"The Lion's Busy" dialogue

[Greg Method]

I was watching "The Lion's Busy" the other day, and something struck me as odd. I've noticed this before, but didn't really pay much attention to this.

When Leo is reading the birthday card Beaky sent him, and then the page in the book about lions, his voice is noticeably deeper than when he's speaking.

Does anyone know off-hand if Leo's "reading" was added to the reissue? I can't think of any reason (technical or otherwise) why Mel's voice would be deeper only in those two shots, unless it was recorded at a later time.

[Paul Penna]

Originally posted by Greg Method
When Leo is reading the birthday card Beaky sent him, and then the page in the book about lions, his voice is noticeably deeper than when he's speaking.

Does anyone know off-hand if Leo's "reading" was added to the reissue? I can't think of any reason (technical or otherwise) why Mel's voice would be deeper only in those two shots, unless it was recorded at a later time.

It's not so much that his voice itself is deeper, it's the quality of the recording. It's more closely miked, and slightly muffled - not as crisp as the other dialog. Obviously, it was recorded at a different time (or at least not continuously with the other dialog) and with a different mic setup or even in a different studio. This in itself wouldn't be odd; when Blanc did two characters speaking to each other, they'd be recorded separately, then edited together (presumably by Treg Brown). Why they did this in this case, I don't know.

Both my copies are like this: one from a 16mm Blue Ribbon print taped off local TV over 20 years ago, and a 35mm print taped in 1991, probably from Nickelodeon, with just the titles & credits, but no logos.