Where To Watch
Who gave Daffy Duck his lisp?
The gist behind the lisp!
There's always been thomething thpecial about Daffy Duck - his voice! Like his fellow Looney Tunes star, Porky Pig, his speech impediment of lisping is a memorable part of his character. But how exactly did Daffy start lisping?
He didn't lisp for his first few cartoons, but then the cartoonists at Termite Terrace decided his voice needed a change. His creator, Tex Avery, worried that the wild laughs and constant "hoo-hoo" from Daffy was becoming stale, and he wanted Daffy to be less of a nut and more of a character who enjoyed giving in to his nuttiness. So, it was decided that Daffy should have a lisp. But, primary sources from Termite Terrace disagree about what, or who, inspired Daffy's lisp.
According to animator Chuck Jones, "(Daffy) still needed a voice...(Cal Howard) suggested that Leon Schlesinger's lisp plus Leon's absolute belief that the world owed him a living made him a perfect prototype for Daffy. Mel Blanc saw no difficulty in marrying Leon's voice to a duck, so the deed was done and Daffy found a new voice as well as a new personality, an acquisitiveness to match Leon's."
Leon Schlesinger was the producer and founder of Leon Schlesinger Productions, which eventually became the Warner Bros. Cartoon Studio. He was the big boss of all the animators, and he had a prominent lisp. Also worth noting - he was widely (allegedly) considered to be a jerk.
Jones called him "Leon Schlesinger the Unready, or Leon the Unreasonable, or Leon the Unbearable, take your choice; any word starting with 'un' will fit Leon."
There are also stories of him making fun of the offices the animators worked in and saying they couldn't sail on his yacht because he didn't want poor people on his boat. Naturally, the animators had a grudge against him, and giving a character a voice and personality that directly made fun of their boss seemed like fair game. As Daffy would say, how dethpicable!
One major source disagrees with the Leon Schlesinger story: Daffy's voice actor, Mel Blanc. In his memoir That's Not All Folks!, he offered a more sensible explanation for Daffy's lisp: "It seemed to me that such an extended mandible would hinder his speech, particularly on words containing an s sound. Thus 'despicable' became 'dethpicable'."
Unfortunately for us cartoon drama queens, this makes sense. The type of lisp Daffy has is called a lateral lisp, which is when air flows from the sides of the mouth instead of through the front, which would make sense for someone speaking English through a large duck bill. Perhaps Mel Blanc was trying to save face and rise above the slightly mean Schlesinger rumors, but his commitment to his craft speaks through in his approach to Daffy's voice.
While our sources may disagree, Leon Schlesinger still had to approve a cartoon with a lisping character, which may or may not have been based on him. Before showing Leon the new Daffy Duck cartoon, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and the other animators drafted their resignation letters in case they were going to be fired.
Leon Schlesinger said, "Roll the garbage!" and the cartoon played. According to Chuck Jones, "Then the lights went on and Leon leaped to his feet, glared around: 'Jeethus Christh, that's a funny voithe! Where'd you get that voithe?'" Whether Schlesinger took this personally or not, the cartoon was approved. Daffy's fun new lisp had the corporate seal of approval.
According to Chuck Jones, what started as poking fun at Leon Schlesinger accidentally led to him being immortalized through Daffy Duck "...wherever the voice of the turtle-duck is heard throughout the land, Leon is enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen."
What do you think? Was the voice of Daffy based on Leon Schlesinger, or was it just a creative approach to voice acting?
