major success, however, 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 voiced. Butler performed the voice for a few cartoons, but he then told Avery about Don Messick, another voice actor and Butler's life-long friend. Messick quickly became a legendary voice actor.

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 they did all the voices of the puppets. Butler voiced Beany Boy and Captain Huffenpuff. Freberg voiced 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. It was the basis for the cartoon Beany and Cecil.

Butler briefly turned his attention to TV commercials, although he quickly moved to providing the voice to many nameless Walter Lantz characters on the Woody Woodpecker program. His notable character was the penguin "Chilly Willy" and his sidekick, 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, "St. George and the Dragon-Net" (based on Dragnet), 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 by, and co-starred, Daws Butler. Butler also teamed up again with Freberg and cartoon actress June Foray in a short-lived network radio series, The Stan Freberg Show, which ran from July to October, 1957 on the CBS Radio Network. Freberg's box-set, Tip of the Freberg (Rhino Entertainment, 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.

During the 1957–1965 era, Daws Butler gave voice to the following characters, among others:

Butler would voice most of these characters for many decades, in both TV shows and in some commercials. The breakfast cereal mascot Cap'n Crunch became an icon of sorts on Saturday morning TV through many 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 inspiration 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 provided the voice for a number 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 more original voice. Hokey Wolf began as an impression of Phil Silvers, and Snagglepuss as Bert Lahr. Again, Butler redesigned these voices, making them his own inventions. Huckleberry Hound was inspired many years earlier, in 1945, by the North Carolina neighbor of Daws's wife's family.

When Mel Blanc was recovering from a motor vehicle accident, Butler stepped in to provide the voice of Barney Rubble (another rather Carney-esque voice) in four episodes of Flintstones. 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).

In the year of his death The Good, the Bad, and Huckleberry Hound was released, a tour-de-force featuring most of his classic early characters.

Daws Butler died of a heart attack on May 18, 1988. He was 71. Daws Butler is interred in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. Many of his roles were assumed by Greg Burson, who had personally studied with Butler for years.

[edit] 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 whose autobiography cites Butler as being her mentor, and the greatest influence on her life), and rare recordings of Daws himself. Bevilacqua has also co-authored the authorized (with Ben Ohmart) biography book Daws Butler, Characters Actor, and edited the book Scenes for Actors and Voices written by Daws Butler, both published by Bear Manor Media.

[edit] External links

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