Milton Knight is an accomplished animator, designer, painter and filmmaker – and a periodic contributor to this blog. A few weeks ago he posted a video on his new You Tube Channel featuring scenes with voice actors he likes. I asked Milton to expand upon that – tell us in a few words what he likes about these voices. Animators often cite their artistic influences, but it’s very rare to hear them talk about vocal talent. Following Milton’s comments, below the video, I asked voice expert Keith Scott to give us a little background on the performers Milton selected. I hope you enjoy this double-header post today. And please consider following Milton on his Patreon. – Jerry Beck
I prefer voices that are not dogged put-ons. Voices that sound like people. For example:
HONEY’S MONEY – Wentwoth
Contrasting with his appearance, the voice is an overly gleeful child who “needs his nap”. Refreshing that he wasn’t given the Blanc “moron” voice.
A CAR-TUNE PORTRAIT – The Lion Master of Ceremonies
Stentorian tones, eloquent while avoiding dislikable pomposity. His “Greetings, my good friends”, sounds entirely sincere without parody, even coming from a lion in a tux.
FLY HI (?) – a Fly
Often the Van Beuren Fables sound as if they were built around whatever entertainer was going to be in town, A ‘precious’ voice that has the feel of a stage performer. The British accent doesn’t play into the situation at all. I think this is a female.
BEHIND THE CLOCK – Owl
An ad for Kellogg’s by Anson Dyer (British). Finicky, blustering, human-y voice. Watch it here.
GRIN AND SHARE IT. – Spike
An Irishman’s gentle bellow. An unctuous, insincere eloquence.
“Behind The Clock”
A false frog’s croak, incongruous.
GET RICH QUICK PORKY – The Huckster
Smooth, unctuous. A lovely and fast talker, literally.
LITTLE FOX
From a 1970s People’s Republic of China cartoon that frequently turned up as filler on cable television in the 1980s. Cajoling with an audible sneer. The actor doesn’t sound like English was his first language and lends a unique inflection. In other parts, a Papa Bear shouts “You god damn swindler” and a Bunny Rabbit cries “You bastard!” I can only suppose that they didn’t reckon that these lines were taboo in America.
THE BIG CITY – Bubble
Hearty, deep British voice coming from the chest. Very male. Most likely a smoker.
CINDERELLA BLUES – Fairy
A staff member who did most of the vocal noises in the early 30s Van Beurens goes falsetto for a Beautiful Fairy Queen, but I wasn’t fooled for a moment.
CHEW CHEW BABY – Wally Walrus
A thick, convincing accent that made the character. No subsequent actors equaled it . An overly dramatic astonishment, as if the ‘ruse’ hadn’t been obvious.
LORBER’S FOR SERVICE – Narrator
A commercial short from Australia with matter-of-fact cruel humor. Extra points for the deadpan delivery. Watch the full short here.
WET BLANKET POLICY – Buzz Buzzard / Woody
Lionel Stander’s ashtray rasp captures the unwholesome district of Damon Runyon. The bee buzz Woody voice is heard here and then in THE BARBER OF SEVILLE, where there is barely acting in his deadpan delivery. [I thought it’s Bugs Hardaway.
TOONERVILLE PICNIC – Doctor
A radio announcer-like voice, musical and crisply delivered. No “hey, I’m a cartoon!” here.
WE’RE ON OUR WAY TO RIO – Bluto
I had thought this was Dave Barry’s voice; p’raps not. More of a “reader” than actor, but strong and more eloquent than Bluto has a right to be. His laugh is no Gus Wickie or Jackson Beck, but I like it.
“Clobber” by Moye
Comedian and entertainer doing Heckle’s slick wise guy normal voice plus an enjoyable Jolson schtick.
Allen was versatile, doing the voices of both magpies plus their adversaries.
• The frightening soliloquy from the earlier HAPPY GO LUCKY spotlights the warm syrup tones of Sid Raymond.
• The Wolf in FLYING SOUTH is, I believe, a Greek accent. Hungry Greek wolves appeared frequently in Terrytoons, usually on the prowl for Gandy Goose. A friend tells me the bass, stilted reading is Herschel Bernardi.
• Ending with Doug Moye in CLINT CLOBBER’S CAT. A natural non-actor actor.
In this interesting Milton Knight-created compilation of short cartoon sequences, there is a raft of unusual voices, some quite well known to cartoon buffs and some still highly obscure. I won’t pretend to know any of the voices in the early black and white Van Beuren clips (it’s obvious some are staff members, including a female voice done by a man using a wobbly falsetto), but some others here merit a note for their sheer longevity (Earle Hodgins) or, conversely, the brevity of their careers (young Billy Booth).
Most prominent in this video montage are the true professional voices, such as David Ross, the talking lion MC in Fleischer’s A Cart-Tune Portrait (1937). He was a cultured, literate critic and author who turned to New York radio announcing in the early 1930s. His sonorous tones with the perfectly modulated speech were in demand on top East Coast radio programs as a commentator on musical fare like The Fred Waring Show and Arthur Tracy, The Street Singer. He could almost be mistaken for Frank Gallop (later the narrator of the Famous Studios Casper cartoons, although Gallop had a slightly more ironic tone and could do comedy. Ross was pretty straight, but blessed with that baritone smoothness).
Another fine artist was Earle Hodgins, here heard as Honest John Gusher in a clip from Get Rich Quick Porky. A member of a Mormon family from Utah, he spent the decade of the 1920s learning the craft of a versatile character man in traveling stock companies, then honing his vocal ability to talk very quickly (and still be understood) by jumping into the very new vocal medium of radio in San Francisco, where he was a writer, actor and studio director. He ventured to Los Angeles in 1933 and gained more radio work at the Warner Bros. owned station KFWB, in various short-form comedy programs like Comedy Stars of Hollywood and Hi-Jinks. Here he perfected the con artist voice he became known for in scores of movies, particularly Westerns, where he played the snake oil salesman-patent medicine-motormouth character he made his specialty, which got him hired by Tex Avery for cartoons like Porky’s Garden, or this Bob Clampett clip from, as noted above, 1937’s Get Rich Quick Porky. He was a most prolific actor who worked until his death at age 70 in 1964.
The little boy voice accompanying the hideously large brat Wentworth (at the very start of this video) is Billy Booth from the Yosemite Sam starrer Honey’s Money. Booth was a child actor (aged eleven when he recorded this), and was most known for the role of Dennis the Menace’s buddy Tommy in the long -running TV series of the late 1950s.
We also hear Bill Thompson, as the Irish-inflected Butch the Bulldog with Droopy; Allen Swift mumbling as Clint Clobber; Jack Mather as Wally Walrus in the 1945 Woody Woodpecker entry Chew-Chew Baby; movie actor Lionel Stander as villainous Buzz Buzzard in Wet Blanket Policy (Lantz loved his voice and would often brag at conventions “I used Lionel Stander as the voice of the buzzard!!!”; a frustratingly unknown bass baritone used only once for Bluto in the all-musical Popeye classic We’re On Our Way to Rio; Dave Weber is heard as the first Heckle & Jeckle voice in this compilation, followed by Sid Raymond also having a go at the magpie, and I think it’s Dayton Allen as the French accented Wolf in a third Terry clip, but not certain 100%). Some others here are ones I can’t ID at present.
Milton Knight is an artist of wide experience, having been involved in comics, illustration, animation and painting. You’ve seen his animation in Sonic The Hedgehog, The Twisted Tales of Felix The Cat and in Ralph Bakshi’s Cool World. His comic art has graced Mighty Mouse, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and his own book, Hugo. Knight has also recently completed his first novel. Visit his blog at 
I definitely agree with “What’s Sweepin’?”; “Beat it, Junior. And take off that trick moustache!”
The logo for Whitford’s Theatre Ads at the end of the Lober Auto Service commercial indicates that the film was made by Australian Animated Cartoons Pty Ltd. Archer Whitford, owner of the ad company, founded the studio in 1936 largely with talent from the recently defunct studio Cartoon Filmads. The head animator was Eric Porter, often referred to as “the Australian Walt Disney,” who would go on to direct Australia’s first full-length animated feature in 1972. Since the façade of the building in the ad specifically mentions the LaSalle, which General Motors discontinued in 1940, we can safely assume that the ad was made sometime in the late ’30s or early ’40s.
Archer Whitford and his brother Frank were a couple of interesting figures in Australian media history. They started out by hiring cushions to patrons at an outdoor picture show in the Western Australian mining town of Kalgoorlie. From there they branched out into advertising, at first on “magic lantern” slides, and ultimately owned an empire of TV and radio stations before selling out to Sir Frank Packer. The Perth suburb of Whitford is named after them.
The musical arrangement in “A Car-Tune Portrait” is credited to one King Ross, who otherwise has very few credits in animation. I wonder if he could have been related to announcer David Ross? I know that King Ross was a trombonist, active in New York radio in the ’30s and ’40s, who marketed his own brand of brass mouthpieces. Granted, Ross is a very common surname, but still….
As for my own personal favourite cartoon voices, I’m going to have to think about that. Certainly my hat is off to the actor who voiced the porcine Führer in the wartime Terrytoon “The Last Round Up” (1943). Most Hitler impersonators in cartoons of that time — and I’m afraid I have to include even the great Mel Blanc in this — tended merely to string together a lot of familiar German culinary terms like “Hasenpfeffer” and “Sauerbraten”. But this guy, whoever he was, lets out a barrage of perfect gibberish, and I do mean perfect. His delivery is impeccable. It couldn’t possibly have been scripted. I laugh my head off every single time I hear it.
It is David Ross. If you listen to him on old time radio you will hear the voice
The lion voice in “Car-tune Portrait” has always struck me as impressive. I also appreciate the other voices represented here. It’s good to focus once in a while on the voice artists who weren’t as big names as the well-known (and sometimes overused) go-to voice artists. Takes a village, as they say.
A few stand-out voices for me are when actual boys play the part of boys. With all due respect to June Foray, Ginny Tyler, and other female artists who professionally provided voices for boy characters, there’s a ring of authenticity when it’s done by a young male. Such as with Bobby Driscoll providing the voice for Peter Pan. I also like Teddy Eccles as Aaron in “The Little Drummer Boy,” Peter Robbins and Chris Shea as Charlie Brown and Linus, Bruce Reitherman who provided the voice of Mowgli as well as the first voice of Christopher Robin (with an American accent), and Sean Marshall as the boy in “Small One.” Tim Matheson, who provided the voice of Jonny Quest, is another good example, and he voiced the character into his teens as well as doing other voices in addition to plenty of live action roles. Plus, Jay North as Bamm-Bamm, although he was older when he took on the voice. Of course there was always the problem of a young voice actor aging out of a role. Dick Beals with hie perpetual boy voice was an adult who could keep a good thing going for years.
Voice artists, with the exception of the bigger names, are often not given their due, so it’s great to see a tribute like this one. Although I never made it into the field of animation, if I had, it would have been as a voice actor. The closest I came was dubbing a singing voice for an actor in a local musical production.
I’d be interested in your opinion of the boys who have voiced Peppermint Patty and Marcie in a number of Peanuts productions, for example Stuart Brotman and Jimmy Ahrens in “Race for Your Life.” Personally I thought they were terrific!
I guess I was wrong about Clint Clobber. I had read that Allen Swift got the role after Terry staffer Doug Moye, a non-professional who did the voice for the Terry Bears’ father, recorded the first Clint cartoon. The clip Milton included does sound like a staff member doing this amusing mumbly voice, so ignore my reference to Swift. I agree that it’s Mr. Moye.
The Lober commercial is hilarious for its time.
“That’s the way to adjust headlights! Good luck, Hector, we like to see who we run over…”
So glad to see Earle Hodgins name brought up here. I’ve been a B-western fan for years and I always love hearing his voice work in cartoons.
I agree that the casting of Billy Booth as Wentworth was a great idea. Because he looks just like Mugsy and other goonlike characters favored by Freleng, his realistically cheerful voice makes him that much funnier. And he’s not a brat like most kids-human or anthromorphized- in most WB cartoons. When he first appears on screen, you expect to hear Mel’s trademark ‘stupid’ voice.
When he happily observes “My mommy and daddy are fighting”, I can’t help but crack up.