We'll Be Right Back Part 5 (Voice Actor Vridays Edition)

In all this talk of cartoon commercial spokespeople, breakfast cereal cartoon commercials, and the like, there is a certain character who (whom?), I'm sure to you, has been conspicuously left off. The character I am referring to is Cap'n Crunch. Well, the truth is I have been specifically saving the Cap'n for today so I could spotlight him as a part of the new weekly segment Voice Actor Vridays: The Great Segment with the Stupid Name. (That's the new tag line I'm using.)

Cap'n Horatio Magellan Crunch first appeared in 1963 as a breakfast cereal, and Jay Ward Productions, who you may remember as the creators of Rocky and Bullwinkle and George of the Jungle, was hired to create an animate the mascot for the cereal. From 1963 through the present Cap'n Crunch has been getting into thirty to sixty second adventures in animated commercials, whether it was fighting "the Soggies" or matching blades with the pirate Jean LaFoote, voiced by Bill Scott (voice of Bullwinkle J. Moose). Cap'n Crunch's adventures also regularly appeared in comic book adventures that were available in the cereal box.



Cap'n Crunch is a really fun and truly iconic character of cartoon advertising, but one of the things that makes him special is that he was voiced by the legendary Daws Butler, and Daws is the spotlight of today's Voice Actor Vriday: The Great Segment with a Stupid Name.

If Mel Blanc is the name that is immediately synonymous with voice acting outside of the industry, Daws Butler is that name inside the industry. Daws Butler is the voice actor's voice actor. I respect the hell out of Mel Blanc, but Daws, along with Thurl Ravenscroft and Paul Frees, was who I wanted to be like when I decided I wanted to go into this business. In seventh grade I had pictures of all three of them pinned to my wall--only seventh grader ever who did that, I imagine, but--they were who I wanted to be like.

Daws Butler was the voice of most of the characters in the Hanan-Barbera catalog: Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss, Yogi Bear, Jinx the Cat, Quick Draw McGraw, Wally Gator, Hokey Wolf, Elroy Jetson, Cogswell Cogs, Loopy De Loop, Peter Potamus, among many others. He also provided the voice of several characters in Jay Ward's Fractured Fairy Tales and Aesop and Son, although due to his contract with Hanna-Barbera, he received no screen credit for those roles.

In the 1980's Daws Butler began a voice acting workshop in Hollywood, CA, after many people suggested that he share his secrets of the business with young people wishing to get started in voice acting. That workshop has become legendary, and many of the top voice actors of today like Corey Burton (Captain Hook and Count Dooku), Nancy Cartwright (Bart Simpson), and Bob Bergen (Porky Pig) got their start in Daws' class.

One other thing that makes Daws pretty special is that he is universally described by those who knew him as one of the kindest people you could ever meet. I was going to write an extensive biography of Daws here in the blog, but there are many great places to learn about him. Here's a nice bio written by one of his sons, and here are several articles written by his friends.

And finally, this video was a part of the recent release of the first season of The Huckleberry Hound Show. It has a lot of great insight into Daws and his life and career by those who knew him. So here is this week's spotlight Voice Actor: The Legendary, The One and Only Daws Butler.



CG