Daws Butler
Charles Dawson "Daws" Butler (
November 16,
1916 –
May 18,
1988) was a
voice actor born in
Toledo, Ohio, who created and played the voices of many famous
animated cartoon characters, including
Yogi Bear and
Huckleberry Hound.
One of his first voice roles was that of
Snap, one of the
Rice Krispies elf mascots. His first major success, however, came in the mid
1940s at
MGM.
Tex Avery hired Butler to provide narration work for several of his cartoons. In many cartoons there was a nameless Wolf who spoke in a
southern accent and whistled all the time. Butler provided the voice for this Wolf. While at MGM, Avery wanted Butler to try to do the voice of
Droopy Dog, a character that
Bill Thompson regularly gave voice to. Butler did the voice for a few cartoons but then told Avery about
Don Messick, a soon-to-be-legendary voice actor and Butler's life-long friend. After Messick got his foot in the door, like Butler, it was all uphill from there.
In
1949 Butler landed a role in a televised
puppet show created by
Warner Brothers cartoon director
Bob Clampett called
Time for Beany. 33-year-old Butler was teamed up with 23-year-old
Stan Freberg and together did all the voices for the puppet show. Butler was "Beany Boy" and "Captain Huffenpuff". Freberg was "Cecil" and "Dishonest John". An entire stable of recurring characters were seen. The show's writers were Charles Shows and Lloyd Turner, whose dependably funny dialog was still always at the mercy of Butler's and Freberg's ad libs.
Time for Beany ran from 1949 to
1954 and won several
Emmy Awards, and was the basis for the cartoon
Beany and Cecil.
Butler briefly turned his attention to TV commercials, though quickly moved on to providing the voice to many nameless
Walter Lantz characters on the
Woody Woodpecker program. His notable character was the penguin "
Chilly Willy" and his side-kick, the southern speaking dog Smedley. Also in the 1950s, Stan Freberg asked Butler to help him write comedy skits for his
Capitol Records albums. Their first collaboration, "
Saint George and the Dragonet" (based on
Dragnet), was the first comedy record to sell over one million copies. Freberg was more of a satirist who did song parodies but the bulk of his "talking" routines were co-written by, and co-starred, Daws Butler. Freberg's box-set,
Tip of the Freberg on
Rhino from
1999, chronicles every aspect of Freberg's career except the cartoon voice-over work and it showcases his career with Daws Butler.
In
1957 Hanna-Barbera left MGM. Daws Butler and Don Messick were on-hand to provide voices. The first,
The Ruff & Reddy Show, set the formula for the rest of the series of cartoons that the two would helm until the mid
1960s.
It was in the 1957–
1965 era that Daws Butler gave voice to the following characters:
*
Reddy the dog*
Huckleberry Hound*
Yogi Bear*
Snagglepuss*
Quick Draw McGraw*
Baba Looey*
Loopy De Loop*
Dixie Mouse*
Mr. Jinks*
Super Snooper and Blabber Mouse*Fibber Fox
*Aesop's Son (in the "Aesop and Son" segment of
The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show)
*
Wimpy (from the
Popeye cartoons)
*
Augie Doggie*
Hokey Wolf*
Wally Gator*Alfie Gator
*
Peter Potamus*
Lippy the Lion*Elroy
Jetson*
Cogswell*
Henry Orbit*Captain Skyhook
*Rock Slag
*Big Gruesome
*Red Max
*SGT Blast
*Peter Perfect
*Ruffus Ruffcut
*
Scooby-Dum*among others
Butler would voice most of these characters for many decades, in both TV shows and in some commercials. "
Cap'n Crunch" became an icon of sorts on Saturday morning TV through many cereal commercials produced by
Jay Ward. Butler gave voice to the Cap'n from the 1960s to the
1980s. He based the voice on an old character actor named Charlie Butterworth (who was also the inspiration for the voice of Quick Draw McGraw - with a Western twang added). In the
1970s he was the voice of "Hair Bear" and a few characters in minor cartoons such as
C.B. Bears. On
Wacky Races Butler provided the voice for a number of the racers. On
Laff-a-Lympics, Butler was virtually the entire "Yogi Yahooey" team.
Butler based some of his voices on popular celebrities of the day. Yogi Bear began as an
Art Carney impression (Butler had done a similar voice in several of
Robert McKimson's films at Warner Bros and
Stan Freberg's comedy record "The Honey-Earthers). However, Butler soon changed Yogi's voice making it much deeper and more sing-songy, thus making it a complete original voice. Hokey Wolf began as an impression of
Phil Silvers, and Snagglepuss as
Bert Lahr. But again, Butler redesigned these voices, making them competely his own inventions.
Huckleberry Hound was inspired many years earlier, in 1945, by the North Carolina neighbor of Daws's wife's family.
When
Mel Blanc was recovering at home from a motor vehicle accident, Butler stepped in to do
Barney Rubble—another rather Carney-esque voice—in four
Flintstones episodes.Aside from
the Jetsons, Butler remained somewhat low-key in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1975, Butler began an acting workshop that spawned such talents as
Nancy Cartwright (The Simpsons),
Corey Burton (Old Navy, Disney), and
Joe Bevilacqua (NPR).
In the year of his death
The Good, the Bad, and Huckleberry Hound was released, a tour-de-force featuring most of his classic early characters.
Daws Butler died of a heart attack on
May 18,
1988. He was 71. Many of his roles were picked up by
Greg Burson, who had personally studied with Butler for years.
Daws Butler is interred in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.
*The video
Daws Butler: Voice Magician is a
1987 documentary of Butler's career from his pre-MGM days on up through his teaming with Freberg in
1949 and the teaming with
Don Messick in
1957.
*Former Butler protege
Joe Bevilacqua hosts a radio series on XM Satellite Radio's Sonic Theater Channel (163) called
The Comedy-O-Rama Hour which features a regular segment called
What the Butler Wrote: Scenes from the Daws Butler Workshop with rare scripts of Daws performed by his students, including
Nancy Cartwright (the voice of
Bart Simpson), and rare recordings of Daws himself. Bevilacqua has also co-authored the authorized (with Ben Ohmart) biography book
Daws Butler, Characters Actor, and edited the book
Scenes for Actors and Voices written by Daws Butler, both published by Bear Manor Media.
*
The Official Daws Butler Website
