Arthur Q. Bryan
Encyclopedia
Arthur Quirk Bryan was a United States comedian
Comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...

 and voice actor, remembered best for his longtime recurring role as well-spoken, wisecracking Dr. Gamble on the radio comedy Fibber McGee & Molly and for creating the voice of the Warner Brothers cartoon character Elmer Fudd
Elmer Fudd
Elmer J. Fudd/Egghead is a fictional cartoon character and one of the most famous Looney Tunes characters, and the de facto archenemy of Bugs Bunny. He has one of the more disputed origins in the Warner Bros. cartoon pantheon . His aim is to hunt Bugs, but he usually ends up seriously injuring...

.

Early career and Looney Tunes

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Bryan grew up with a deep desire to go into show business, stumbling through the industry for several years before finding steady if unsatisfying work as a bit player and occasional film narrator in Hollywood.

Bryan came to prominence in his late 30s as the voice of Egghead and Elmer Fudd
Elmer Fudd
Elmer J. Fudd/Egghead is a fictional cartoon character and one of the most famous Looney Tunes characters, and the de facto archenemy of Bugs Bunny. He has one of the more disputed origins in the Warner Bros. cartoon pantheon . His aim is to hunt Bugs, but he usually ends up seriously injuring...

 at Warner Brothers animation unit, headed by Leon Schlesinger
Leon Schlesinger
Leon Schlesinger was an American film producer, most noted for founding Leon Schlesinger Productions, which later became the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio, during the golden age of Hollywood animation.-Early life and career:...

.

Along with several characters, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, or Porky Pig, all voiced by Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...

, one of Warner's early big stars was Bryan's Elmer Fudd. The slow-talking, slower-witted, enunciation-challenged Mr. Fudd is a game hunter whose Brooklynesque speech (courtesy of Bryan's own childhood upbringing in the borough) was exaggerated for memorable effect by his habitual substitution of W for the letters L and R, an effect further immortalized by the tongue-in-cheek screen credits of the 1941 Bugs Bunny short Wabbit Twouble
Wabbit Twouble
Wabbit Twouble is a Merrie Melodies cartoon starring Bugs Bunny, produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions and released on December 20, 1941 by Warner Bros. Pictures...

.

When watching him perform, director Bob Clampett
Bob Clampett
Robert Emerson "Bob" Clampett was an American animator, producer, director, and puppeteer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes animated series from Warner Bros., and the television shows Time for Beany and Beany and Cecil...

 (or "Wobert Cwampett" in the screen credit) thought Bryan's girth added to the hilarity of his dialogue, and redesigned Fudd as a fat man patterned after Bryan's real-life appearance. After a few shorts, Clampett decided it was a mistake, and Fudd returned to his classical form. But fat or slimmed, Bryan's Fudd was so popular that the character's shorts were used to create and develop the character of Bugs Bunny, with the first official Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is a animated character created in 1938 at Leon Schlesinger Productions, later Warner Bros. Cartoons. Bugs is an anthropomorphic gray rabbit and is famous for his flippant, insouciant personality and his portrayal as a trickster. He has primarily appeared in animated cartoons, most...

 appearance coming in the Fudd cartoon, A Wild Hare
A Wild Hare
A Wild Hare is a 1940 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies animated short film. It was produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, directed by Tex Avery, and written by Rich Hogan. It was originally released on July 27, 1940...

.

Bryan's name does not appear in Looney Tunes credits because of Mel Blanc's contract with Warner Brothers, which stipulated that only Blanc would receive on-screen credit for voice work.

Radio

Bryan's work in animation did not go unnoticed by radio producers. Although his first forays into that medium were inevitably accompanied by instructions that he use the Fudd voice, Bryan soon came to the attention of Don Quinn and Phil Leslie
Phil Leslie
Phil L. Leslie was an American comedy writer. His first career, since he was good at math, was keeping books for a local bank in St...

, the production and writing team responsible for Fibber McGee and Molly
Fibber McGee and Molly
Fibber McGee and Molly was an American radio comedy series which maintained its popularity over decades. It premiered on NBC in 1935 and continued until its demise in 1959, long after radio had ceased to be the dominant form of entertainment in American popular culture.-Husband and wife in real...

and their supporting characters, two of whom spun off into their own radio hits, The Great Gildersleeve
The Great Gildersleeve
The Great Gildersleeve , initially written by Leonard Lewis Levinson, was one of broadcast history's earliest spin-off programs. Built around Throckmorton Philharmonic Gildersleeve, a character who had been a staple on the classic radio situation comedy Fibber McGee and Molly, first Introduced to...

and Beulah.

The Gildersleeve character, played by Harold Peary
Harold Peary
Harold Peary was an American actor, comedian and singer in radio, film, television and animation remembered best as Throckmorton P...

, became series broadcasting's first successful spin-off hit; that plus the onset of World War II (which cost Fibber McGee & Molly their Mayor LaTrivia, when Gale Gordon
Gale Gordon
Gale Gordon was an American character actor perhaps best remembered as Lucille Ball's longtime television foil—and particularly as cantankerously combustible, tightfisted bank executive Theodore J. Mooney, on Ball's second television situation comedy, The Lucy Show...

 went into the Coast Guard in early 1942, and "The Old Timer" Bill Thompson
Bill Thompson (voice actor)
Bill Thompson was an American radio actor and voice actor whose career stretched from the 1930s until his death.-Early career:...

 was drafted almost a year later) nabbed nearly every other remaining male voice.

Bryan was first hired for the new Great Gildersleeve series, to play the part of one of Gildersleeve's cronies, Floyd Munson, the barber. His work on the series (in Bryan's natural voice) so impressed the Quinn and Leslie, that Bryan was added to the cast of their main show, Fibber McGee and Molly, in 1943.

On Fibber, Bryan found himself in the unusual position of being smarter than, more educated than, and generally superior to his foil, titular braggart McGee. Playing Doc Gamble, Bryan was a polar opposite of the Fudd character—Gamble was well-spoken, even-tempered, and usually got the best of McGee, which Elmer could never do with Bugs.

Films

Bryan never earned a big break in film in spite of his vocal success; his film work remained largely uncredited cameos, usually employing the Fudd persona, or minor supporting roles in B-movies (like the apoplectic newspaper editor in the Bela Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...

 thriller The Devil Bat
The Devil Bat
The Devil Bat is a black-and-white comedy-horror movie which was produced by Producers Releasing Corporation and directed by Jean Yarbrough...

). He did work steadily, appearing in dozens of films over the years, in such successful releases as Samson and Delilah
Samson and Delilah (1949 film)
Samson and Delilah is a 1949 film made by Paramount Pictures , produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr as the title characters...

; two Bob Hope
Bob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...

/Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....

 "Road" films, Road to Singapore
Road to Singapore
Road to Singapore is a 1940 Paramount Pictures film starring Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour, and Bob Hope, which marked the debut of the long-running and popular "Road to …" series of pictures spotlighting the trio.-Plot:...

and Road to Rio
Road to Rio
Road to Rio is a 1947 comedy film, directed by Norman Z. McLeod and starring Bing Crosby as Scat Sweeney, Bob Hope as "Hot Lips" Barton, and Dorothy Lamour as Lucia Maria de Andrade. It was the fifth of the "Road to …" series.-Plot:...

; and the Ozzie and Harriet feature Here Come the Nelsons. He also appeared frequently in live-action short-subjects for Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

 and Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...

, including leading roles in the "Grouch Club" comedies and supporting roles in the Joe McDoakes
Joe McDoakes
Joe McDoakes is the protagonist of a series of 63 black and white live action comedy one reel short subjects released between 1942 and 1956. The Joe McDoakes shorts are also known as the Behind the Eight Ball series or the So You Want... series...

 series.

Bryan continued as the Fibber show's secondary male lead, even after Thompson and (for a time) Gordon returned to the show, and he stayed as Dr. Gamble all the way through its final incarnation on the NBC Monitor series in 1959, as well as playing Floyd on "Gildersleeve" through its conclusion in 1954. Bryan's final original work as Fudd came in the Warner Bros. Edward R. Murrow
Edward R. Murrow
Edward Roscoe Murrow, KBE was an American broadcast journalist. He first came to prominence with a series of radio news broadcasts during World War II, which were followed by millions of listeners in the United States and Canada.Fellow journalists Eric Sevareid, Ed Bliss, and Alexander Kendrick...

 spoof Person To Bunny
Person To Bunny
Person to Bunny is a 1959 Merrie Melodies Bugs Bunny cartoon released on April 2, 1960. It stars Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Elmer Fudd. The cartoon is posthumous because Arthur Q. Bryan died before the release of the cartoon.- Plot :...

.

Television

Bryan was a panelist on the early TV quiz show Quizzing the News
Quizzing the News
Quizzing the News was an American game show which aired on ABC from August 16, 1948 to March 5, 1949 at 8:00 PM on Monday nights. Alan Prescott hosted the show, which featured Arthur Q. Bryan, Milton Caniff, Mary Hunter and Ray Joseph as the panelists...

(1948–49). He also landed a minor television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 role in 1955, as the handyman
Handyman
A handyman is a person skilled at a wide range of repairs, typically around the home. These tasks include trade skills, repair work, maintenance work, both interior and exterior, and are sometimes described as "odd jobs", "fix-up tasks", and include light plumbing jobs such as fixing a leaky toilet...

 Mr. Boggs in the short-lived CBS sitcom, Professional Father
Professional Father
Professional Father is a 1955 CBS situation comedy television series starring Stephen Dunne as Dr. Tom Wilson, a child psychologist successful with his patients but less than effective with his own family...

, starring Stephen Dunne as a child psychologist and family man.

Death

Bryan died of a sudden heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...

 on November 18, 1959. Hal Smith
Hal Smith (actor)
Harold John "Hal" Smith was an American character actor and voice actor. Smith is best known as Otis Campbell, the town drunk on The Andy Griffith Show, and was the voice of many characters on various animated cartoon shorts...

 assumed the voice of Elmer Fudd in later Looney Tunes productions, and beginning in the early 1970s Mel Blanc
Mel Blanc
Melvin Jerome "Mel" Blanc was an American voice actor and comedian. Although he began his nearly six-decade-long career performing in radio commercials, Blanc is best remembered for his work with Warner Bros...

 would do him for various special television appearances. Bryan is buried in Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery
Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery
Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery is located at 10621 Victory Boulevard in North Hollywood, California.The cemetery has a special section called the Portal of the Folded Wings Shrine to Aviation that is the final resting place for a number of aviation pioneers — barnstormers, daredevils and...

.

Legacy

The DVD specials for some cartoons such as What's Opera, Doc?
What's Opera, Doc?
What's Opera, Doc? is a 1957 American animated cartoon short in the Merrie Melodies series, directed by Chuck Jones for Warner Bros. Cartoons. The Michael Maltese story features Elmer Fudd chasing Bugs Bunny through a parody of 19th century classical composer Richard Wagner's operas, particularly...

, in Looney Tunes Golden Collection
Looney Tunes Golden Collection
The Looney Tunes Golden Collection was an annual series of six four-disc DVD box sets from Warner Bros.' home video unit Warner Home Video, each containing about 60 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts...

, includes bits of conversation between Bryan and Mel Blanc, affording a rare opportunity to hear them working together, and to hear Bryan's natural voice. Bryan's natural voice is also heard as the ultra-tired hotel guest in A Pest in the House
A Pest in the House
A Pest in the House is a 1947 animated short film directed by Chuck Jones starring the characters of Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd. The title is an appropriate play on "a guest in the house." Voices are performed by Mel Blanc...

, in which Bryan "talks to himself", Elmer Fudd being the hotel manager.

External links

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