Tomorrow marks 99 years since voice-acting titan Don Messick was born. My favorite voice actor of the Hanna-Barbera family, I had to have something here to mark the occasion, and I think I came across quite a find.
Below is a piece on Messick that ran in the February 1st, 1972 edition of the Santa Barbara News Press. The focus is primarily on Messick's animation work, but there are also some great details about his early forays into acting here, too. It's a short but sweet piece, and even comes with a nice illustration of Messick, shown alongside those he brought to life. And for what it's worth, this is probably the only time you'll see him discuss the character of Schleprock from The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show.
Pixie or Boo Boo...It's Really Don
By Mary Every
Firing off his vast repertoire of voices, Don Messick catapults a listener back to bed on that Saturday morning when...
The TV last heard in the depths of the night was in the middle of a late, late show.
Then, suddenly in bright morn, it is emitting the yips and yaps of animated little creatures.
And the first impulse of the awakened adult is to turn the damned thing off.
Forget it, though, if there are little ones wrapped up in that television make-believe world. And don't spoil their fun by telling them that Flippopotamus and Schleprock are really a man named Don Messick who lives right here in Santa Barbara.
The two cartoon characters are among the latest roles for Messick, a voice-over artist who commutes to auditions and work in Los Angeles from his home at 63 Humphrey Rd. They are viewed simultaneously on different networks at 10 A.M. Saturday in the "Curiosity Shop" and "Pebbles and Bamm Bamm" shows.
Flippopotamus, as described by Messick with appropriate inflection, is a "swingin, real cool hippo" and Schleprock, again with appropriate inflection, "is a teenager, but kind of a bad luck omen, walks around with a black cloud over his head."
The "Pebbles and Bamm Bamm" series, noted Messick, is an outgrowth of the "Flintstones" series, the first and longest-running cartoon show on TV prime time.
Among Messick's favorite characters have been Boo Boo on "Yogi Bear," Muttley, the snickering hound on "Dick Dastardly," and Dr. Benton Quest on "Jonny Quest."
Other versions of his voice have been attached to Ranger Smith, Scooby-Doo, Ruff and Professor Gismo in "Ruff 'N' Reddy," Pixie Mouse on "Huckleberry Hound," a little monkey called So So, and a dog with a bit of an Irish accent on "Dr. Doolittle."
Recently, Messick did some voice work on a feature-length animated film, "Charlotte's Web," to be released in April. The film features the voices of well-known film stars, such as Debbie Reynolds, who does Charlotte. Messick does Jeffrey, a little gosling.
Something many people don't realize, said Messick, is that in film cartoons, "the voice track is done first, and then the cartoons are animated. The animators draw characters according to the voice. We are shown a storyboard of the episode, a sort of roughed-out comic strip of the main action and attitudes of the characters."
About his rather unique profession, he noted that "compared to other types of performers, it is a rather restricted field." He has also done commercials for television and some radio spots.
"I may be called at any time for an interview regarding commercials or a new cartoon series, and am required to be in Los Angeles at a moment's notice," said Messick. "In fact, I have driven to LA for interviews twice in one day."
He explained his work as applying human characteristics and voices to animals, noting that "I don't do impersonations—period. I like to think of myself as a vocal quick-change artist."
Most of his cartoon series work has been for Hanna-Barbera productions, and it started with three different voices in "Ruff 'N' Reddy" in 1958.
Messick fell into his field in both a natural and flukish sort of way.
"I was always interested in acting," he said. "When my voice changed when I was about 12 1/2, I discovered I had two voices. So I became a ventriloquist.
"My parents got me an inexpensive ventriloquist dummy when I was about 13. I practiced in front of a mirror, learning to talk without moving my lips."
At the age of 13, Messick began making local appearances as a ventriloquist in the rural area of Maryland's Eastern shore, where he lived, and at 14, he had his own weekly radio program.
When he was 16, he went to Baltimore to study dramatics and became involved with legitimate theater.
After several years of doing Off-Broadway parts in New York and Hollywood, Messick became the voice behind a lot of puppets on television shows.
The live puppet shows, which were presented to the television networks in a production package, became "impractical" for the stations when the major motion picture studios started releasing their backlogs of theatrical cartoons for television, Messick said.
After a few years, he continued, "the public was satiated with old cartoons." And the major movie studios, for economic reasons, had discontinued cartoon production.
Hanna-Barbera Productions was formed to supply cartoons for TV use, and Messick had been working for them from the beginning.
"In the past 15 years," he noted, "I have done over 50 cartoon series. Many are still running.
Messick has his own production room at his home here. It's a hobby room, where Messick's 16-year-old son, Tim, a photography buff, has a corner for his darkroom equipment. Messick uses his recording equipment in the room to develop new voices, produce demonstration tapes of past voices, and dub music.
"I'm especially interested in Japanese music," he commented. The modern especially fascinates me—the combination of the traditional oriental sound blended with the new Western influence."
