[Groop]William Hanna

[Mark Evanier]

On Thu, 22 Mar 2001 18:16:53 -0800, "Gary Grossmann"
<grossfam@olywa.net> wrote:

>Woody Woodpecker was created by Walter Lance, a contemporary of Disney who
>died a while back at the age of 93.   btw, Azamin, according to something I
>heard or read years ago, the original voice of WW was Lance's wife, who won
>the part on a blind audition after initially being turned down when she
>asked her husband directly.  I'm sure Mark knows if this is true or not.
>
> I imagine Mark will write something about William Hanna in the CBG.  For
>those of you who don't know, Mark writes really great columns that appear
>each week in the CBG.  They cover a wide range of topics, usually related to
>comics, are typically humorous, always insightful, and worth the price of
>the magazine all by themselves.

ME: The man's name was Walter Lantz.  The story about his wife
auditioning that way is a bit suspect.  Lantz and his wife -- who went
by the name Grace Stafford -- always insisted it happened that way.
But, like a lot of animation folks, Mr. Lantz was not above telling
colorful anecdotes that didn't quite match the reality.  For instance,
he used to claim that he created Woody when he was on his honeymoon
and the rapping of a woodpecker on the cabin's roof kept him and his
wife awake all night.  A funny story...but Woody was created two years
before that honeymoon.

In the same way, Mel Blanc used to tell how he got the idea to have
Porky Pig stutter because he studied some real pigs and their grunts
sounded to him like a stutter.  Again, it's a nice story...but Mel was
not the first voice of Porky.  He got the job after they hired the
first voice, who was an actual stutterer, and who was picked because
Porky was created, long before Mel was in Hollywood, to have a
stutter.  (Mel, by the way, was the first voice of Woody Woodpecker.
Grace Stafford was the fourth or fifth, but did it for the rest of her
life.)

I haven't decided yet what, if anything, I'm going to write about Bill
Hanna.  Although his death was not unexpected, it kind of caught a lot
of us off-guard.



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