Charles Dawson "Daws" Butler (November 16, 1916 – May 18, 1988) was a voice actor, who created and played the voices of many famous animated cartoon characters, including Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound.
His road to stardom 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 and wrote every script. Butler was "Beany Boy" and "Captain Huffenpuff". Freberg was "Cecil" and "Dishonest John". An entire stable of recurring characters were seen. Time for Beany ran from 1949 to 1954 and won several Emmy Awards.
Butler turned his attention to TV commercials. This did not last very long because he soon giving 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", went Platinum by today's standards. Freberg was more of a satirist who did song parodies but the bulk of his "talking" routines were co-written and co-starring 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:
Butler would voice most of those characters throughout the decades to come whenever they happened to appear on TV shows or in 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. In the 1970s he became the voice of "Hair Bear" and a few characters in minor cartoons such as C.B. Bears. On Wacky Races Butler was a few of the racers. On Laff-a-Lympics, Butler was virtually the entire "Yogi Yahooey" team.
Butler based many of his voices on popular celebrities of the day. Yogi Bear was essentially Art Carney (Butler had done a similar voice in several of Robert McKimson's films at Warner Bros). Huckleberry Hound was inspired by Andy Griffith, Hokey Wolf by Phil Silvers, and Snagglepuss by Bert Lahr.
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 the year of his death was released The Good, the Bad, and Huckleberry Hound, a tour-de-force featuring most of his classic early characters.
Daws Butler died in 1988 at the age of 71. Many of his roles were picked up by Greg Burson , who had personally studied with Butler for years.
For further information
- 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.
- Daws Butler, Characters Actor by Ben Ohmart & Joe Bevilacqua is the authorized biography of Daws Butler
- Joe Bevilacqua hosts a radio series on XM Satellite Radio's Sonic Theater Channel (163) called What the Butler wrote: Scenes from the Daws Butler Workshop, which features rare scripts of Daws performed by his students, including Nancy Cartwright (the voice of Bart Simpson), and rare recordings of Daws himself.
External links
Last updated: 05-07-2005 06:25:31
Last updated: 05-13-2005 07:56:04
