The best recording sessions usually are the ones in which all the actors are in the same room performing together as if it were a radio play. All of Jay Ward's cartoons, such as Rocky and Bullwinkle, were done this way. Mark Evanier, who wrote and voice-directed Garfield, also works this way. I remember sitting in on many recording sessions of The Jetsons, when Daws Butler, Penny Singleton, Mel Blanc, Howard Morris, and the whole cast sat in a circle and worked off each other. They encouraged, prodded, and provoked one another into great performances.

Phil Proctor remembers that, "When I did The Smurfs at Hanna-Barbera, it was so much fun. I went into my first session there, with Daws Butler, Alan Young, Paul Winchell, and Jack Riley; Gordon Hunt was directing. They would say, `Oh, Phil does a wonderful English accent. Let's create a part for him.' And they would massage parts for you. It was wonderful, like the old movie studio days. It was like being part of a repertory company."

June Foray.

Changing Trends
One of the current trends in the American animation industry is to cast major movie stars to voice animated characters. From Robin Williams in Aladdin, Tom Hanks in Toy Story, even Woody Allen in the upcoming DreamWorks feature Ants, these stars not only demand huge salaries, they take work away from the core group of voice actors.

"A lot had changed since I was last in it," Lee Harris states. "The casting of celebrities promotes the cartoon to adults more than it does kids. A kid watching a cartoon isn't going to jump up and down and say, `Oh boy! It's Danny Devito doing the voice!' I read a quote from a casting person at one of the big companies that said that the days of the Mel Blancs and the Daws Butlers are gone, and that they cast well-known celebrities because they want `real' actors as if Mel and Daws were not `real' actors, which of course they were."

"The greatest actor I ever knew was Daws Butler," insists Greg Burson.

"They gravitate towards celebrities," said Corey Burton, "so that they have actors who have already developed a persona they can draw from to fill out the character, whereas a multi-voiced person is waiting for their idea to produce the particular voice. So they get somebody like Don Rickles coming in to Toy Story, and say, `OK, Don, you're Mr. Potatohead,' and they are able to use his personality. Plus, they see it as a big marketing plus. That way they get little bits on Entertainment Tonight and other `behind the scenes' TV shows. That's not bad, but it's just insulting when they completely ignore the regular voice people."

Phil Proctor talks about the difficulties of keeping up with the ever-changing business: "I've been doing it for about 25 years now, and I have gone through all the different kinds of fads of what is `in' and what is `out'. It's rather difficult sometimes when you just have found a niche for yourself, and then they say they don't want that anymore."

Lee Harris states that, "My goal is to have an original character on a TV series. Our generation of TV babies are making the decisions in casting, writing and directing, and we seem to have a large case of nostalgia. I'd like to be known for an original character that people would remember. I've never lost sight of that, even though everything else in the industry has changed. The way that Daws used to describe things for animation or commercials, with somebody just picking up the phone and saying, `Hey Daws, hey Frees, hey June Foray, come over, we're doin' a cartoon.' I don't expect things to be like that again, but the `celebrity curse', combined with 'playing it safe' with just very few established voice actors--those are the battles to be fought and we just have to keep fighting."