Thursday, December 19, 2013

You Know The Voice: Mel Blanc (1951)

After years of being a member of Jack Benny's radio (and later television) repertory company, you wondered if Mel Blanc would ever land a headlining gig of his own, away from the Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies that made him an icon.

Well, it never quite materialized on television. Instead, the closest Mel got was a 35 minute promotional film he made for Capitol Records in 1951. "Wanna Buy a Record?" casts Blanc as a generic record store owner who's trying to make ends meet, then ends up taking a customer (musician Billy May) to Capitol for a primer on how records are made, leading to cameos by Capitol artists (at the time) Les Paul & Mary Ford and Dean Martin.

"Wanna Buy a Record?" was never released to the public until now, as it was uploaded to YouTube by Allison Martino:

2 comments:

Unknown said...

what a great instructional film!

(via http://www.universalmusic.com)

hobbyfan said...

Mark, do they still use that today?