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What happened to Porky's original voice actor?
Porky originally had a stuttering voice actor.
In 1935, Porky Pig made his Looney Tunes debut in the short I Haven't Got A Hat. Director Friz Freleng knew the studio was looking for a new breakout star to replace Bosko and Bosko's boring replacement Buddy. At this point in cartoon history, there were no characters with speech impediments of any kind, so Freleng took a risk and created a character who stuttered. To double down on Porky's speech impediment, Freleng told the casting department to find an actor with a real stutter and they found Joe Dougherty. Treg Brown, the sound editor on Termite Terrace, would take the recording of Dougherty reading Porky's lines, with no additional accent or intonation. Then Brown would speed up the recording slightly to increase the pitch to get the childish Porky voice we know now - which is very similar to how animators still create kids' voices today on shows like South Park. Casting a voice actor with a stutter wasn't a huge risk at the time because Porky was only meant to be a minor side character; Beans the Cat was meant to be the breakout star of I Haven't Got A Hat. Beans is credited before Porky, and in many of Porky and Beans' cartoons together, the title after "Looney Tunes" usually says "Starring Beans". But Beans' moment in the spotlight was shortlived because audiences loved Porky, and wanted more.
Porky becoming a star character was great for the animation studio, but it was not great for Joe Dougherty. The stutter that helped Porky stand out as a character also troubled his original voice actor. Production of Porky cartoons was increased, meanwhile, Dougherty could not control his stutter. According to Freleng, Dougherty got nervous every time he said "cut" and struggled with reading on cue. He also could not control his stammering to end a sentence or a phrase on time. Recording lines took longer than it would on most cartoons. All these issues added to production costs and time, time animators did not have if they wanted to capitalize on Porky's rising star power. After 12 cartoons with Dougherty voicing Porky, Leon Schlesinger stepped in and fired him. Additional lines on the remaining Dougherty Porky cartoons were filled in by Count Cutelli. Schlesinger then asked Mel Blanc to step in as Dougherty's replacement in 1937. Blanc had his own approach to the voice, even visiting a pig farm to try to mimic the pigs' grunts. He quickly realized that Dougherty's stutter was now a core part of Porky's character, so Blanc continued stuttering as a part of Porky's voice.
Losing the role of Porky Pig stung, but it did not end Joe Dougherty's acting career. Dougherty pivoted from voice acting to on-screen performances in films like A Star is Born, East of Eden, and he also appeared in Western shows including The Loner and Pistols 'n' Petticoats.
