Film Stars of Playa Del Rey; Mel Blanc

Mel Blanc lived for many years at 177 Ellen Street, in the exclusive community known as Surfridge, at Palisades Del Rey, CA.

Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros. as the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, the Tasmanian Devil and many of the other characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies theatrical cartoons, during the "Golden age of American animation."

He later worked for Hanna-Barbera's television cartoons, most notably as the voices of Barney Rubble in The Flintstones and Mr. Spacely in The Jetsons.

Blanc was also a regular performer on The Jack Benny Program, in both its radio and television formats. Having earned the nickname “The Man of a Thousand Voices,” Blanc is regarded as one of the most influential people in the voice-acting industry.

Originally, the sound of the Maxwell car on Jack Benny's radio show was a pre-recorded sound effect on a phonograph record. During a live broadcast, however, Blanc noticed that the record player wasn't turned on for the crucial moment when the effect was supposed to play. He quickly grabbed the microphone and improvised the sounds himself, to the utter delight of the studio audience. Benny made it part of the program from then on and gave Blanc much larger parts to play in the show.

Blanc created the voice of Walter Lantz's Woody Woodpecker, whose laugh was a version of a laugh Blanc had been performing since high school. He only performed the voice in the first four Woody cartoons: Knock Knock, Woody Woodpecker, and The Screwdriver, and Pantry Panic, after which Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies producer Leon Schlesinger signed him to an exclusive contract.

Lantz used Ben Hardaway to record Woody's dialogue for subsequent cartoons until 1950, but since no one could properly imitate Blanc's laugh at the time, a sound clip from Woody Woodpecker was edited into these later cartoons' soundtracks. In 1948, Blanc sued Lantz for using his voice in subsequent cartoons without compensation and settled with him out-of-court. However, Blanc saying "Guess who?" can be heard at the beginning of every Woody Woodpecker short.

The sound Bugs makes while munching a carrot is actually Mel Blanc munching on a carrot. He tried using celery, raw potatoes, and a lot of other things, but only a carrot would make that carrot crunching sound. According to Noel Blanc, Mel's son, Mel was not in fact allergic to carrots as was previously thought by many. People who worked in the sound studios believed this because they would see Mel spitting out the carrot after taking a bite. Mel did this because he could not speak with the carrot in his mouth and that was the only reason he spat it out.

The epitaph on his headstone at his burial site in Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood reads, "That's All, Folks!"