On January 24, 1961, Blanc was involved in a near-fatal car accident. He was driving alone when his sports car collided head-on with a car driven by 18-year-old college student Arthur Rolston on Sunset Boulevard. Rolston suffered minor injuries, but Blanc was rushed to the UCLA Medical Center with a triple skull fracture that left him in a coma for two weeks, along with sustaining fractures to both legs and the pelvis.
About two weeks after the accident, one of Blanc’s neurologists tried a different approach. Blanc was asked:
“How are you feeling today, Bugs Bunny?”
After a slight pause, Blanc answered, in a weak voice, “Eh… just fine, Doc. How are you?”The doctor then asked Tweety if he was there, too.
“I tot I taw a puddy tat,” was the reply.
Blanc returned home on March 17. Four days later, Blanc filed a US $500,000 lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles. His accident, one of 26 in the preceding two years at the intersection known as Dead Man’s Curve, resulted in the city funding the restructuring of curves at the location.
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Years later, Blanc revealed that during his recovery, his son Noel “ghosted” several Warner Bros. cartoons’ voice tracks for him. Warner Bros. had also asked Stan Freberg to provide the voice for Bugs Bunny, but Freberg declined, out of respect for Blanc. At the time of the accident, Blanc was also serving as the voice of Barney Rubble in The Flintstones. His absence from the show was relatively brief; Daws Butler provided the voice of Barney for a few episodes, after which the show’s producers set up recording equipment in Blanc’s hospital room and later at his home to allow him to work from there. Some of the recordings were made while he was in full-body cast as he lay flat on his back with the other Flintstones co-stars gathered around him. He also returned to The Jack Benny Program to film the program’s 1961 Christmas show, moving around by crutches and a wheelchair.
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Listen to this radio: Interview With Mel Blanc’s Son, Noel Blanc
Blanc began smoking cigarettes when he was 9 years old. He continued his pack-a-day habit until he was diagnosed with emphysema, which pushed him to quit at age 77. On May 19, 1989, Blanc was checked into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center by his family when they noticed he had a bad cough while shooting a commercial; he was originally expected to recover. Blanc’s health then took a turn for the worse and doctors found that he had advanced coronary artery disease. He died on July 10 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, at the age of 81. He is interred in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood. Blanc’s will stated his desire to have the inscription on his gravestone read, “THAT’S ALL FOLKS” (the phrase was a trademark of Blanc’s character Porky Pig).
(Sources: RadioLab & Wikipedia)
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