Inspirational History: A Thousand Voices

On the night of January 24, 1961, a man was driving his Aston Martin on Sunset Blvd. As he rounded a turn ominously known as "Dead Man’s Curve," an 18-year-old college student driving in the opposite direction lost control of his vehicle and slammed head-on into the sports car. The aluminum bodied Aston Martin was crushed so badly it took first responders at least half an hour to extract the 52-year-old sports car driver from the wreckage. He was in bad shape, concussed, and unconscious.

His name was Mel Blanc.

If you are not familiar with Mel Blanc’s name, you are almost certainly familiar with one (or more) of the nearly 1,500 voices he provided to characters like Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Tweety, Barney Rubble, Cosmo Spacely, and Woody Woodpecker.

One paramedic identified Mel Blanc from an autographed photo of him dressed as a rabbit. The paramedic exclaimed: “It’s Bugs Bunny!” Then, EMTs rushed Mr. Blanc to nearby UCLA Medical Center. At the hospital, doctors wrapped him in a full-body cast. He fell into a coma. Mel Blanc’s medical team gave him a one in a thousand chance for survival. The Honolulu Herald even prematurely published his obituary the next day!

For weeks — two or three, depending on the source — the man of a thousand voices remained comatose. His alertness did not improve through any of the usual treatment. On a whim, Dr. Louis Conway, the neurologist treating Mr. Blanc, tried something new. The doctor asked the performer: “How are you feeling today, Bugs Bunny?”

In character, a now barely conscious Mr. Blanc responded immediately: “Eh, just fine, doc. How’re you?”

At that moment, the legendary voice actor began to recover. He even setup recording equipment around his bed and performed voiceover work — apparently including an episode of The Flintstones where Barney Rubble also found himself in a full-body cast — while healing from his many fractured bones.

Mel Blanc made a remarkable recovery. He continued to give voice to a multitude of characters for nearly three more decades until his death in 1989.

Obviously, every traumatic brain injury is unique. Still, it’s hard to ignore some of the parallels between Mel Blanc’s near-fatal crash in 1961 and Suzy’s crash in 2023: the head-on collision with an out-of-control vehicle, the trip to UCLA Medical Center, the litany of broken bones, the many weeks in a coma, and — with hard work and some good luck — hopefully, a remarkable recovery for Suzy too.