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Who was Mel Blanc's favorite Looney Tunes director?
Did the Man of a Thousand Voices have a favorite director?
Mel Blanc joined Leon Schlesinger Productions in 1936 and was the main voice actor behind Looney Tunes characters until his death in 1989. As one of the few people to have worked with every single Looney Tunes director, Mel Blanc was often asked which director was his favorite. Everyone was curious: was it Bob Clampett or Chuck Jones? Or maybe Tex Avery or Frank Tashlin? But what about Friz Freleng or Bob McKimson? Warner Bros. Animation had an embarrassment of riches when it came to talented animation directors, and Blanc had worked with all of them, many times over.
In his memoir That's Not All Folks!, Blanc mulled over this question: "Naturally, each director had his own style, and at Warner Bros. I had the privilege of working with some of the industry's finest." The book was published in 1988, when Blanc was still working with Friz Freleng and Chuck Jones on movies like Daffy Duck's Quackbusters, so of course, he had to be diplomatic in his rankings of the directors. Freleng and Jones were the only two directors Blanc included in the Acknowledgements section of the book.
Blanc settled on a director worthy of a positive mention: "For me, Robert McKimson was easiest to work with because he always knew what he wanted and how to communicate it." While Blanc had a good working relationship with McKimson, there was another director he struggled with: "The only one I had any trouble with was Clampett. He was an egotist who took credit for everything, yet in the studio he could be irritatingly indecisive."
It's worth noting that Bob Clampett, the creator of Tweety Bird, was fairly unpopular within the Warner Bros. animation department, having major beef with Eddie Selzer, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, Tex Avery, and now confirmed beef with Mel Blanc.
But who was Mel Blanc's real favorite director? "Hell, how do I answer?" He wrote, "Certainly each had his area of expertise: Jones was the best animator of the lot, Avery probably the cleverest gag man, Freleng unsurpassed for sheer imagination, and Tashlin a technical innovator, introducing to cartoons motion picture devices such as off-kilter angles, montage effects, and quick cuts. All were tremendous talents."
Everyone's a winner in Mel Blanc's heart, but here is how he actually ranked them: "I'll go out on a limb here and put Freleng, Jones, and Avery just slightly ahead of McKimson and Tashlin, with Clampett just slightly behind. If this were a horse race, it would be a photo finish."
