One of the best things about a lifelong friend is that you get to cheer some of their lifelong ambitions. Leonard Kohl’s new book, Bluto, Buster and The Blob: Conversations with Actors and Writers from Hollywood and Radio’s Golden Age! is a book that’s really been in progress for decades waiting for Len to put the interviews he’d done in the 80s and 90s in a longer form.
This book, the first of a series Kohl is working on, gathers together interviews he did with all sorts of people. I’ve been pouring over it like I used to pour over issues of Fangoria, Filmfax or the many fanzines I’ve loved like Mindrot/Animania and others. His enthusiastic writing is conversational and contains the sort of wonder you have for your favorite things when you’re able to actually talk to someone that helps create them. Even better, Kohl gives context to references as they’re made, giving the reader an excellent reference point for the things being discussed. Some sections are about his personal interaction with a particular person, like child actor Donnie Dunagan, who did the voice of young Bambi in the Disney classic. It’s a nice little summery of Dungagan’s career, and an enjoyable read.
The book is chock full of all these stories and interviews. After two days of cracking it open at most any chance, I have to say it’s the most enjoyable book of the year for me so far. From a series of letters and responses from Jean Rogers, to interviews with, director Ed Bernds,“Bluto”, to extensive compiled interviews conduced over many months/years with Buster Crabb, voice actor Jackson Beck and actress/ writer Kate Phillips (Kay Linaker), it’s a fascinating Book. At 491 pages, it’s like having the best fanzine for folks that love animation, serials, golden age radio and knowing really esoteric facts about the behind the scenes aspects. It’s a little more expensive because of its size, but worth it.
What other book do you have that has chapters like this?
The interviews with Jackson Beck are favorites of mine. Over the years Len had published some of this material in the Popeye fan club newsletter, but gathered they are a lovely document of how a longtime voice actor thought about his profession, what it was like to work through many decades, and, beyond his actual work, a documentation of all sorts of things about Beck’s life through that journey. I can’t recommend this enough since it’s so different in some ways, and a lot of fun to keep cracking open and reading another section about a totally different creative person or story.
Bluto, Buster and The Blob is available on Amazon, or at Bearmanormedia.com.
Len was kind enough to let me use pieces from his interviews over the years on some of the Thunderbean discs. On the Popeye Blu-ray. Here are some pieces of interviews with Jackson Beck the Len did over the phone- about a half hour worth of them. These were never recorded with the intention of presenting them, rather just for transcription, but it’s so much fun to hear his voice and how he describes things. My favorite part is around 19:30 in, where, during a party for Sid Raymond, Beck was shown a Buzzy the Crow cartoon, and didn’t remember working on them! In his attempt to remember the character he guesses the name as ‘Ricky Raven’! The person that showed the cartoon to Jackson was our very own Jerry Beck.
Steve Stanchfield is an animator, educator and film archivist. He runs Thunderbean Animation, an animation studio in Ann Arbor, Michigan and has compiled over a dozen archival animation DVD collections devoted to such subjects at Private Snafu, The Little King and the infamous Cubby Bear. Steve is also a professor at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
Just ordered it. Leonard’s frequent comments to the posts on Cartoon Research show that he has a good grasp of the subject matter, and he writes well. For what you’re getting, the price is very reasonable — and Amazon just gave me free shipping for the very first time!
I, too, always assumed from his deep bass voice that Jackson Beck must have been a giant of a man — maybe not in the same class as Ted Cassidy or Thurl Ravenscroft, but surely, like Gus Wicke, well over six feet tall. What a surprise to learn that Beck was a comparative “runt” (sorry, couldn’t resist) barely bigger than Jack Mercer. There’s a lot of great stuff in that interview, “Ricky Raven” notwithstanding, but I really want to know what he thought of L. Ron Hubbard! (“I knew Ron back when he was only a small-time crook.” — Isaac Asimov)
Late in his life I became acquainted with Rear Admiral Gordon John Crabb, CBE, who commanded the Australian Fleet during the Vietnam War. Even in his eighties and disabled by a stroke, he was a very imposing figure. After he died I read in his obituary that, perhaps predictably, Admiral Crabb was known to his intimates as “Buster”; I suppose anyone named Crabb, Crabbe, Crabtree or the like who served in the navy during World War II would have been saddled with that nickname. As for me, I just called him “Sir”.
This rare interview is fantastic! I wonder if Jackson Beck remembers doing any recording for the National Lampoon radio hour. There is a recording of him as an announcer for a fictitious game show that was extremely funny.
Catch it and you keep it?
Thanks so much Steve and Paul! Regarding Jackson Beck – through the help of The Official Popeye Fanclub co-founder Fred Grandinetti, I was able to contact Jackson Beck over the phone. As soon as I said who I was and what I wanted to talk to hm about, I heard a “Bluto”-like anger in his voice as he said something like: “Who the hell gave you this number?” I quakingly stated that I was a member of the OPF and that Fred had given me the phone number. Then Beck’s tone lightened and he said: “Oh, okay” – and then we started to talk a bit. For a time, I just centered my questions on POPEYE related topics and then I thought, “If I’m going to bother this guy with questions, maybe I should ask him more about his career or things he wants to tell me.” So, that’s what I did. I can’t tell you how great it was for me to call him and have him say, “Oh, hi Lenny! How’s it going?”
Kevin, there’s a whole bunch of things I SHOULD have talked to Jackson Beck about. I had forgotten that he had done announcing work for The National Lampoon records, much less some announcing he did on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. But, under the circumstances, I did the best I could. He did not have a cassette tape recorder or a VHS tape player when I talked to him for a few years, starting in 1993. So, his memory was cloudy as to whether or not he may have done some voice work on the last of the Famous Studios’ SUPERMAN cartoons or not. Beck’s first “Bluto” voice was for THE ANVIL CHORUS GIRL in 1944, but I haven’t been able to figure out EXACTLY when Beck started working for Famous. Anyway, thanks for the kind words! Beck was very uneasy talking about L. Ron Hubbard’s organization, because he knew that some of what he told me would go into our Official Popeye Fanclub News-Magazine. Mostly, that worked out well for me, because if I got something wrong – or half-right” he’d read the magazine, call me up and correct me – as he should have! A very nice person to get to know – at least a little bit – and I thought these interviews with Jackson Beck were worth prerserving – ditto for the others. The second book of the series will cover many interviews with classic cartoon animators like Shamus Culhane, Dave Tendlar, Gordon Sheehan, Jon McClenahan and others! Thanks again!
I accidentally put my hand on the back of our car – in pitch black darkness – and my wife shut the lid of the “hatch” and – Bam! – I skinned and brused a couple of fingers pretty badly – so it’s a little hard to type. I just want to thank Steve again for all the help he gave me on the entire book series – as well as much help from Jerry Beck, too!
The SINBAD story Jackson Beck told me was confusing to me. First I thought he was talking about the Fleischer color “two reeler” POPEYE cartoons and he might have been for a minute or two, but he ended up talking about a silent fantasy film that was part hand-colored when he was younger – sometime in the early 1920’s – maybe? Could it have been a live-action film like THE BLACK PIRATE (1926)? Any film historians out there who can help me out? (Read the whole section of the interview in the book,) I’ll stop here – as my fingers are starting to really “hoit”! Thanks again, Steve and Jerry!
Jackson Beck’s reminisces about voice acting are remarkable! Or just great for being about being a veteran radio actor who was chosen as the latest, and last Bluto (after a few earlier Blutos, including Gus Wickie, my personal favorite), but he admits that he didn’t know much about playing the part, except for having seen some Popeye cartoons at the movies.
However, he had a perfect gravelly “Bluto voice” which is apparent here even when he isn’t playing the character. So, like Jack Mercer, he stayed with the Popeye series all the way to the end, even though the increasingly low budgets and repetitive stories made the animation embarrassingly bad by the 1960’s.
But, a paycheck is still a paycheck, right?
That seems to be the way Jackson Beck looked at it. If someone’s going to hire you for your talent – do the best you’re capable of doing! I can’t think of anything I’ve heard him perform on a cartoon, radio show, LP record, etc, that sounded like he was just “going through the motions.”
Paul, thanks for the great review on Amazon.com! I was hoping SOMEBDOY would post a review over there! I appreciate it very much!
I was on a satellite radio show last night- devoted to old-time radio, etc. – YESTERDAY USA – and I’m still warn-out from talking for about three hours with clips of interviews and old radio shows by Jackson Beck, etc. My admiration for the late Jackson Beck keeps growing as I hear shows that he did like THE MAN BEHIND THE GUN from early WWII and then to hear him some 20 years later narrate a grim SUSPENSE show from the early ’60s! What a tremendous talent!