Daws Butler and Don Messick provided almost all of the voices for Hanna-Barbera cartoons during the first two years of the studio’s life. One notable exception was someone who provided a speciality voice—nightclub comedian Red Coffey or Coffee (he used both spellings through the 1950s and finally settled on the double-e ending).
Coffey found his way into cartoons when he was hired to voice a duckling for MGM’s Tom and Jerry series. His first cartoon was apparently Little Quacker, released to theatres at the start of 1950. Evidently Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera loved the pathetic duck character, as he flew over to H-B about a year after MGM shut down its cartoon operations and was cast in an early Yogi Bear cartoon, Slumber Party Smarty (1958), on the Huckleberry Hound Show. A few more H-B cartoon appearances followed. But when the duck went through a bit of a makeover and emerged as Yakky Doodle in 1961, Jimmy Weldon provided his voice (though Coffey voiced in him in a few of the mini-cartoons that aired during the Yogi Bear Show).
We cobbled together some information about Coffey in this post. We’ve got a side-bar on him, courtesy of this piece in the Los Angeles Times of April 26, 1959. He seems to be trying out jokes for his act more than anything.
A few people have written in over the years saying they worked with Coffey and his wife and he was a pleasant enough chap. He comes across that way in this story. Sorry the picture isn’t of better quality.
Red Coffee Bowls for Laughs and Strikes Up High Averages
By DON SNYDER
There is hilarity in the bowling sport because of one of its participants. The participant is Red Coffee.
“As a little boy I took up the game. Now that I’m a grownup, the game is taking me.”
Coffee, a night club entertainer, averaged 184 at Van Nuys Bowl, 1856 at Tarzana and 187 at Kirkwoods in leagues this season. “I averaged best on the scales. For a penny a throw, I hit 235 every time.”
Coming back from a strike during practice at Monterey Park Lanes, he said, “I finally got the ball working, now I’m unemployed.” ‘Terrific Ball’
Coffee likes to talk about his game. “I throw such a terrific ball, the termites get nervous.”
Red is teamed with his songster Jerry Wallace and has played from here to Las Vegas to Buffalo, N.Y. “I take my bowling ball wherever I go. I went bowling with a girl in Detroit. She had a smile like the 7-10 split.”
Coffee, also an accomplished voice effects man for movie cartoons, can tell you about rough lane conditions he has been up against. “These alleys I played in Buffalo were so slick, Sonja Henie was settin’ pins. This pair I hit in Oshkosh were slow enough to make Step ‘N’ Fetch It look like Jesse Owens.” Tossed 300
Red was born in Arkansas City, Kan., but grew up in Cushing, Okla., where he tossed a 300 game. “You got to watch out in Cushing. They have fast gutters there.”
Coffee, who invaded Southern France in a parachute during the war, likes pot game and tournament action. “I don’t win much. An ant with a double hernia carried away what I won in my last tournament.”
Coffee’s trademarks on a bowling lane are his tan baseball cap and hanging shirttail.
Coffey and his wife Karen formed a revue in the 1960s and took it on the road. You can read reviews from Variety from 1970 (left) and 1972 (right) and will notice that he pulled out his version of the duck voice. As best as I can tell, he only got screen credit at Hanna-Barbera for a Loopy de Loop cartoon he worked on.
Long-time readers here will know I’m not a fan of the duck character, but writers Mike Maltese and Tony Benedict did their best to tone down most of the things I don’t like about him. The duck voice talent is a different story, though I personally like Jimmy Weldon’s duck voice better than Coffey’s. All the voice talents in those early days at Hanna-Barbera deserve a bit of recognition today, and that includes 300-bowling comic Red Coffey.
Before there was a Yakky Doodle played by Jimmy Weldon on the “Yogi Bear Show,” Hanna-Barbera had a similar duck with a similar voice provided by Red Coffey. The duck appeared with Yogi, Augie Doggie, Snooper and Blabber and even Loopy De Loop, the boring good wolf. The duck was called Iddy Biddy Buddy on Yogi’s early cartoon “Slumber Party Smarty” and in merchandise. Before Iddy, there was a similar duck with a similar voice by Coffey on a handful of Tom and Jerry theatrical cartoons at MGM. The only on-screen voice credit for any of those cartoons was on the Loopy short, and the billing read “Red Coffee.”
Trying to answer the question “Whatever happened to Red Coffey?” has been somewhat maddening. A post on the blog was devoted to the subject awhile ago. A few of Red’s former co-workers chimed in with some valuable information. So I’ve tried again to hunt him down and have finally met with a bit of success.
When we last left Red, he had split from his partnership with singer Jerry Wallace and was on the road in 1960 with “Hellzapoppin’.” Commenters picked up the story and said Red was later in a revue featuring his wife Karen and that his actual last name was Coffman.
Leave us put on our Super Snooper deerstalker cap and stalk down some clues. Trying to find someone with the nickname “Red” isn’t exactly easy. So let’s see if we can find him through his wife.
Red and Karen travelled hither and yon during the ‘60s and early ‘70s. Stories and ads about their appearances bill her as “Karen De Luce.” A check of that name on the web has found a couple of complaints were lodged against her in the mid-‘60s before the American Federation of Musicians for back salary. One reveals her name was actually Dolores Coffman. Aha! A clue! So what happens when we plug that name into the search engine at FamilySearch.org? Elementary school, my dear, Blab. We find ourselves with a Dolores Irene Coffman, who was born in Missouri in 1917 and died in Orange County, California in 1997. Her maiden name was “Luse.” Hmm. “De Luce.” “D. Luse.” Coincidence? Let’s find out.
Gingerly, we type “Dolores Irene Coffman” into a newspaper search engine. And that’s when we come up with this story from the Abiline Reporter-News of April 5, 1965.
COUPLE IN HOSPITAL Voice of Yogi Bear Hurt In East Abilene Smashup
A one-car smashup in east Abilene injured the voice impersonator of a children’s television show and his wife at 4 a.m. Monday, police reported.
In fair condition at Hendrick Memorial Hospital are Mr. and Mrs. Merl Coffman of Reseda, Calif.
Coffman is the voice for the “Yogi Bear” and “Huckleberry Hound” shows under the stage name of Roy Robert Coffee, 40, said Officer Joe Hicks.
Cotfman complained of pains in the head, chest, pelvis and knee. His wife, Dolores Irene Coffman, 47, suffered cuts on the ankle, hand and wrist, a hospital official said.
The accident occurred as the Coffmans attempted to turn off Interstate 20 onto the U. S. 80 business route into Abilene. They were traveling west. Their 1964 station wagon hit a guard railing and wedged. A heavy duty wrecker was called to pull it loose. The car was a total loss, Hicks said.
Coffman was driving and was trying to find a gas station since he was low on fuel, according to Hicks.
The officer said Coffman told him he was the voice for the children’s shows. A hospital official confirmed this. Hicks added he saw receipts for Coffman’s role in the television shows.
Hicks was assisted in the investigation by Sgt. Dwain Pyburn and Officer Carl Ewell.
Well, we finally have part of a real name of our proto-Yakky Doodle and a genaeological web search reveals a little bit more.
Merle H. Coffman was born on April 24, 1923 near Arkansas City, Kansas to Homer C. and Ethel Irene (Mitchell) Coffman. He was the youngest of two brothers. His father was a railway brakeman while his mother worked in a dress shop; they died about six weeks apart in 1982. In 1940, the family was living in Cushing, Oklahoma. Merle and Dolores married in Nevada on February 25, 1961. Their revue had various incarnations. It played at the Gold Room in the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. But it also trudged through small town America; construction hadn’t finished at the 125-seat lounge the 18-member cast was supposed to open in Spencer, Iowa in 1973 but the show went on. The Social Security Death Index reveals Merle H. Coffman died in August 1988. Legacy.com seems to indicate he died August 1st in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Could they have have been entertaining on a cruise ship? Alas, the trail runs cold again.
There’s one other interesting news story about Red. It’s from the Pasadena Independent of March 4, 1960.
Former Deputy Held on Three Drug Counts
A former deputy sheriff was arraigned yesterday in Los Angeles on three counts involving marijuana possession and sale.
Ross H. Moore, 37, taken into custody at his West Covina home after he assertedly sold marijuana to undercover deputies, appeared before Municipal Judge Winthrop Johnson for the brief court proceedings.
His associate, in the alleged violation of the State Health and Safety Code, Merle H. Coffman, 36, was arraigned on single count of possession of marijuana.
Both men were taken into custody last Tuesday at their home at 436 East Michelle St., following an investigation started February 20 by the sheriff’s narcotics detail. Undercover officers purchased marijuana from Moore last February 25, they alleged.
Following the court appearance, the two suspects were returned to County Jail, pending a preliminary hearing March 10. Bail for Moore was set at $15,000. Coffman's bail on the one count was $2,500.
Moore, who served three years as a Los Angeles county deputy, was allowed to resign in 1951 rather than be discharged for excessive use of force on a prisoner.
I haven’t found whether the charge stuck or what happened to the case, but evidently it didn’t affect Coffey’s career as he toured with “Hellzapoppin’” later in the year.
Karen and Coffee cut a novelty 45 that wound up on a couple of private labels; we can only presume they sold it at venues after each of their sets wrapped up. But ol’ Red also worked out a legitimate record deal. In November 1959, the Warner Bros. label released a novelty Christmas song by Coffey, as Red Coffee, called “Ducky Christmas.” Billboard called it an attempt to take advantage of the Chipmunks’ popularity, though none of the voices are sped up. Here is it, for you fans of Hanna-Barbera duck voices.
As incredible as it may seem, that ditty was an effort of the Sherman brothers, Richard and Robert, who would be tapped by Disney to do outstanding work on Mary Poppins.
You’ll notice his stage name in the references above is “Coffee” instead of “Coffey.” With the exception of a few blurbs on the “Hellzapoppin’” tour, it’s consistently spelled that way in the stories and ads I’ve found during the ‘60s and ‘70s. I can only speculate that Red changed it for good after he and Wallace broke up their act in the late ‘50s. That means the credit as “Red Coffee” on the Loopy De Loop cartoon “This is My Ducky Day” is an accurate reflection of the name he was using at the time the cartoon was made and, therefore, correct.
One final note—a number of ads bleat that Coffey/Coffee was the voice of Yakky Doodle (and worked on Tom and Jerry). We know Coffey was the pre-Yakky duck at Hanna-Barbera. But Coffey did voice Yakky himself at least once. Celebrity interviewer Stu Shotak has a copy of one of the cartoon bumpers from the half-hour Yogi Bear show in his collection, not available on DVD, where Yakky’s voice is definitely Coffey’s. Jimmy Weldon’s Yakky was always more upbeat sounding than Coffey’s duck.
So leave us put away the deerstalker cap for another day. We can only hope in the future we’ll find some more clues in the hunt for Red Coffey.
It has been said—and if it hasn’t, allow me to say it—that any information you want to know is out there. All you have to do is find it. In the case of information about cartoon voice actors, that sometimes involves a lot of fruitless searching.
And that brings us to Red Coffey.
Animation history hasn’t been kind to Red. Well, history hasn’t been kind to Red. A two-and-a-half year search for information about him has turned up very little, including what his name really was, when he was born and if he is still with us. But we can trace his career at Hanna-Barbera fairly easily.
Our story starts in the pre H-B studio days on January 7, 1950, the date MGM released the Tom and Jerry cartoon Little Quacker. It featured a noisy little yellow duck whose voice was clearly inspired by Clarence Nash’s Donald over at Disney. MGM didn’t have a huge stable of voice actors; there isn’t much of a need for one when half your cartoons feature characters that don’t talk. So Hanna and Barbera brought in someone new who could provide the appropriate duck sound, and that someone was Red Coffey. Barbera must have loved the duck character because it was brought back again and again until the studio closed seven years later (it also sounds like Coffey doing the “meow, meow” in Tex Avery’s Ventriloquist Cat, but I’ve been told it’s actually Harry Lang).
How Hanna and Barbera found Coffey, or whether he was already known around Hollywood as someone who did duck impressions, is one of those big mysteries I have been unable to solve. But Coffey could do much more than a duck. He was a nightclub comic, and a big enough one in 1950 to land a gig at the original Club Bingo in Las Vegas (the famous Sahara was built on the site in 1952). Through the ‘50s, Coffey was in an act with singer Jerry Wallace. Heres’s a picture of them at the Casbah nightclub (location unknown); Coffey is on the left and Wallace on the right. The two also had nice little solo careers. Wallace found himself with some hits on the country chart in the latter part of the decade and starred in Corn’s-A-Poppin’ (1956), a feature film filled with self-conscious acting and obvious, trite dialogue on a grand scale. Pardon my diversion from Mr. Coffey for a moment to link to the trailer for the movie. It has to be seen to be believed.
Meanwhile, back the ranch—and we do mean “ranch”—Coffey landed a gig on Dude Martin’s TV show on KTTV in Los Angeles, making his debut on July 22, 1953. Martin was the leader of a neat group that ventured into country swing. He later went by the name Steve Martin when he was the station’s programme director and even that wasn’t his real moniker. Coffey’s sojourn on the show was a short one. On September 16, Dude “abandoned the corny and poorly staged slapstick,” as the Long Beach Independent called it, and started loading up on less country-fied acts, like Al Martino.
No matter. Red carried on with his stage partnership with Wallace through the decade. And he made a bit a cash on the side by playing that duck in the MGM cartoons. Then, when Bill and Joe started in business for themselves and began to put together The Huckleberry Hound Show in 1958, the self-pitying duck returned—and so did Red Coffey. He turned up in the Yogi Bear cartoons Slumber Party Smarty and Duck in Luck (with a fabulous appearance by Yowp), Pixie and Dixie’s A Wise Quack and Snooper and Blabber’s De-Duck-Tives (as a Trafazian duck, no less). In the Yogi cartoons, he was known as Biddy Buddy or Iddy Biddy Buddy and not only got a marketing push by the studio, he was immortalised in song on a couple of Golden Records for kids (with Gil Mack rendering not very approximate versions of the H-B characters).
When Yogi Bear got so big, it made financial sense to spin him off into his own series, Joe and Bill looked through their company of supporting characters to find a couple to promote into their own shorts. That’s when the pathetic duck was tweaked a bit and turned into Yakky Doodle. But here’s where animation history proved to be unkind to Red Coffey. He wasn’t hired to voice the character. Instead, Joe put the call out to Jimmy Weldon, who began hosting a kids show in Los Angeles starting September 15, 1952. It featured a duck puppet named Webster Webfoot who, in a familiar-sounding story, had a voice clearly inspired by Clarence Nash’s Donald over at Disney. Webster was popular in the ‘50s and beloved today by those who saw him then. He made appearances on The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show and even cut a record. Play it below. You can stop it when the inevitable happens and it gets too annoying.
Why did Weldon suddenly come in to play the duck that had been Red Coffey’s role for ten years? The answer could be that Coffey wasn’t available. He spent part of 1960 touring in the Olsen and Johnson show Hellzapoppin’, which is about as far as you can get from either a western act or cartoon ducks (the show featured a drunk/lamp post routine by a guy billed as Ben Dova). However, Coffey did provide his duck voice at H-B a final time in the Loopy De Loop cartoon This is My Ducky Day. Red appeared in the credits. But cartoon history continued to be unkind as his name was misspelled. The misspelling was picked up years later by people compiling information about cartoons and has been disseminated all over the internet (if he was ever credited at the end of the old Huck half-hours, the credits have been lost to history).
The Oxnard Press-Courier of June 16, 1961 reveals a gig at a high school grad (along with other acts) at the Elks Club and bills him as “the voice of Huckleberry Hound.” At this point, the Coffey trail turns cold. I can find no specific references to him after this so it is anyone’s guess whatever happened to him. At one point, some lame comedian on the internet decided to put up one of those joke entries on an Anyone-Can-Post-Anything site and that non-information started making the rounds as if it were undisputable fact. If anyone can share any biographical facts about him, please do. Perhaps animation history can yet be kind to the career of Red Coffey.