Butler was born on November 16, 1916, in Toledo, Ohio, the only child of Charles Allen Butler (1890-1972) and Ruth Butler (1899-1960). The family later moved from Ohio to Oak Park, Illinois, where Butler became interested in impersonating people.[4][5]
In 1935, Butler began performing as an impressionist, entering multiple amateur contests and winning most of them—not with the intention of showing his talent, but as a personal challenge to overcome his shyness. He subsequently won professional engagements at vaudeville theaters.[5]
He then teamed up with fellow performers Jack Lavin and Willard Ovitz, forming the comedy trio The Three Short Waves. They played in theaters, on radio, and in nightclubs, with positive reviews from regional critics and audiences. They dissolved the act in 1941 when Butler joined the U.S. Navy as America entered World War II. He subsequently met his wife-to-be Myrtis at a wartime function near Washington, D.C.[6]
Beginning with The Three Little Pups, Butler provided the voice for a nameless wolf that spoke in a Southern accent and whistled all the time (the tune was Henry C. Work's "Kingdom Coming"). The character also appeared in Sheep Wrecked, Billy Boy, and many other cartoons. At MGM, Avery wanted Butler to take on the voice of Droopy, at a time when Bill Thompson was unavailable due to radio engagements. Butler did a few lines, then recommended Don Messick, another actor and Butler's lifelong friend, who was better at imitating Thompson. Messick voiced Droopy in several shorts.[5][7]
In 1949, Butler landed a role in a televised puppet show created by former Warner Bros. Cartoons animation director Bob Clampett called Time for Beany. He was teamed with Stan Freberg, with whom he did all the puppets' voices: Butler voiced Beany Boy and Captain Huffenpuff, and Freberg voiced Cecil and Dishonest John. An entire stable of recurring characters were also 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.[8]
In 1952, Butler starred in the live-action short Nice Try, Virgil.[9]
He briefly turned his attention to writing and voicing TV commercials. In the 1950s, Freberg asked him to help him write comedy skits for his Capitol Records albums. Their first collaboration, "St. George and the Dragonet" (based on Dragnet), was the first comedy record to sell over a million copies. Freberg was more of a satirist who did song parodies, but the bulk of his dialogue routines were co-written by and co-starred Butler.[10]
Butler teamed again with Freberg and actress June Foray in a CBS radio series, The Stan Freberg Show, which ran from July to October 1957 as a summer replacement for Jack Benny's program. Freberg's box set, Tip of the Freberg (Rhino Entertainment, 1999), chronicles every aspect of Freberg's career except the cartoon voice-over work, and showcases his career with Butler. In Mr. Magoo, the UPA theatrical animated short series for Columbia Pictures, Butler played Magoo's nephew Waldo (also voiced by Jerry Hausner at various times).[10] In Freberg's "Green Chri$tma$" in 1958, a scathing indictment of the over-commercialization of the holiday, Butler soberly hoped instead that we'd remember "whose birthday we're celebrating".
Butler provided the voices of many nameless Walter Lantz Productions' characters for theatrical shorts later seen on the Woody Woodpecker program. His characters included the penguin Chilly Willy and his best friend Smedley, a Southern-speaking dog (the same voice used for Tex Avery's laid-back wolf character and for Hanna-Barbera's Huckleberry Hound).[8]
Butler voiced most of these characters for decades, in both TV shows and in some commercials. The breakfast cereal mascot Cap'n Crunch became an icon of sorts on Saturday morning TV through many commercials produced by Jay Ward. Butler played Cap'n from the 1960s to the 1980s. He based the voice on that of character actor Charles Butterworth. In 1961, while Mel Blanc was recovering from a road accident, Daws Butler substituted for him to voice Barney Rubble in five episodes of The Flintstones (The Hit Songwriter, Droop-Along Flintstone, Fred Flintstone Woos Again, The Rock Quarry Story, The Little White Lie). Butler had previously voiced the characters of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble in the 90 second pilot for the series (when it was called The Flagstones).
In Wacky Races, Butler provided the voices for a number of the racers, Rock Slag, Big Gruesome, the Red Max, Sgt. Blast, Peter Perfect, and Rufus Ruffcut. He voiced a penguin and a turtle in the movie Mary Poppins, his only known work for Disney. Along with Stan Freberg, Paul Frees and June Foray, Butler also provided voices for children's records featuring recreations of several successful Disney cartoons and films.
Butler based some of his voices on popular celebrities of the day. Yogi Bear began as an Art Carney impression; Butler had done a similar voice in several of Robert McKimson's films at Warner Brothers, and on Stan Freberg's comedy record "The Honey-Earthers". However, he soon changed Yogi's voice, making it much deeper and more sing-songy.
Hokey Wolf began as an impression of Phil Silvers, and Snagglepuss as Bert Lahr. When Snagglepuss began appearing in commercials for Kellogg'sCocoa Krispies in 1961, Lahr threatened to sue Butler for "stealing" his voice. As part of the settlement, the disclaimer "Snagglepuss voice by Daws Butler" was required to appear on each commercial, making him the only voice actor ever to receive credit in an animated TV commercial. Huckleberry Hound was inspired by a North Carolina neighbor of Butler's wife's family; he previously used the voice for Tex Avery's laid-back wolf and Walter Lantz's Smedley.
Later life
In the 1970s, Butler was the voice of "Hair Bear" on Help!... It's the Hair Bear Bunch! and a few characters in minor cartoons such as C.B. Bears. On Laff-a-Lympics, he was virtually the entire "Yogi Yahooey" team. He also played the title character in The Funky Phantom, and Louie and Pug on The Pink Panther Show. In 1977, he guest-starred as Captain Numo and his lackey Schultz on the What's New, Mr. Magoo? episode "Secret Agent Magoo".
Daws met and married Myrtis Martin in 1943 while he was in the United States Navy during World War II.[15][16] They had four sons, David, Don, Paul and Charles, and remained married until his death in 1988.[17]
Bevilacqua also wrote Butler's official biography, published by Bear Manor Media.[22] A new book of cartoon scripts written by Butler and Joe Bevilacqua, Uncle Dunkle and Donnie: Fractured Fables, was scheduled for publication in the fall of 2009. A four-volume, 4½-hour audio set of Uncle Dunkle and Donnie was to be simultaneously released, with Bevilacqua performing all 97 characters in 35 stories. Butler also trained Hal Rayle, who ultimately determined that his best-known character of Doyle Cleverlobe from Galaxy High School should sound like "Elroy Jetson after he finished puberty".[23]
In popular culture
The video Daws Butler: Voice Magician is a 1987 documentary of Butler's career, from his pre-MGM days through his teaming with Freberg in 1949 and teaming with Don Messick in 1957. It was originally seen as a PBS pledge-drive special.
Former Butler protégé Joe Bevilacqua hosted a radio series on XM Satellite Radio's Sonic Theater Channel called The Comedy-O-Rama Hour. It had a regular segment, What the Butler Wrote: Scenes from the Daws Butler Workshop, with rare scripts of Butler's performed by his students (including Nancy Cartwright) and rare recordings of Butler himself. Bevilacqua has also co-authored (with Ben Ohmart) the authorized biography book Daws Butler, Characters Actor, and edited the book Scenes for Actors and Voices written by Butler, both published by Bear Manor Media.
Butler was a contestant on Groucho Marx's quiz show You Bet Your Life in 1960. The studio audience did not recognize him until he began speaking like Huckleberry Hound. He and his partner Marie Gómez split the top prize of $10,000.[24]
In 1985, Butler was interviewed about his career on Dr. Demento's radio show.
^"Daws Butler (visual voices guide)". Behind The Voice Actors. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of a title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its opening and/or closing credits and/or other reliable sources of information.