The Flintstones daily comics for the last half of December 1961 were pretty much centred around Fred and Wilma. Pebbles hadn’t been invented, so she couldn’t be the focus of the gags. Barney enters into the picture four times, and we see Betty once. Dino just stands there as decoration in one strip. Dear old Baby Puss is ignored again.
This may be the one and only mention of a Diplodocus in connection with the Flintstones. Usually, those long-necked dinosaurs in the cartoons are brontos (as in burgers), but someone decided to strive for accuracy. On the other hand, François is called “Franswah.” Maybe the correct spelling would have confused American readers.
Sam Echo looks to be a long-lost relative of Fred's.
As I mentioned before, someone else has these Flintstones dailies re-printed on their web site, so there’s no reason for me to duplicate it. Since I had clipped these, I figured I might as well post them. The place to find all of them is here.
Fernando Montealegre was among the first staffers at Hanna-Barbera, jumping over from MGM where he started as an assistant animator and became a background artist. In keeping with the times, his work on Mike Lah’s Droopy shorts (in Cinemascope) at MGM are quite stylised.
He has some fun shapes and colour choices in his early work at H-B, starting with Ruff and Reddy. One cartoon I like is “Tally Ho Ho Ho,” a Yogi Bear adventure that was the third animated short put into production for The Huckleberry Hound Show (first aired Monday, November 10, 1958).
In this cartoon, Monty creates trees using geometric figures of various shades of yellow, with stick-figure trunks and branches. Here are two reassembled pans, though both are, in reality, shorter, as you can see the same clump of trees at either end. In the first, the sign and tree in the foreground are on a cell overlay. See how he handles patches of grass, large rocks and clouds. (You can click on them to enlarge them).
While you’re seeing them in colour, I watched Huck and Yogi in black-and-white. Monty had to make sure the colour choices would look good on non-colour sets.
Lah was the layout artist on this cartoon, and also provided some of the animation.
By the way, this was the sole H-B cartoon where the sound cutter chose what became The Donna Reed Show theme, also in 1958. It was from the Capitol Hi-Q Library, reel L-40, entitled TC-430A Domestic (also known as “Happy Days”). There was a slow version and a fast version.
As a cartoon show, Magilla Gorilla was a great merchandising opportunity.
Hanna-Barbera already had a marketing deal in place with the Ideal Toy Corp., which inflicted Pebbles Flintstone on television viewers (girl dolls sell better than boy dolls, claimed Ideal, so “Fred Jr.” remained on the drawing board). In August 1963, Ideal decided to invest $30 million over five years to sponsor four animated series in more than 150 cities. By October 7, Broadcasting magazine announced the first would be Magilla Gorilla and Friends. It had a little girl named Ogee (more girl dolls) and occasionally featured a dachshund (perfect for plush dog toy sales).
A half hour promotional film called Here Comes a Star was filmed at the Hanna-Barbera studio for airing on stations that would be broadcasting Magilla in January 1964. Young Me liked the promo. I got to see Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera and the outside of the shining new H-B studio on Cahuenga. And a real staff meeting to come up with ideas for the show! (Writer Tony Benedict, one of the people in the scene, admitted to me it was all scripted. And unfortunate alcoholic Dan Gordon is slurring his lines). But the cartoon show itself reeked of familiarity and it became the first H-B show I stopped watching.
Why a gorilla, you ask? Bill and Joe weren’t going to say “because Ideal can sell Magilla-in-a-boxes and Magilla pull-string talking dolls.” So the studio (I suspect that was the source) came up with this news release that papers could publish and drop in the call letters, date and time of the local Magilla affiliate. The Cincinnati Post published this on Dec. 28, 1963.
Magilla to Remove Chilla From Image of Bad Gorilla
Gorillas have a virile, vigorous and violent public image.
The way they shake the bars in the zoo denotes great strength. The memory of King Kong climbing the Empire State Building to swat airplanes like flies conjures up phenomenal animal power. Even Tarzan gulped a little when the great apes thumped their chests.
BUT IF ANYONE feels like wagering a bunch of bananas, it's a good bet that a gorilla by the name of Magilla is going to be tomorrow’s lovable TV glamor boy.
Magilla Gorilla is the hero of a new cartoon series that begins the week of Jan. 13. It will be carried by WCPO-TV.
Magilla is the creation of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, the hottest team in the animated cartoon business, and if anybody can make a gorilla lovable, they can. Cavemen had a rotten reputation for hundreds of years. Then Hanna and Barbera Productions created "The Flintstone,” and the public couldn’t get enough of them.
Besides “The Flintstones," Hanna and Barbera have created “Yogi Bear,"“Huckleberry Hound,"“Quick Draw McGraw" and “Top Cat."
MAGILLA GORILLA, as millions of children soon will learn, is a resident of Peebles Pet Shop, which would dearly love to sell him, or even give him away.
Each week poor Magilla will bravely embark on another adventure that somehow backfires. He makes an excellent pro-football player in one episode, until a member of the opposing team bribes him with a banana and he is taken back to the pet shop in disgrace.
Another adventure finds Magilla in the Army (assigned to guerrilla warfare, of course), and the less said about his behavior when he is sent aloft in the nose cone of a rocket, the better.
To Hanna and Barbera, it doesn't seem at all strange to have settled on a gorilla as a hero. “IF YOU TRY a cartoon story today with tiny elves dancing and singing in child-like voices while leaves float away into the water and bunnies hop about with twitchy noses, you're lost," they explain. “Children will tolerate such foolishness but they won’t accept it. They’ve seen too many pointless, aimless pretties that insulted their intelligence. In the area of comedy, today’s child has a taste as sharp as his parents."
Magilla Gorilla will headline the half-hour weekly show, but the program also will feature two other regular segments, one involving a western sheriff called Ricochet Rabbit and his faithful deputy, Droop-Along Coyote, and the other recounting the running feud between a hillbilly cat and mouse, Punkin’ Puss and Mushmouse.
Magilla will make his debut at 6 p. m. Wednesday, Jan. 15 over Ch 9.
Now, let’s get to the real point of the post.
The late Earl Kress, I suspect while helping put together the Rhino Records Hanna-Barbera music discs years ago, dubbed (onto cassette) all kinds of cues by Hoyt Curtin written for the studio’s shows in the first half of the ‘60s. There’s an inch-high (get it?) stack of sheets from various music sessions, stating when and where they recorded, and some of them indicating the takes were not to be part of Curtin’s library. One session has the musicians guided through the Magilla theme. At almost 18 minutes, it’s a little repetitive, but it may be interesting to hear how a session went. And you may like to hear how the arrangements sounded without vocals over top.
The only musician identified is a drummer named Irving. Curtin can be heard in the background. Incidentally, the series’ credits say the theme was by Nelson Brock.
And here’s part of a voice session from October 8, 1963 with the unmistakeable voice of Joe Barbera trying to get what he wants out of Allan Melvin, who played Magilla, for a sponsored intro to the show. Joe isn’t terribly diplomatic. At one point, he tells Melvin he’s “completely out of character” and orders him to punch the sponsor’s name—IDEAL Toys.
Magilla lasted 31 episodes, with Mr. Peebles’ voice changing to Don Messick after Howie Morris told Barbera to go do something with himself.
There’s some cool stuff on this tape. Unfortunately Earl didn’t dub off all the master tapes (it would have taken forever) because there were cues written and recorded on Jan. 22, 1966 for Toing Tiger and The Suburbans (aka The Neighbors), and a main title theme with vocal for Hillbilly Hawk. None of them ever aired and Earl doesn’t appear to have copied them. But we’ll have another post here down the road with music you should remember.
Of the three cartoon series that made up The Quick Draw McGraw Show, Augie Doggie was the last, even though, in a way, it was first.
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, as you well know, directed the Tom and Jerry series at MGM. Tom’s nemesis, on occasion, was a bulldog named Spike. By the ‘50s, the series was getting stale. Barbera looked around for some new characters, so he paired Spike with a son named Tyke and hired Daws Butler to give the dad a Jimmy Durante voice and Durante’s “Dat’s my boy who said dat” relationship on radio with Garry Moore.
When Mr. H and Mr. B. opened their own studio, they borrowed freely from cartoons made at Metro and when Quick Draw was being developed, brought back the idea of a Durante-sounding father dog and his young son.
There was some tinkering on the part of Hanna, Barbera and writer Mike Maltese. Variety on January 8, 1959 announced the doggie pair were named Pete and Repete. The paper revealed a change on January 28 and said the series would be called “Arf and Arf.”
We’re unable to discover when the studio settled on “Augie Doggie” and “Doggie Daddy” but it was no later than April 1959 as we can see from this model sheet by Dick Bickenbach.
Maltese deserves credit for naming the characters. His niece Margaret told me Augie was the name of her mother’s brother. And writer Tony Benedict mentioned to me that Maltese would say things when the two were talking and the words ended up as Augie Doggie dialogue. Augie also owes a bit to Warner Bros.’ Sylvester Junior, invented by writer Warren Foster for the Bob McKimson unit, especially when Augie would pull off one of those “Oh, for the shame of it all!” routines.
Daws Butler didn’t repeat (or “repete”) his Durante voice for the new series. He recalled in an interview that it took a lot out of his throat and he didn’t want to do it, so Barbera held auditions for the part. Radio actor Doug Young told TV historian Stu Shostak that Daws ran into him in a bookstore one day and corralled him into make an audition tape for Hanna-Barbera. Young remembered he and Peter Leeds auditioned for Doggie Daddy.
All this may have resulted in a delay getting Augie and Dear Old Dad into production. The first cartoon in the series was apparently the 16th made for the Quick Draw show, Foxhound Hounded Fox. The cartoon is different than later ones in the series as it mainly focuses on Augie and a fox, instead of the familiar formula of Doggie Daddy being put upon and making observations to the TV audience about what was happening.
While a number of newspaper articles commented on the Quick Draw show or Quick Draw himself, one columnist focused on Augie and his long-suffering father. Here’s what’s the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Luke Feck wrote on June 17, 1960.
Dog Show "Drink this, fun-loving Dad, of mine." "Anything you say, my scientific son," a Durante-like voice gravels back.
That's the way next week adventures of Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddie gets off the ground Tuesday night on Channel 9’s “Quick Draw McGraw.”
As a cartoon-loving friend of mine once said. "This show isn’t for the kids alone. I wouldn't miss it on a bet." "Why is that, fun-loving friend," I asked. “I think it’s funny, sober pal of mine,” he replied. "Why," I asked, trying my hardest not to sound overly sober. “It works on two levels, levelheaded one,” he said. “Oh,” I said, patting my flat-type hair, “are you calling me a flathead?” "No, it really does work that way. There's the straight visual gimmick for the kids, but there is something deeper than that in it. This is a cartoon with a message for the youngster and the oldster alike.” "And better than Yogi Bear," I said trying to put him in his place. "Of course not," he said.
Now, I had to give him credit for proving that he was a pretty discerning fellow. "BUT LOOK, besides the visual yuks, they have some pretty sophisticated humor and some mighty punny fun.” (I had to interject a “Good Grief” at that unsunny pun, which did nothing to brighten my day.) "They have this young dog, Augie Doggie, and he seems to typify the younger generation—he’s might smart and sometimes he sure wonders what gives in the head with his dad, Doggie Daddie.” "Is that questioning attitude typical of the younger generation?" I asked as naively as only a bachelor can. "Those worryin' little sons of mine do nothing but wonder about their Dad's stupidity," he said. "They have reason, family loving friend,” I said slipping into the Augie Doggie idiom. "Imagine, a grown man like you making his children watch a cartoon series instead of the news. That sophistication deal is just a crutch to cover up your arrested development," I said.
That's what I said. But what I did, on a basis of what my friend had said, was to call WCPO. They promised me a screening of next week's show. I saw the cat and mouse affair, a pair named Snooper and Blooper, and a horse named "Quick Draw McGraw" and his partner Baba louie.
The cat and mouse—nothing like Jinks, Pixie and Dixie of the Huckleberry Hound show—didn’t really say anything that was meaty but there were plenty of sight gags for the kiddies.
The horse named Quick Draw did a fairly funny take off on the Zorro bit and was occasionally bright and once even witty.
Finally, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddie turned up with a bit of nonsense about lighter-than-air medicine that Augie made for his Daddie.
I must report that now I am an Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddie fan of theirs. So much a fan, in fact, that I converted the Boss into a fan of theirs too.
The boss, by the way, bears a close resemblance to Doggie Daddy in looks and mannerisms. He just doesn't bark, fortunately.
While Mr. Feck enjoyed Augie, and the Quick Draw show was nominated for an Emmy in its first season, there’s always a wet blanket that wants to impose their views on everyone else. This letter appeared in a newspaper in York, Pa., on October 6, 1961:
REVOLTED
Editor, The Gazette and Daily:
On October 3, I was shocked to witness with my children a most objectionable display of sadism on a “kiddies” cartoon program entitled Augie Doggie and Augie Daddy [sic]. This was at 5 p.m., the so-called children’s hour.
I immediately telephoned the station and voiced my complaint, with the thought that perhaps no one there really looked at the film before putting it on the air. Fully 75 percent of the duration of this cartoon for little ones’ entertainment was taken up by watching “Augie Doggie” run through the house and yard firing a shotgun at point blank range at both “Augie Daddy” and a burglar, neither of which was hurt, although their faces were blackened and clothing tattered from the shots.
Aren’t there enough children shooting themselves and others needlessly without having an incentive such as this put before their eyes?
What more can I and other conscientious parents do to stop this revolting situation? Copies of this letter are being sent to Mr. Minow, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Washington, D.C., and the Department of Television Programming, National Broadcasting Company, New York.
SYLVIA F. MOHLER
I don’t know what the woman expected NBC to do about it, as Augie was never on the network.
As a kid, about all I copied from The Quick Draw McGraw Show was Daws Butler’s pluralisation of sheep as “sheeps,” which drove my mother crazy and my dad had to tell her “He knows the real word. He heard it in a cartoon.” (On second thought, I might copied Quick Draw by yelling “Kabong!” and hitting my brother on the head with a Beany and Cecil toy guitar, but I can’t remember after 60 years).
Layout artist Bob Givens, who arrived at Hanna-Barbera with Maltese from Warners, said in a 2011 interview “the Augie Doggies, they were kind of fun to do.” Maltese seems to have enjoyed putting together the stories. Doggie Daddy would watch things fall apart but, generally, maintained a sense of humour. Doug Young’s performances made you believe Dear Old Dad was a caring father. The cartoons are still pleasant to watch after all these years.
Fans of the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons have likely already read of the death of the voice of Yakky Doodle, Jimmy Weldon, at the age of 99, and may wonder why I have not talked about it yet. I’m writing this post just now because I have spent the day dealing with a very unexpected matter in which police were involved (I am fine) so it has taken up my time.
I never had the chance to speak with Mr. Weldon, but all accounts show he was a kind man who enjoyed entertaining and enjoyed life.
Long-time readers will know of my distaste for Yakky. He began life at MGM, when Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were looking for third characters to play off Tom and Jerry. The duck wallowed in self-pity, beginning with Little Quacker (released in early 1950). Bill and Joe liked him and cast him in eight cartoons. When the MGM studio closed in 1957, the two created H-B Enterprises with director George Sidney. The Huckleberry Hound Show was being developed the following year, and secondary characters (capable of being marketed) were in need. Barbera came up with a similar duck and put him in two Yogi Bear cartoons (one where he foiled that noble, intelligent hunting dog, Yowp). The following year, he appeared opposite Pixie & Dixie/Mr. Jinks, Snooper & Blabber and in three cartoons with Augie Doggie.
Hanna-Barbera signed a deal in fall 1960 to develop a show around Yogi Bear, and one segment was handed over to the duck, who was re-designed and given a new name (H-B marketing had been calling him “Bitty Buddy”).
Starting at MGM, the duck was voiced by nightclub comedian Red Coffey, and there is at least one between-the-cartoons short where Coffey voices Yakky. But Coffey, for whatever reason, couldn’t take on the role permanently, so Weldon was hired by Barbera in what Weldon called “the most important thing that ever happened to my career.” He was working on television in Fresno and used to fly to Hanna-Barbera for voice sessions. In his own plane!
Yakky benefited from several things, not the least of which was Weldon’s performances coupled with writer Mike Maltese’s downplaying of the “poor, poor me” aspect of the character. Weldon’s Yakky was generally cheerful, optimistic and a dedicated friend. These characteristics seem to describe Weldon himself. He made a career later in life as a motivational speaker. This story from the Newhall Signal of Feb. 3, 1992 gives you a bit of insight into Jimmy Weldon.
Weldon energizes seniors’ motivation By ANDREA MORET Signal staff writer
NEWHALL — With a flashy smile and a high-energy presentation style, Jimmy Weldon appeared before a group of about 50 seniors last Tuesday like a colorized version of an old black-and-white television favorite.
A motivator, speaker, comedian and actor, Weldon, 68, is perhaps best known for the numerous children's shows of the 1950s he starred in with his duck mascot, Webster Webfoot. But Tuesday, he brought a message of motivation to the audience assembled in the multipurpose room of the Santa Clarita Valley Senior Center.
Frequently addressing the crowd by name and gesticulating his every word, the speaker imbued the 55-plus set with confidence and encouragement in a stirring, often funny, presentation. "You are the most important person on this earth," he told the seniors. "It's up to us to give the young people today something to live for." To Weldon, there is no such thing as retirement. Only what "I used to do and this is what I do now." There is also no such thing as time, only spending time and spending it wisely.
Experience is "just what a guy gets when he no longer needs it"—a lesson well-learned after a youth accident with a lawn mower severed part of his finger.
Weldon spoke of his life experiences from Oklahoma radio show personality to television sitcom star, frequently interjecting adages of heartfelt advice. "This computer," he said, pointing to his head, "works like the land. I tell young people be careful what you plant up here because it's going to come back to you."
Weldon knew at the age of 7 he would end up in Hollywood one day. It was the day he saw his first motion picture, "Ten Nights in a Bar Room."
A scruffy youth from Chickasha, Okla., he didn't have any special talent other than a voice that he practiced and practiced until he sounded like Donald Duck. Nevertheless, he was determined that voice would buy his ticket to movies.
His brothers laughed at him and his seventh-grade teacher even sent him to the corner when he answered her in "duck voice."
But he persisted, and his efforts paid off when Hollywood started buying into his talent. Eventually, the voice incarnated into Webster Webfoot, a blue-capped, enormous-eyed, yellow-billed duck.
He said he was once asked to speak before a crowd of doctors by a physician intrigued by the idea of a man making a living as a "duck."
Weldon explains in his memoirs, "Go Get 'Em Tiger," how he pulled Webster out of his suitcase and told the 150 doctors and their wives, "this is the little guy I hope will take me to Hollywood one day."
Indeed it did. Fifty years later, Weldon once again pulled his mascot out of that suitcase before the Santa Clarita seniors, but this time with a few memories to share of his experiences in radio, television and movies.
The Webster Webfoot Show, the longest running television show in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, launched a career that would send him to Los Angeles, New York, Fresno and back to Los Angeles.
His career spanned 41 years, taking him to the British Broadcasting Corp., the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and the NBC network show, "Funny Boners."
The producers of the hit television show, "Yogi Bear," fashioned Yogi's sidekick, "Yakky Doodle," after Webster Webfoot.
As a youth, his small part in one of the "Our Gang" movies cowered in the shadows of a movie role he later co-starred in with Ronald Coleman of the hit TV show, "Halls of Ivy."
But it wasn't the movie and television show credits, the introductions to famous people nor the rounds of golf with celebrities that formed the message he has since taken on the road. It was the lessons learned from the underlying factors that helped motivate him along his career journey, he said.
In large letters, Weldon scrawled the word "motivation" on a blackboard, inserting a slash between the “v” and “a” and adding a “c” to the latter part of the word to form "action."
Goals are not enough to realize your dreams, Weldon said. A goal must be followed by a plan, a desire, confidence, determination and a positive attitude.
As parents and grandparents, he told the seniors, "you can plant the seed with young people" and find new purpose in your own lives. "Don't lose the enthusiasm," he implored. "We're the same ones we were when we were little. We're just a little older."
As for the “Donald Duck” aspect of his voice, Weldon amusingly recounted to interviewer Stu Shostak that Clarence Nash, the voice of Donald, wasn’t happy about it. (Nash never worked for Hanna-Barbera, no matter what the internet may say). He said he and the other actors in each Yakky cartoon worked together in a studio with Barbera directing on the other side of the glass in the control room, gesturing how he wanted the lines read, and reacting whether they were voiced the way he wanted.
Weldon would have turned 100 on September 23rd. His words about living, live on. And, here and there, so do Yakky’s cartoons where he gets the better of Alfie Gator and Fibber Fox, yells for Chopper, and screeches an off-key version of "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay."
Note: As someone has asked me this, the last pre-1961 Hanna-Barbera actor who is still alive is Elliot Field, who was Blabber Mouse and some incidental characters in the first few episodes of the Quick Draw McGraw show.
“How long did it take to animate a Hanna-Barbera cartoon?”
That question has been put to the Yowp blog before. I could say “How should I know? I’m a cartoon dog,” but that answer is neither satisfactory nor altogether true.T
Layout artist Bob Givens, who said he and Mike Maltese left Warner Bros. for H-B together in November 1958, recalled that Ken Muse was the fastest animator at the studio and could complete a 6 ½ minute cartoon (Huck, Yogi, etc.) in a week.
What about the half-hour shows, like The Flintstones or Jonny Quest? Well, we have a partial answer thanks to the late Earl Kress and his trusty filing cabinet.
Earl made copies of production records in the H-B file for the first dozen or so episodes of The Flintstones. These are invaluable as the episodes for the first two seasons had their closing animation removed in the 1960s and the same set of credits from one episode spliced onto the end of all of them. (As a kid, I was miffed. The voice credits said “Hal Smith – John Stephenson” and I knew they weren’t heard on some of the shows). When the DVDs were released, Earl oversaw new gang credits over the original animation (minus sponsor credits) so they were closer to how the shows originally aired.
More interesting, perhaps, are the dates (not always complete) about how long each show spent in layout and animation. These credits are not on DVD, either.
Unlike episodes in the fifth and sixth seasons, only one person animated each half hour. Unfortunately, the sheets don’t name any assistants; the studio had them, as a Variety story of Oct. 20, 1960 related how Bob Carr had been promoted from assistant to full animator.
You can click on each of these sheets to read them better. Regular readers here should know who the animators and other artists are who are recorded in these production logs, so I’ll skip commenting about them.
You’ll see it took about six weeks to animate each of the first two episodes put into production. Normally, the voice track is recorded first and then the animator goes to work. That isn’t the case here. It could very well be because the first few tracks were scrapped and the parts of Fred and Barney re-cast. Hal Smith related he was Barney opposite Bill Thompson’s Fred and Thompson (known better as the voice of Droopy at MGM) couldn’t maintain the growly voice that Barbera wanted for the character. (Barbera also wrote in his autobiography that Mel Blanc was not available when the show was first cast).
The animation checker for P-1 is Janet Gusdavison. A photo in the Mike Barrier collection shows she was at UPA in 1948. She can be found in the City Directory for Miami in 1941, so I presume she was working at the Fleischer studio then. She died in 1998.
The cameraman is Frank Paiker, who went back to the silent days in New York and the sound editor is Warner Leighton, who came to H-B from live action after time in the military. He was a Beverly Hills High School grad who died in 2005.
Emil Carle is the animation checker on P-2. He also animated a Pixie and Dixie cartoon. More about him in this post. Roy Wade was responsible for some of the camera work; he had been a cameraman at MGM and happened to be Bill Hanna’s wife’s brother. The sound editor is Joe Ruby, who should need no introduction, especially to fans of a cartoon Great Dane he co-created (make that “Rate Rane”).
P-2, “The Flintstone Flyer,” was the debut episode on Sept. 30, 1960. P-1, “The Swimming Pool,” was the third episode to air on Oct. 14, 1960.
By episodes three and four, the animators are working after the track is recorded.
The checker on P-4 is Annie Lee Holm, whose obit on IMDB says she started her cartoon career with Walt Disney. She died at age 61 in 1986.
Cameraman Vic Shank was a World War Two vet who worked for Austenal Labs in Chicago. In 1969, he was employed by a sports car dealership but the next year, he was the head of Animated Film Service, a film distribution company. He died in 1974. Sound editor Greg Watson had been with Hanna and Barbera at MGM under Jim Faris.
P-3, “The Prowler,” was the 14th episode to air on Dec. 30, 1960, while P-4, “The Baby Sitters,” was the 7th on November 11, 1960.
The voice cast list for P-5 is incomplete. Bill Thompson supplies his Wallace Wimple/Droopy voice as Mr. Slate. No, not the Slate who’s Fred’s boss. This one puts up his kids as collateral so he can buy a pop-up toaster (from the Buddy Buddy jewelry store run by Frank Nelson).
Remarkably, Don Patterson animated both P-4 and P-5 at the same time. It took about seven weeks.
The checker on P-5 in Pat Helmuth. A story in the Monrovia News-Post in 1980 indicates she studied at the Art Institute in Chicago before moving to California, and worked for the Disney studio. She opened her own shop in 1963 and made pottery as well as painted in acrylics. The sound editor on the cartoon is Don Douglas. He has the distinction of working on the last Warner Bros. cartoon, the Cool Cat epic Injun Trouble, which employed Bob Givens as its layout artist.
P-5, “The Engagement Ring,” was the ninth episode to air on Nov. 25, 1960 while Production P-6, “No Help Wanted,” was episode four, airing on Oct. 21, 1960.
P-8 should actually read “The Drive-In.” It aired Dec. 23, 1960, the 13th episode. P-7, “At the Races,” was the eighth episode, appearing on ABC stations on Nov. 18, 1960. It was written by Syd Zelinka, a radio writer for Groucho Marx and the team of Jimmy Durante and Garry Moore, who moved into television to work for Jackie Gleason (both on The Honeymooners and on his variety show) and Phil Silvers on Bilko. He died in 1981.
P-9 is the first cartoon where Jerry Mann provided voices for Hanna-Barbera. He was an impressionist and comedian who showed up on a number of Tom and Jerry cartoons in the 1940s. The cast list doesn’t indicate that Duke Mitchell sang as Fred Flintstone. And what is it with Hanna-Barbera characters and drums? Barney plays the drums in this cartoon and “The Swimming Pool.” Benny the Ball pounds a pail with drum sticks in Top Cat. Then George Jetson plays a drum kit in the Jet Screamer episode.
It took Ken Muse seven weeks to animate this episode. My guess is he was working on the Kellogg’s shows at the same time.
P-10 has Fred turned into the snooty Frederick, where Alan Reed digs his Falstaff Openshaw voice from the Fred Allen radio show out of retirement. Howard McNear uses his quirky Floyd the barber voice from The Andy Griffith Show on this cartoon as the doctor.
P-9, “Hot Lips Hannigan,” was the second episode to air on Oct. 7, 1960, while P-10, “The Split Personality,” was show number 5, airing on October 28th. I cannot explain why both were “approved” (or by whom) after the dates they aired.
Yes, Production 11 is the one where Dino talks like Phil Silvers, though you’ll notice the voice list calls the character “Snork.” I’ve always wondered if Jerry Mann auditioned for the Silvers-inspired lead in Top Cat months later (Arnold Stang was the third choice). This may have been the first Warren Foster-Mike Maltese team-up; they didn’t write together at Warners.
P-11, “The Snorkasaurus Hunter,” was the 18th episode to air on Jan. 27, 1961, while P-12, “Hollyrock, Here I Come,” appeared on Dec. 2, 1960, as the tenth episode.
Nancy Russell provides several voices in P-13. A wild guess is she is the Nancy Guild Russell in the 1950 census for Santa Monica whose occupation is “motion picture actress.” She appeared in a Life magazine article in 1945, was signed by 20th Century Fox, then married fellow contract player Charlie Russell in 1947 (they divorced 2 1/2 years later). She was 73 when she died of emphysema in 1999. You can read a little bit about Bob Hopkins of P-14 in this post, which also gives you a link to some things about Jerry Mann.
“The Girls’ Night Out,” was Production 13 but the fifteen show broadcast on Jan. 6, 1961. P-14, “The Monster From the Tar Pits,” aired on Nov. 4, 1960, as episode six.
John Stephenson’s long career at Hanna-Barbera began with Production 15. Eventually, when the series settled down to give Fred a regular boss, Stephenson was given the role. He had a fine career in front of the camera on sitcoms, as a narrator, as a commercial announcer on radio and TV, and even appeared on early television in Chicago while in university.
Norm Stainback shot some of the cels for this cartoon. He was born in Arkansas. In 1940, he was employed in Burbank by the company that makes Jergen’s Lotion. Ten years later he was a lab technician for a film developer in the Los Angeles area. He died in Dallas in 1984.
P-15, “The Golf Champion,” aired Dec. 9, 1960, the eleventh episode of the series. P-16, “The Sweepstakes Ticket,” was the twelfth show and aired the following week.
A new name pops up as the sound editor on P-17. Hank Gotzenberg later worked on the Grantray-Lawrence Spiderman cartoons and for Chuck Jones Productions. He served in Guam with the U.S. Marines and had worked at Lockheed Aircraft when he enlisted in 1941. The 1950 Census reports he was divorced, unemployed since at least 1948 and living with his parents. He died at Long Beach in 1978, age 58.
Earl didn’t have a sheet for P-18 “The Hot Piano,” animated by George Nicholas and written by Mike Maltese, known mainly for the cops singing “Happy Anniversary” (Earl does have a dub of the recording session for the song from Aug. 28, 1960). P-19 is the last one I received from his collection. Don Patterson must have been pretty busy at the time as it took him more than two months to finish animating it.
Arthur Phillips made his H-B writing debut on P-19, and his name appears on many more in the series. He had written for Jackie Gleason and Red Skelton on TV, and on films in the ‘40s. He died in 1990.
P-17, “The Hypnotist,” was the 20th episode to be broadcast on Feb. 10, 1961 while P-19, “The Big Bank Robbery,” was the 17th show, airing on Jan. 20, 1961.
Since you’ve read this far, let’s pass along some cues (from a cassette) from Earl. The titles listed below are what’s on the actual recording sheets. No date is listed, but the hand-writing is the same as cues recorded on June 10, 1960. The names are what Hoyt Curtin gave them.
6-1 SEGMENTED LITE SKIP IN PARK
6-2 LITE WALK + TALK – CUES AT END
6-3 ROMP IN PARK BRIDGE
6-4 DROLE INTRO TO DROLE WALK W/CUES
6-5 CUEY INTRO TO BUILD-UP BUTTON
6-6 FAST WALK + TALK TO CUES
6-7 ORGAN – SEMI-SOMBER – BRIDGE
6-8 NOSTALGIC – TO WALK TEMPO – HELD NOTE
6-9 SLOW THEMATIC FLINT TO CUTE ROMP
6-10 SLOW FLINT TRAVEL W/SLOW DOWN BREAK – HELD END NOTE
The Quick Draw McGraw Show was bought and paid for by Kellogg’s, so the cereal maker made sure it had its imprint in the opening and closing animation.
As the Randy Horne Singers cheerfully bleated out “(That’s) Quick Draw McGraw,” the star drove a stagecoach through the plateaus of the American Southwest.
The camera cuts to a close-up of Quick Draw cracking his whip. Rather cleverly, the whip returns to spell the sponsor’s name with the letter-style familiar from cereal boxes.
But hold on thar! Quick Draw’s rope trick is only temporary. The letters fall and drop around his snout.
Quick Draw cracks the whip again. The force causes his head to swirl around, giving him multiple eyes and some funny expressions which viewers don’t see because of the pace of the animation.
The letters on the whip resume their correct form.
Some years later, Hanna-Barbera put out both the Huck and Quick Draw series into syndication, but without Kellogg’s participation; stations could sell the spot-break time that had been used to sell Sugar Pops or Corn Flakes. This also meant changes in the openings and closings to remove all references to Kellogg’s.
This annoyed me as a kid. “They’ve cut out Baba Looey on the stagecoach,” I grumbled loudly at the TV set.
I was also irritated about the changed opening to the Huck show. “Where’s the rooster?” I wanted to know. Years later, when Huck came out on DVD, the rooster footage returned and I satisfied myself it wasn’t something my childhood imagination had dreamed.
Animation director Robert Alvarez has these layout drawings in his collection. I presume they’re the work of Dick Bickenbach as his personal collection of H-B artwork ended up being auctioned on line.
I couldn’t tell you who animated these opening and closing sequences. I’m pretty sure the backgrounds are by Joe Montell, who worked for Tex Avery at MGM and later for John Sutherland Productions and Jay Ward in Mexico.
Now, thanks to the collection of the late Earl Kress, a little appropriate music. Here is the Kellogg’s “Good Morning” jingle on a xylophone. I’ve snipped out Hoyt Curtin’s slate and instructions. The xylophone player is named Chuck. There are three versions at different tempos. These were made at Western Recording on August 26, 1960. At the same session, by the way, Curtin recorded the vocals for the “Happy Anniversary” episode of The Flintstones.
GOOD MORNING XYLOPHONE
GOOD MORNING XYLOPHONE FAST
GOOD MORNING XYLOPHONE FASTER
And, because you want it, here is Hoyt Curtin scatting how he wants the Kellogg’s jingle to sound.
GOOD MORNING by HOYT CURTIN
Ah, but that’s not all!
Also buried in Earl’s audio collection are the opening/closing Kellogg’s billboards for Top Cat. Weekly Variety reported on March 1, 1961 the series had been sold to the cereal company and Bristol-Myers (makers of Ban deodorant and Bufferin) on an alternate-weekly sponsorship basis.
TOP CAT OPENING BILLBOARD
TOP CAT CLOSING BILLBOARD
This is the point in the post where I make my usual lament that Quick Draw isn’t on DVD (except for several episodes from the last season where music rights aren’t an issue) and that the Top Cat DVD has the same closing credits on all 30 episodes. (Kin Platt did not write the whole series, on-line "research" notwithstanding). We know from Variety’s review of Oct. 4, 1961 that Harvey S. Bullock wrote the debut “The $1,000,000 Derby” and Mike Maltese told interviewers he also supplied at least one story).
Kellogg’s deserves some credit for the success of the Hanna-Barbera studio. In 1958, H-B Enterprises was only turning out Ruff ‘n’ Reddy for NBC. Joe Barbera or Screen Gems’ John Mitchell or both managed to convince Leo Burnett, Kellogg’s agency, to replace one of its syndicated half-hour live-action strips with The Huckleberry Hound Show. Huck’s incredible success resulted in the birth of Quick Draw and the expansion of what became a cartoon empire.
Well, it had to happen some time. No, I have nothing to do with it; I really have neither the time nor inclination to put one together.
But you're in luck. Greg Erhbar does have the time, and he's begun one.
Greg has a wonderful breadth of knowledge about children's records, including the ones featuring the Hanna-Barbera characters and the Hanna-Barbera record label. He also has a real interest Bill and Joe's cartoon studio. He'll be discussing this with various guests. Greg takes great care to strive for accuracy.
This reminds me that some years ago, Rick Greene sent me scans of some Golden Record covers for H-B songs cut in New York City. Here are four of them:
For contractural reasons, Daws Butler and Don Messick could not appear on the Golden Records (and Earl Kress told me that Daws hated to fly to New York anyway), so people like radio actor Gil Mack were hired to impersonate the characters. Greg likes his work better than I do. Mack was very versatile on radio but as Mr. Jinks, he's cringing at best. You can find a whole bunch of those songs in this dusty old post.
It is quite possible Hanna-Barbera’s silent partner wasn’t so silent in 1963.
When H-B Enterprises started in 1957, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera weren’t the only ones behind the studio. The two had a connection with George Sidney dating to when he directed Anchor’s Aweigh (1945), which featured animated scenes with their Tom and Jerry. In 1957, Sidney was the head of the Directors Guild of America, and he agreed to invest in the new company and take an executive title. Not only that, he is credited with making the arrangements to connect Hanna and Barbera with Columbia Pictures’ TV subsidiary Screen Gems.
Sidney remained in the background while he continued his directing career, cashing out when Taft Broadcasting bought Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1967.
But, along the way, a funny thing happened.
Sidney became infatuated with a young dancer named Ann-Margret. George Burns had added her to his act. Sidney saw her, shoved her into his movie production of Bye Bye Birdie (1963) and thanks to a re-write of the script, put a lot of the focus on her.
Now we get to connect some dots. Sidney’s Birdie was distributed by Columbia. Sidney’s H-B series The Flintstones was distributed by Screen Gems. What better way for Sidney to get more publicity for his movie star than by having her guest-star on The Flintstones?
Okay, I don’t know if that’s the way it went down. But it’s fun to consider.
On April 9, 1963, Daily Variety’s Army Archerd reported her signing for the fourth season debut episode as Pebbles’ babysitter. A release by ABC or Screen Gems hit newspapers by late May, advertising “She will sing two songs, one a lullaby, the other an upbeat pop number.”
I must admit I’ve never been infected with Ann-Margrock Fever. Some people like babysitters tugging at the heart with a sticky-sweet lullabye to a little girl, but it’s not the kind of plot I’m into.
The season debut (on most ABC stations) was September 19. Not coincidentally, in an ABC promotional tie-in, Fred appeared on the Jimmy Dean show an hour and a half later.
Here’s Variety’s review of Production P-103, published September 25:
THE FLINTSTONES
With Alan Reed, Jean Vander Pyl, Mel Blanc, Bea Benaderet, others;
Producers-Directors: William Hanna, Joseph Barbera
Writers: R. Allen Saffian, Harvey Bullock
30 Mins., Thurs.; 7:30 p.m.
PARTICIPATING
ABC-TV (film)
Now in its fourth season, "The Flintstones" has the unique distinction of being the lone survivor of several animated cartoon series aimed at an adult level. Among programs in this category that have failed to click are "The Jetsons," a situation comedy set in the 21st century, and "The Boing Boing Show," based on a newspaper cartoon character [Yowp note: It wasn’t. It was a character created by Dr. Seuss].
While the stone age era originally may have been a somewhat bizarre setting to place characters who mouth contemporary things, the satirical creation of the Hanna-Barbera cartoonery has not become almost as much a part of tv viewing as the news and weather report.
Calling 'em a household word wouldn't be too far off for a merchandising offshoot has put "Flintstone" glasses on lotsa kitchen shelves.
For the seasonal preem Thursday (19) writers R. Allen Saffian and Harvey Bullock came up with an amusing bit which caricatured singer Ann-Margret. She arrived in Bedrock (that's where the Flintstones live) to appear in a tv special dedicating Bedrock Bowl.
But before the "special" went on she wound up as a babysitter for the Flintstones' offspring and later managed to get Fred Flintstone and neighbor Barney Bubble [sic] on the show with her in an oldtime vaude strawhat & cane terp routine. It sounds rather silly, but nevertheless it all added up to the kind of material that Flintstone fans thrive upon.
Ann-Margret, who supplied her own off-screen voice, also warbled a couple tunes—“The Littlest Lamb” and "Ain't Gonna Be Your Love No More" which provided a lively musical fillip. Alan Reed again is the voice of noisy Fred Flintstone, Jean Vander Pyl continues as his wife while the bungling Barney Rubble is depicted by Mel Blanc, per usual. "The Flintstones" are off to another solid season and don't have to drill to bedrock to find someone to pick up the tab. For among the bankrollers are everything from Skippy Peanut Butter to Welch's Grape Juice. Gilb.
Despite the mention of Benaderet, her name is not in the credits in the fourth season. Is Joe Barbera trying to tell her something?
An irony is the “old-time” dancing routine was done to a neutral Hoyt Curtin cue heard on the cartoon from the future—The Jetsons. Despite the presence of Carlo Vinci and Don Patterson, the animation isn’t terribly interesting. Margrock is infected much of the time with Hanna-Barbera-itis—her body is rigid while her head moves a bit. (I wonder if the Margrock dance moves were copied from Ann-Margret's swivel-hip routine on the 1962 Oscar telecast, which she told the Atlanta Constitution in 1963 was the turning point of her career).
And how’s this for dialogue?
Ann – Thank you so much, Mr....
Fred – Flintstone, miss. Fred Flintstone. And this is my partner, Barney Rubble.
Barney – Hi.
Laugh Track – familiar sounding guffaws.
Yeah, some real funny stuff there, Mr. L. Track. There are a few talking animals-as-appliances to amuse us. Actually, the funniest comment comes from the sponsor of the Margrock show (played by John Stephenson) who sniffs that his mother sang “The Littlest Lamb” to him. That was some accomplishment, since the song was written by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera with Joyce Goodwin and copyrighted on Sept. 9, 1963. The other song, “Ain’t Gonna Be Your Fool No More,” was written by Brice Coefield and Gary Pipkin and published by Screen Gems-Columbia Music, according to the cue sheet for the cartoon.
The popular press apparently had apparently decided Fred and Pebbly-Poo were passe. I’ve found no newspaper reviews of the episode, not even after a rebroadcast on June 16, 1964.
However—and this is the real purpose of this post—two months after the start of the 1963-64 season, the Tennesseean featured the Flintstones (sans Margrock) on the front of its entertainment magazine with the headline “Flintstones Begin Fourth Smashing Season.” Why a cover story article is using the future tense two months after something started, I don’t know. But this was published on November 17, 1963 and we hear what the stars felt about being on a hit show while it was still on the air.
Flintstones Enter Their 4th Year
WITH THE hayseed growing amongst the "diachronda" in Beverly Hills, the German army surrendering all over again for a new generation, and doctors flashing their scalpels and libidos into millions of living rooms, Hanna-Barbera's "Flintstones" will enter its fourth year on television.
Hanna Barbera's animated satire of life in the stone age (Thursdays, 6:30 p.m., Color. Ch. 8.) has proven a smash not only in America but throughout the world as well. It is currently playing in over 42 countries.
One of the little known aspects of the show is the marked effect it has had on its real life stars. Alan Reed, Bea Benadaret, Mel Blanc, and Jean Vander Pyl. "I just completed a trip to various parts of the country," states Alan Reed, the burley voice of Fred Flintstone, "and because people recognized my voice and realized it was Fred, I really had some wonderfully warm experiences." Close to Public "In all the years I was doing radio, my voice was never as familiar to the public as it is now with the ‘Flintstones.’ It's a good feeling to know that you are that close to the public."
Bea Benedaret [sic], the voice of Betty Rubble, says, "There's no doubt that being the voice of Betty Rubble has brought added excitement to my life. "All my friends, both professional and non-professional, feel very personally and unusually interested in the fact that I am doing the part. "I am very proud to be doing the series," she said.
Fred Flintstone's ever-lovin' spouse, Wilma, portrayed by Jean Vander Pyl, has this to say: "I think the most gratifying reaction I get to doing the voice of Wilma Flintstone is the delightful prestige that goes along with it. As opposed to doing most other shows, this is not only unique but virtually unheard of. It's a real joy. It doesn't matter about all the other characters I've done throughout the years. Other Members
Rounding out the cast, the versatile Mel Blanc, who essays Barney Rubble on the show, stated: "Being the voice of Barney Rubble in the Flintstones has been one of the most fun things I have ever done. Mostly because of the reaction I get from my fans and from the public in general. [“]They love Barney and consequently they love me. That's nice. "I have yet to talk to anyone who is not familiar with the series, and that's mighty unusual these days for television, now that people are getting a little more choosey. "I had this exciting popularity driven home to me when I was in the hospital after my automobile accident.
[“]The mail I got was fantastic, and most of it came from those who were sorry to know that Barney Rubble had been injured. "I found that Barney had a good many friends, and that's a gratifying reaction to an actor who never appears on the screen. Let's face it. The 'Flintstones' are practically a national institution."
Time certainly bore out Blanc’s claim. There have been all kinds of spin-offs, sequels and specials—and a live-action feature film—that kept the Modern Stone Age family in the public consciousness, though these days it’s more nostalgic or cereal related. As for Ann-Margret, she’s still with us, but I can’t help but think every obituary will refer to her appearance with Fred and Barney. Perhaps thanks to George Sidney.
Jean Vander Pyl didn’t have a big name on television when she was cast to play Wilma Flintstone in 1960.
The others were a bit different. Bea Benaderet appeared on TV on Burns and Allen, continuing her Blanche Morton role from her radio days. Mel Blanc was known as Bugs Bunny and all kinds of Warner Bros. cartoon characters and periodically surfaced on camera on the Jack Benny show. Alan Reed had done odds and ends on the tube, but was not too many years removed from playing Falstaff Openshaw on Fred Allen’s radio show.
Vander Pyl had a number of supporting parts on network radio, starting with Jenipher Asbury on Scattergood Baines in 1937 while still attending UCLA. A 1948 article about her on the Ziv-transcribed My Favorite Story in 1948 mentions appearances on Amos ‘n’ Andy, The Aldrich Family, The Alan Young Show, The Dinah Shore Show, Dr. Christian, Sherlock Holmes, Cavalcade of America and with Fanny Brice. It skipped Lux Radio Theatre.
Her major regular role on radio was opposite Robert Young on Father Knows Best. Perhaps only Father knows why she was replaced by Jane Wyman when the show went to television.
Years after voicing Wilma Flintstone on 166 prime time episodes, and various spin-offs and specials (and in the 1966 feature film A Man Called Flintstone), she reflected back on her career in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. The feature story ran on September 29, 1989.
Meet Jean Vander Pyl, the Real Voice Behind Wilma Flintstone By ANDRE MOUCHARD
Fred was never the Cary Grant type.
He was into bowling and burgers, beer and boxing.
His idea of dressing up meant tossing on his lodge hat—the one with real animal fur.
Still, in spite of his Neanderthal habits, Wilma Flintstone wouldn't have had him any other way. "I loved the bum. Sure, Fred was a Yahoo and I got mad at him all the time. But we really loved each other. Our romance was one of the things that made us so popular. "We were real."
That's the word from Jean Vander Pyl, the "real" voice of Wilma and hundreds of other radio and TV cartoon characters.
Vander Pyl, a San Clemente resident, has been an actress for more than 50 years. Her career has covered several generations of radio and TV entertainment. She's had long-running roles on radio shows, including the part of Margaret Anderson on "Father Knows Best," and made regular appearances on radio shows such as "Fibber McGee and Molly." More recently she has had bit parts on such TV programs as "Murder, She Wrote" and "Hardcastle & McCormick."
But none of those jobs, Vander Pyl says, have matched the impact she made as the long-suffering wife of TV's No. 1 caveman. "The Flintstones" was television's first prime-time cartoon, running from 1960 through '66 on ABC, according to Joe Barbera, who produced the show with William Hanna. The show has been in syndication ever since. "I wasn't ever what you would really call a ‘star,’ but I did have Wilma," Vander Pyl says. "Millions of people grew up with us as a big part of their lives. And millions more probably will."
Vander Pyl, 70, still signs notes "Love, Wilma" and keeps a great stockpile of Flintstone memorabilia in her beach-front apartment. Next year will mark "The Flintstones'” 30th birthday, and the show's producers, William Hanna and Joe Barbera, are contemplating a Flintstone revival, Barbera said in a telephone interview from his Hollywood office.
He says they are weighing a number of options—including a possible live-action Flintstone movie—but Vander Pyl is pushing for a remake of the cartoon. "I think we would be more popular than ever," she says. "Every time I talk to somebody about a new Flintstones series, I get a great response. I think the people who grew up with ‘The Flintstones' still want to see us. "And, of course, if we do it as a cartoon, I'd get to be Wilma all over again."
Vander Pyl, who also provided the voices for Rosie [sic] the Robot and Mrs. Spacely on another Hanna/Barbera cartoon, "The Jetsons," notes that there is a precedent for reviving an animated show.
Though "The Jetsons" ran for only one season—in 1963 [sic]—Vander Pyl claims the show's popularity has grown in syndication. "The kids have taken up ‘The Jetsons' like some kind of cult We've become the 'Star Trek' of cartoons."
In the mid-1980s, Hanna/Barbera Productions called in Vander Pyl and the rest of "The Jetsons'” cast to make 42 new episodes, enough for about two TV seasons. Last year, they made a new Jetson movie, which is scheduled to be released next summer.
Barbera, who created both cartoons and directed most of the early Flintstone episodes, says it's likely "The Flintstones" will be revived "in some animated form" in 1990.
If it is, Vander Pyl will have a job, Barbera says. "A great [cartoon] voice is something that when you close your eyes and listen, it immediately makes you chuckle. Also, it's got to work for people of all ages, not just kids," he says. "Jean had that voice when we cast her, and she still has it."
Vander Pyl's work as Wilma was a key element in the success of "The Flintstones," he adds. "I know I'm going to get killed for saying this, but Wilma had a great 'housewife whine' to her voice. She commanded enough authority to run the house but kept an equal amount of warmth." "Wilma is a communicator and a lot of women relate to that at least I know I do," Vander Pyl says. "I think there's a lot of me in Wilma, and even though she's just a cartoon, I think my voice is one of the things that made her so human."
Still, Vander Pyl says she never trained to be a "voice."
When she was graduated from Hollywood High in 1937, she had just won the Best Actress award in the citywide Shakespeare Festival for her portrayal of Juliet. Her next stop was supposed to be Broadway. "I wanted to be a star in the theater, not radio," she says.
But after an illness interrupted her plans, Vander Pyl enrolled at UCLA and started working in radio. She promptly discovered that school and radio work didn't mix. "My sorority sisters told me I had to either go to work or go to class," Vander Pyl says. "So I said 'Bye, girls.’”
That began a steady, if unspectacular career in radio, doing freelance voice work for a number of stations in Hollywood. She says her strong points were that she could play everything "from the ingenue to the villainess without complaining or screwing up." "Radio was a notoriously anonymous profession. It was considered a second-class art," she says. "Agents wouldn't even bother with us until the networks started packaging the shows and bringing more money into it. So I lived without the burdens of stardom."
As TV came alive and radio fizzled in the mid-1950s, Vander Pyl was one of many voice performers to find work in the new medium. "When radio died, the prognosis was that we radio actors would be out of work because all we did was use our voices," she says. "But that was wrong. Most of us came from a theater background, and making the switch wasn't that big a deal. Then a few of us got lucky and got into cartoons."
The idea of making "The Flintstones," a cartoon that Barbera says was based loosely on the TV comedy "The Honeymooners," came after marketing experts discovered the audience for cartoons in the late '50s was more than 50% adults, Vander Pyl says.
According to Barbera, the prime-time cartoon immediately touched a nerve. "We must have done something right because Fred got marriage proposals every week," he says.
Vander Pyl is the last surviving member of the show's original cast. Former radio star Alan Reed was the original Fred, Bea Benaderet played Betty Rubble and Mel Blanc was the voice of Fred's sidekick, Barney Rubble, as well as Dino the Dinosaur. "Mel was a great actor," Vander Pyl said of the recently deceased Blanc. "He was so good he made everybody sit up and notice that people who did voice work were talented." "The Flintstones" brought Van der Pyl a modicum of fame, as well as other cartoon and TV roles. But it didn’t make her rich.
Though the show has been in syndication for more than 20 years, Vander Pyl doesn't earn a penny on the reruns. "I think The Flintstones' and 'I Love Lucy' sort of shocked the Screen Actors Guild," Vander Pyl says. "Nobody knew that TV shows would go on forever, so our old contracts didn't call for much in the way of residuals. That's why I'm not wealthy."
But with payments from other shows still coming in, and a small pension from the Screen Actors Guild, Vander Pyl, a widow, says she is comfortable. A mother of three with two grandchildren, she lives in a small, tidy apartment about a half-mile north of the San Clemente Pier, and an Amtrak railroad line is the only thing standing between her front porch and the ocean.
The serenity of her home has helped keep her desire for acting work down to a minimum. "Two years ago, my commercial agent told me I needed some new photographs. But I sit here and look at the ocean and I still need the [new] pictures," she says. "At my age, I'm interested in working, but not in making the drive up to Los Angeles five times a week. "Of course, I'd make the drive if it meant getting to be Wilma again. That wouldn't be such a pain at all."
You’ll likely be surprised to learn that syndicated writer Eve Starr claimed in her June 11, 1960 column that Hanna and Barbera were unhappy with the first of the five episodes completed, but scrapping it would cost $65,000. Barbera admitted in 1960 that five soundtracks with other male leads (Bill Thompson and Hal Smith as Fred and Barney) were dumped and the parts re-cast. (Each half-hour show took about four hours to record, reported Starr).
The Stone Age cartoon wasn’t Vander Pyl’s first work at Hanna-Barbera. When The Quick Draw McGraw Show was developed in 1959, Joe Barbera insisted on new voice talent. Elliot Field was hired (he was Blabber Mouse in four cartoons). So were Peter Leeds and Hal Smith. And Vander Pyl was signed, too, debuting as the Tallulah Bankhead-sounding Mrs. J. Evil Scientist on the Snooper and Blabber cartoon The Big Diaper Caper (Daws Butler’s first time as Blab).
Besides voicing cartoons, Vander Pyl had something in common with her fellow Flintstones cast members. They smoked. A lot. Her son Michael told the Associated Press “All of them ended up dying of smoking-related diseases. That cute laugh that Betty and Wilma did with their mouths closed? They came up with that because when they normally laughed, because they were smokers, they coughed.”
He also revealed before she became ill, Vander Pyl wanted to do a TV commercial as Wilma warning kids not to start smoking.
Lung cancer claimed Jean Vander Pyl on April 10, 1999 at age 79.
There’s something pleasing about seeing pictures of the people who worked on the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Of course, publicity photos of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera have been around since their days at MGM. Cartoon histories/biographies come up with snapshots of some of the artists, writers and musical director Hoyt Curtin.
A few were published in an article on the studio in Hollywood Studio magazine’s issue of April 1967. I’m sure you’ve seen clearer copies of the photos of writers Tony Benedict and Warren Foster. But there are also pictures of two of the studio’s sound cutters which I don’t remember seeing before.
Greg Watson worked with Hanna and Barbera at MGM. He was the junior film editor under Jim Faris and moved over to H-B in 1957 (Warner Leighton was hired for the H-B sound department the same year). Watson, Hanna and Barbera brought some of the MGM cartoon sound effects with them; Fred MacAlpin was MGM’s original sound editor in 1937 and some of his effects can be heard in early H-B cartoons. Among Watson’s creations, according to a 1994 USA Today article, was the pitter-patter of Fred Flintstone’s feet while starting the Flintmobile. It was made by Watson pounding the palms of his hands on Hanna’s leather couch.
Also pictured is Don Douglas. Watson told Fred Seibert about him in 1995: “He most recently was working at Universal, and he created a thing by combining violin plucks, you know, pizzicato, and a couple of other sounds, and we called it ‘Pixie and Dixie Hop’.”
Watson has passed away. I don’t know about Douglas.
Though the article was written in 1967, the photos are several years old. You’ll notice the cinder block walls in the back of the sound cutting room. They’re from the second Hanna-Barbera studio in the windowless “bunker” studio at 3501 Cahuenga Blvd., down the street from where they constructed the studio familiar to fans.
I’m not going to re-post the article as it deals with mid ‘60s Hanna-Barbera cartoons, but you can read it at on this site.
Note: This is post 1,400 on Yowp. I can’t say it’s the last as I have things from Earl Kress I’d like to post but I can’t find the time to write. Posts on my other blogs were written months ago.
One of the earliest public praises for The Huckleberry Hound Show came from the “Musing the Muses” column by Ms Jean Saxon in the Orange Leader of November 9, 1958. The series was available for viewers in Orange, Texas on KFDM-TV in Beaumont and KPLC-TV in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Her assessment was bang on and echoed other critics of the day.
I’ve been meaning to clue you in on a new cartoon series that is appearing on both Channel 6 and Channel 7 Thursdays at 5:30 p.m. The series is called “Huckleberry Hound” in honor of the hero.
Not since Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Pluto ventured into the moves a quarter of a century ago has such a delightful company of characters been created. Huck’s playmates include Yogi Bear and his patient little friend, Boo Boo Bear; a cantankerous cat, Mrs. Jinks [sic]; and two mice, Dixie and Pixie. They were developed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, who produced and directed “Tom and Jerry,” which won the[m] seven Oscars.
On the short basis of one preview and one show, I predict that Huck and his pals will prove a hit in television not only among children but among adults and those of us in our second childhood. There is a sneaky kind of satire woven through the cartoons—watch for it to tickle your funny-bone.
Actually, it wasn’t her assessment. The last two paragraphs are mostly word-for-word what Larry Wolters wrote in the Chicago Tribune on September 29. Nothing like a little journalistic plagiarism.
The Leader occasionally gave a plot-line for what was likely the first cartoon of the three to air on the show that week. As you likely know, not every station got its own 16mm print, so they were “bicycled” to smaller stations. As an example, show K-005 with Pistol Packin’ Pirate aired on the two stations above on November 27, 1958. Other stations got their prints a month before that.
The drawing you see above is likely publicity art drawn from the time the show debuted. It and what you can see below are from the late Earl Kress’ files. It appears he photocopied some photocopies. Whether some are from colouring books or were drawn long after the show debuted, I don’t know. The drawing of Yogi on roller skates above is almost the same pose in the title card to The Runaway Bear (1959), one of a number of first-season cartoons without Boo Boo.
Below is a pose of Huck reminiscent of Lion Tamer Huck (1959). I don’t know of any cartoon involving Huck and a fish. The last picture of the gang is a favourite. Some time ago, Jim Engle inked and painted a version of it which you can find on this blog.
Denise Kress send me more art that Earl had in storage. The Yowp blog is retired but if I can make time, I’ll post some more, including a colour chart.
The Yogi Bear Show wasn’t ready when it went on the air for the first time on this date in 1961.
The problem was simple. Hanna-Barbera didn’t have enough lead time to get the series together.
Kellogg’s and its ad agency, Leo Burnett, had worked out a deal with Hank Saperstein to have a half-hour syndicated slot filled with a new series starring Mr. Magoo, who had been appearing in short cartoons that UPA had been selling to individual stations. But then Saperstein called it off, not liking all the terms of the deal.
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera quickly filled the breach, announcing on October 12, 1960 that Yogi Bear would be getting his own show. It seems that 3 ½ months wasn’t enough time to get the cartoons together; the company was extremely stretched, with The Flintstones, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw and Loopy de Loop in production. So Yakky Doodle did not appear on the first show (at least in some cities). Fans were treated to an Augie Doggie re-run instead.
Among the stations that aired Yogi on January 30, 1961 were KING-TV, Seattle; KMTV, Omaha; KTVU, Oakland; WBTV, Charlotte; WMCT-TV, Memphis; WDSU-TV, New Orleans; WGR-TV, Buffalo; WSB-TV, Atlanta; WNCT, Greenville, N.C.; WCPO-TV, Cincinnati; KTUL-TV, Tulsa; KRON-TV, San Francisco; WPIX, New York; WPRO-TV, Providence; KELO, Sioux Falls; KOCO-TV, Oklahoma City; KTVT, Fort Worth; KMBC-TV, Kansas City and KFSD, San Diego.
Yogi first appeared on The Huckleberry Hound Show in 1958, but surpassed the blue dog in the Hanna-Barbera star system. The same week his show debuted, he appeared in the Sunday comic section of newspapers across the U.S. And the company’s first feature film, eventually named “Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear” for the star, made it to theatre screens in 1964. Huck was nowhere to be seen (the feature did include a snickering dog which I maintain was inspired by the bulldog in Tex Avery’s Bad Luck Blackie at MGM and later was turned into Muttley).
By 1961, Yogi was firmly entrenched as a denizen of Jellystone Park, with a permanent sidekick and an adversary. When he began in 1958, that wasn’t altogether the case; in fact, Ranger Smith was did not appear in the first season of the Huck show. Yogi was put into various plots, including spot gags as he tried to catch a trout (and failed), attempted to get across a freeway, dealt with an annoying duckling that later evolved into Yakky Doodle and matched wits with that fine dog that deserved stardom, Yowp.
Younger cartoon fans who have been raised on lord-knows-what are still exposed to the rhyming bear. Here is an article about the world’s largest Yogi. I take issue with one of the bullet points. I have never heard Yogi was “inspired by Smokey Bear.” His vocal qualities and costume bear (yuck, yuck, yuck) some similarities to Art Carney’s Ed Norton on The Honeymooners, but a similarly dressed character (silent) appears in Hanna and Barbera’s MGM short Down Beat Bear (1956).
And because someone will mention this if I don’t, the characters were re-worked several years ago in a streaming series.
You can read reviews of all the Yogi cartoons made between 1958 and 1962 on the blog, and more about his show in this post and this post.
Are we ever, EVER, going to see The Quick Draw McGraw Show on any kind of home video format?
I get asked that a lot.
Let’s hear from someone who should have an answer.
First, the background.
A wonderful man named Earl Kress had been hired to help get Hanna-Barbera’s early half-hours out on DVD. In 2005, the first season of The Huckleberry Hound Show was released. Earl had searched through the studio’s records, finding things he said they didn’t know they had. He found cue sheets, episode guides, footage lists for opening credits, even footage itself; all kinds of great things.
Unfortunately, Huck didn’t sell as well as was hoped. But Quick Draw was put on the list for release.
Then the project went nowhere.
At the time, Earl told readers of the Golden Age Cartoon forum that the half-hour shows were not intact that he could find (in colour, anyway), some of the bridges could not be found, and some of the footage was not in the best condition.
But the main problem was music rights.
When the Hanna-Barbera studio opened in 1957, the most inexpensive way to include background music in a film was to license a stock music library. Hanna-Barbera signed television deals for two very popular ones—the Langlois Filmusic library, “composed” by Jack Shaindlin, and the Capitol Hi-Q library, created in 1956 from the works of numerous composers, but updated by Capitol record every year. Ruff and Reddy cartoons used these libraries. So did three of the four seasons of The Huckleberry Hound Show and two of the three seasons of The Quick Draw McGraw Show. (Afterwards, Hoyt Curtin was hired by Hanna-Barbera to compose cartoon cues that belonged to the studio).
When the Huckleberry Hound DVD was released in 2005, Capitol still had rights to the stock music and a deal was struck to clear it for home video use. That soon changed. The music, as Earl explained, had reverted to the composers or their heirs, and trying to get it approved for DVD was thwarted by demands from two estates. He rather forlornly expressed the feeling the odds were against Quick Draw cartoons—at least the ones with the Shaindlin and Capitol music—ever being released on home video.
We’re getting close to 20 years later. There’s still no Quick Draw home video, excepting a small number of cartoons with Curtin’s cues on compilation discs.
Enter George Feltenstein.
Among animation fans, George is best-known for his years with the Warner Home Archive, overseeing releases of various Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes. Hanna-Barbera now falls under his company’s eye. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read a promotional puff piece about some H-B series or specials I think are really lame and yelled “What about Quick Draw!?!”
George has answered that question in an interview with music expert-turned-author Greg Ehrbar.
“What we face with music clearance on television programming is pretty horrific. Thankfully, most Hanna-Barbera productions don’t have music clearance issues, thanks to the late, great Hoyt Curtin. His work-for-hire compositions that were so unforgettable, those are not a problem. It’s when something else was introduced from outside the bubble, that’s where things get complicated.
“Of course, the early years when they didn’t have work-for-hire compositions in the very, very early shows; for example, that’s why there’s no Ruff and Reddy DVD.
“Well, we would like to change that, and we’re now finding ways to make some of those things happen. You take everything a step at a time. I don’t give up easily. [...]
“I still will pursue the projects I would like to see. All four seasons of Huckleberry Hound. I would like to see Quick Draw McGraw. I’d like to see New Adventures of Alice in Wonderland. But, in the meantime, we have such a gold mine of treasures that are clear, that are ready for release, or that can be made ready for release, and that’s the direction we’re taking right now.”
So George’s attitude is “never say ‘never’.” But it’s more of a hope than anything else. There’s no indication from him anything has actually been done about Quick Draw (or Huck), or whether he has to convince management to agree to demands of the stock music rights holders (which was done for the Warner Bros.’ “Seely Six” cartoons from 1958) as the decision certainly wouldn’t be his alone. For now, we can expect to see Blu-rays of cartoons from the ‘80s. Well, I guess someone likes them.
In the meantime, you’ll have to continue to enjoy Quick Draw McGraw bootlegs, as slightly murky and defaced with TV bugs as they are.
Incidentally, this should be a good year for early Hanna-Barbera fans when it comes to books. Greg has written Hanna-Barbera: The Recorded History. Greg certainly is the right person to write this, as he knows more about H-B Records, Colpix and the Golden Records that featured Hanna-Barbera characters than anyone I can think of. And there’s a bit on music used in the actual cartoons.
And Kevin Sandler and Tyler Williams have written Hanna and Barbera: Conversations, which should be out in May. I intend to talk to Kevin and post the interview here as we get closer to the publication date. When it comes to the early days of the studio, there are fewer and fewer people around to converse with. I had the great pleasure of chatting with layout man Jerry Eisenberg and writer Tony Benedict some time ago, as well as retired KFWB disc jockey Elliot Field, who provided voices for the studio in 1959 before moving to Detroit. I’m looking forward to both books.
Oh, and a fruitful conclusion to George Feltenstein’s idea to let us all see Quick Draw McGraw in his pristine glory.
By the way, George, if you’re reading and would like send me scans of Quick Draw cue sheets, I’ll happily accept them.
P.S.: People also ask me about the status of this blog. I honestly don’t have time to write a lot now. I’m on to other things in real life. However, I have put together a number of posts and there’ll be something once a month for the next number of months, the same as last year, but the blog is pretty much retired.
Since it is the Super Bowl weekend (at least if you’re reading this at the time it was posted), let us look at the work of Carlo Vinci in Yogi Bear’s football opus. Rah Rah Bear (1959).
Here’s a graceful run cycle by Carlo. Yogi lopes across the football field, waving his arm and turning his head toward the crowd. 12 drawings. They are shot one frame apiece.
Here’s how the cycle looks slowed down. Background by Bob Gentle.
“It’s a touchdown!” yells the play-by-play announcer (Don Messick). Notice Yogi and the helicopter go in front of the goal posts.
It would have made a neat shot if they went between the posts (with the one in the foreground having to be put on a separate cel) but the chopper’s too big.
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera explained to syndicated columnist Charles Witbeck how this cartoon came about:
“You know that Yogi and Huckleberry Hound don’t just belong to the kids,” Hanna continued. Grown-ups know about our animal friends. “An example. In late November we had a special story on Yogi Bear and the Chicago Bears pro football team. When the Bears heard about it, they were delighted. George Halas, coach and owner, said we could do anything we wanted.
“We first got the idea,” Barbera said, “when I saw a headline in late September on the sports pages. It went something like ‘Giants to Clobber Bears.’ I saw a football story with Yogi reading the headline and saying: ‘Us bears have got to stick together.’ So Yogi goes back and helps the burly bears win. It’s kinda cute.”
Barbera never let facts get in the way of one of his stories. The Giants never played the Bears in 1959. Or even 1958. However, the Chicago Cardinals under Jim Lee Howell opened their 1958 season on September 28th with a 37-7 home-field loss to the New York Giants. Considering the cartoon was on TV a little less than two months later, even with Hanna-Barbera’s hurried production schedule, it’s doubtful the cartoon could have been inspired so soon.
Before the era of theme parks, Hanna-Barbera’s star characters appeared in person—thanks to large costumes—starting around September 1958—at various places, including football stadiums. So it was that Honest Ed Justin booked “Yogi” to appear in Chicago at a game between the Bears and 49ers on November 15th (the Bears won, 14-3). Not coincidentally, Rah Rah Bear aired in Chicago ten days later.
Rah Rah Bear made another appearance—on record. In July 1961, Colpix released “Here Comes Huckleberry Hound” with “soundtracks” from four cartoons, including Rah Rah Bear. Huck was used as a narrator to link scenes and the original stock music from the cartoon isn’t heard.
Speaking of Yogi and football, one of the players on the 1960 Xavier University Musketeers in Cincinnati, Dick Buechler, was nicknamed Yogi Bear. It was because he was as fierce as a bear and had nothing to do with pic-a-nic baskets. (After graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in 1963, Buechler was stationed at the air field of the Naval Auxiliary in Milton, Florida).
One other Yogi-football connection can be found in the pages of the Star News-Vanguard of Sept. 30, 1961, where the coach of Hamilton High used an offensive formation against the Culver City Centaurs called “Yogi Bear.” From what I can tell from the story, it involved throwing to the quarterback in the clear. The plan was tried several times and failed miserably.
Evidently head coach Frank Cullom was not smarter than the average bear.
I think you know who these guys are.
Caricatures appeared periodically at Hanna-Barbera, especially on The Flintstones; we don't need to name them. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were caricatured, too. The Color It Happy pilot of the late '60s comes to mind. So does another would-be show from '70s called Duffy's Dozen, where Bill and Joe voiced their characters. They were drawn by the same man who signed the drawing above. It was an assistant animator named Ben Shenkman (the art came from the May 1970 edition of Hollywood Studio Magazine.
Shenkman was a native New Yorker, born July 3, 1913. We can thank film historian Donald Crafton for some biographical material he wrote for the January 1993 issue of Film History in an article entitled “The View From Termite Terrace: Caricature and Parody in Warner Bros Animation.”
Shenkman’s career can be seen as typical for the industry. In the late 1920s he was working as an office boy at Columbia in New York. He aspired to be a cartoonist and one of his sketches of the manager was published in the Columbia Beacon. The boss introduced Shenkman to Max Fleischer, whose animation studio was nearby, and he joined the ink-and-paint staff. He was soon laid off and returned to Columbia, but this time in Charles Mintz’s cartoon unit. Mintz moved Krazy Kat production to Hollywood in 1930 and invited 16-year old Shenkman to join as an in-betweener, a job he accepted and held for nine years. But his talent as a caricaturist was well-known, and he was in demand as a designer of greeting cards, invitations and occasional publicity drawings. Friz Freleng, recently returned to Schlesinger’s from a stint at MGM in mid-April, 1939, know about Shenkman by way of his friend at Columbia, Art Davis, and invited him to work on Malibu Beach Party.
The cartoon was released in 1940. It was a parody of the Jack Benny radio show, with Benny inviting movie stars (Gable, Garbo, Raft, Bette Davis and so on). Crafton goes on:
Schlesinger had an agreement that Benny would have the right to approve the drawings and the film and Mary Livingston[e], in fact, did insist that the caricaturist ‘do something about the nose’ before filming commenced. [Livingstone was so snout-sensitive, she had a nose job]. The stars’ studio photographs provided the basis for the sketches. Shenkman recalls that the principal’s voices were recorded by the stars themselves, but some of the others might have been impersonated. [If that was the case, the sound wasn’t used. KFWB’s Jack Lescoulie provides the voice of Benny].
The success of his caricatures led to Shenkman’s being hired by the studio in March 1940 as an animation assistant. [Tex] Avery had been working on Hollywood Steps Out well before Freleng’s film was released, and immediately engaged Shenkman to do caricatures. Avery took him and a background artist [Johnny Johnsen] to Ciro’s to make notes and sketches of the décor and guests. Schlesinger probably had obtained permission from the restaurant. Shenkman made about fifty model sheets of celebrities which the animators adapted for head size, perspective rendering and, of course, movement. Parts of the action were rotoscoped. In the scenes where Clark Gable and a mysterious lady do a Rhumba, Shenkman was filmed dancing with Mildred (Dixie) Mankemeyer, fiancée of [animator] Paul Smith.
[snip]
Both these films have a bit of documentary quality about them, derived in no small part from Shenkman’s hard-edged ‘photographic’ style caricatures.
He enlisted in the army on Dec. 31, 1942 and was discharged on Dec. 16, 1944.
When Shenkman left Warners is difficult to say. Webb credits him with the Peter Lorre caricature in Birth of a Notion (1947). The page to the left comes a Los Angeles Times magazine. Shenkman painted all the art for his son’s bedroom, but the short article that goes with it only calls him an “artist” and does not say where he was working. The 1950 Census return lists his occupation as “cartoonist, movie.”
He gained a connection with Hanna and Barbera when he moved to the MGM cartoon studio. He is responsible for a drawing of a group of artists at the studio in 1956; the staff members have been identified by H-B background artist Art Lozzi. There is a grey-scale version of this drawing in Martha Sigall’s wonderful book on her career in animation, but this comes from the Cartoon Research website.
Here’s more of Shenkman’s work. This must have been done on a freelance basis as it appeared in the Sunday magazine of the Boston Globe on Oct. 22, 1961. That's a good-looking Bugs.
We’ve posted a bit about Shenkman on the Yowp blog before. He took part in the ninth annual “Operation Art for the Armed Forces” in mid-December 1961 at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Oakland. Taking part were Hanna-Barbera writers Mike Maltese and Warren Foster, who showed some cartoons from the Huckleberry Hound Show and gave away cels; Johnny Johnson, Tex Avery’s background painter dating back to the Warner Bros. days; Phil Duncan, who had his own studio called TV Cartoon Products and freelanced for Hanna-Barbera; and Fred Crippen, the UPA artist who later created Roger Ramjet.
The story gives a bit of background, though I caution that other "facts" contained in it aren't quite correct. It says Shenkman "has done portraits and caricatures for Disney and MGM and is now with UPA." I don't know about his Disney connection, but Keith Scott's essential The Moose That Roared has his name on the list of the early Rocky and Bullwinkle animation was that done in Hollywood.
This picture of Shenkman with his drawing of Bill and Joe dates from 1967, according to a commenter on this blog some years ago.
Shenkman seemed to like the volunteer gig for the armed forces. Here is a December 1966 photo from "Operation Art For the Armed Forces." Second left in the top row is Jerry Eisenberg, layout man at Hanna-Barbera. I hope you've read his interview on this blog. Jerry, as you have read, pitched series ideas to Joe Barbera and the article in The Oak Leaf mentions he was working on the Yogi Bear Sunday comics. Background artist Janet Brown is next to him. Also shown are two H-B animators, Larry Silverman and Bill Carney. Silverman's career went back to the silent days and he's better known for his work on the East Coast, mainly at Terrytoons, though his name shows up on a 1933 Harman-Ising cartoon, Wake Up the Gypsy For Me, for Warner Bros.
Shenkman was back a year later. He is at the lower left. At the top left is another well-known Hanna-Barbera artist, background painter Dick Thomas, who started at Warners in the late '30s. Murray McClelland was also employed at Hanna-Barbera at the time, and at the top far right is 84-year-old Johnny Johnsen, who seems to have retired from MGM before Hanna and Barbera set up their own studio in 1957.
We've found one other story about a Shenkman caricature event. It was in a Los Angeles suburb in 1964. Also taking part in it was Art Leonardi, the ex-Warners animator who rose through the ranks at DePatie-Freleng.
Again, it's unclear when Shenkman left Hanna-Barbera. Harvey Deneroff, a fine historian with animation in his family, spoke to Shenkman and says he later worked at Filmation, DePatie-Freleng and for Ralph Bakshi. His credits include Archie’s Funhouse, Star Trek: The Animated Series, Coonskin, Wizards and Hey Good Lookin’.
Hanna-Barbera cartoons have been tarnished with a reputation of little real animation, with a lot of eye blinks and maybe an arm and mouth moving, the rest of the character left on one cel, frame after frame after frame.
I won’t comment about the later cartoons. Going back to the beginning, the first Ruff and Reddy cartoon in 1957 barely had any animation, but it wasn’t as static as Crusader Rabbit. When the Huckleberry Hound Show debuted in 1958, some of the cartoons featured characters that simply popped from pose to pose without any fluidity.
In Huck’s second season, additional artists had been hired and the animation was treated like you would find in a theatrical cartoon. Not often, but it happened. Characters would move in full, sometimes one drawing to a frame. At the same time, director Bill Hanna and his animators would try to get some emotion out of the characters without resorting to a lot of talk (that would change soon).
Here’s an example from the Pixie and Dixie cartoon Hi-Fido, which aired at the start of the 1958-59 TV season. Warren Foster’s plot is simple. The meeces try to drive Mr. Jinks nuts by making the sound of a barking dog through a microphone, meaning the cat can hear a dog, but not see one.
Jinks catches on to what’s happening. But the plot turns and a stray bulldog strolls into the yard and then up to Jinksie in the house.
The animator is Manny Perez, formerly of Warner Bros. and, I suspect, working freelance on this cartoon. He employs several drawings, animated on twos, to shift Jinks’ weight from one foot to the other, and lean on the dog. Note that Jinks is drawn in full in each frame. There’s no cheating here.
Mr. Jinks lies to the meeces he was hip to their scheme, and that he “knewwww there was no dog around the house.” Jinks then chuckles about the situation. Here, Perez limits the animation to Jinks’ head in three movements. The cat then looks at the dog and continues to chuckle (the exposure sheet may have screwed up as there is no movement as Jinks laughs).
Then he realises there IS a dog. The drawing below is held for at least 16 frames to establish what’s happening.
The dialogue switches from a chuckle, to a nervous laugh, to crying as the cat expects the dog to maul him.
These are some of the crying drawings. Only the head is animated. No two drawings are used in consecutive frames.
This is where the famous H-B eye-blinks come in. That’s the only animation as the basic pose is held for about 60 frames, or roughly 2 1/2 seconds.
The shock drawing and the back-up-to-the-wall are held for two frames each.
The dog moves in and barks at Jinks. I won’t post them all but Perez uses three barking drawings, with the entire dog moving as in full animation. A Jack Shaindlin cue runs out and a Spencer Moore cue takes over in the background.
You’ll notice the lovely colour on these frames, even though there’s some digital fuzz. It would appear these cartoons were restored either for cable television or for the non-existent second volume DVD set of the Huckleberry Hound Show.
John Stephenson lasted only five episodes before being replaced as Doctor Benton Quest on Jonny Quest in 1964. But another actor on the show got shoved out of a role even faster.
The evil Dr. Zin was played by Vic Perrin. Perrin was constantly in demand on network radio, even into the dying days. But when he was hired in 1947 for the starring role in the Mutual network's The Zane Grey Show, he was fired after the first broadcast. The trade papers said he sounded more like a villain than a hero, so they brought in Jim Bannon.
You can tell from the first sentence that this year marks 60 years since Quest debuted in prime time. I’m an old guy so, yes, I watched it (on a black and white TV) during its original broadcast. I hope to have a post on the debut anniversary. For now, I thought I’d do a post about the man who made four villainous appearances on the show.
I’m not a huge fan of Wikipedia, but in the case of Vic Perrin the entry is very good. It looks like the writer got his information from Perrin’s obit in the Los Angeles Times or the Hollywood Reporter. What you read below comes from other sources.
Victor Herbert Perrin was born on April 26, 1916 in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. His father was a travelling hardware salesman. At the age of 19, he was employed at WHA radio in Madison, Wisconsin and a member of the WHA Players. He emceed events and appeared in stage productions including “The Merchant of Venice” and “The Merry Widow.” Newspaper clippings reveal he was still at WHA as late as May 1940.
Next it was off to Sunset and Vine in Hollywood. Broadcasting magazine of May 16, 1942 reported he first found work as a parking lot attendant, then as an NBC page, then joined the announcing staff of the Red network. In July of 1941, he was on the NBC Blue network, where he introduced Hank McCune in a 15-minute weekly show called Pacific Coast Army Camp News and stayed with the network when it was spun off by NBC, eventually being named ABC. Promotion was quick. The trades reported in January 1943 he had replaced Army-bound Dresser Dahlstead as chief announcer of the network. When Dahlstead returned, Perrin quit ABC in October 1945 to freelance.
Perrin did a pile of shows on radio, even into the 1960s. A list would be pointless, though we point out he was a particular favourite of Jack Webb, and cast a number of times on Dragnet, and co-starred with Raymond Burr on CBS'Fort Laramie. There was acting work in television, too; Perrin appeared in both the radio and TV versions of Gunsmoke, among many things. A weekly role on television for a number of seasons was uncredited. His voice was the one you heard at the beginning of Outer Limits. Almost all his work was on the dramatic side, though he did appear in one episode of the sitcom I Remember Joan.
Perrin's first connection with animation I can find was a few years before Jonny Quest. In September 1957, he was the host of the fifth annual Screen Cartoonists Guild's Cartoon Festival.
You wouldn’t find Bugs Bunny or Tom and Jerry at this showing. This was a showcase for studios that made animated commercials. For the record, the studios were: Animation, Inc.; Cascade Pictures (home of Tex Avery); Churchill-Wexler; Fine Arts Productions; Graphic Films; Ray Patin Productions; Quartet Films, Inc.; Shamus Culhane Productions, Sherman Glas Productions; Song Ads, Inc., John Sutherland Productions; Telemation; T.V. Spots, Inc. and Le Ora Thompson and Associates. It would appear Perrin was providing voice-overs for animated spots. To the right is a trade ad from Dec. 29, 1958. (Dick Le Grand and Virginia Gregg were also radio actors).
We briefly pause from our Perrin story to post frames from some of the ads that appeared at the Festival; another one was the famous Jell-O Chinese Baby from Ray Patin Productions. I cannot tell you if he voiced any of them.
The Hollywood Reporter of Nov. 2, 1960 mentions that Perrin was recording seven cartoon spots for Pacific Telephone Yellow Pages, directed for Playhouse Pictures by Pete Burness. The same page revealed on March 16, 1962 that Playhouse's Bill Melendez had Perrin voicing five spots for the Interstate Building Assn. A week later, the Reporter blurbed that Playhouse hired him and Dick Tufeld (the "brought-to-you-by" announcer on The Jetsons) to voice a pair of animated commercials for Southern California Gas, directed by Melendez. And on Nov. 2, 1962, the paper squibbed that Perrin, Lucy Ann Polk and Dick Cathcart were providing voices for Ralston and Foremost commercials; the animation director wasn't revealed.
Unfortunately, information isn’t available about his hiring at Hanna-Barbera and when he recorded the Jonny Quest voice tracks. The episodes he appeared as Dr. Zin were:
● Riddle of the Gold, October 16, 1964. ● The Robot Spy, November 6, 1964. ● Double Danger, November 13, 1964. ● The Fraudulent Volcano, December 31, 1964.
My recollection from the Jonny Quest documentary on-line is series creator Doug Wildey opposed the idea of a regular villain. As it turned out, Dr. Zin was only in four of the twenty-six episodes, though he did return—as did Perrin—when the series was retooled in the 1980s. Perrin played other parts in the original series as well. A sentimental favourite is Perrin as the scheming Dr. Ahmed Kareem in “The Curse of Anubis” simply because at the climax, my sister got so scared, she ran out of the living room vowing never to watch the show again.
We’ll spare you another shopping list of animated accomplishments at Hanna-Barbera and elsewhere, other than to mention his work ranged from comedy (The Hair Bear Bunch and several series with a gangly Great Dane) to action-adventure (Space Ghost). His voice was in a Lutheran-made animated Christmas special with a fine cast that included Don Messick, the wonderful June Foray, Hans Conried, Jerry "We're-not-hiring-you-as-Pebbles" Hausner and Colleen Collins, who was heard in a number of Tex Avery cartoons at MGM. Perrin did a number of live-action religious-based films. Click here for his narration on a half-hour for the Franciscans, with music from the Impress library in the background, and a role for Pat McGeehan, who voiced a noise-hating bear and other characters for Avery.
Perrin was apparently not interviewed in the popular press about his animation career—he did talk his work on Jonny Quest to Starlog magazine in an issue not available on line—but spoke about commercial acting. Several stories showed up in newspapers in early 1967; I suspect they were releases that came out of the office of his agent, Jack Wormser.
Actor Makes Handsome Sum As TV 'Voice'
VIC PERRIN is one actor who makes more money when he's not seen on camera than when he is.
He belongs to that exclusive breed in show business that has hit it big as the anonymous voices on TV commercials.
Last year Perrin earned in excess of $100,000 of which 80 per cent was from TV (and radio) commercials.
Vic, who has appeared on such TV shows as “The Big Valley,” “FBI Story,” “Gunsmoke,” and “Have Gun, Will Travel,” is never seen in TV commercials on purpose. "MY BELIEVABILITY as an actor is reduced in direct proportion to how often I'm seen in a commercial," he explains.
Perrin is a serious actor and maintains that an acting background is the No. 1 essential to success in the lucrative commercial field. "I try to give a TV pitch reading the same serious treatment that I would give to a speech by Henry V,” he maintains.
Some professional TV critics maintain that many commercials are better than the program in which they are inserted. Perrin agrees. "I think there is more creativity going into commercials these days than into many of the programs," he says.
Wormser, by the way, represented a who’s who of cartoon voice actors who worked in commercials, including Mel Blanc. Perrin and Blanc have another connection; as The Hollywood Reporter of Aug. 29, 1972 stated Perrin had been hired as a teacher at the Mel Blanc School of Commercials.
Perrin and Blanc died six days apart. Perrin was 73 when he died of cancer on July 4, 1989.
The Huckleberry Hound Show was a phenomenon. Critics liked it, and even admitted watching it. Colleges formed Huck Hound clubs. An island in the Antarctic was named for the star. It not only was the first cartoon series to win an Emmy, it was the first syndicated show of any kind to do it.
But why?
I could give you a pile of my own reasons, but let’s find out an answer from someone else.
The Huck show was broadcast not only in the United States, but in Canada, Australia and England. It was the subject of Alan Dick’s column in the Daily Herald of London on May 22, 1962.
Magic of Mr. JINKS (AND THE MEECES HE HATES TO PIECES)
FOR millions of youngsters Friday teatime is the peak of the viewing week. Spellbound they watch Yogi Bear's exploits. Which is as it should be, for Yogi is glorious kid stuff.
But I know a minor poet, a university graduate, an American expatriate professional man, two market porters and a road sweeper who contrive to get home in time that evening to join their children round the telly. What is the subtle appeal that unites such an unlikely cross-section? As a member of the Yogi Union in good standing, let me try to the drawing power of these animated animals—Yogi himself and Boo-Boo; Huckleberry Hound, the dog; Mr. Jinks, the cat. and Dixie and Pixie, the meeces Mr. Jinks hates to pieces.
My conclusion is that they have a methodical madness which interprets the subconscious loves and hates of men and nations. Feud
Although it is Yogi Bear who has given his name to the cult, it is Mr. Jinks the Cat who sits most behind the psychiatrist's couch. He is the one who interprets our love-hate libidos, our blood-lusting and our bravado.
His everlasting feud against Dixie and Pixie, the mice, fulfils our human yearning to give the other fellow a bloody nose without really hurting him.
Here is the magic of Mr. Jinks and the meeces he hates to pieces.
They inflict upon one another the most devastating punishment. But after the horrendous impact, both sides testily shake themselves and walk unscathed away. "I hates meeces to pieces," breathes Mr. Jinks with venom. I despises them mices."
But the day the meeces disappeared. Mr. Jinks moped on his bed, inconsolable with grief. And another day when Mr. Jinks was missing, the meeces went to pieces.
That was the love-hate relationship showing clear. You always love the one you hate.
Yogi Bear sits on the other side of the couch. He is the excitable fall-guy in all of us, the permanent sucker who never learns.
With the dead-pan expression and the self-satisfied voice, with an upward lilt like Schnozzle Durante, Yogi and his little stooge Boo-Boo always become involved.
Yogi is emotional, but self-centred with it. He is forever trying to help, while helping himself. Knight
Huckleberry Hound—who drags out his name like a hunting cry: How-ow-ownd!—is Don Quixote tilting at windmills.
He is the good-natured, love-thy-neighbour, turn-cheek we would all like to be, and aren't.
He is the knight with a broken lance, the prince of derring-don't. When he besieges the wicked knight's castle the portcullis is sure to fall, the moat to drain, the molten lead to pour.
And when he reaches his fair damsel in distress, she turns out to be a toothless hag.
But Huckleberry takes it all with good grace and lives to fight another day.
There they all are, our mixed-up love-hate, do-good, derring-do subconscious selves, scribbled in a psychiatrist's notebook by a gang of shadow animals.
Or are they more real than we like to think? Do we all hate meeces to pieces?
Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy had several forefathers that were combined into a pleasant cartoon series.
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera partly borrowed from themselves, as they had a father-son dog team in a number of Spike and Tyke cartoons they produced for MGM in the mid-‘50s. But they were borrowing even then, as the real origin comes from the Jimmy Durante-Garry Moore radio show. Old vaudevillian Durante always referred to young comedian Moore as “Junior” and proudly exclaimed “Dat’s my boy who said dat!” Younger fans may not know both Spike and Doggie Daddy took on Durante’s voice and delivery, the former from Daws Butler and the latter from former radio actor-turned-trucker Doug Young. (Butler said he recommended Young because he was worried about the effect doing the raspy voice would have on him).
Augie had a bit of Sylvester, Jr. in him, lamenting “dear old dad’s” behaviour. The Augie series was written by Mike Maltese, who didn’t write for Sylvester, Jr., but was at Warner Bros. when the cartoons were made. (It's been pointed out Maltese wrote Goldimouse and the Three Cats, released a year and several months after he left Warners. The slurping kitten was developed a decade earlier in the Bob McKimson unit by Warren Foster).
And the other influence is Maltese himself. Joe Barbera noted in 1959 that Maltese named all the characters. After “Arf and Arf” was rejected, Maltese named Augie for an in-law. And in most of the cartoons, Maltese used the basic formula he put into Wile E. Coyote at Warners—Doggie Daddy’s best efforts and intentions end in unexpected failure. Daddy also comments to the audience an awful lot. Baba Looey does it, too, and so do Blabbermouse and Fibber Fox, also Maltese creations. The idea certainly helps keep the audience engaged with what’s on the screen.
The Hanna-Barbera cartoons relied on dialogue a lot more once Maltese arrived in late 1958 (Foster joined him several months later from John Sutherland Productions) but there are occasionally some good takes. My favourite is by Dick Lundy in Million-Dollar Robbery (1959). Here’s one from the great George Nicholas, who gave Fred Flintstone some fine expressions. This is from Peck O' Trouble (1960), when Augie's presence startles tax cal-cu-culatin' dad. Whether Hanna timed it this way, or Nicholas used some judgment on his own, or both, I don’t know, but the first drawing is held for roughly 24 frames. The others are shot on twos or threes.
You’ll have to forgive the Italian TV bug on the frames, but these are the nicest ones I can find for the cartoon. It’s evident the Augie cartoons were restored at one time, compared to the washed-out versions with the Boomerang bug that may still be on-line somewhere.
Nicholas’ work is easy to spot here. At times, the characters have the beady eyes and big floppy tongues you see in his animation at H-B. There’s a bit of animation where Doggie Daddy stops running, but his long ears keep going and then fall to the side of his head, as in full animation.
There’s even a favourite Tex Avery bit in this cartoon, where Augie races outside onto a knoll away from the house to make a noise so he doesn’t disturb his dad inside. It’s the same kind of gag Avery used in The Legend of Rock-a-bye Point for Walter Lantz. That cartoon gave Maltese a story credit but it’s likely Tex came up with the gag, since he used it at MGM.
Hanna and/or Barbera once said the Augie Doggie series was a spoof of ‘50s sitcoms, but I can’t think of any (that lasted, anyway) involving a single father, other than Bachelor Father with John Forsythe. In drama, there was The Rifleman, and later, I guess you could put Flipper in that classification, but the star wasn’t human.
There’s a moment in another cartoon, High and Flighty, where Doggie Daddy gets emotional, thinking he’s lost his son forever. Despite the hammy music in the background, the scene is treated straight and shows the bond between the two.
The Augie series could get a little out there at times. Outer space was still a big thing in the late ‘50s, so dear old dad deals with a Martian baby in his home, and Augie and Daddy take a trip to Mars to hunt a rabbit with Bugs Bunny-like wiles (and Augie, for good measure, puts his hand to his head and says “Oh, for the shame of it!” like a certain Warner Bros.’ junior cat). The characters remained popular, and appeared in various later Hanna-Barbera “gang” series, with John Stephenson taking over Daddy’s voice after Young moved to Oregon in 1966.
Bob Givens laid out at least five Augie cartoons after he arrived from Warner Bros. in late 1958. He said the Augies and other early Hanna-Barbera cartoons “were kind of fun to do.” And they’re generally still fun to watch. And, after all, who’s going to disagree with the guy who designed the first real Bugs Bunny for Tex Avery?
The Flintstones daily comics for the last half of December 1961 were pretty much centred around Fred and Wilma. Pebbles hadn’t been invented, so she couldn’t be the focus of the gags. Barney enters into the picture four times, and we see Betty once. Dino just stands there as decoration in one strip. Dear old Baby Puss is ignored again. 
Monday, December 16, 1961 
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Monday, December 23, 1961 
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Monday, December 31, 1961
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