Hanna-Barbera cartoons rarely made fun of themselves in the olden days, but it happened in one of those little cartoons between the cartoons on either The Huckleberry Hound Show or The Yogi Bear Show.
“Hey, Boob! Watcha doin’, Boob? I’ll bet you’re drowin’ our lawn, Boob,” says Yogi, walking over to his buddy Boo Boo. (Why a flower is in a pot not being watered, I don’t know).
“Keep up the good work, Boob. You’re a real buddy, Boob!” Boo Boo is less than happy with Yogi’s patter.
Silently, and with his expression unchanging, Boo Boo turns the hose on Yogi.
“Hey! What’s with you, Boob?”
“After all,” Boo Boo says to the TV audience, “How long can a guy stand being called ‘Boob’?”
For you younger readers, “boob” meant “idiot” until another definition was popularised on the 1970s version of The Match Game.
My guess is this was written by Warren Foster. No one else at the studio would have likely struck back at being forced to write dialogue a certain way (e.g., Yogi’s rhyming couplets).
The animator, I suspect, is Don Williams with the backgrounds by Bob Gentle. The beet-red, fading colours come through the courtesy of Eastmancolor and my inability to improve on them. The print is from the collection of Steven Hanson.
“What are you doin’ with the soap?” ringmaster Huckleberry Hound asks Pixie and Dixie, in one of those little cartoons between the cartoons.
“It’s for Jinks. He’s chasing us,” says Dixie. We hear Jinks off camera. The meeces, with their elfin eyes, take off with a high step.
Jinks runs into the scene . . .
. . . Slides into the washing machine . . .
. . . And into the wash cycle. Check out some of the drawings of Jinks. Pixie and Dixie just move their mouths and an arm comes up; otherwise, they’re rigid.
Ken Muse is the animator.
The frames come from a 16mm black and white reel courtesy of Steven Hanson’s YouTube channel.
Before he played a cowardly Great Dane that solved mysteries (I’ve forgotten the character’s name, Scrubby or something), and before he portrayed Astro on The Jetsons, what was the first dog Don Messick voiced at Hanna-Barbera?
No, the answer isn’t me! Actually, his first pooch was Woolly the sheep dog on Ruff and Reddy, who first appeared on TV on March 22, 1958.
But forget Woolly. Who’s birthday is it today?
That’s right. Mine. Though judging by George Jetson, fans can just make up their own birthdays for characters and people will swallow it without question so long as it’s on the internet.
It was on this date in 1958 that Foxy Hound-Dog aired on a number of stations where Kellogg’s bought time.
Lew Marshall is the main animator of the cartoon (although the two frames above are by Mike Lah) and he saves Joe and Bill some money by coming up with a few cycles that take up a little more than the first 30 seconds of the cartoon. Here is an endless cycle of my initial run in the cartoon. It takes 32 frames to go from one end of the background to the other. Marshall uses only three drawings; one is used twice to create a four-position cycle, animated on twos.
You’ll notice the inconsistent colour separation. The head/trunk are on one frame, the legs and ears are on separate frames.
The Yowp debut cartoon has a few things old-time animation fans will remember. There’s a variation of the log-over-a-cliff gag that Tex Avery and writer Dave Monahan pulled off in All This And Rabbit Stew (1941). You’ll remember it from other Warners cartoons. I must have seen that, or the Bugs/Elmer version, as I realise my fate. Even with limited animation, Mike Lah draws a nice little expression. Wile E. Coyote could not have done it better. I emit a forlorn “yowp” before plummeting.
The old drag act appears, too. I think this is the only time Yogi did drag. Unlike similar dress-ups by Bugs Bunny or Woody Woodpecker, it isn’t being used to arouse and confuse but merely as a disguise. These two frames are consecutive. Hanna-Barbera was still employing pose-to-pose movement in its animation.
You’ll notice something else. Lah’s animation has my muzzle the same colour as the rest of my body. Marshall’s very is a sporty blue-ish grey. It could be whoever painted the Lah scenes didn’t get the correct colour chart.
There were three Yowp cartoons in all. Duck in Luck first aired on January 26, 1959, where the nemesis was the pre-Yakky Doodle duck, animated by Carlo Vinci. The final appearance came in the second season on Sept. 28, 1959 with Bare Face Bear, animated by Gerard Baldwin. By this time, Warren Foster was the sole writer of the Yogi Bear cartoons and a decision was made to permanently give Yogi (and Boo Boo) a home in Jellystone Park and Ranger Smith as a nemesis. “We’re going in a different direction,” they would say today, as I became unemployed (but that duck later got his own series. Drat!). It’s significant that neither Boo Boo nor Smith are in the final Yowptoon.
During the first year of the Huck Show, Hanna-Barbera marketed its characters, but since there were only five stars (Huck, Yogi, Pixie, Dixie, Jinks), secondary characters were included to round out things. Yes! There were Yowp toys and games at one time. Above is a Knickerbocker Roly Poly Target Game made in 1959. It came with a gun that shot corks and had some kind of tie-in with Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.
With that, I will wish myself a happy birthday. The blog is pretty much shut down but there are are still a few posts left in storage so we’ll try to get them published.
The first Hanna-Barbera cartoon series were not only hits with viewers, but with critics and even watchdog groups.
A Catholic publication in March 1960 was complimentary about the H-B shows then on the air and quoted Joe Barbera about why he thought the cartoons were appealing.
A non-denominational publication akin to Reader’s Digest republished portions of the story. Here’s what the July 1960 issue of The Family Digest wrote. Note the original name of The Flintstones and the writer’s lack of knowledge of Jay Ward Productions.
Quick on the Draw Condensed from The Catholic Preview of Entertainment SOMETIME THIS year, a family known as The Flagstones will make their national television debut, tentatively set for the ABC-TV Network during the prime evening hours. Who are The Flagstones? They are a family of cartoon characters starring in the first full length half-hour animated series designed for adult viewing. This newest television “first” marks a milestone in the long and successful partnership of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. For more than 20 years these two men have worked together to provide simple, honest and carefree humor for motion picture and television fans through the creation of such cartoon characters as Tom and Jerry, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Auggie Doggie and Quick Draw McGraw. For Hanna and Barbera, The Flagstones complete the progression to more adult, satirical cartoons which began, almost accidentally, with Huckleberry Hound. Huck, as his many fans call him, was created primarily to keep the small fry amused, following in the footsteps of Ruff and Reddy and adventurous dog and cat team, the first H-B TV series for Screen Gems. But Huck Hound’s hang-dog willingness to accept any herculean task and still come up smiling appealed to adults, who found his attitude admirable in a pass-the-buck age. College students across the nation began showering awards and honors on Huck, and many of them held special Huckleberry Hound Days on campus. Sensing the value of this adult interest, the show’s sponsor, the Kellogg Company, ordered continuation of the series, which was the first half-hour television series consisting entirely of original cartoons. Hanna and Barbera quickly followed up with Quick Draw McGraw, a three-part series which spoofs television westerns, mysteries and situation comedies. Of course, the antics of McGraw, a gun-toting horse; Snooper and Blabber, cat and mouse detectives; and Auggie Doggie, the mischievous pup, keep the series alive with action the children love. But the adults see and enjoy the satire behind it all. Now, with The Flagstones, Hanna and Barbera feel they have developed a new form of television entertainment. The series satirizes our way of life by dealing with the problems of a family living in the stone age, problems which could happen today. Mr. Flagstone drives a tractor, only it’s a dinosaur; the family car is made of stone. “We think the popularity of our shows lies in providing a psychological release for human beings of all ages,” explains Barbera. “No one ever gets hurt despite clobberings and binding situations. We have tried to give the audience characters they can identify with themselves, then follow up with wild antics impossible to duplicate in real life. The adults have all taken to the satire while the children watch the programs for the face value of the action-packed story.” Hanna and Barbera began working together over 20 years ago amid Hollywood’s famed atmosphere of jealousy, quarrelling and success at any price. They have found the success but have avoided the quarrelling. H-B Productions operates out of the world’s largest cartoon studio (a studio built by Charlie Chaplin) and is the only company turning out new and original cartoons especially for television consumption. As Barbera puts it, “Everyone in the business predicted we would fall flat on our faces trying to do a half-hour cartoon show each week. Actually, careful planning makes it possible. For example, when the action calls for a character to change his facial expression, we save the body and simply draw another head. This way we use 80 percent fewer drawings to animate the story.” Teamwork is also evident in the success of H-B Productions. The two men put in about 16 hours each, per day. They employ 150 artists and technicians in a 24-hour, round-the-clock operation. Coordination, which can be difficult with so large a staff, is actually a simple matter; there are no vague memos, no closed doors, no time clock. Every worker knows his job and does it. To the uninitiated, the job of “throwing together” a cartoon might seem like child’s play. Actually, the complicated and highly skilled technique boils down to this: First the story is written, then a story board is made, composed of a number of rough drawings with the dialogue written underneath each square. Next, through the process of trial and error, the voice men develop the sounds for the cartoon characters. The men begin working under a stop watch, until finally their voices are properly times and recorded. The recording and the story board go to the animators where action is matched to the sound. Scenic backgrounds are drawn, the penciled lines are “inked” in, a painter provides four color over-lays and then the finished drawings in color travel to the photographers. Altogether, 10,000 of these individual drawings are needed for a half-hour program. The success of H-B Productions indicates that good wholesome laughter is marketable on television. At a time when charges of corruption, excess violence and lack of originality are being hurled at the entertainment industry, William Hanna and Joseph Barbara can be especially proud of their contributions to show business.
Newspaper cartoonist Feg Murray had a daily syndicated feature where he drew and profiled a celebrity.
Who would have guessed one of his subjects was cartoon writer Mike Maltese?
Here is the drawing from the Brooklyn Citizen of May 15, 1941 when Maltese’s cartoons were released by Warner Bros.
Yes, Ray Katz never directed a cartoon (though he was in charge of contracts for his brother-in-law, Leon Schlesinger, at the time), it’s debatable whether cats were a Maltese speciality, and I suspect he never used a typewriter to write a story, but it’s surprising to see a cartoon writer get recognition. Especially since Maltese didn’t work for Disney, and especially since Maltese had to fight his way into the Schlesinger story department (he related to historian Mike Barrier how Bugs Hardaway and the older writers tried to freeze him out in 1940).
Coincidentally, Variety reported on May 9, 1941 that Schlesinger had signed Maltese to a five-year contract as a story and gag man.
The Cat’s Tale was released March 1, 1941.
Maltese remained at Warners, writing some terrific cartoons for Chuck Jones, until 1953 when the cartoon studio was about to close and he jumped over to Walter Lantz Productions. When Warners re-opened the following year, Jones managed to get Maltese re-hired, and with a $50-a-week raise (“Unheard of,” remarked Mr. Maltese in a 1976 interview). He left for Hanna-Barbera in November 1958 as paisano Joe Barbera offered even more money. In his first year, he wrote all 78 cartoons on the Quick Draw McGraw Show, along with a Huckleberry Hound cartoon and another starring Yogi Bear.
The rest of the story is fairly straight-forward. Maltese worked for Chuck Jones off and on for the rest of his career, finally leaving Hanna-Barbera for good in 1971, indignant over interference by the networks in his stories. His last series for the studio was (I think) Funky Phantom (Didn’t the teenagers in that one own a sand buggy named “Looney Dunes”?).
His pre-Warners career at Fleischer and Jam Handy is related in Barrier’s fine book “Hollywood Cartoons” and Joe Adamson indispensable “Tex Avery: King of Cartoons.”
Maltese remains my favourite cartoon writer. He passed away in Los Angeles on February 22, 1981 at age 73.
Who would have thought a dog and cat that barely moved on screen would be the start of a TV empire?
It was on this date, 65 years ago, NBC aired the first Ruff and Reddy Show. It was a rarity, back then, for a Saturday morning. It contained brand-new, never-seen-before cartoons made especially for television.
We’ve written about the series a number of times (see the Topics tree on the right side of this page). To give you a capsule history:
• Rudy Ising claimed he went to Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera at MGM in 1955 with the name and “the format” for the cartoon; they were originally Ising’s “Two Little Pups” at MGM. He sued after the series debuted (see The Hollywood Reporter, June 30, 1958). • Ruff and Reddy were copyrighted on May 25, 1956 by Shield Productions. This was a company co-owned by Hanna without Barbera (see the U.S. Government Catalog of Copyright Entries and Keith Scott’s book The Moose That Roared). • H-B Enterprises was registered on July 7, 1957 after MGM closed its cartoon studio. Layout artist Dick Bickenbach told historian Mike Barrier the MGM crew was working on Ruff and Reddy just before the closure. • NBC buys the series from Screen Gems. The Reporter of Nov. 11, 1957 mentions the show will be in colour “with initial episodes taking them to outer space. Two first-run cartoons from the Columbia library will also be included.”
You can read more about all this, and the copyright episode dates in this post.
What was the first show like? We’re fortunate enough to have a review from Billboard’s Charles Sinclair in the issue of December 23, 1957. It also leaves a hint about one of the Columbia/Screen Gems cartoons that aired.
Ruff and Reddy (Net) Host, Jimmy Blaine. Producers: Fred Hanna [sic], Joe Barbera. Director, Robert Holtgen. Utilizes cartoons, both new product and former theatrical shorts. A Screen Gems Production for NBC-TV. Sustaining. (NBC-TV, 11-11:30 a.m., EST, Dec. 14) “Ruff and Reddy is a slicked-up version of the kind of cartoon show which has often pulled high ratings at the local level when assembled by stations out of available cartoon packages. It may well repeat the same performance in its run on NBC-TV’s Saturday morning line-up. The format was simplicity itself. Jimmy Blaine, complete with blazer jacket emblazoned with Ruff and Reddy characters on the pocket, gave the lead-ins and lead-outs to a pair of Screen Gems cartoons full of the usual slapstick chases, which in turn sandwiched a cliff-hanger cartoon about the adventures of Ruff and Reddy with space pirates. Moppet dialers may have been pulled at the clincher in the first cartoon, where a seed-guzzling crowd [sic] stopped ruining a roof garden because it was a “Victory Garden,” but it at least firmly dated the cartoon for adults. A pair of contest plugs, involving Revell electric trains and a doll layout, looked for all the world like regular commercials, complete with “hard sell.” Summed up: “Ruff and Reddy” should have lots for the tots.
The show wasn’t sustaining for long. Billboard of December 16th reported General Foods bought alternate weeks. The odd thing is Ruff and Reddy was opposite Mighty Mouse on CBS, which was also sponsored by General Foods.
The Columbia cartoon referred to in the review matches the description of “Slay It With Flowers,” a 1943 short starring the Fox and Crow.
The National Parent-Teacher didn’t review the show until its November 1959 issue, but seemed fairly positive about it, though the reviewer had trouble grasping the cliff-hanger aspect.
Ruff and Reddy. NBC. This is a show designed for “children as children,” not as jet pilots, U.S. marshals, or space men. The scenes are those of Wonderland, the characters whimsical and elfin. Now and then some monster rears his fearsome head, but he’s too fantastic to give rise to more than a short, delicious shudder. Even the commercials manage to adapt themselves to the spirit of the entertainment less clumsily than in most shows where this is tried. Many of the cartoon sequences have a quality of mystery and charm that suggest the famous Arthur Rackham illustrations for children’s books. Others, alas, are humdrum cartoon staples—not by the artist’s choice, we'll wager, and in future we hope this imaginative cartoonist may be given his head. The characters have a fine time playing tricks with words (“Mr. Tall met Mr. Small in the hall—that’s all”). A child is sure to follow suit with a perseverance that may drive adults to distraction yet can lay a fine foundation for language skill. But we strongly recommend more caution with the word games. Bad English like “Who am I? You know whom,” “float as good as a boat,” and mispronunciations for the sake of punning (‘“genuwine hareloom,” “‘cat-astrophe”) can make impressions that will take years to come unstuck. These elements are held together, after a fashion, by a host who is seen briefly with two talking birds—telling a riddle, rattling off amusing nonsense, or raptly reciting his commercials. We say “after a fashion” because the components of the show, delectable as they are, are thrown at the viewer in what appears to be utter confusion. It may go something like this: The birdman introduces a cartoon. The cartoon is interrupted by man-and-bird comment, which is interrupted by a commercial. Then we see another—and different—cartoon. Then there's more man-and-bird comment, with a commercial or maybe two commercials. After that we go back to the first cartoon, which is at last completed, though not without interruption by a song or two and another commercial. Perhaps this confusion doesn’t bother children. They may think that’s the way it is in life and art. But shouldn’t they be finding out that there’s such a thing as form—in art, however it may be in life—and that form begins with unity and continuity? This lack of wholeness Ruff and Reddy shares with many of the children’s shows, especially those that include cartoons. But surely it is one program that can maintain itself on a higher level. It provides more than passive entertainment for children. It is a show that can teach a child to flutter the wings of fancy. Let it teach him to flutter them in rhythm as well as rhyme.
It didn’t take long for Screen Gems’ marketing people to pounce on the show for tie-ins. The Reporter of December 30 said the show “has already been franchised for a number of toy and clothing items on the basis of previews of the films.”
And it didn’t take long for H-B Enterprises to find a new enterprise. Variety of Jan. 22, 1958 mentioned 52 segments of Ruff and Reddy had been completed (the first four adventures of season one) but production had begun a week earlier on 78 segments for a new programme. Talks were underway with Screen Gems on a new series. It was The Huckleberry Hound Show, which racked up favourable reviews, a cult audience (at least in its first year) and an Emmy. Huck, more than Hanna-Barbera’s other drawling dog, gave the studio its major boost.
Now something for you “list” fans out there. Here’s what the Philadelphia Inquirer put in its TV listings for the first run of the first season. No Columbia cartoons are mentioned and there wasn’t a summary every week.
December 14, 1957 (Debut). Kiddies’ cartoon series.
December 21, 1957 Kiddies’ cartoon series.
December 28, 1957 “The Mad Monster of Muni-Mula.” Ruff and Reddy, that crazy cat and dog team, are told by Mr. Big Thinker that he is going to make robots that look like them for his invasion of Earth. “The Hocus Pocus Focus.” When Ruff and his robot-brained pal try to escape, the Thinker orders their return.
January 4, 1958 “Muni-Mula Mix-Up.” When Ruff and Reddy, the dynamic cat and dog, try to escape from the robots on the aluminum planet of Muni-Mula, they are caught by the ever-present Hocus Pocus Focus, which takes them to the Big Thinker, the planet’s leader. The pair, thinking they are sure goners, are surprised when the Big Thinker’s large metal head opens and out pops an unexpected guest.
January 11, 1958 “The Creepy Creature.” Ruff and Reddy, the adventurous cat and dog, held prisoner on the planet Muni-Mula, fall into good luck when they meet Professor Gizmo, who shows them the real master mind of the planet, a mechanical brain. “Surprise in the Skies.” Ruff, Reddy and Professor Gizmo are attacked by the whole Muni-Mula army of robots.
January 18, 1958 “Crowds in the Clouds.” Reddy is accidentally left behind when the adventurous cat-and-dog team, Ruff and Reddy, try to escape from the plant [sic]. Muni-Mula, on Professor Gizmo’s rocket ship. “Reddy’s Space Rescue.” As Reddy falls through Space, Gizmo saves him with his secret weapon.
January 25, 1958 “Rocket Ranger Danger.” After escaping from the aluminum planet, Muni-Mula, Ruff and Reddy, the adventurous cat and dog, and their friend Professor Gizmo, relax in their rocket ship. “African Adventures.” Ruff and Reddy start a new adventure when they agree to help Pinky the pint-size pachyderm, find his mom in Africa.
February 1, 1958 >“Last Trip of the Ghost Ship.” Ruff, Reddy and Pinky the pint-size pachyderm board the ship “Voodoo Queen” headed for Africa. “Irate Pirate.” The trio meet Cross-Bones, the tiny pirate captain who forces them into the brig.
February 8, 1958 “Dynamite Fright.” Ruff, Reddy and Pinky the pint-sized pachyderm escape from the ghost ship’s brig and are thrown into the ocean when the ship blows up. Their raft is attacked by a swordfish. “Marooned in Typhoon Lagoon.” To evade their attacker, Pinky blows a jet of air from his trunk. It propels them to the African shore.
February 15, 1958 “Scarey Harry Safari.” In Africa, Ruff is kidnaped by Harry Safari, the hunter, who uses him for bait. A lion saves him, but in turn is caught in a trap. “Jungle Jitters.” Ruff beats Harry to the trap and saves the lion. Ruff tricks the hunter into giving him his gun. he little cat aims at a rock. But it’s not a rock, it’s Pinky the pint sized pachyderm.
February 22, 1958 “Bungle in the Jungle.” Ruff mistakes Pinky, the elephant, for a rock, but the little elephant is saved when Reddy spoils his friend’s aim. Now it’s Harry Safari’s turn. He takes aim at Pinky, but is scared out of his wits by the friendly lion’s roar. “Miles of Crocodiles.” Ruff, Reddy and Pinky then try to cross a stream by floating some logs. But they’re not logs—they’re crocodiles.
March 1, 1958 “A Creep in the Deep.” Reddy is luckier than Ruff and Pinky the Pint-sized Pachyderm, who are caught on a crocodile-infested river. From a tree, Reddy swings his friends back to shore. “Hot Shot’s Plot.” Harry Safari finally tracks down the trio. He tricks the naïve Pinky into luring his mom toward one of Harry’s traps.
March 8, 1958 “The Gloom of Doom.” Pinky, the pint-sized elephant, realizes too late that he is trapping his mother. Ruff, Reddy and the friendly lion rush to her air, but they are soon at the mercy of Harry Safari.
March 15, 1958 “Introduction—Western Adventure.” Ruff and Reddy, the powerhouse cat and dog duo, embark on a western vacation when Reddy wins a limerick contest. They head for the Gran Canyon, but take a wrong turn, and wind up in the spooky ghost town of Gruesom Gulch. “Slight Fright of a Moonlight Night.” After meeting some of the frightening spectres who haunt Gruesome Gulch, Ruff and Reddy head for the sheriff’s office.
March 22, 1958 “Asleep While a Creep Steals Sheep.” Ruff and Reddy, the adventurous cat and dog, meet a long-haired sheep dog with a mystery to unfold. Hijackers have been rustling his flock without leaving tracks. Reddy masquerades as a sheep, hoping to catch the outlaws red-handed, but falls asleep on the job. “Copped By a ‘Copter.” Reddy, disguised as a sheep, is hauled into a helicopter by two desperadoes.
March 29, 1958 “The Two Terrible Twins From Texas.” Reddy, the canine half of the cat and dog team, Ruff and Reddy, has been kidnaped by two fierce outlaws who think he’s a sheep. They discover his identity, and whisk him away in their helicopter before his pal, Ruff, can come to the rescue. “Killer and Diller.” The notorious outlaws, Killer and Diller, dream up a gruesome scheme for getting rid of Reddy. They fly him to Dead Man’s Mine, then send him rolling on his “last ride” in a runaway ore car.
April 5, 1958 “A Friend to the End.” Reddy, the drawling dog, is being hurtled to certain destruction in a runaway ore car, when his pal, Ruff, comes to the rescue. Then they head for the boarded-up shack where rustlers Killer and Diller have hidden the stolen sheep. “Heels on Wheels.” The walls of the old shack slide apart, and the outlaws speed out of the building. Ruff and Reddy decide to follow by helicopter, but there’s one small problem. Reddy, the pilot, has never flown before.
April 12, 1958 “The Whirly Bird Catches the Worm.” The heroic cat and dog team, Ruff and Reddy, use a helicopter to chase a pair of escaping sheep rustlers. When the outlaws stop for a quick lunch, Reddy swoops down on them, parking his ‘copter on the rustlers’ moving truck. “The Boss of Double Cross.” Reddy daring jumps from the helicopter to the roof of the speeding truck, but doesn’t realize there’s a tunnel dead ahead. He’s knocked out cold, and the outlaws make a bee-line for their headquarters, the notorious Double-Cross Ranch.
April 19, 1958 “Ship Shake Sheep.” Ruff and Reddy, searching for a flock of stolen sheep by helicopter, discover the hideout of the sheep-nappers, Killer and Diller. The helicopter is about to crash, but the quick witted sheep band together to spell out a warning to their rescuers. When Ruff and Reddy parachute to the ground, the rustlers are waiting for them. “Rootin’ Tootin’ Shootin’.” Reddy is talked into observing the “code of the west” and shooting it out with a killer. The outlaw reaches for his “12 gun” and gives Reddy a frightening demonstration of plain and fancy shooting.
April 26, 1958 “Hot Lead For a Hot Head.” Reddy, the awkward pooch, prepares to shoot it out with those notorious gunslingers, the Terrible Twins from Texas.
May 3, 1958 “Blunder Down Under.” Ruff and Reddy,” the adventurous cat and dog, dive into the ocean to catch a slippery seal, but encounter a strange metal monstrosity, which rises mechanically out of the sea.
May 10, 1958 “The Late, Late Pieces of Night.” Ruff and Reddy set out to sea on Professor Gizmo’s boat, the S. S. Leadbottom, but a strange submarine follows them all the way. They reach Doubloon Lagoon, and discover a sunken chest filled with pieces of eight. “The Goon of Doubloon Lagoon.” The diving bell, with Ruff and Reddy inside, is captured by mysterious magnetic rays from a phantom submarine. Our heroes are whisked off to Gruesome Grotto, a secret hideaway beneath the sea.
May 17, 1958 “Two Dubs in a Sub.” Ruff and Reddy, the foolhardy cat and dog, are tossed into a cell at “Gruesome Grotto,” the underwater hideaway by a pair of sea going swindlers, Captain Greedy and Salt Water Daffy. Their faithful friend, the seal, attempts to rescue them. “Big Deal with a Small Seal.” Ruff and Reddy, along with Professor Gizmo, are trapped in a cell—and the walls are moving in to crush them. But their pal the seal stops the torture device.
May 24, 1958 “A Real Keen Submarine.” Ruff and Reddy, the happy-go-lucky cat and dog, try to escape from Captain Greedy in the Captain’s own submarine, but Reddy and his slippery pal, the seal, are captured. The seal slides away from Greedy’s clutches, and the chase is on. “No Hope for a Dope on a Periscope.” Reddy is hanging onto the periscope of the submerging sub, but the seal comes to the rescue. He drags the water logged dog to shore just in time to encounter, once again, the giggling pirate, Salt Water Daffy.
May 31, 1958 “Rescue in the Deep Blue.” While Ruff, the feline half of the cat and dog duo, Ruff and Reddy, is forced to help Captain Greedy dig for sunken gold, his partner, Reddy, is held prisoner at Gruesome Grotto. Reddy makes his get-away, but he’s trailed by a dog eating shark. “A Whale of a Tale of a Tail of a Whale.” Reddy and his friend, the seal, come ashore on a small island, which turns out to be a big while. They hitch a whale-back ride to Doubloon Lagoon where Captain Greedy has Ruff doing his dirty work.
June 7, 1958 “Welcome Guest in a Treasure Chest.” Ruff, the spunky cat, thinks his partner, Reddy, the dumpy dog, has been swallowed up in the briny deep and continues to work for the pirate, Captain Greedy. But the shrewd seal, Ruff and Reddy’s slippery pal, has a plan for fooling the evil captain by hiding a sunken chest. “Pot Shots Puts Hot Shots on Hot Spot.” Captain Greedy and Salt Water Daffy steal the S. S. Leadbottom and load it with pirate gold—leaving Ruff and Reddy off on a desert island.
Here are two NBC news releases, one outlining reruns in season one and the other announcing the start of season two. You can click to enlarge them.
The Chicago Tribune published on October 4, 1958, the date of the last show in season one, listed the Columbia cartoon as Carnival Courage (1945).
NBC continued carrying the series for another two seasons, but the number of Ruff and Reddy cartoons was expanded from two to three. One newspaper’s listings for Saturday, October 18, 1958 gives the names of fourth, fifth and sixth episodes of the chickasaurus story, meaning the first three ran to start season two a week earlier. The Columbia cartoons may have disappeared. A network news release dated May 15, 1959 stated broadcasts of The Ruff and Reddy Show would begin in colour on June 6, 1959. It seems that was postponed until June 27th, according to a release dated June 2nd, which bragged about the colours on Jimmy Blaine’s puppets, Jose the toucan and Rhubarb the parrot.
Ruff and Reddy disappeared from the schedule after summer of 1960 but returned for the 1962-63 and 1963-64 seasons. You can read the release from NBC below. Note that Blaine was gone.
The last Ruff and Reddy show on NBC on Saturday mornings appears to have aired on September 26, 1964. The cartoons soon popped up in syndication, judging by TV listings in late 1964, including on KCOP Los Angeles with Bob Adkins as a host. Years later, American readers of a certain age will remember when cable television erupted, the cartoons appeared on Boomerang.
I’ve said a number of times I’m not a fan of the show and don’t recall watching it when I was a kid. Regardless, it does deserve some recognition for historical reasons, as well as some really good background art and music selection, but I imagine it’ll be yet another old H-B series that we won’t be seeing on home video.
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had high hopes for Top Cat.
The Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw shows were still attracting audiences in syndication. Both had been nominated for Emmys in 1960—and Huck won. The Flintstones had some critics pouting at the outset, but soon gained an audience. Now, cartoon studios were falling over themselves to put an animated show in prime time. ABC picked up Top Cat.
Considering all that, and the fact the series had plenty of the popular Bilko show mixed into its formula, it shouldn’t lose.
It was likely ABC that set up a junket for entertainment reporters to come to California and find out about its new shows for the fall season. Jim Downing of the Tulsa Tribune was one who took advantage of the freebie and got two columns out of his visit with Joe and Bill as they plugged Top Cat. The first column appeared on June 28, 1961, the next the following day.
It’s a shame the scan of Joe’s drawing of T.C. is poor, but you get the basic idea. The busted hat didn’t make the cut—probably too much pencil mileage involved. And he’s borrowing a sweater from Choo Choo.
FROM TIME to time from now on through the summer I’m going to tell you about the new shows which are scheduled to be introduced on the TV screen next season. I talked with stars and producers of some of them when I was in Hollywood this spring and got a line on a number of them. You haven’t heard about most of these shows, so I can brag that what you are going to be reading will be real little old scoops on the TV writing gentry.
Let’s start out today with a real scoop. The picture you see here is “Top Cat," star of a coming cartoon series to be seen on ABC-TV this fall. Joe Barbera, half of the cartoon team of Hanna-Barbera which produces "The Flintstones" among other popular pen-and-ink epics, picked at his lunch at the Tail O'Cock [sic] restaurant—I think that's in Sherman Oaks, Calif., and talked very happily about the success of "Flintstones" and the prospects for "Top Cat.” "ITS A DAMON RUNYON kind of a yarn,” he explained, rubbing his blue jowls with a talented hand. (He looks pretty much like Fred Flintstone, if you must know.) “Top Cat is the leader of a gang of alley cats and he lives in a garbage can behind a bowling alley. He is trying to improve the standard of living of his pals, see? “His buddies are Bennie the Ball, Choo-Choo, The Spook, Fancy Fancy and The Brain. He's a real operator—even has a telephone on the pole right by his garbage can. Sometimes his secretary answers it. . .” “My, my,” I said. “Is he some kind of a nut?” "WELL, YOU MIGHT SAY SO. He's a kind of an efficiency expert—efficient at conning the general public into supporting him in the style to which he has become accustomed. He— well, here's an example of how he operates: He blows his whistle, see? and times the other cats to see how long it takes ‘em to congregate. No excuses for tardiness." I said it sounded like he was a Sgt. Bilko type. “Yeah, that's the idea. In fact, we got one of Bilko's boys— Maurice Gosfield who did the Pvt. Dobermann part— to be the voice of one of the cats. He's Bennie the Brain.” [sic] So I said that was fascinatin'—but what did Top Cat look like? Barbera took my notebook and scribbled rapidly with a pencil. "There. That’s what he looks like. That’s the first time we’ve shown him by the way. I guess it’s all right to let you see him now.” The ABC-TV publicity man who arranged the luncheon-interview was wringing his hands. "We were going to send Jim some nice drawings, glossy prints for good reproduction,” he said. “Later, that is." “Oh, well, anyway, that's what Top Cat looks like,” said Barbera. "He doesn't have to use this sketch.” LITTLE DID HE KNOW! MISS an opportunity to reproduce a real Joe Barbera original? From my own note pad? Ha! (I also am treasuring another pair of sketches he made, showing Top Cat’s garbage can-castle.) Hold your breath until tomorrow and I'll tell you some more about Hanna-Barbera stones factory.
The second column refers to their first studio on Cahuenga, not the one fans would recognise. This was the “window-less bunker,” as layout artist Jerry Eisenberg referred to it. Bill and Joe kept bragging about “no time clocks or memos” but never gave the reason. The bunker was so small, people worked from home. Of course there were no time clocks there.
People are curious about the animating process, so the column gives a brief summary.
My knowledge of Top Cat has huge holes in it, but I don’t recall Barbara Nichols ever voicing a character, though I can see her being cast as Honeydew Mellon. Fans are not helped by the Top Cat DVD having the same end credits spliced onto every cartoon. This is the first time I’ve read that Daws Butler was supposed to voice one of T.C.’s gang. He had been up for the role of Top Cat after Michael O’Shea fizzled out, but Barbera decided Daws was voicing too many lead roles for the studio and hired Arnold Stang, an excellent choice.
BILL HANNA and Joe Barbera produce such pen-and-ink operas as "Ruff and Ready" [sic], "Huckleberry Hound,” “Yogi Bear,” "Quick Draw McGraw” and "The Flintstones” for the panting television public. Now they are working on “Top Cat,” the Bilko-type feline I told you about in Wednesday's column who starts on ABC-TV next season. These two modest fellows— and they are just that, as nice a pair of guys as you'll ever meet— no longer draw the stuff themselves because they just can’t do that much work. They have a staff of 150 animators, sketch artists, background painters and technicians working like mad to get the strips out. But Bill and Joe still check every detail and either one is capable of filling in anywhere in the production line. Hanna-Barbera Productions is housed in a couple of one-story buildings sprawled on a hillside at 3501 Cahuenga Blvd. in Hollywood. From the outside the place looks about as impressive as a machine shop. INSIDE, JOE AND BILL HAVE tiny cluttered, offices and their assistants have even tinier and more cluttered offices. Everything about the place seems miniature after seeing the vast halls of the Disney Studios. Every square foot of space is utilized and everybody works with somebody else's elbow in his ribs. H-B Productions simply has outgrown its quarters, but they're too busy to do anything about it. "We used to turn out 48 minutes of ‘Tom and Jerry’ cartoons a year for MGM," said Barbera during a luncheon interview. "Now we do twice as much in a week — with half as many people.” To do that, Bill and Joe have worked out a system which reduces animation to the simplest elements. Their characters don't breathe, for example. And, usually, if one is talking, nothing else is moving about him. Movement is kept to a minimum, in fact. That makes for fewer drawings, faster production. I have before me as I write this a complete "cell" of a scene from a Flintstones episode. The background is painted (with ordinary house paint, by the way) on white cardboard. Fred Flintstone is walking along in front of his house. He is in three layers. That is, most of him is painted on one transparent sheet of plastic, but his feet are on a second layer and his mouth is on the top layer. To make him talk, all the work needed is to draw his mouth. For walking, merely his feet change. The background is moved slightly each "frame" to make it appear he is walking past it.
All cartoons are done in color, by the way, on the theory that eventually they will be televised in color and also can be adapted for movie theater showing throughout the world. At the time I interviewed the boys, they did not know who would be the "voice" of Top Cat. Now it has been decided to give the job to Arnold Stang. Voices are important in the cartooning business. Dawes Butler [sic] is a busy man at H-B. He does the voice of Yogi Bear and of Huckleberry Hound and will do The Spook, one of Top Cat's buddies. Alan Jenkins [sic], Maurice Gosfield, Herb Vigran, John Stevenson [sic] and Barbara Nichols will contribute their voices to TC (Top Cat) characters. THE HOURS KEPT BY and Joe and their methods for getting the job done are considered unorthodox even by Hollywood standards. There are no time clocks or memos. If an animator or artist feels he does his best work by coming in at night and working until dawn, that's fine with them. Through a profit-sharing plan, all the employes share in the H-B success. With nothing but success ahead of them, Bill Hanna (who looks like Barney Rubble) and Joe Barbera can trace their luck back to Huckleberry Hound who started them on the road to the top in 1958. And above each of their desks is a picture of Huckleberry Hound shaking hands with them. The inscription says, “Thank You Huck.”
Top Cat and the other new prime-time cartoons of 1961 failed to get audiences and several retreated to Saturday morning reruns. Some fans say the series was Hanna-Barbera’s best in prime time. “Best” is always debateable, but T.C. and his gang had staying power, were revived on occasion and are still remembered today.
Earl Kress was among a handful of wonderful people who loved and really knew Hanna-Barbara cartoons, and would go out of his way to help others who did, too, even if it was just to chat by e-mail.
Hanna-Barbera and other studios employed Earl as a writer. He won Emmys. He was only 60 when he passed away from cancer in 2011. When he died, the good people in animation said many good things about him.
Earl amassed, what I gather, was a huge amount of material; he was involved in publicity of the H-B cartoons after the studio was sold to Turner, in addition to music CDs and cartoon DVDs. Much of it has been sitting in his home in the dozen years since he left for another plane.
Denise Kress went through her late husband’s material some time ago and mailed some of it to me. I’ve passed on some of it in this blog. I think he would have wanted it. Earlier this month, Denise bundled up a package of Earl’s files and took the great expense of sending it to me. It’s a bewildering amount of material, including voice recording session data and animation credits for The Flintstones, a whole episode guide from Wacky Races, one of his draft stories for H-B from 1980, non-cartoon cues from the Capital “Q” library (the one before Hi-Q) and a lot more.
With this overly long introduction, let me post the lyrics and music for what I suspect was a theme song for Touche Turtle.
Yes, Touché’s part of starting-to-get-blah period of Hanna-Barbera comedies. But I post this because the lyrics are by Mike Maltese, my favourite of all cartoon writers, and I don’t know if this was ever used on television.
Touche’s gestation period seems to have started in 1960. A Life magazine spread featured story director Dan Gordon looking over concept drawings for a proposed Hairbrain or Harebrain Hare series. One of the drawings is pretty much Touché Turtle. A Variety story of October 20, 1960 stated a deal had been worked out for two syndicated cartoon series, one starring swordsman Hairbrain and Dum Dum, and the other with Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har, another Maltese invention.
Somehow, during development, the rabbit disappeared and Dum Dum was paired with Touché Turtle. Wally Gator was added by August 1961 (sayeth the Hollywood Reporter) and the troika appeared (in colour) on the Beachcomber Bill Show on KCOP in Los Angeles on Monday, September 3, 1962, after a preview the previous August 27th—at 7:30 in the morning! (The station signed on early). The Los Angeles Citizen-News reported “Zero-Hero,” animated by Ken Muse, was previewed. Screen Gems claimed each episode in the three shows cost $9600 a piece, 156 cartoons in all (Variety, Mar. 7, 1962).
Those of you who have seen the series know the theme song before each cartoon consists of the Randy Horne Singers belting out “Touché, away! Touché, away! It’s Touché Turtle.” Maltese did better, though he’s been wittier (eg. “The Flower of Gower Gultch” at Warners).
As you can see below, Hoyt Curtin composed a theme, including chords. I have no skill at playing in A-flat on anything so I can’t attempt to recreate this aurally for you.
It might have been cool if Bill Thompson, the voice of Touché, had sung this, but I don’t know if it was ever recorded.
As you know, this blog is retired but when I get a chance, I’ll put up a few more things Denise has sent this way.
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.
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