Looney Tunes Yosemite Sam

Although he was created to assuage ideas of Bugs Bunny being a bully to the bumbling, dim-witted Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam never proved to be much brighter than Fudd.

However, though audiences enjoyed him, he was far more belligerent and aggressive than the otherwise mild-mannered Elmer Fudd, which was unlikely to evoke feelings of sympathy for him from audiences whenever Bugs Bunny got the best of him.

Some, including Friz Freleng's own daughter, assert that Yosemite Sam was in some ways an extension of Freleng, himself. Freleng repeatedly denied such notions and, instead, cited a character in the comic strip, Toonerville Trolley, named the Terrible-Tempered Mr. Bang as his inspiration.

Yosemite's fiery appearance, his wild temper and his unique look also gives credit to a Red Skelton character named Sheriff Deadeye, as well as a Tom Varn character known as Bubba and, finally, a Tex Avery cartoon titled Dangerous Dan McFoo. While many different characters influenced the creation of Yosemite Sam, he is the only one that remains the clear favourite of cartoon audiences everywhere.

Mel Blanc was the original voice of Yosemite Sam who admitted in his autobiography that Sam's voice was somewhat difficult for him to create. One day, Blanc was in an angry mood and yelled as loud as he could. It was then that he first arrived at the idea that a similar voice was a perfect fit for the gun-toting, loud-mouthed Yosemite Sam.

He further noted that he would only record Sam's voice at the end of the day when he was finished recording for any other characters, as he was always hoarse afterwards. In Blanc's final years, the voice would become too much for him and he passed the duties of Sam's dialogue on to others, which makes the Yosemite Sam voice one of the very few that was created by Blanc, but actually performed by other voice actors while Blanc was still alive.