But The Characters Live On

What do you do when you produce cartoons with iconic characters and the voice actors who created their sound die? You find some of the very talented people on this panel that took place last month at the Television Academy. It was moderated by my friend Mark Evanier, who knowns something about that business because he worked at Hanna-Barbera in the 1980s and has been the writer/supervising-producer/voice-director for "The Garfield Show" for many years.

The panelists are: Bob Bergen, the modern-day voice of Porky Pig; Dee Baker (Daffy Duck and others); Jeff Bergman (Fred Flintsone, Bugs Bunny, and more); and Grey Griffin (Daphne in the "Scooby Doo" cartoon, and more). They're joined by Andrea Romano, casting/voice director for Warner Brothers television; Matt Craig and Gary Hartle, producers of the Cartoon Network series "Wabbit"; and Mallory Lewis, who carries on the work of her mother Shari and her famous puppet, Lambchop (unlike the other voice actors, who do their work unseen by the public, Mallory is actually a ventriloquist, and it's fun to see her interacting with her right hand like this).

You'll not only see them talking about their profession, but doing many of their voices, as well, as Mark works them through a couple of scripts...