The Strange Day When Bugs Bunny Saved the Life of Mel Blanc
Open Culture | May 6th, 2013 | Kate Rix

Radio Lab, broadcast over WNYC, recently aired a piece about Blanc …featuring an interview with his son Noel Blanc, who is also a voice actor. Noel Blanc tells the story of a terrible car accident that badly injured his father in 1961 as he was driving home along Sunset Boulevard from a job in San Francisco. Mel Blanc, driving an Aston Martin, collided with another car on Dead Man’s Curve. Blanc was almost killed and slipped into a coma. Blanc’s son and wife spent two weeks at his bedside trying to revive him, but got no response.

One day, about 14 days after the accident, one of Blanc’s neurologists walked into the room and tried something completely new. He went to Mel’s bed and asked, “Bugs Bunny, how are you doing today?”

There was a pause while people in the room just shook their heads. Then, in a weak voice, came the response anyone would recognize.

“Myeeeeh. What’s up doc?”

The doctor then asked Tweety if he was there too.

“I tot I taw a puddy tat,” was the reply.

It took seven more months in a body cast for Blanc to recover. He even voiced Barney Rubble in the first episodes of The Flintstones while lying in bed with a microphone dangling from above…