I just realized Scooby-Doo is only 10 months older than me. Most of my life I've had the impression that the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon was younger than me. Fifty years ago today, on Sept. 13, 1969, Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Machine Gang hit the airwaves. Scooby, Fred, Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy certainly have been pop culture icons for decades.
Voice actor Frank Welker recounts how he got the job of voicing Fred:
By Welker’s own account, his Scooby-Doo career was a happy accident. In 1969, the Colorado-born performer was making appearances at stand-up comedy clubs around L.A., and part of his 20-minute set included a three-minute gag where he simulated the sounds of cats and dogs fighting. A commercial casting agent heard that routine and instantly called him in to provide those same growls and hisses for a Friskies dog food ad. But the job offers didn’t stop there. “It just so happened that his fiancé was casting a show at CBS called Scooby-Doo,” Welker remembers. “So I went over to Hanna-Barbera, and Joe Barbera was doing the session. He told me not to worry about Scooby, but wanted me to read for Shaggy and Fred.” A quick glance at the early character sketches for both characters left Welker with a clear preference. “Shaggy looked like a funny character — Fred was just a guy in an ascot.”
Five decades later, Welker actually has two jobs aboard the Mystery Machine: Since 2002, Welker has provided the voices of both Fred and Scooby-Doo, the latter being a role originated by one of Welker’s earliest mentors in the business, Don Messick.
Read about the history of Scooby-Doo and its various incarnations at Yahoo Entertainment.
Image Credit: Hanna Barbera, Warner Bros. Animation/Wikimedia Commons
Image Credit: Photo: Everett Collection