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Lucille Bliss revealed the unconventional behind the scenes recording of The Smurfs
The power of Smurf Village!
Lucille Bliss loved playing Smurfette, and in interviews about the behind-the-scenes of The Smurfs, she provided key insight into what she felt set the production apart from other cartoons.
In an interview with the Leader-Post, Bliss described Smurfette's recording schedule. "The cast would gather at Hanna-Barbera Studios, where director Gordon Hunt would lead the script read. After questions and discussion with the actors, they move to the recording studio where all the 'Smurfs' would stand with music stands around one or two microphones." The Smurfs cast recorded as an ensemble, while most other cartoons recorded each voice actor individually or in pairs. This was no small feat - there are over 100 Smurfs in the village and at least 10 main characters, including Gargamel. While many of the voice actors voiced more than one Smurf, that's still a lot of people recording together around one microphone and recording on tape.
The man managing the large ensemble cast was Gordon Hunt, a seasoned Hanna-Barbera director who, in his pre-Smurf career, directed cartoons like The Richie Rich/Scooby-Doo Show and The Flintstone Comedy Show. Hunt would walk the cast through each episode's storyboards and answer their questions along the way. Bliss recalled that Hunt's schedule meant that each day in the studio resulted in at least two episodes of The Smurfs or one television special being recorded.
While Bliss mostly recalled the benefits of recording as a group, she did acknowledge that it was more expensive. "If one person goofs and it's in the scene," she said, "You've got to do that segment of the scene over, whereas if you just go in alone and do your part and you goof up a few seconds, you do it over again and you go home." Even with the shortcomings, Bliss realized the experience of ensemble recording was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; no cartoon had done it previously and The Smurfs was one of the few times it was ever done.
Bliss recalled the setup "resembling a symphony orchestra," and in another interview, this time with the Television Academy Foundation, she included, "We would usually rehearse two hours for a show and three hours for a special, and we were an ensemble cast...It's really wonderful because (there are) so few ensemble casts...It's wonderful because you play off each other."
The community of the ensemble cast wasn't just a fun working environment, but Bliss felt that the actors being able to play off each other assisted character development and ensured that no two Smurfs were alike. This helped create the unique, joyful, and memorable Smurfs we still know and love today. Over the ten years of recording together, the cast grew close and, after the show ended, Bliss enjoyed getting the Smurfs back together to table read episodes for charity events and fundraisers.
