If you ever get the chance to listen to any of those old shows, when you hear Senator Claghorn, you’ll say, “Hey, that’s Foghorn Leghorn!”.īlanc addresses this in his autobiography, That’s Not All, Folks! Since I don’t own the book, I can’t quote directly from it, but I seem to remember him claiming that he didn’t consciously take the voice characterization from the Claghorn character, although he acknowledges that the two are similar. My 8 year old son also has this kind of trouble with the letter R.įoghorn Leghorn’s voice, and his character, was based on a character from the Fred Allen radio program named Senator Claghorn. But the character evolved into the one which we know and (quite possibly) love. Elmer-like characters appear in earlier WB cartoons minus the voice (he looks slightly different as well). I would assume that Bryant created this voice to fit the kind of overgrown child look and quality of Elmer Fudd, and the voice worked well enough to keep it. This apparently was not uncommon, as I have also heard Mel Blanc do a character called Sad Sack in war-era broadcasts, and the voice is nothing more nor less than Porky Pig. I have heard other radio broadcasts in which Bryant appears, and he uses the Fudd voice there as well, although he’s playing a different character. Bryant (not Mel Blanc, until the 50s, after Bryant’s death). If Mel Blanc is to be believed (and there’s no real reason why not), the artists came up with a drawing to fit a character, showed it to the voice talent and asked, “What would he sound like?” Then the voice talent would think about the characteristics (a loud, braggart rooster, f’rinstance) and come up with a booming southern accent for Foghorn Leghorn.Įlmer Fudd’s voice was originated and performed by Arthur Q. The audiences were comprised of adults, and some of the jokes in those cartoons are pretty sophisticated.Īlso, I don’t believe the writers came up with the voices. So they’d watch a Bugs Bunny cartoon featuring Elmer Fudd, then watch Casablanca or some such. Audiences would pay their admission and get a newsreel, a cartoon or two, maybe some kind of giveaway (especially during the Depression), perhaps a preview trailer, and then the feature (not in that order). The early cartoon shorts accompanied theatrical film releases. But IRL, the writers probably heard somebody speaking like that and thought it was funny or that it “connected” with the intended audience (young children) better.īut IRL, the writers probably heard somebody speaking like that and thought it was funny or that it “connected” with the intended audience (young children) better.Īhh, but the intended audience wasn’t young children. I suspect, if Elmer Fudd had a history of some sort, that it was a speech impediment from childhood that never really got cured. I have heard from many foreign speakers with English as a second language say that the English r is by far the hardest part of English pronunciation.īut some foreigners and most children who haven’t quite mastered the English r try to approximate it, and it usually ends up as a ‘w’ sound, being the closest phoneme in the English language (or the foreigner’s original language) to the r. Most foreign speakers of English will simply replace the English r with their native r, and vice versa, until the other language’s r is mastered. The French/Dutch r and the Italian/Russian r’s are quite different from the English r (and IMHO, more aesthetic). The English “r” is a most unique sound, especially among European languages. This type of speech impediment is common among young children and foreign speakers of English.
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