This ad appeared in the Los Angeles Times 63 years ago today, marking the debut of The Quick Draw McGraw Show, replacing Wild Bill Hickok in the Kellogg Monday through Friday line-up.
It seems Monday was a popular night for Quick Draw on the West Coast. Here are some other stations that aired the fastest-shootin’-est cowboy, er, cowhorse, er, horseboy on birthday night, September 28:
KJEO 47, Fresno (at 6 p.m.)
KRCA 3, Sacramento (at 6 p.m.)
KGW 8, Portland (at 6 p.m.)
KSD-TV 5, St. Louis (at 4:30 p.m.)
KAKE 10, Wichita (at 6 p.m.)
WTTG 5, Washington, D.C. (at 7 p.m.)
WVET-TV 10, Rochester (at 6 p.m.)
WNAC-TV 7, Boston (at 6:30 and 7:30 p.m.)
WRGB 6, Schenectady (at 6 p.m.)
The ad shows the first Quick Draw cartoon was “Lamb Chopped” (Production J-11), featuring the orange, bad-guy Snagglepuss. The other cartoons were “Baby Rattled” (J-14) with Snooper and Blabber, and “Million Dollar Robbery” (J-31) with Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy.
Syndicated columnists Hal Humphrey and Erskine Johnson both penned pieces published in November, along with Don Page of the Times. All praised the series; it wasn’t “violent” like those old movie cartoons.
16mm prints of the half-show show were not struck for all stations. Some were bicycled from station to station and if you read TV listings for the third season (most cartoons were reruns), you can see that different shows appeared in different cities on the same day.
This isn’t intended as a full birthday post; instead you can read an old post on the show here.
