The second was Happy Rabbit, which he saved from oblivion by providing a new name, Bugs, from the nickname of the character's illustrator, Ben Hardaway. Blanc's first major character was Porky Pig, the shy stammerer. Blanc joined Leon Schlesinger Productions, an innovative cartoon workshop that eventually developed Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. The couple then went to Los Angeles, where Mr.

Blanc used his voice to create a repertory company. The sponsors could not afford to hire additional actors, so Mr. He married Estelle Rosenbaum in 1933 and, soon after, they won contracts to appear on a daily radio program. He attended elementary and high schools in Portland, Ore., and studied music, becoming proficient on the bass, violin and sousaphone. Melvin Jerome Blanc was born on May 30, 1908, in San Francisco, to Frederick and Eva Katz Blanc, managers of a women's clothing business. Blanc was still active as he approached 80, when he made new recordings of five of his classic characters for the innovative 1988 live-animation film ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit,'' rejuvenating Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Tweety Pie and Sylvester the cat. For that series he supplied the voices for both Barney Rubble, the dull-witted neighbor of Fred and Wilma Flintstone, and Dino, the Flintstones' pet dinosaur. In the 1960's he also contributed to ''The Flintstones,'' the first animated situation comedy created for television and the first cartoon broadcast in prime time. In the 1940's and 50's he supplied the voices for 90 percent of the Warner Brothers cartoon menagerie, and in the 60's he was a co-producer of ''The Bugs Bunny Show,'' an ABC-TV Saturday morning series that featured Looney Tunes characters in new adventures written for television. Blanc helped develop nearly 400 characters and provided a rich mix of voices for some 3,000 animated cartoons. He had been admitted to the hospital on May 19.

Mel Blanc, the versatile, multi-voiced actor who breathed life into such cartoon characters as Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Pie, Sylvester and the Road Runner, died of heart disease and emphysema yesterday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Old woody woodpecker cartoon