The Voice of Porky Pig Names His Three Favorite Classic Porky Shorts
For more than 50 years, Mel Blanc supplied the voices for nearly every Looney Tunes character. And so, when he passed away in 1989, it took a small army of voice actors to replace him. Among them was Bob Bergen, who had dreamed of playing Porky Pig since he was a child — he finally got the chance in 1990 on Tiny Toon Adventures. Since then, Bergen has voiced Porky countless times. Yet the classic Porky shorts still hold a special place in his heart. Here are his three favorites of all time…
‘Robin Hood Daffy’ (1958)
“I love the relationship between Porky and Daffy in Robin Hood Daffy,” Bergen explains. “Porky plays Friar Tuck, and he doesn’t believe that Daffy is Robin Hood — he’s like, ‘There’s no way this idiot is Robin Hood.’”
‘Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century’ (1953)
“Duck Dodgers is a great cartoon for the same reason Robin Hood Daffy is,” Bergen says. “Taking these classic characters and having them play different characters works so well. They never refer to ‘Porky as the Eager Young Space Cadet’ or ‘Daffy Duck as Duck Dodgers,’ they just happen to be Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. The best thing about it, though, is the comedy. As a kid, I remember laughing when Porky has the cake with the dynamite in it and he off-handedly says, ‘Happy b-b-b-birthday you thing from another world, you.’ As a five-year-old, I thought that was hysterical.”
‘Scaredy Cat’ (1948)
“I love how the different Looney Tunes directors took these characters — going from Chuck Jones to Friz Freleng to Bob McKimson — and found their own fingerprint while also keeping the integrity of the characters,” Bergen tells me. “I love that Sylvester, who was just an a-hole to Tweety, is terrified of ghosts when he’s with Porky. It’s a completely different side of him. The same for Porky — you get to see a different side of him in Scaredy Cat. When he’s with Daffy, he’s the smart one, but in Scaredy Cat, he’s completely oblivious to everything going on around him. These characters have real dimensions to them.”
