Ted Bonnitt: Welcome to Phil and Ted's sexy Boomer Show. I'm Ted Bonnitt. My trusty co-host, Phil Proctor is still out and about, but we'll both be back next week. Today we have a really fascinating and fun show. If any of you who are Loony Tunes fans, bugs Bunny. Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck. Our guest today is Noel Blanc, son of Mel Blanc, who did all the voices for the Looming Tunes.

Noel's going to share some stories about his life with his dad, many stories you probably have never heard before, and Noel himself has had a remarkable life and he's gonna share some stories about his friendships with Kirk Douglas, Michael Jackson, Hugh Hefner, and some of the exploits and people he's worked with.

Over all these years, the Sexy Boomer Show is heard every Tuesday here on K P F K, and you can always hear replays in our other shows on our website. Sexy boomer show.com. Hi Noel.

Noel Blanc: Hi Ted. Gee, thank you very much for the interview. Would you like to go to lunch now? Not so fast. Well, this is a treat. We've been friends for a long time.

Yeah. Over 25, 30 years.

Ted Bonnitt: We got to know each other in the neighborhood, but we both did radio. We were in the same business.

Noel Blanc: Yeah. Television and radio commercials. And I started long before you. I, yes. In 1959. Oh my gosh.

Ted Bonnitt: You're a child of Hollywood. In the true sense of the word. Your childhood was even fascinating to me.

Noel Blanc: Oh, very fascinating. Because basically we lived in Play Del Ray and play El Ray was the closest thing that you came to the Second World War. Now that sounds strange, isn't it?

Ted Bonnitt: If anyone has ever flown into LAX Los Angeles airport, they fly into play Del la. Yeah. And when you take off from lax, you fly over play at la.

Noel Blanc: That's right. Before you hit the ocean, you see these strange, abandoned concrete streets with no structures on it.

That's right. My house used to be on that street. The reason those houses aren't there anymore, the runway was moved another thousand yards out. And, um, they needed the, uh, area to be clear about any homes because you weren't quite high enough over the houses to, uh, stop the vibration that was going down to the homes there.

But we were all there during the second World War. That's a strange place to be because Plato Ray was probably close to where they expected the Japanese submarines to hit. We had mines field, which was the Air Force base right in back of us, literally a half a mile. Was that lax? That's turned into lax, but at the time it was a Army Air Force During the bombing of Pearl Harbor, 1941, we would get alerts every night.

That there was probably a Japanese submarine in the area, which they never ever discovered by the way. They had 20 millimeter and 50 caliber machine gun shells going out into the water. They had aha guns, 50 millimeter cannons being shot into the air, and they had barrage balloons that looked very much like the Goodyear Blimp.

With big cables attached to make sure the Japanese aircraft wouldn't fly low and try to bomb water and power structure of all Los Angeles is right there and still is. Standard oil was right there. Three aircraft building areas, and if the strategic targets were taken out, all of Los Angeles was gone. County.

Ted Bonnitt: So if there was a front line in North America during World War it was Playa del Rey.

Noel Blanc: Yeah. People didn't understand that. They said, well, there were other places on the coast not like this. What was life like during the war? Living on the beach there? Well, it was very exciting for a young person, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years old, watching the military troops go up the streets, literally every night, having to turn off all the lights inside the house.

I had a little place in the linen closet where I could sit and read or play with my toys, whatever it might be. And then as I got a little older, I got to sit with the adults during the time that my dad went out as an air raid warden. And, uh, my mom used to have a little red wagon that she'd take, uh, beans and chili up to the soldiers that were up the street, maybe two or three platoons per night up the street with search lights.

Ted Bonnitt: There's one incident that happened on the beach there during the war that became a part of folklore, and that was the Battle of Los Angeles, which has been popularized over the years as a potential U F O sighting that triggered anti-aircraft fire.

Noel Blanc: And while was there that night, two days after Pearl Harbor.

Ted Bonnitt: Suddenly you hear guns go off.

Noel Blanc: Yeah, ack ack guns, we'd call 'em as kids and I don't know if the adults had referred to them the same way, but uh, they were firing at unknown aircraft in the area of Playa del Rey of course, between Playa del Rey and El Segundo.

Ted Bonnitt: Now, there's a famous picture that I think published in the LA Times, or one of the major papers at the time of this moment when all this anti-aircraft fire is flying into the, into the sky at what looks like an object. But these were just a convergence of spotlights trying to illuminate what it was shooting.

Noel Blanc: We had search lights on every hill here. Air Force was part of the army, was running the search lights at that time, so they were ready for an attack by the Japanese, and we knew that Pearl Harbor exacerbated everything right then and there.

One, one short stop. And that was the end of it of, uh, 1941. December 7th, is it? Yeah. Yeah. 1941. And after that, we all became very aware of what could happen to our coast.

Ted Bonnitt: So there was this hair trigger if you, oh, forgive me.

Noel Blanc: That's right, doc.

Ted Bonnitt: Uh, and so when this object was spotted, and this is the very early days of radar.

And so this house somehow got amplified as the only time that A U F O, because people leap to the notion that it was some sort of alien craft that we all fired at.

Noel Blanc: Well, no, they thought it was a Japanese craft at the time.

Ted Bonnitt: At the time, but it has since been been popularized as an alien craft. I actually did a little digging into the story. What it appears to have been was because they were testing radar, one of the tests they did was launch a balloon with like a bag of. Coins, huh? Because they didn't have the budget and the money to put aircraft up there to test the uh, radar. So they would launch bags of literally metal coins by balloon, weather balloon, and then bounce radar signals off of that to see if they could find it and see it.

That was part of the testing of the technology, and that these bags of coins would reflect, of course, on the radar as an object, a solid object, and that was what? Fort MacArthur. I spoke to people there and that's what their interpretation was. No, it was just radar. It was early radar signatures, but it was unknown and they were firing at basically bags of coins.

Noel Blanc: Boy, that is weird. I'll tell you why. Cuz that's the first time anybody ever told me that. But as a kid we used to find a lot of quarters and things on the ground. That's it. Very interesting, huh? We could never understand who dropped these quarters, and we thought it was a fellow by the name of Teo McCoy, who, because he was selling real estate and used to give out dollar bills that were crisp to all the children in the area as he drove by and give a card that said, Teo McCoy, I sell houses.

And I thought that he was doing the same thing with the kids with the quarters. No, I think, well, who knows? It certainly wasn't Japanese aircraft.

Ted Bonnitt: When you say your dad was an he raid warden, it's very interesting to note that your dad is Mel Blanc Bugs Bunny. Did he, uh, ever have, uh, an urge to throw a voice while Oh yes.

Noel Blanc: The troops used to love him coming up, uh, with his hair raid, war, hair raid, warden, uh, helmet on, and uh, you know, do voices, do Porky? Do. Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig were very important at that time because in every theater there, there was a, before the cartoon, bugs Porky and Elmer FUD sang any bonds today, and that was on every theater.

50 million people a week were in the theaters. No television, just radio. And 50 million people a week saw Bugs Porky and, and Elmer sing any bonds today and. The Bugs Bunny became the most popular cartoon character within a year after having 50 million people in the United States see him every week.

Ted Bonnitt: It was World War II that launched bugs into the big time,

Noel Blanc: very big time because you saw it on nose art on the airplanes. You saw it in on Battle ships, decals or paintings of the Warner Brothers characters. Bugs was dressed up as Uncle Sam, so he was the American public.

Ted Bonnitt: You're gifted with the same voice quality of your dad?

Noel Blanc: Well far from it. Let me tell you. His larynx, his vocal chords, everything about him was big, big, chest size, 44, chest, small waist.

He had a lot of air inside those lungs. He could shout Yosemite. Sam could shout and keep shouting. The vocal chords were so strong that they never failed him, and then he'd go right into T Tweety maybe. Wow. And he became those characters. You could watch him and he actually transmogrified into those kind of characters or each one.

You could look at him. He was Yosemite Sam when he was doing him. And Bugs. And Porky. And Daffy, he was all those characters. If you could turn the sound off, which I used to do in the sound booth and see his face, and you knew which character he did by, the stance of his stature even was very revealing.

Ted Bonnitt: Wow. Your name Noel Blanc

Noel Blanc: White Christmas. My dad was a big fan of Noel Coward. And Blanc was his real name. It was originally with a K. B L A N K, but his teacher in the second grade said, Mel, you're nothing but a total Blank and you'll be all your life. He said, boy, I better change that to a C. So I was named white Christmas in France.

When they ask for a name and I tell him, white Christmas, of course I get a lot of laughs

Ted Bonnitt: and ask to come into the passport office. Before we leave Playa Del Ray, when you were growing up there and your dad was beloved then he still is Beloved. He's probably one of the most popular Hollywood characters ever. He just, yeah, everybody loves your dad. He used to have ice cream socials. On Sundays,

Noel Blanc: ping pong and ice cream, ping pong and ice cream, open house to friends George Burns, Jack Benny, Jack Carson at that time. Yeah, they'd all come over and uh, play ping pong.

Ted Bonnitt: You also split your time as a child in Big Bear Lake, just outside of Los Angeles.

Noel Blanc: My folks used to love to go up to Big Bear to Fish. They were both fisher people, my mom and dad and my, uh, dad used to love to fish, and we spent most of the summer there. We built the cabin there, which is exactly the same as it was back then, which

Ted Bonnitt: you still spend most of your time up there.

Noel Blanc: And this is the same furniture that Jack Benny and George Burns and Lu Ball, they all sat around up there.

Ted Bonnitt: When they came up, your dad seemed to have this effect on them to just make life simple and easy and pleasant.

Noel Blanc: My mom and he were that kind of people. You love to be around him and he could tell a story, he'd talk long story jokes that kids, you know, Hey Mel, do this. He was basically a very quiet guy until somebody would ask him to perform.

Then he came out of it. To perform and then he'd be quiet again. I remember he and Johnny Carson, when they'd go to any cocktail party, they were friends and they'd sit in the corner because Johnny didn't like to really talk with a drink, drink in his hand and talk to people. My dad never did that. Neither did my mom.

Ted Bonnitt: As you grew older, you did go to ucla. Tell me the Marilyn Monroe story,

Noel Blanc: Just getting into UCLA At that time I was about, uh, 17 and uh, I went to, uh, the Jack Benny show with my dad because Marilyn Monroe, uh, told Jack Benny that she would love to be on the show. And Jack had just happened to come over for dinner to our house the night before and says, you know, I'm gonna have dinner with Marilyn Monroe.

So he, I told you, Dad, I says, can you take me to the show? You know, I'd like to just see her. So, uh, he took me over, I sat in the audience and he says, come on backstage when we're through. So when the show was over, I walked up the stage, got in the back. Just as I was walking toward the end of the back of the stage, Marilyn Monroe rushes out, throws her arms around me and says, oh, Noel, I've been wanting to meet you for so long.

Jack Benny put her up to that cuz she knew that. I thought Marilyn Monroe was the. Living in. Yeah.

Ted Bonnitt: And you're 17.

Noel Blanc: And I'm 17. Oh my God. But Benny was like that. He'd do crazy little jokes on people like that. And they were all harmless and very well done.

Ted Bonnitt: Seems like Jack Benny was almost an uncle figure to you.

Noel Blanc: Yeah. Yeah, he was. He was one of my dad's closest friends too. Benny was funny all the time and not with jokes or anything, just his expressions. I'm sure he was attracted to your dad's personality and Oh yeah, and they were both violinists got along wonderful and he admired my dad's driving. They did a couple of shows a year in Palm Springs, so when they had to go to Palm Springs, Jack would only drive with my dad and mom and myself to Palm Springs and back.

Ted Bonnitt: These are days before private jets and, and limousines. It was a much simpler time, wasn't it?

Noel Blanc: Yes.

Ted Bonnitt: He needed like anyone to relax a little bit. Once in a while Big Bear was a retreat for him from the hustle and bustle, but it. Didn't work out that way.

Noel Blanc: No, no, that's very true. A hundred fishermen actually would come out every morning on Big Bear Lake, maybe more the outboard Motors at that time, a lot of 'em were single cycle hot board motors.

Yeah. And the racket about five 30 in the morning would start right outside of the bedroom window, which was the cove right there. And the cove just, that was the same one that he cut all the fish in and they, they knew this cove was pretty good. Jack Benny was up one of the weekends and dad says, I'm gonna stay up and write a song about Big Bear Lake.

He says, cuz I've been thinking of one in the boats that are putting, et cetera, et cetera. So he wrote the song, big Bear Lake and in the Morning and he got on his into the piano. I could play the chords of it and he says, what do you think? I says, gee, it sounds fantastic. Play it for Benny. So he played it for Benny, and Benny says, That's amazing.

I like that song. And Benny loved Big Bear Lake and he says, why don't I get this Sportsman Quartet? And you know the guys at Capital Records cuz you're making all those kids records for them. We'll put the song on the air and on record. So Capitol made a record of it. Benny's put it on the air, became a hit, and big beer got the best of it because all of a sudden you got a lot of new people up with Big Bear.

And it was all because of the little boats in the morning.

(Complete song, “Big Bear Lake”)

Ted Bonnitt: That's the hit song, Big Bear Lake by Lovable Looney Tune, Mel Blanc. Our guest today is Mel's son and my dear friend, Noel Blanc. You're listening to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer show on K P F K Los Angeles. I'm Ted Bonnitt. Phil Proctor will be back next week and you can hear all our episodes as podcasts at our website, sexy boomer show.com.

Because of your dad's celebrity. His fan base essentially was everyone, probably one of the widest fan bases of any personality in Hollywood. Not only was he a cartoon character, but he does all these voices on all these radio shows that were number one or number two. Some of them in the country, he was ubiquitous.

Noel Blanc: That's it. Maybe that was because he didn't have over-exposure issues, because it wasn't really about his face or his facial. Nobody knew what he looked like. So he could do a hundred different people. I mean, he was on television with the Jack Benny show. Yeah, but still he played different characters.

Ted Bonnitt: He wasn't in the spotlight any one time long enough to burn out.

Noel Blanc: That's right. And the characters never burn out as seen. Now they're just as popular cuz they're not, they don't have an age. Bugs Bunny still, bugs Bunny.

Ted Bonnitt: He had all kinds of fans. One day the two of you were home in Big Bear and the phone rang.

Noel Blanc: Oh yes. So I said, dad, I'll catch the phone. We have landlines, of course at that time. He says, hello, is this Mel? I says, no. He says, this is Elvis Presley. Is Mel there? And I said, oh, yes, Elvis. Here's, here's my dad. I winked to my dentist. This one says he's Elvis Presley. Because people used to call up and say, Hey, that I'm Jimmy Stewart, or whoever it might be that they were Gabby Hayes, whatever it might be, that they were imitating friends did this, or Oh, just odd people would call and do it.

They could mimic the different voices. And he's Elvis Presley and dad goes, he puts his hand to his head. He goes, oh no. Hello Elvis. Hello, Mel. Yeah. Hey, I'm doing a picture up here. It's called Country Cousins and, uh, uh, I'd like to come down, see you. I'm up here at Cedar Lake where the movies where a lot of 'em were made up there.

And uh, he says, I can come down about 10 minutes. I'm driving a black Cadillac convertible. Are you gonna be around? Yeah, I'll be here, Elvis, I'll be seeing ya. Okay. He hangs up. My dad says that's Elvis is gonna be here in 10 minutes. So we're laughing at, so we walk up the hill of the driveway to the street and we're waiting on the street and all of a sudden a black Cadillac comes down the street.

One guy in it driving it, and it's Elvis Presley. He turns in, he gets outta the car, grabs mail, hug, gives him a big hug. He's so, I just love the character so much. Mel, do Bugs. Do Porky. Do Daffy! He said, come on in the house, Elvis. Okay. He comes in the house and he's looking out this big window, in a little teeny cabin with a big window that's over the looks over the lake, and there's the boat down there and it says, Bugs Bunny.

He says, that's your boat, right? I'm like, yes, it is. He says, let's go for a ride. Well, movie stars always want to drive the boat. It's really funny. So Elvis, can I drive it? Mel says, yeah, but see those buoys out there? You gotta stay five miles an hour until you get out there. So Elvis gets into the boat.

The boat's facing outward. We get into the boat and out of the slip, he's going forward. So it goes straight out of the slip. At about 20, 25, 30 miles an hour, we're on the lake cruising toward the dam. And along comes a much faster boat by the side of us and it says yellow jacket on it. And I knew that Roy Rogers had a boat called or was named Yellow Jacket, or that was the brand name of the boat.

And he's up by the side of us and he's looking over and looking over and he realizes it's Elvis Presley driving the boat. So Roy Rogers signals us to slow down and stop, and we all do. And it was wonderful because I don't think he'd ever met Elvis before. And between my dad, Elvis and Roy, they told wonderful stories with each other.

And at that particular time, the number one cowboy in the United States was Roy Rogers. The number one singer in the United States was. Elvis Presley and the number one voice in cartoons or voice was heard more probably than anyone in the world maybe, than Elvis Presley was my dad, and they had all kinds of stories to tell, but by the time Elvis looked at his watch, he said, oh, nuts.

And now I gotta get going. I gotta get outta here. Elvis left the building and took off, and that was it. Wow. And your dad with all his fame at Warner, the studio system was really a contract situation. He was getting $45 a week to start with, to do Bugs Bunny and all the characters. And then he finally, they upped him to $60 a week to do all the characters and all the cartoons.

Mm-hmm. And then he says, uh uh, you won't give me a raise. No. Can you put my name on the bottom of the credits, voice characterizations by Mel Blanc. And they said, okay. So whenever they saw Bugs money or, or Porky Pig or whatever, Davi speeding Gonzalez, there were a lot of cartoons made. About 55 a year. It had Mel Voice characterizations Mel Blanc.

And because of that, and everybody was going to the theater at that time, they saw his name on the credits in the movies and they called him up for the radio shows. They knew he could do all these voices. Ah, Brilliant. If see one man is doing all those voices, I'll just use 'em as a character. On my radio show,

Ted Bonnitt: they were doing more than one loony tune cartoon a week.

Noel Blanc: Yeah. Wow. Took 'em nine months to do it. How many people, oh. 300. All hand drawn. All hand drawn. Wow. Big studio. Yeah.

Ted Bonnitt: And your dad was doing all the voices. Yeah, but it didn't take him very long to do the voice. You could do 14 characters when he had to do 'em, and that would take him to about an hour. But your dad was working like almost a paid employee.

Noel Blanc: At that time, oh, he was just a paid employee not making much. If it weren't for Capital Records, he wouldn't be making anything at that time. Wow. Because he was number one seller at Capital Records during the time of Sinatra and Nat King Cole. They were just beginnings times. He was selling more records than they were, uh, with bugs money, uh, and, and friends albums.

This was in the uh, forties. He did about a hundred records, really sold 14 million copies of records. They were storybook records. Bugs goes to the fair and they'd open the book, the large book, the size of a 78 record. At that time, about the size of a 33, it looked like you'd read along. To the, the, the voices doing the story cuz there was no television.

Recording: What’s up Jack? Say Wait a minute, Owen, you a w me. A rabbit. A rabbit. Oh Doc, you slay me. Say, I'll tell you what I'll do though. I'll help you look for a rabbit. Come on, duck

to tole hunting. We will go. My name is Daffy Duck. People say I'm loony. I'm like an yellow. A little out of Tony.

Well, we have to turn back to camp now.

That's all folks.

Ted Bonnitt: There was an experience here in Hollywood about your dad. He had a terrible car accident on Dead Man's Curve.

Noel Blanc: Incidentally, Jan and Dean's dead man's curve is about that curve. There's a stretch off Sunset Boulevard and the reason it's Dead Man's curve. 23 deaths. 23 deaths. It's a winding segment of the road.

It's crowned road to get the water off of it. People that go on it go too fast and roll off the crown.

Ted Bonnitt: Unfortunately, your dad was going to work.

Noel Blanc: He had a gig at uh, seven o'clock in town in the evening. Evening.

Ted Bonnitt: What was he driving?

Noel Blanc: An Aston Martin, which was very light car, made out of aluminum, a beautiful car.

Ted Bonnitt: When was this? What year?

Noel Blanc: ’59. He’s going to work on Sunset Boulevard. He was not a fast driver, and he's in the right lane and all of a sudden an Oldsmobile big A 98 Oldsmobile, crosses the double divider and hits him head on. And the kid got a scratch on his knee because big car versus small car doesn't work very well.

And uh, my dad was taking the UCLA hospital and they didn't give him much of a chance at all. Lost a lot of blood, had a head injury and he was in a coma for about 12 days and he. Broke a lot of bones. Oh my gosh. Oh, if name a bone. He didn't break. He's in a body cast by this time all the way up to his neck, all the way out to this, both legs.

And they're on a bar so that the both legs are spread about 10 degrees, 20 degrees opposite each other with a bar and a body cast up to almost to his neck. And everybody was trying to a ruse him, Jack Benny. Oh yeah. And he got so many phone calls. My God. All over the country. Yeah. The Hawaiian newspaper actually had headlines. Bugs Bunny died.

Ted Bonnitt: But from your perspective inside trying to wake your dad up,

Noel Blanc: Nothing helped. And we kept the television on inside the icu. It was near his bed and he could look at it, but of course he was in a coma. The Looney tunes were on while my dad was in this coma most of the time. And the doctor comes in about the 12th day or so, and he sees.

Bugs Bunny and everything up and he gets an idea. He goes over to him cuz we've been trying to, my dad says, Mel, can you hear me? I said, dad, can you hear me? He goes over to him and says, bugs, can you hear me? Bugs Bunny, can you hear me? And my dad, I. Blinks his eyes and goes, me.

I swear to God, that happened and I was in the room, so it was my mom. And then he said, Porky, can you hear me? And my dad did Porky Bug. Twitty Daffy. And he did all the characters coming out of the coma. It was amazing that that happened. From then on, he was out of the coma and he looked at my mom and said, weren't we supposed to be somewhere?

She said, Mel, look where you're at. And he looks down and he sees where he is at and his body cast and everything. He says, weren't we supposed to be in Hawaii? Yeah. They were planning a trip to Hawaii, so his memory, everything, his brain was working 100%. He just came out of it and said, Hey, where am I? Hey, what?

Where we supposed to be somewhere? What an amazing moment. Amazing moment. Yeah. It was as if Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes saved his life. Yeah. Amazing. Fantastic. But it was a long recovery. Oh, the body cast stayed on for four months maybe. Oh my God. And uh, yeah, he was, he did the first 65 Flintstones from that body cast with a cast around him.

Ted Bonnitt: Mel played Barney.

Noel Blanc: Barney. Yeah. Bea Benaderet played Betty. He did the dinosaurs too, didn't he? Do you know the dinosaur and odd voices? So obviously your dad recovered. I walked with a cane. It's basically the same injury that I had in the helicopter. And if you were to take the x-rays almost exactly 30 years later, and we were 30 years apart in age, but at the same age, 52, and I was 52, 30 years later when, uh, this plane hit my helicopter.

Uh, the helicopter accident with Kirk Douglas and myself knocked us to the ground. They didn't expect me to live, but I think if you would've taken our x-rays and looked at them, my x-rays and Mel's x-rays would've been pretty close. Wow. I broke more ribs. I broke almost all my ribs, so we were both 1,001 chance of living at the same age with basically the same injuries.

Ted Bonnitt: That's a coincidence you wouldn't wish for.

Noel Blanc: No. My God.

Ted Bonnitt: Before we leave the Mel conversation, any personal reflections?

Noel Blanc: As a son, my dad always loved working with me and I loved working with my dad. We did for 35 years.

Ted Bonnitt: You went into business with your dad?

Noel Blanc: It was called Mel Blanc Associates at that time. Yeah, 1960.

Ted Bonnitt: What was the business that you started with your dad?

Noel Blanc: It was radio commercials, comedy radio commercials, much like Freberg. There were very few people doing comedy commercials at that time.

Ted Bonnitt: In the course of doing this business, you had to find new voice talent. And you gave Robin Williams his first radio job.

Noel Blanc: I caught him at the improv and he was wonderful. Just crazy. We were doing some commercials for Las Vegas Convention Authority and I said, I saw a guy, a comedy store, and I think he does an interesting little voice, which later became Mork of Mindy and many, this is an interesting like little space voice, uh, that he could do with my dad doing.

Marvin the Martian kind of a thing that, so the commercials were kind of cute and I didn't know where to get Robin Williams, so I heard that he was in San Diego, and I guess they called the comedy club and found out his number, and I called him, I said, Robin, would you like to work with Mel Blanc? He said, oh my God, uh, really?

You would love to work with Mel? I says, well then come on up. Thursday at 10 o'clock, and this was the week before he says, I got my own Volkswagen van, or whatever it was that he had down there. He says, I'll be up there at 10 o'clock. We were recording outta my house at that time. Dad came over to the house and I get a call at about 11 o'clock and I said, Robin, you're.

An hour late what's happened? He says, oh, my van blew up on the freeway and I had to get it towed and everything. I finally got to a telephone. I says, well grab a cab and come on up. So he came up and it, he was terrific. It took him about an hour to settle down before I had to tell him that you have to go in front of the microphone, Robin.

You can't go all over the stage cuz the mic doesn't follow you. You gotta sit in front of the microphone and do the commercials. And he did. Whenever I would see Robert E always thanked us for doing the commercials.

Ted Bonnitt: Now, this Las Vegas client you had, you were there for the heyday of Las Vegas. Really? In fact, we opened Caesars Palace with all the commercials we did to for the opening Caesars Palace in 1966.

Noel Blanc: Did a lot of hotels. This was back in the day when the wise guys ran the town, right? Oh yeah. It was a lot of fun. What was Vegas like? It was making a lot of money and charging very little for the rooms. You could get a beautiful room for 11, $12. Yeah. The Vegas buffets and for a buck 25, buck 40, you could get a lobster and prime rib and whatever you wanted.

Ted Bonnitt: It was all gambling revenue that supported it.

Noel Blanc: Sure.

Ted Bonnitt: I'm trying to draw a picture of what. Las Vegas was like back in that day. It was obviously mob controlled. It was before,

Noel Blanc: Before traffic,

Ted Bonnitt: Before traffic, and it was before high cost of rooms or food. Vegas must have been just a cash cow. Oh yes. What a great client.

Noel Blanc: Yeah. Unbelievable. It was great.

Ted Bonnitt: But not without ups and downs, like every creative venture. The idea for the military leave,

Noel Blanc: Oh, when we were doing the Caesars Palaces commercials, it was kind of funny because they said, we're gonna have an opening party pretty soon. I says, well, before you have the opening party, the Vietnam Wars on right now.

And wouldn't it be wonderful if we could open the hotel up? Took all the vets that had just come back from the Vietnam, whether they can make it or not, they can bring their families over to Caesars Palace and get a free couple of days here. And it would be tremendous publicity for the hotel itself. The food would be free.

Right? And the gambling wouldn't be free. Right. So they decided to have the military over and they, they took my judgment on that, which was really the wrong thing because they tore the place apart. Uh, Nosharium, which was their coffee shop, never looked the same. After they finished, they had to close the hotel down for a couple of days to redo what the vets did at that time.

Thought I was gonna get killed because I suggested that one. But that's a true story.

Ted Bonnitt: You were worried you were gonna get your own plot of land about 12 miles out of town.

Noel Blanc: That was it.

Ted Bonnitt: You did an anti-smoking spot. You did a lot of Anti-smoking spots in 1964. Everybody smoked. Oh yeah.

Noel Blanc: We were all smoking while we were doing them. So everybody's smoking while they're doing these anti-smoking commercials. We decided to do comedy commercials, so we lined up, these are radio commercials lined up. Jack Benny with George Burns, Lucille Ball with Edward G. Robinson. I lined up Phyllis Diller with Liberace.

I knew they were both gonna be at NBC Studios and that's why we lined them up for this date. So I go into, uh, Liberace's dressing room. And Phyllis Stiller comes in, I know I'm Phyllis. I'm the old Blanc, et cetera. I'm Liberace. Hi. I love your piano, whatever. And so we're sitting there and talking over the script, and all of a sudden, a baby elephant comes in the front door of his dressing room.

Phyllis Diller. Oh, hi. Get that out, please come. You know, she, but Liberace jumps on the bed and he's going quick, get this out away. He's frightened as hell, and I'm fairly frightened too because the, the thing must weigh a couple of thousand pounds at least, I think was his Hollywood palace or whatever it was, was one of the acts on the stage.

And the elephant just decided to make a, a quick left turn in the dressing room.

Ted Bonnitt: You did some famous radio campaigns. You did Seven up.

Noel Blanc: Oh gosh. Avis Ford, Chevy, Pontiac Chrysler, Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, America's Most Misunderstood soft Drink.

Ted Bonnitt: That was yours.

Noel Blanc: Yeah. Uh, Chrysler Plymouth. Coming through Ford in your future.

Yeah, we were, there were a lot of 'em that our groups put together.

Ted Bonnitt: Vincent Price,

Noel Blanc: well we did 500 radio shows together. It was called Odyssey.

Ted Bonnitt: You worked with everybody.

Noel Blanc: Oh, the writers, sure. From Mash, Laugh-in, yeah. John Rappaport, who later wrote MASH and produced it, and many of the writers from Laugh-in.

Ted Bonnitt: This afforded you a nice life in Hollywood.

Noel Blanc: Yeah, it wasn't a giant money maker because we did a lot of charity services like the American Cancer Society, things like that.

Ted Bonnitt: You lived in Beverly Hills.

Noel Blanc: I bought my house from Bobby Darron, the singer, Bobby Darron, on the corner of Rodeo Drive. He says, well, I'm asking 300,000.

What can you afford? I said, well, I could probably Ford about 150,000. This is 7 0 2 North Rodeo. What year was this? 1968 and Bobby, Darren had just redone the house to get Sandra D back because he wanted Sandra D to come back to him. They had separated, so he redid the house just exactly the way Sandra D wanted it.

She didn't come back, so he wanted to sell it. He had just learned that he was also going to die within two years because of a heart. Problem.

Ted Bonnitt: Oh my God.

Noel Blanc: Had rheumatic heart failure, so we sold everything for nothing. That's why he said, take it. Wow. Yeah, he just, he and I hit it off really well together.

Built studio, worked out of the house for 25 years, 30 years.

Ted Bonnitt: Nice.

Noel Blanc: I never drove. I took a bicycle in and out of the town or walked.

Ted Bonnitt: That's how you met Kirk Douglas.

Noel Blanc: Yeah. He lived two blocks away and his son came over for Halloween. In 1968 and he said, I'm Eric Douglas. I'm my Kirk Douglass's son. They live two blocks over on Canada.

He said, you gotta come over and see the house. I says, oh, that sounds nice Eric. You, you have to invite me and tell your dad then, and I'll come. He says, yeah, come over for a movie. Cuz they had a big projection room. So he says, I think we're having a movie next week. I says, boy, I'd love to, I'd love to meet your dad.

And uh, I went over that week and, uh, Met his dad and we just hit it off. For some reason, Eric would spend a lot of time at my house and later other son. Peter spent a lot of time at my house and during the business. Joel, his other son, Michael, was doing his own thing. Joel worked for me for a while, couple years, and Kirk and I became very close.

He was my closest friend for 25 years.

Ted Bonnitt: What prompted you to become a helicopter pilot?

Noel Blanc: Kirk and I had to go to, uh, Palm Springs once. I was gonna stay at his house with he and his wife, and I says, I got an idea. I got a friend that has a helicopter company and he said he would fly us down there to show us his helicopter and to see what it's all about.

So Kirk said, that sounds like a great idea. And so he gave us the helicopter for the day. To go down there with his driver. I just loved the feeling of a helicopter. I got to ride in the front seat on the way down there, and, uh, I says, I gotta learn how to fly one of these. And I loved it. It's, it's amazing.

You're a bird. When you're in a helicopter. You become a bird. You can stop, you can go, you can travel over the water at five feet above the water.

Ted Bonnitt: You had this terrible accident with Kirk Douglas.

Noel Blanc: Yeah, we had the helicopter accident when the plane ran into us. And what happened? We're on the pad and the guy that's teaching his student is a, one of the best trick flyers, aerial specialist number one in the world.

Yeah. And obviously he was turned back and looking at, talking to the student who's piloting it from the back, he wasn't on the radio. And I'm watching that plane facing east to see if there's any other planes landing. And then as I turn to take off and I'm on the radio and I'm telling him what I'm gonna do, and he comes down the runway and takes my rotor off, he and his student die instantly and we fall to the ground.

If it was six inches lower, we would all die instantly.

Ted Bonnitt: Oh my God. How far did you fall?

Noel Blanc: About 50 feet.

Ted Bonnitt: How hurt was Kirk?

Noel Blanc: Uh, he had hurt his back. Uh, he was in the hospital for a day. That's it. Yeah.

Ted Bonnitt: God, Kirk Douglas was invincible. Unbelievable. He lived a hundred, almost 104, and, uh, with a stroke and two replaced knees At 90.

Noel Blanc: He did a, he did a theater show at 90 years old, at the Kirk Douglas Theater, which was, he had aphasia from the stroke and he did this show wonderfully. Did four performances. Um, no. He was amazing.

Ted Bonnitt: And he was a big real estate investor.

Noel Blanc: I never knew that we were the closest of friends, but at his hundredth birthday, I'm sitting next to a fellow who's very well dressed.

He looks about 90, 95 years old. And I said, did you produce some of the movies for with Kirk? No, no. We were in real estate together. He says, yeah, we were the early investors in the marina. We built those two buildings here and these apartment buildings there. He never told anybody, and I thought I knew all those secrets, but I didn't know this.

I know that he built an enormous amount of playgrounds both here and in Israel. In Los Angeles County, built over 400 playgrounds and Israel built another. 200, 300. He also put the wing in at the actor's, uh, old folks home or whatever they call that. Yeah, yeah. So he built a whole building there. He built a theater in Culver City, the Kirk Douglas Theater.

Most of the money that he had made after he passed away went to charity. So he was one of the biggest charity people I'd ever. Wow. He kept that quiet.

Ted Bonnitt: You were good friends with Hugh Hefner. He had a medical emergency and you took him to a hospital and landed on a rooftop.

Noel Blanc: That was an interesting day. His doctor Mark Ser, which was an old friend of mine, it's a way I met, uh, f actually. The doctor said, uh, can you fly Hef? I said, sure. So I pick up Hef and his girlfriend at that time and fly him to the Huntington Hartford, uh, medical Center.

Ted Bonnitt: The reason he had to go by helicopter was because Hefner had a stroke.

Noel Blanc: He goes down the escalator, whatever it was, from the roof, and I'm sitting in the helicopter. It's a nice day, very clear, and I look out to the north and I see a black cloud in the area, and I'm saying, well, that black cloud, it's very low. That just makes no sense at all, like a black mass, and it's slowly moving and getting bigger and coming toward me.

And I'm, what is this now? I had heard about the, the killer bee problem. Mm-hmm. So as it's getting closer and closer and closer, I'm saying, oh my gosh, this can be bees. So I close all, everything on the helicopter, Vince, the whole works. And within a minute I'm covered with bees. The entire helicopter. They stop on the helicopter.

They thought it was some giant bee I guess, but it's so dark inside cuz they covered all the, and I've got a big cabin in that helicopter, plus side windows for the rear seats and they covered virtually the whole helicopter. Now I can't start the helicopter cuz it's gonna get, Into the engine, so I'm gonna have to wait it out until the queen leaves.

Evidently a queen planted herself on the helicopter cuz they're following the queen. So I'm there 15, 20 minutes now with a bees surrounding me, I'm starting to sweat like crazy. Finally, the female leaves the queen and they all depart instantly and the cloud moves further south. He comes up and he says, how you doing?

I says, fine. Hef, jump on in. We're heading back to the mansion.

Ted Bonnitt: You used to go over to the, the Mansion every Sunday.

Noel Blanc: He was really nice. I could go anytime I wanted to day or night. Mm-hmm. If I wanted to spend the night there, fine. I never did, but I was luckily one of the very few people that could come there day or night.

Ted Bonnitt: What was,

Noel Blanc: It wasn't what you think it is. Especially then, and Kimberly and I are still, we still talking to each other all the time. She and Kat, my wife, are close friends.

Ted Bonnitt: That's how you met your wife, Kat?

Noel Blanc: Yeah. Through Kimberly. It was a, uh, wonderful place to go at any time for me. Mm-hmm. I never saw one drug being pedaled or sell, sold or used there.

So either they kept it totally away from me, which I think they didn't. I think what. What we uh, hear about the mansion is totally BS. I didn't see any drug being used. I saw certain people smoking marijuana sometimes. That was the only drug I saw. Yeah, but that was even far and few between.

Ted Bonnitt: We're talking about the eighties, right?

Noel Blanc: Yeah. By either way, if there were any drugs there, he would kick the person off. If he knew that there was drugs being used there, they were gone. No chan, no second chance. There were so many wonderful people that I met. He didn't go for the people that weren't really solid good people.

Ted Bonnitt: Maybe there was debauchery at times and perhaps earlier.

Noel Blanc: Yeah, I just didn't see it. Those were the times. Yeah.

Ted Bonnitt: But by the time you were there in the eighties,

Noel Blanc: N Noel Blanc: o. And then he met Kimberly and the kids. They called me Uncle Noel, the two kids. I brought my mom up there for, uh, three or four Thanksgiving dinners. Uh, she sat at the table with Hef. We had movies Fridays and Sundays.

Ted Bonnitt: What was your takeaway about Hefner?

He was brilliant, lovable, honest, caring. I was dating somebody that I met up there and we separated. I felt terrible that we separated, and Hef was the kind of person he put his arm around you and say, well, I know you feel bad, but don't worry about it. It's gonna be okay.

You'll meet the right person someday. He was just like a dad to everybody is a whole different kind of a guy. And the movie time, he would talk about the movie before it started. And then he'd sit there eating popcorn and it was, it was like a family basic

Ted Bonnitt: sounds also innocent. The rep didn't really,…

Noel Blanc: Oh, everybody was, sex was all over the place. I never saw any fornication or any drugs being used at that time. Hmm. Which is kind of interesting. Yeah. And I was in the jacuzzi a lot, but to go But to be in the jacuzzi with people, yeah, fine. Yeah. But I didn't see anything happening during that time.

Ted Bonnitt: Another good friend. Was Michael Jackson.

Noel Blanc: Michael Jackson was an interesting ride. His plastic surgeon before he got looking crazy, when he looked really good, his plastic surgeon was a friend of mine and he says, I'm going up to a visit to Michael. Can we all fly up there and we land at the airport right near his house? I said, sure. We so. We did and we had a wonderful time. The second time I flew was even more amazing cuz after he found out I was Mel Blanc's son, I land at the airport and there's a limousine waiting to pick me up and I get in the limousine and it's all television sets up back where the windows are supposed to be, their television sets, and they're all playing cartoons.

Looney Tunes cartoons said, oh my God, this is something special. Wow. So then we get to near the house and here's a big carriage with a footman. Two of these most beautiful. Uh, white stallions, giants, horses pulling this carriage, and the footman gets me into the carriage and we drive up the driveway in the carriage to a circular driveway where the door is gonna open for me to get out.

And there's Michael Jackson standing there waving. Hi. That's the second time. Never land, never land by carriage. Wow. To the house.

Ted Bonnitt: It was a state visit.

Noel Blanc: Oh, sh.… Oh my gosh. Wow. Uh, we had a great time. We raided the kitchen first. We got some fried chicken, things like that. This cabin was just an amazing cabin.

The second floor was an incredible dance studio, and it. Turned on the, the recorder and threw me a baton. He says, you dance with that? And I put, he puts the hat on and we we're dancing around the floor. He says, follow me. He says, I'm not really a dancer. He says, follow me. He says, okay, can we now call your dad?

I says, sure. So I call my dad up and he says, I said, Michael Jackson's on the phone. He says, it mean that. Radio commentator on abc. I said, no, the other Michael Jackson. Oh, okay. So they talk, and then the third time I flew up there, he wanted to take a ride in the helicopter and learn more about it. So we took a ride in the helicopter.

He was amazing. He had a little chimpanzee. We had the greatest time. Chimpanzee puts its arms around my neck and we walk around. Rock around the place with the chimpanzee. Yeah, he was very open to me. I had met Michael before with Jermaine Jackson and his brother. I'm driving up a street in Westwood in a black Ferrari and BMW that pulls up to me and I see a guy leaning out and he says, hi, it's Michael Jackson.

I says Michael Jackson. That's how I met him. In the car like that

Ted Bonnitt: before the doctor connection?

Noel Blanc: Yeah. He says, yeah. So my brother with Jermaine and the other, other brother also, he says, we love your car, can we come see it? I said, okay, so you follow me. So we follow him over, gets outta the car and we talk.

And, and that's how I met Jermaine also. And Jermaine Jackson became a friend of mine. Fun stories.

Ted Bonnitt: You, you met these people. It was happenstance, which is how you got to know the Kardashians. Right. You went to school?

Noel Blanc: I went to school. Then this was, uh, fourth grade. There was no schools in my in played Ray area because there was no school. There was nothing there. My mom says, well, there's a military academy in Walden Hills. You think you'd like that? I said, I betcha I would if I could come home every day, just go to their school. And that's how I met Bob, Bob Kardashian, Sammy Kardashian, all the Kardashians. We were at this, uh, school.

And they were all day school people that lived in the Baldwin Hills area, which with school was, and that's how they became good friends.

Ted Bonnitt: And through that connection, you met O.J. Simpson.

Noel Blanc: O.J. was living with the Kardashians this time near Hollywood in the hills. When he was on trial, and Robert, who you call Bob Kardashian, was a lawyer for him.

I, Bob Shapiro was another close friend of mine, by the way, Bob Shapiro, the O.J. trial. Oh, that's a strange thing

Ted Bonnitt: To set this up a little bit if you go back, his wife, Nicole Simpson.

Noel Blanc: I met Nicole the day that O.J. did. So I had been friends of O.J. for a long time. We were sitting at the Daisy with Jack Hansen that owned the Daisy on Rodeo Drive, which was a wonderful place to have lunch, a little patio outside, and O.J. would come over and have lunch with us once in a while too, cuz I was there almost every day.

I just took my bicycle down to, uh, this little restaurant. So it was really, really a lot of fun. A lot of movie stars and recording artists and O.J. would come in, have, I'd sit with Jack and we'd have lunch, Jack Hansen, who owned it, and uh, Jack says, O.J., I got somebody you gotta meet. I just hired her from my store across the street.

Jack Hansen own a, a women's apparel store, also across the street and both buildings. He says, I'll call Nicole over so you can meet her, cuz she just started working here and she's 17 years old. Of course, O.J. says he met her when she was 18 or whatever. It came, but it wasn't, it was 17. But she was a young kid.

And come on over and meet O.J. Simpson. So she comes across the street and we all sit there and we have a Gaye all the time, and they get along terrifically. I can see O.J. really likes her and I can see that they like each other and that's great. Jack says, why don't we all go out to dinner? So that's fine for me.

So myself and a date, we sat in the back seat, O.J. and her and Jack sat in the front seat of the rolls that Jack had and we all went into Westwood, where the theater district was in Westwood Village to the Old world. That's the name of the in Westwood. And we had a great time. And Jack says, as we're driving back, why don't do that again?

So. It came out the second night. We went there too. The same place. He and no, and Nicole really get along famously at that time she was a great girl, and O.J. at that time seemed terrific also. And they, and we were so happy that they were loved each other and they fell in love and. I realized that through the years, you know, they were pretty much in love with each other all the time.

That's how I originally met O.J.. Now we're going forward to the time that after he killed her, I'm at a dinner at a person's house? Yeah. In Bel Air. His name is, uh, Lee Benowitz. We'd go up here for dinner often. We're up there for dinner with Howard Weitzman and Howard Weitzman has to leave to go to the airport earlier that day to meet O.J. who's coming in from Chicago.

After they discovered the deaths, if you remember, he took the flight back as soon as he could. He had cut his hands and all that. You see, he broke his glass in the laboratory there in Chicago in his room, and Howard Weitzman went out to meet him at the airport. His wife stayed at the place and we talk with him.

Where's what happened to Howard? Well, he had to leave early to pick up O.J. I said, oh, really? So Weitzman goes and picks him up. Uh, after we eat dinner and everything else, Weitzman's out there taking him home and Weitzman was a brilliant attorney at that time. Okay, flash forward to another hour. We were at a place, a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard and it, it had music, live music and everything, and all of a sudden his phone rings.

Bob Shapiro's phone rings. Now remember, Howard Weitzman had taken him to his house and we thought, that's gonna be the, the lawyer. And Bob says, he's talking and he goes, O.J.. O.J.s on the phone out of nowhere. We're at dinner at a different place that had just left Weitzman to go pick O.J. up at the airport and O.J.’s on the phone, and he's talking with him and says, yes, yeah, we can meet tomorrow.

O.J. Yeah. And he hangs up. He says, says O.J. Simpson. I says, wait a minute. I was just with Howard Weitzman in the afternoon who went to pick. O.J. before we came here. What do you mean he's calling you? He says, well, people have been known to change lawyers. I says, Wow. I've never Wow. Heard of that. But how fine a coincidence that is.

It only means something to me in Kat that we were at these incredible coincidences that happened with O.J. and the fact of knowing them from the beginning and having be there the day he met, these are all verified dates. Cuz you know, I keep a a, a page of what I do every day since 1958.

Ted Bonnitt: You have a journal?

Noel Blanc: I have a journal of it. I can tell you every move. Every day. Yeah. Every single day. You were witness to O.J. meeting Nicole the first time. You double dated with them Two nights. Nights in a row. That's right

Ted Bonnitt: When they met and then years later, because they're both friends. You're with one who's been retained as the lawyer.

Noel Blanc: Well see, he wasn't retained as the lawyer then. I got a feeling Howard thinks that he did it, so he doesn't want to take the case. Oh, okay. And that's when. He must have called Bob Shapiro, who was another very noted lawyer. I mean, that's very strange stuff.

Ted Bonnitt: Looking back now at a really well lived life, I think I've had a, a charm to life, even though I might've died, uh, during the crash.

Noel Blanc: It was so close. Um, aside from that, a perfectly wonderful life with a greatest wife. There's six months in Big Bear and six months in Santa Monica. I grew up here in Santa Monica and I met great people in this area such as yourself. Talk about really great storytellers. He's a great storyteller. I'm medium midway, mid wash, but he's a great storyteller.

Ted Bonnitt: Thanks. I'm still gonna do a very, very friendly edit. Don't worry! Well, Noel, thank you.

Noel Blanc: And as my dad would say, head of the E. The the E. That's all folks.

Ted Bonnitt: This is Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer show. Our guest today, Noel Blanc. Phil Proctor will be back next week, and we have a whole bunch of great shows lined up.

Thanks to our producer, Donna Walker, here at KPFK-FM. We're here every Tuesday at 1:00 PM and you can hear all of our shows on our website@sexyboomershow.com. I'm Ted Bonnitt. See you next week.