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A last-minute audition with Leon Schlesinger secured Mel Blanc's role at Looney Tunes
Learn about how Mel Blanc became P-P-P-Porky Pig!
Before he was the man of a thousand voices, Mel Blanc was another young actor in Hollywood trying to get a job. His journey to Looney Tunes was not easy despite his immense talent, and for eighteen months, Blanc wasn't even given an audition at Leon Schlesinger Productions. He would walk into the office every two weeks and ask to audition, only to be told that they didn't need any more voice actors.
Instead of giving in to dejection, Blanc continued coming back, knowing that if he could audition, he would get a job. One day, that all changed because the receptionist who would normally turn him away was not there, and a different receptionist was there, and they were willing to audition Blanc.
Blanc was pulled into a room with Friz Freleng, Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin, Chuck Jones, and Bob Clampett. Of the four, the most excited about the potential addition of Blanc was Tex Avery, who needed someone to voice a drunken bull in Picador Porky. In Blanc's autobiography, That's Not All Folks!, Blanc wrote, "Asking Mel Blanc if he can sound like a drunk is like asking Marcel Marceau, 'Can you mime?'"
After Blanc's impression, the animators broke out into applause and immediately booked Blanc for that Tuesday. From there, Blanc was brought in to voice one-off characters for Merrie Melodies cartoons.
In 1936, Porky Pig was the number one star of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. Porky was created by Friz Freleng, who received a lot of criticism for giving Porky a stutter, but according to Blanc, "(Freleng) wanted to distinguish Porky from the many homogenous animated-film characters, and in hindsight, the distinctive speech impediment."
Freleng asked casting to find an actor for Porky who stuttered, and Joe Dougherty was chosen. Dougherty had a real stutter, one that he struggled to control in real life. After twelve cartoons, they brought in Count Cutelli as an additional voice actor who could record some of the lines more clearly.
Blanc explained the Dougherty situation as complicated, "It must have seemed ideal at first - need a stammering cartoon pig, hire a stammering actor. But problems unfolded. Recording was still done on expensive optical film, and Dougherty's inability to come in on cue wasted a lot of it, irritating budget-minded Leon Schlesinger."
Dougherty was ultimately fired shortly after Blanc was hired, and Leon Schlesinger needed a new voice actor for his prized pig, ASAP. So, he called Blanc into his office and said, "I've got a problem here, Mel...Joe's a nice enough fellow and he does his best, but...I was wondering if you'd try Porky's voice."
Blanc recalled joking in the moment, "'You want me to be the voice of a pig? That's some job for a nice Jewish boy.' I was joking. Schlesinger was in no mood for laughing."
After going to visit a pig farm to learn how to really sound like a pig, Blanc returned to Schlesinger and combined the way Porky currently sounded with timing inspired by the grunts of real pigs. Blanc recalled the moment he got the role, "I finished by ad-libbing, 'Th- uh-th-- uh-th--that's all, folks!' Schlessinger jumped up from behind his heavy desk and stabbed a finger in the air. 'You're it!' he shouted."
While Porky would ultimately be just one of Mel Blanc's one thousand voices, this audition was what ultimately made Looney Tunes his home, from this moment forward he became the main voice actor for all Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons.
