Clik here to view.
Yogi Bear Becomes a Star
Snagglepuss and Yakky Doodle can thank Hank Saperstein for the boost in their careers. In June 1960, a deal was being firmed up between Kellogg’s and Saperstein’s UPA. Variety reported on August 10th...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Musings About Muse
The cartoons on the Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw and Yogi Bear shows were, as layout artist Bob Givens recalled, 500 feet (without titles, I presume). He also recalled Ken Muse was the footage...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hanna-Barbera Birthday Did-You-Knows
63 years ago today, some forms were signed by George Sidney, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera creating what eventually became the biggest TV cartoon operation in the world. This is the birthday of H-B...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Astro By Nicholas
If you’ve visited our sister blog, Tralfaz, you’ve seen the masthead with the Jetsons’ Astro (né Tralfaz) on a circular dog-walk treadmill. It comes from Millionaire Astro and is one of a pile of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Joe Ruby
His first credits at Hanna-Barbera were as a film editor. You see one to the right from the “Elroy’s Mob” episode of The Jetsons. And if the screen credits still existed, you would see his name on the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Voice Called Flintstone
You know the voice of Fred Flintstone today—all because of pralines. The main cast of The Flintstones were hardly neophytes when it came to acting without being seen on camera. All four had acted on...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Stone Age Starts In 1960
The real TV money is in prime time, thought John Mitchell at Screen Gems. So he approached Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera to come up with a cartoon show for night-time viewing. All kinds of stories have...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ken Spears
They were partners in animation for years—and they died about three months apart. Ken Spears passed away last Friday of lewy body dementia at the age of 82. We mentioned in our post about Joe Ruby the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Daws Does It
Daws Butler is still with us, in a way, even though he’s been gone physically for 32 years. You can pull out a DVD of one of his cartoons and enjoy his work. His recordings with Stan Freberg...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Turning The Meeces Around
The anonymous artists called on to use dry brush during innumerable exit scenes at Hanna-Barbera did a marvellous job. Here’s part of a scene from Rapid Robot, a 1959 Pixie and Dixie cartoon. Jinks...
View ArticleClik here to view.
No Time Clocks
Joe Barbera seems to have had an obsession with time-clocks. Maybe he had a bad encounter with one at MGM or Van Beuren. Whatever the case, he mentioned in a number of interviews about the time he was...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Le Hound et Le Bear Yogi
When the Huckleberry Hound Show DVD came out years ago, it included some of the little cartoons-between-the-cartoons found on the original series. It didn’t contain all of them. Whoever was running...
View ArticleClik here to view.
He's Still a Top Cat
It’s tough to say how much the older Hanna-Barbera cartoons are in the public consciousness these days. I don’t watch TV so I couldn’t tell you if any channel is airing them. The Flintstones got a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Flintstones Weekend Comics, September 1964
Seven years ago, this blog featured Flintstones Sunday comics from 1964. Unfortunately, I stopping finding readable copies so there were no posts for four months. Lately, I accidentally found a source...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Don Messick Helps Others
Don Messick was Hanna-Barbera’s first major supporting character actor. Except when Joe Barbera went on a kick of finding “different voices” in 1959 (hence the hiring of Doug Young and Elliot Field,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Flintstones Weekend Comics, October 1964
Four comics this month. The blog has posted the last one before but this is the whole month's worth. The layouts are excellent. October 4th features a silhouette panel, October 18th has a great target...
View ArticleClik here to view.
K-E-Double-L...
Mr. Jinks may have been better on commercials than he was in the TV cartoons. Here are some frames for a 60-second Kellogg’s Raisin Bran spot. I’m glad the plot is self-explanatory because I can’t find...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Flintstones Weekend Comics, November 1964
Betty Rubble got the short shrift in the Flintstones newspaper comic strips, even more so than the beloved Baby Puss. The cat wasn't a regular character on TV, though (ending animation...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Doggie Daddy, Art Lover
Who would have guessed Doggie Daddy was a connoisseur of art? Well, he is in some cartoons. Background artists whiled away the time by putting inside gags or other bits of inspiration in the paintings...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Flintstones Weekend Comics, December 1964
Well, here it is December in Bedrock, and there’s no snow. In fact, there’s rain in one of the Sunday Flintstones comics in December 1964. We get summer-time activities, too, including badminton and...
View Article