Lucille Bliss, the first voice of Crusader Rabbit passed away this week. She was 96. She had a long career, did many cartoon voices including several for the Smurfs. But for me as an impressionable dorky kid growing up, Crusader Rabbit was my favorite -- I suppose because of all the clever puns and wordplay. So the voice was as important as the picture. I never met Miss Bliss, but I understand she was a wonderful person. She provided joy to many people. There is no joy tonight in Galahad Glen.
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Friday 2 part-question:
You said that back in the 70s networks used to be way more relaxed about a show's content and wouldn't micromanage everything like they do nowadays. Do you happen to know if that was the case when they started out in the 50s with I Love Lucy and all those shows? Is it a growing trend that network control just becomes tighter and tighter and in 5-10 years we'll have shows where writers just take down what the network execs say characters do?
Part two: The "I Love Lucy" end credits only mention 10 people that worked on the show.
Did they really do it with so few people (only 3 writers every episode) or did they give credits differently in those days and most people didn't get mentioned?
Yes, 'Lucy' had the same three writers for the first five seasons - then they added two more for the last two seasons. Just happened to find a Lucy documentary in YouTube last night, and Madelyn Pugh and Bob Carroll kept saying how it was easy to write for one of the greatest physical comedians of all time - they knew that Lucille Ball would try ANYthing for a laugh.
I subscribe to the Archive of American Television YouTube channel. Quite often, when they upload an interview, it means that person has just died. That's how this news broke for me. I hope I don't see Ken's interview for a while.
I loved Crusader Rabbit as well, and wondered why it did not live on in syndication. Then I finally saw an old episode on the web and discovered the reason.
There is more animation and movement in a power point presentation than they had in Crusader Rabbit -- so it was clearly story and voice driven. And it was a great part of my childhood...
I am very sorry to hear Lucille has passed. She was my voice coach when I was trying to break into voice-overs. A very sweet lady who indeed was the voice of Crusader Rabbit and later as the Lady Smurf. She will be missed.
I was very sorry to hear this yesterday. Count me among the youthful lovers of Crusader and Rags, the forunners of Rocky and Bullwinkle. For a while, they aired a Crusader Rabbit Hour on Saturdays, when they'd run one of the entire serials complete, since it was, like Rocky's adventures, serialized, and worse, serialized on Sheriff John's Lunch Brigade show. Nothing against Sheriff John, who just died himself last month, but his show was on at noon, so after age 5, I could only watch him on vacations and school holidays.
Lucille was the original Crusader Rabbit, but not the only one. Someone else voiced the character the second season. I have no idea why. I understand that Lucille worked right up to the end.
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