Profile: Frank Welker

[tv star collector]

Actor, musician, stand-up comedian, and voice-over legend, Frank Welker has spent the last three
decades covering the spectrum of entertainment. Although famous in animation circles for his many
straightforward characters--such as Freddie Jones, the hip, scarf-wearing blond leader of the
mystery-solving gang in Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, rock-and-roll drumming shark Jabberjaw,
and seven different characters on Transformers--Welker's bread and butter relies heavily on his
uncanny ability to imitate members of the animal kingdom and to amaze with his alien creature
voices.

Over the past thirty years, Welker's vocal acrobatics in live-action productions have surreptitiously
graced characters such as the evil gremlin Spike in Gremlins, the poisoned monkey in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spock's screams in Star
Trek III: The Search for Spock, barnyard animals in Big Top Pee-Wee, as well as characters in countless television shows, including The X-Files.

Franklin W. Welker was born in Denver, Colorado, on Feb. 16, 1945. The youngest of three boys
proved to be a showman at an early age. By the time he was seven, he could be found outside his
home standing atop an ash pit entertaining his neighbors and friends. What his parents assumed to
be a stage the young lad was going through proved to be an ongoing obsession, as Welker then
progressed to doing impersonations of his family, friends, and pets. At times, he was a prankster,
confusing callers to his home by answering the phone in funny voices.

In grade school, it was only natural for a boy with Welker's talent to be the class clown. It did not
take him long to realize that he could use his unique vocal qualities to attract the opposite sex, and,
consequently, in an effort to impress a group of girls, twelve-year-old Welker was kicked out of his
seventh-grade class for making dog sounds.

Upon entering high school, Welker switched gears, becoming active in sports and music. Not long
after his high school graduation, he obtained a job as a prop boy for CBS television affiliate KLZ in
Denver, but because of his crazy vocal antics, he was soon assigned to do sound effects and gags
for the local Fred 'n' Fae Show.

In 1965, Welker left KLZ and headed west to California to attend Santa Monica College, where he
studied acting and performed in a series of plays. Two years later, while continuing his education at
UCLA, he also began his professional career, obtaining his first acting job in a commercial for Bold
laundry detergent. Other commercials followed, and although the young actor was beginning to gain
momentum as an on-camera actor, he decided to expand his repertoire.

With plays and commercials under his belt, Welker was determined to try his hand at stand-up
comedy. Developing a routine and making the rounds to audition for local clubs, he landed a stint
at a West Hollywood club called Ledbetters, then frequented by comedian Steve Martin. The
burgeoning comedian proved to be a crowd pleaser and was subsequently hired as an MC for a
Hollywood strip club called the Losers, which gave him experience in performing burlesque-style
comedy. While in the club's employ, Welker was spotted by a talent agent who booked him in
night clubs in San Francisco and Atlantic City, which led to him touring with the Righteous Brothers
as their opening act.

After a year of touring with different musical groups, Welker returned to acting, snagging a role in the
Elvis Presley film The Trouble with Girls. There he appeared with his future animation co-star Nicole
Jaffe, the future Velma on the Scooby-Doo series. Between takes, Welker entertained the cast and
crew by making animal sounds; this so amused Presley that, whenever he saw Welker on the set,
they would greet each other by making choking dog noises.

But it was Welker's stand-up routine that started him on the road to voice-overs. After recreating a
dog-and-cat fight on stage at Ledbetters, Welker was approached by a producer who observed his
act and offered him a job as the voice of a dog's tail in an upcoming Friskies commercial. Welker,
who had never done a voice-over before, was not even quite sure what one was, but agreed to do the
job.

When Welker showed up for the spot, the producer's girlfriend, who happened to be casting ABC's
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, witnessed his stellar talking-tail performance and decided that he
would be perfect for the role of the dog on the new Hanna-Barbera series. Welker then walked into
Hanna-Barbera convinced that he "would get the dog, hands-down." But when the auditions were
over and the smoke cleared, veteran voice actor Don Messick had the lead role, leaving Welker
earmarked for the role of Freddie.

Once Welker had his foot in the door at Hanna-Barbera, he soon became a fixture in their studios,
working alongside established voice-over veterans such as Henry Corden, June Foray, and Paul
Winchell, among others.

Welker's saving grace was, once again, his ability to do animals and strange creatures. Because
there was an animal of some type in every show, Welker was almost always guaranteed a spot.

As his voice-over career was taking off in the 1970s, Welker continued to work on-camera,
appearing in such shows as Love, American Style and The Don
Knotts Show.

Though the 1970s found Welker performing a number of animated voices, including Marvin (Junior
Super Friend) and his pet, Wonder Dog, on Super Friends, Curly on The Three Robonic Stooges,
Fangface, and the Shmoo on Fred and Barney Meet the Shmoo, he also performed on two comedy
albums, The Watergate Comedy Hour, in which he played Richard Nixon, and comedian Bill Dana's
record Jose Supersport. In addition, Welker took his comedy act on the road, opening for such
notables as Glen Campbell, Ricky Nelson, and Ann-Margret. Ironically, Welker was opening for
Ann-Margret at the Las Vegas Hilton the night his old friend and iconic former co-star, Elvis
Presley, passed away.

As time passed, many of the great voice-over actors from the early days of cartoons, including
Daws Butler, Don Messick, and Mel Blanc, passed away, leaving Welker the new elder statesman
of animation. Although only in his fifties, Welker was working with young actors such as Mary Kay
Bergman, Rob Paulsen, Jeff Bennett, and Maurice LaMarche, who had grown up with his work.

[Excerpted from The Magic Behind the Voices, by Tim Lawson and Alisa Persons (2004)]

P.S. After Don Messick passed away (in 1997), Welker added Scooby-Doo to his resume of dog
voices that also includes Bart Simpson's dog, Santa's Little Helper; Richie Rich's dog, Dollar;
Fonzie's dog, Mr. Cool on Fonz and the Happy Days Gang; Foofur; and Dynomutt.

[MrCleveland]

Welker also did a voice of Booker, Sheldon, and Bo in Garfield and Friends and was also the dog voices on The Simpsons.