"And I'd go, 'Joe!'

"'You want to read for it? All right. Go ahead. This guy is 50 years-old and he's the villain.' And I'd read for it and he'd say, 'Welllll, pretty good, pretty good. Tell ya what; I'm gonna give it to Stephenson, but, that was really good.'

"The next time we'd read something, he'd say, 'This guy is 80 years-old, but Frank, you want to read for it?' He would ask you if you wanted to read. Then sometimes you'd get it.

"But it was so much fun. There was no fear, because we all knew we were going to take our best shot. The competition is reading right in front of you, but it doesn't matter. You're showing off for Joe, getting to read all these different characters. And you’d get rewarded by getting it every once in awhile.

"I'm identified quite a bit with doing the dogs and animals -- which is usually good for me because in almost every show there's some sort of animal. So at least I get in the show. Sometimes, if there's other characters I get to read those, too," he says.

Going On Instinct
Today, Welker notes that actors are often cast before they arrive at the sessions.

"Sometimes you'll audition and they've got you written down for the roles they expect from you, and that's the work part of it, you know," the actor says ruefully. "That's not quite as fun."

For Welker, preparing for an audition is, "a pretty quick process. The ideal situation is that the studio provides the actor with artwork. I look at the character and immediately, a voice comes to my mind.

"When somebody asks you something and you say the first thing that comes out, it's usually -- for you -- correct. It may not be what they want, and may not be what the studio wants, but as an artist or as a performer or as a human being, you look at something and you react. Initially, what you react to is usually what's the most comfortable and what you have the most latitude in.

"A lot of times, they'll cast you in a role, and the directors will direct you into a box. They'll say, 'Do a little of Paul Lynde. Now let's take that away and let's put in a little bit of Humphrey Bogart. Now, add that character you did four years ago in that show for me where you read the dog. O.K., now let's take this and take that --' and pretty soon, your tongue is tied behind your back, and you try to do the best you can. You don't have a lot of latitude with the character because it's not from your heart."

An exception would be Fall-Apart Rabbit, the stunt character Welker voiced in Bonkers.

"I really liked that character for Disney. It was really easy to do. It was from my heart. Ginny McSwain [the voice director] latched onto that; she let me go and have fun."

"But I would say, the best and easiest way to audition is to go strictly by instinct and be able to ad-lib a little bit, and not be tied totally to the script."

Welker then points to a bothersome flaw in the auditioning process, in that sometimes a director can give too much direction.

"The less direction you get on auditions, then you have your own initial instincts working for you. If you lose the job, then it's your own fault. Then you feel better than if you lose the job based on too much interpretation or input. When the director on the audition directs me the way he wants it, then, it's really their interpretation that's being judged. I could lose the job based on that audition because it's really their interpretation, not mine."

During recording sessions, Welker has to evaluate how close he has to stick to the scripts, and how much freedom he has to ad-lib, or embellish his character.

"In the early days, Joe Barbera hired me a lot -- not because he felt I was such a great voice guy -- but because he thought I was funny. He was really being perceptive in the people he hired, because my readings weren't quite as good as some of the polished guys. But I think he liked that I would bring him this weird stuff, and he liked that I would ad-lib," Welker says.

"Joe told us a story where he was directing Alan Reed, doing Fred Flintstone. In a recording session he ad-libbed, he said, 'Yabba-Dabba-Do!' And somebody said, 'No, that's not in the script.'

"Alan said [pensively], 'Oh, is it okay that I say that?'

"Joe said [enthusiastically], 'Gee, yeah. That's good. Go ahead and use it.' That's become one of the biggest, most identifiable phrases of all time. So Joe was perceptive about that."