Actors - Daws Butler

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	Actors - 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.

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. 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.

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
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.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Daws Butler ]

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Actors - Daws Butler

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