Frank Welker - Wikipedia

Thank you, my friend Maj Marty Hogan for making us aware that March 12 is the anniversary of the birth of American voice actor Franklin Wendell Welker for his role as Fred Jones from the Scooby-Doo franchise since its inception in 1969 and as the voice of Scooby-Doo since 2002. He is also known as the voice of Megatron in the Transformers franchise and as the voice and vocal effects of Nibbler on Futurama.

Happy 73rd birthday Franklin Wendell Welker

The Many Voices of Frank Welker (80+ Characters Featured)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnF5gpn8k5Y


1. Background from imdb.com/name/nm0919798/
"Overview
Born March 12, 1946 in Denver, Colorado, USA
Birth Name Franklin Wendell Welker
Nickname Dr. Frankenwelker
Height 5' 8" (1.73 m)

Mini Bio
Frank Welker was born on March 12, 1946 in Denver, Colorado, USA as Franklin Wendell Welker. He is an actor, known for Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) and Transformers: The Last Knight (2017).

Trade Mark (4)
1. Often works in animated productions as the "voice" of various animal characters.
2. Often provides a deep raspy ominous voice for his characters, most notably Doctor Claw
3. The voice of Fred Jones. He has performed as the character over 200 times.
4. The voice of Megatron, the nefarious leader of the Decepticons on The Transformers(1984).

Trivia (21)
1. Referred to in Hollywood as a voice god.
2. Has shared two roles with Leonard Nimoy. When the third season of The Transformers(1984) came around, Frank took the role of Galvatron that Leonard Nimoy had taken in The Transformers: The Movie (1986). And in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Frank provided the screams of Leonard Nimoy's most famous character Spock.
3. Has provided voices for eight of the original 14 Decepticons on The Transformers (1984) animated series: Megatron, Soundwave, Skywarp, Laserbeak, Rumble, Frenzy, Ravage and Buzzsaw. He voiced two of the original Autobots as well: Trailbreaker and Mirage, as well as one of the Dinobots (Sludge) that also appeared in the first season.
4. Has done every voicing of Fred Jones for all of the Scooby-Doo animated series with the sole exception of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (1988). Even in parodies and cameos on different television series, he has always done this voice.
5. Has done voices for both the original Star Trek movie series and the spin-off series Star Trek: Voyager (1995).
6. He also did the animal voice effects including Dumbo in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988).
7. In Tiny Toon Adventures (1990), he voiced Furrball, Gogo Dodo, Calamity Coyote, Little Beeper, Byron Basset, Uncle Stinky Pig, Henry Bear and Ralph the Guard who later appeared in Animaniacs (1993), where Frank not only voiced Ralph, but also voiced Thaddeus Plotz, Buttons, Runt, Flavio Hippo and Chicken Boo.
8. His broad spectrum of character voices, noises and other vocal effects that have appeared over the last 40 years in motion pictures, have vaulted him to number one on the "All Time Top 100 Stars at the Box office" list. The revenue of films he has participated in have generated over 12 billion dollars worldwide. His work in over 90 films has put him ahead of Eddie Murphy, Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks and Samuel L. Jackson.
9. Although he never met with the producers or the director Michael Bay, Bay felt his Welker's G1 Megatron voice did not fit the film and Bay's new interpretation. Ironically, he recreated the G1 voice for Transformers: The Game (2007) based on the movie, and was once again reunited with his old nemesis Optimus Prime played by Peter Cullen.
10. One of the most prolific voice actors of all time, he has been involved with some of the most popular and important animated series of all time as well, beginning with his role as level-headed leader Fred Jones on "Scooby-Doo", the evil Decepticon leader Megatron on The Transformers (1984) (among others), Dr. Ray Stantz on The Real Ghostbusters(1986), and a variety of supporting roles on G.I. Joe (1985), Tiny Toon Adventures(1990), Animaniacs (1993) and The Smurfs (1981).
11. His "Doctor Claw" voice is arguably his most famous role. Aside from playing Doctor Claw on Inspector Gadget (1983), he has used the voice for other characters, such as Darkseid on SuperFriends: The Legendary Super Powers Show (1984), Emperor Krulos on Dino-Riders (1988), Soundwave on The Transformers (1984) (only heavily modified with a vocoder, to give it a distinct monotone, robotic sound), as well as in movies such as the Cave of Wonders in Aladdin (1992), Shao Kahn in Mortal Kombat (1995), Soundwave again in both Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) and Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) (without the vocoder effects), as well as playing the Devil in four movies: The Golden Child (1986), All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989), Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey(1991) and Spawn (1997).
12. His "Doctor Claw" voice came about as a result of him trying to do an impression of singer-songwriter Barry White.
13. Has played the same character (Fred Jones) on 14 different series: Scooby Doo, Where Are You! (1969), The New Scooby-Doo Movies (1972), The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour(1976), Dynomutt Dog Wonder (1976), Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo (1979), The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Puppy Hour (1982), The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries (1984), Scooby's Mystery Funhouse (1985), Family Guy (1999), Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law (2000), What's New, Scooby-Doo? (2002), Robot Chicken (2001), Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2008) and Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (2010).
14. Became the sixth actor to appear in two films to gross $1 billion with Alice in Wonderland(2010) and Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011). He is the first voice actor to achieve this feat.
15. Has worked with Leonard Nimoy in four films: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), The Transformers: The Movie (1986), The Pagemaster (1994) and Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011).
16. Has worked with Christopher Lloyd in five films: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock(1984), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp (1990), The Pagemaster (1994) and In Search of Dr. Seuss (1994).
17. Has worked with Robin Williams in five films: A Wish for Wings That Work (1991), Aladdin(1992), In Search of Dr. Seuss (1994), Jumanji (1995) and Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1996).
18. Having been the voice of Spock's screams, he is one of three Star Trek cast members who has also provided a voice for Star Wars. The others include George Takei and Simon Pegg.
19. Has two roles in common with Carl Steven: (1) Welker provided Spock's screams in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) while Steven played the nine-year-old version of the character in the same film and (2) Welker voiced Fred Jones in Scooby Doo, Where Are You! (1969) and its various spin-offs while Steven voiced him in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (1988).
20. Based the voice of the Cave of Wonders in Aladdin (1992) on Sir Sean Connery.
21. Attended Santa Monica City College where he majored in Theatrical Arts.

Personal Quotes (14)
1. I've been doing voices as long as I can remember. When I was little, I could pick up on sounds and then I discovered you could distort what you hear and make people laugh or disrupt a class.
2. I was voted by my high-school senior class as most likely to recede.
3. I like looking at the characters. Seeing them always brings up some voice or attitude. I am much more visual, and that works so much better than having someone tell me what the character is all about.
4. I have worked alone and with a cast and enjoy the process both ways. There is more back-and-forth with a full cast, and you can feed off the other actors' performance.
5. Normally, I play dads, good guys and little animals.
6. I have this peculiar ability to be able to anticipate mouth movements on screen and fill them with words or sound.
7. One thing that seems to surprise the studios is finding out later my willingness to audition. Under the right circumstances, I actually enjoy it very much.
8. [his views on education in children's programming] Education has its place on television but kids, like adults should have entertainment. Children should go to school all week, get their lessons from their parents, watch PBS and Big Bird and learn how to add and then turn over and watch Fall-Apart Rabbit's head fall off.
9. [his views on cartoon violence] I'm not sure that children's television is where we stop violence in America. I think gratuitous violence in any form is unnecessary. But when characters smack each other with pillow and powder puffs, I'm just not really convinced that that is harmful. But I make noises - I'm not a psychologist.
10. [on Transformers] I think for me, Megatron, for obvious reasons, is my favorite, followed closely by Soundwave.
11. Early in my life, I probably abused my voice more than I should have. It is an instrument. You need to take care of yourself. If you have a session the next day, go to bed early, do vocal warm-ups on the way to the studio, that's just about all you can do.
12. When you have a cast, you kind of play off each other. You can build ... almost like a play, because obviously you read it as a play, so you have this nice interaction. When we did the Transformers series, standing next to Peter Cullen was always a benefit because you really get into it. You're going hand-to-hand, but physically, you get the feeling of that person being there.
13. [on Scooby-Doo] In our business to have a show that goes 50 years, let alone to be part of that in the entertainment business, is kind of unheard of. So I feel lucky.
14. If you get any of the Transformers films on the Blu-ray version, which I just did; I finished my house and made a little theater in there with all my sound equipment. When you use the Blu-ray, Peter Cullen will actually take the dust off your wall and the paint begins to crack. That's the kind of voice this guy has. The color and the sound, oh my gosh."


2. Background from tvdatabase.fandom.com/wiki/Frank_Welker_Wikipedia
Early life
Welker was born in Denver, Colorado. He then moved to California and attended Santa Monica City College in Santa Monica, California, where he majored in theatrical arts. In 1966, he received honors for his performance as the Cowardly Lion in the college's theater production of The Wizard of Oz.[2] During his transition between college and his voice acting career, his first voice-over role was in a commercial for Friskies dog food. The producer's girlfriend informed him of auditioning for Hanna-Barbera during the casting of Scooby-Doo, where he initially auditioned for the title character but instead got the role of Fred Jones.[3]

Career
Live-action acting career
Welker's first on-camera film role was as a college kid from Rutgers University who befriends Elvis Presley in The Trouble with Girls (1969). His next film role was in the Disney film The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes which starred Kurt Russell. He later co-starred with Don Knotts in Universal's How to Frame a Figg. Welker also appeared in Now You See Him, Now You Don't and Dirty Little Billy.[3]
His on camera television appearances included roles in Love American Style, The Partridge Family and The Don Knotts Show. He played a prosecutor in highly acclaimed ABC special The Trial of General Yamashita and as Captain Pace beside Richard Dreyfuss' Yossarian in Paramount television’s pilot Catch-22. He also appeared on Laugh In, The Mike Douglas Show, The Tonight Show, Merv Griffin, The Smothers Brothers Show, The Burns and Schreiber Comedy Hour, Laugh Trax, and as one of the cast members in the special of That Was the Year That Was (1985) with David Frost. In the latter show, he appeared alongside Jim Staahl and Howie Mandel.
Frank also played an on-camera role as a voice actor on an episode of Simon & Simon, in The Duck Factory, where he played a rival actor trying to steal the role of Dippy Duck from fellow voice actor Wally Wooster (Don Messick) and he also appeared in the film The Informant as Matt Damon's father.
In 1978, Frank Welker appeared on The Dean Martin Roast to George Burns. While saluting Burns, he showed his abilities as an impressionist by honoring George Burns with the voices of Walter Cronkite, Henry Kissinger, Muhammad Ali, David Frost and Jimmy Carter.

Voice-acting career
Welker's first voice role came in 1969, as Fred Jones in the Hanna-Barbera series Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!. As of 2002, he is the voice of both Fred Jones and Scooby-Doo. Welker is so closely connected with the character Fred, that any time the character appears in a cartoon (with the exception of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo), he provides the voice.
His next major character voice was for Marvin White in the 1973 series Super Friends (also produced by Hanna-Barbera). He also provided the voice for Marvin's dog, Wonder Dog (which was inspired by Scooby-Doo). That same year, he played Pudge and Gabby on DePatie-Freleng's animated series Bailey's Comets. Welker would continue to provide voices for many characters for Hanna-Barbera for several years, which include Jabberjaw, Dynomutt, Dog Wonder and The Shmoo in The New Fred and Barney Show and its spin-off The Flintstones Comedy Show. Frank Welker described the voice he used for The Shmoo as "a bubble voice" (one he would later use for Gogo Dodo in Tiny Toons Adventures).
In 1978, he played the title character in Fangface and later in its spin-off Fangface and Fangpuss, and also voiced Heckle & Jeckle and Quackula in The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle, and Droopy in The Tom and Jerry Comedy Show.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Welker became a very busy actor, providing the voice for many popular cartoon characters in multiple shows including the villainous Doctor Claw in Inspector Gadget (a role that he reprised in 3 Robot Chicken sketches); Mister Mxyzptlk, Darkseid, Kalibak, and various heroes and villains in Super Friends: The Legendary Super Powers Show; various G.I. Joe heroes and villains; Ray Stantz and Slimer in The Real Ghostbusters; the villainous Dr. Jeremiah Surd in The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest; Bubba the Caveduck and some of The Beagle Boys on Ducktales and Hefty Smurf in The Smurfs.
He also voices various characters on The Simpsons such as Santa's Little Helper and Snowball II. He provided the voice of Fall Apart Rabbit in the 1993 Disney series Bonkers and other various voices for the series, as well as the voices of Mr. Plotz, Runt, Ralph the Guard and other characters in Animaniacs, and McWolf the main antagonist to Droopy and his nephew Dripple in Tom and Jerry Kids and Droopy, Master Detective.
He also provides the voice (both speaking and non-speaking) of Nibbler in Futurama. He has voiced several characters for Family Guy, including a parody of Fred Jones. He played multiple characters in TaleSpin and performed vocal effects for the film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
Welker performed as voice double for Leonard Nimoy in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and provided voices for The Thing in The Golden Child (1986), Sil in Species (1995) and Malebolgia in Spawn (1997). He has also created the vocal effects for different animals in films including the monkey Abu in Aladdin, its two sequels and the television series Aladdin, Arnold the Pig in the television film Return to Green Acres, he was also the voice of Totoro from the English version of the Studio Ghibli film My Neighbor Totoro, and a variety of animals from Tiny Toon Adventures.

In 2005, Welker became the new voice of Garfield, succeeding the original actor Lorenzo Music, who died in 2001 (Welker and Music had previously worked together in The Real Ghostbusters and the original Garfield and Friends). Welker voiced Garfield in Garfield Gets Real, Garfield's Fun Fest, Garfield's Pet Force, and also in the new series The Garfield Show, which has been running from 2008 to present.

Welker has also provided voices for many video game characters including Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and The Shadow Blot in Epic Mickey and its sequel Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two,[4] as well as Zurvan, also called the "Ancient One", on StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. He also did the voice of Xzar, a mad mage from the video game series Baldur's Gate.

Welker provided the voice of Batman in a Scooby-Doo crossover segment of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode, "Bat-mite presents: Batman's Strangest Cases!" In the same episode, he also voiced the MAD magazine counterpart of Batman, Bat Boy.

More of his work includes performing the voice of George in the popular children's series Curious George. He has also performed for the live action film Mr. Popper's Penguins. He voiced Gargamel's cat Azrael in Sony Pictures Animation's live action/animated film versions of The Smurfs.

Transformers
In the 1980s, Welker voiced many recurring characters in the original Transformers animated series. He voiced several Decepticons, including the leader Megatron, Soundwave, Skywarp, Mixmaster, Laserbeak, Buzzsaw, Rumble, Frenzy, Ravage and Ratbat, as well as Autobots Mirage, Trailbreaker, Chromedome and Sludge. With the release of The Transformers: The Movie in 1986, he took on the role of the Autobot Wheelie and afterwards, took over the role of Galvatron (which coincidentally was voiced by his Star Trek III castmate Leonard Nimoy).
Welker also returned to two of his Transformers roles when he portrayed Megatron and Soundwave as part of a spoof in the third season episode of Robot Chicken, aired shortly after the release of the live action film. In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, he reprises the roles of Soundwave and Ravage, and also provides voices for Grindor, Devastator and Reedman. He does not voice Megatron in any of the three live action films (Hugo Weaving was chosen for the role, instead). However, Welker did voice Megatron in the two video games based on the first two films as well as the theme park attractions at Universal Studios Singapore, Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Studios Florida,

Transformers: The Ride.
Welker also reprised the roles of Megatron and Soundwave in the series Transformers: Prime (retitled Transformers: Prime – Beast Hunters for its third season).
He voiced Shockwave, Barricade and Soundwave in the film Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and Galvatron in Transformers: Age of Extinction, adding to his already large list of roles within the Transformers franchise."

FYI LTC Stephen C. LTC (Join to see) Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen Lt Col Charlie Brown Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. Maj William W. 'Bill' Price Maj Marty Hogan SCPO Morris Ramsey SFC William Farrell SGT Mark Halmrast Sgt Randy Wilber Sgt John H. SGT Gregory Lawritson CPL Dave Hoover SPC Margaret Higgins SSgt Brian Brakke 1stSgt Eugene Harless SSG William Jones SSG Diane R.

Frank Welker and I were in the same High School class--Class of 1964, Thomas Jefferson High School, Denver, CO. I last saw Frank at our 50 year reunion in Denver in 2014.

Such a recognizable voice.