Do You Know Me?
My good buddy Mark Evanier posts a different video clip every day on his always entertaining blog, News From Me. Today’s clip is voice-actor extraordinaire Mel Blanc’s American Express commercial. Go there and read what Mark has written, watch the commercial, then come back here for another little bit of trivia about it. I’ll wait for you.
You’re back? Good. Here’s the rest of the story. They originally wanted this commercial to be both Mel Blanc and Daws Butler together on an airplane. Between the two of them, they’ve done the voices for more major characters than the whole rest of the industry put together. But Daws turned them down. Some of his students (Daws used to run a voice workshop), myself included, tried to talk Daws into doing the commercial. It was one day’s work. He still refused. He said there was too much sitting around on film sets and he just didn’t want to do it. Plus, he would have had to fly to another city to shoot it. The producers of Barney Miller, one of Daws’ favorite shows, also wanted him to do a part and he turned them down, too. And that one was shot right here in Hollywood. It’s too bad. Daws was such a great actor, it’s too bad he didn’t get some of the recognition that Mel got by being on shows like Jack Benny and doing the AMEX commercial.
Daws Butler’s reaction to appearing on camera.