{"id":198458,"date":"2025-04-22T10:22:31","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T10:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/animation\/bluto-buster-and-the-blob\/"},"modified":"2025-04-22T10:22:31","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T10:22:31","slug":"bluto-buster-and-the-blob","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=198458","title":{"rendered":"\u201cBluto, Buster and the Blob!\u201d |"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\"\"<\/a>One of the best things about a lifelong friend is that you get to cheer some of their lifelong ambitions. Leonard Kohl\u2019s new book, Bluto, Buster and The Blob: Conversations with Actors and Writers from Hollywood and Radio\u2019s Golden Age!<\/em><\/a> is a book that\u2019s really been in progress for decades waiting for Len to put the interviews he\u2019d done in the 80s and 90s in a longer form.<\/p>\n

This book, the first of a series Kohl is working on, gathers together interviews he did with all sorts of people. I\u2019ve been pouring over it like I used to pour over issues of Fangoria, Filmfax<\/em> or the many fanzines I\u2019ve loved like Mindrot\/Animania<\/em> and others. His enthusiastic writing is conversational and contains the sort of wonder you have for your favorite things when you\u2019re able to actually talk to someone that helps create them. Even better, Kohl gives context to references as they\u2019re made, giving the reader an excellent reference point for the things being discussed. Some sections are about his personal interaction with a particular person, like child actor Donnie Dunagan, who did the voice of young Bambi in the Disney classic. It\u2019s a nice little summery of Dungagan\u2019s career, and an enjoyable read.<\/p>\n

The book is chock full of all these stories and interviews. After two days of cracking it open at most any chance, I have to say it\u2019s the most enjoyable book of the year for me so far. From a series of letters and responses from Jean Rogers, to interviews with, director Ed Bernds,\u201cBluto\u201d, to extensive compiled interviews conduced over many months\/years with Buster Crabb, voice actor Jackson Beck and actress\/ writer Kate Phillips (Kay Linaker), it\u2019s a fascinating Book. At 491 pages, it\u2019s like having the best fanzine for folks that love animation, serials, golden age radio and knowing really esoteric facts about the behind the scenes aspects. It\u2019s a little more expensive because of its size, but worth it.<\/p>\n

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What other book do you have that has chapters like this?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The interviews with Jackson Beck are favorites of mine. Over the years Len had published some of this material in the Popeye fan club newsletter, but gathered they are a lovely document of how a longtime voice actor thought about his profession, what it was like to work through many decades, and, beyond his actual work, a documentation of all sorts of things about Beck\u2019s life through that journey. I can\u2019t recommend this enough since it\u2019s so different in some ways, and a lot of fun to keep cracking open and reading another section about a totally different creative person or story.<\/p>\n

Bluto, Buster and The Blob<\/em> is available on Amazon, or at Bearmanormedia.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Len was kind enough to let me use pieces from his interviews over the years on some of the Thunderbean discs. On the Popeye Blu-ray. Here are some pieces of interviews with Jackson Beck the Len did over the phone- about a half hour worth of them. These were never recorded with the intention of presenting them, rather just for transcription, but it\u2019s so much fun to hear his voice and how he describes things. My favorite part is around 19:30 in, where, during a party for Sid Raymond, Beck was shown a Buzzy the Crow cartoon, and didn\u2019t remember working on them! In his attempt to remember the character he guesses the name as \u2018Ricky Raven\u2019! The person that showed the cartoon to Jackson was our very own Jerry Beck.<\/p>\n