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Daws Butler

Daws Butler (Charles Dawson 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, Quick Draw McGraw, and Huckleberry Hound.

His wife was Myrtis, and they had three sons - David, Don and Charles (Chaz).

Career

Earlier life

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 voice actor.

In 1949, Butler landed a role in a televised puppet show created by former 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 for theatrical shorts later seen on the Woody Woodpecker program. His notable character was the penguin "Chilly Willy" and his sidekick, the southern-speaking dog Smedley (the same voice used for Tex Avery's laid-back wolf character).

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, MGM closed their animation division, and producers William Hanna and Joseph Barbera found themselves unemployed. They quickly formed their own company, and 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.

Voice characters

The characters with voices by Butler from 1957 to 1978 included:

Aesop's Son (in the "Aesop and Son" segment of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show)
Alfy Gator (of Yakky Doodle)
Ali Gator (in two Lantz theatrical shorts)
Augie Doggie
Baba Looey (from Quick Draw McGraw)
Big Gruesome
Bingo (of Banana Splits)
Brutus the Lion (of The Roman Holidays)
Captain Skyhook (of The Space Kidettes)
Chilly Willy
Cogswell
Dixie Mouse (of Pixie and Dixie)
Elroy Jetson
Fibber Fox (of Yakky Doodle)
Hair Bear (of Help!... It's the Hair Bear Bunch)
Henry Orbit
Hokey Wolf
Huckleberry Hound
Hustle (of The CB Bears)
Jonathan Wellington "Mudsy" Muddlemore (of The Funky Phantom)
Lambsy
Lippy the Lion
Loopy De Loop
Mr. Jinks (of Pixie and Dixie)
Peter Perfect
Peter Potamus
Quick Draw McGraw
Red Max
Reddy the dog (from The Ruff & Reddy Show)
Rock Slag
Rufus Ruffcut
Scooby-Dum
Sgt. Blast
Smedley the dog (from the Chilly Willy cartoons)
Snagglepuss
Super Snooper and Blabber Mouse
Stick and Duke (of Posse Impossible)
Undercover Elephant
Wally Gator
Wimpy (from the Popeye cartoons)
Wolf (from the Droopy cartoons)
Yahooey (from Yippee, Yappee and Yahooey)
Yogi Bear

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, with a Western twang added, for the voice of Quick Draw McGraw). 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 voices for a number of the racers, notably Rock Slag, Big Gruesome, the Red Max, Sgt. Blast, Peter Perfect, and Rufus Ruffcut. On Laff-a-Lympics, Butler was virtually the entire "Yogi Yahooey" team.

Inspiration

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 Brothers 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, and he had in fact been using that voice for a long time, for Avery's laid-back wolf and Lantz's Smedley.

Later life

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. Butler remained somewhat low-key in the 1970s and 1980s, until a 1985 revival of The Jetsons. 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.

Death

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

Media

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. It was originally seen as a PBS pledge-drive special.

Former Butler protege Joe Bevilacqua hosts a radio series on XM Satellite Radio's Sonic Theater Channel 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, 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.