In the Rankin-Bass special, Santa Claus is Comin’ To Town, Paul Frees voiced both the Burgermeister Meisterburger, and his assistant Grimsby. Which meant that he got to sing a duet with himself.
I find it peculiar that in current incarnations the characters, esp. Bugs, just don’t sound the same. I thought this was because the studio had just decided to let his son Noel have the character, but I see now that it’s most often Billy West — incl. in Space Jam, which I just flatly refuse to watch.
For talented voice actors, I throw a vote in for Hank Azaria. 105 Characters On "The Simpsons" Are Voiced By 6 Different Actors
Mel most certainly sang entire songs in character. Exhibit A: “What’s Opera, Doc?”
How come, dare I ask? It ain’t great, but it’s a bit of plain vanilla fun. Lola Bunny makes it worth while all by herself.
(In contrast, alas, to Loonatics Unleashed, which is simply unwatchable. Ghastly. The writing is some of the worst in cartoons, ever. Seriously horrid.)
Because https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksqS7DQhGKQ is NOT Bugs Bunny.
Mel Blanc, eh? All I know is that the hat he got for Christmas is too big.
This means war!
I have an autographed picture of him sitting behind his desk with a number of his characters (including Captain Caveman) illustrated around him.
My favorite line of his, though it predates me by quite a bit, comes from a running gag on the Jack Benny Show where he’d call out, “Train leaving for Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga!” I’m not sure why that was funny exactly, except I guess none those places actually had train stations at the time, and of course Cucamonga is just an intrinsically funny word. In any case, now there’s a statue of Jack Benny in Rancho Cucamonga because of the fame he brought to the place. It should really include Mel standing there beside him in a train conductor’s uniform.
Mel Blanc is truly one of the best, if not the best.
However actors like Dan Castellaneta and Hank Azaria (both do 2 dozen characters each on the Simpsons), and Trey Parker (32 characters on Southpark) certainly deserve an honorable mention.
Also Patrick Warburton has to be one of the hardest working voice actors in the business. (Family Guy, Venture Brothers, Kim Possible, Adventures of Buzz Lightyear, The Emperor’s New Groove, etc.)
Billy West plays Elmer Fudd more often than he plays Bugs Bunny. Jeff Bergman plays Bugs and most of the other characters on the Looney Tunes Show. He was also the first actor to take over the classic Looney Tunes characters after Mel’s death.
Patrick Warburton is simply the coolest guy on the planet.
He’s my man crush.
It was the timing of the “CUC…AMONGA!” that made it funny. And later uses of the gag would occasionally play with it, such as having a whole scene take place between “CUC” and “AMONGA!” There were lots of other gags with the train conductor, too, such as when he went to lunch and his wife (Bea Benederet) takes his place while he’s gone. Later, she makes the “Train leaving on track 5 for Anaheim, Azuza, and Cuc-” announcement, and the conductor comes back and says, “Well dear, I’m back from lunch.” and continues the announcement- “HICCUP…amonga.” Apparently he had a few while he was at lunch!
I think the joke back then (at least in one of the earliest sketches, when Mel was reduced to pleading for SOMEONE to board the train–“Two of you, or even one of you! Just someone to keep the engineer company!”) was that these towns were considered nowhere towns that wouldn’t get much visitors.
Try to think back to a time when Anaheim, California, was a nowhere town with few visitors…