One way of getting into a Yogi Bear cartoon was a pan over a long background while Don Messick, as narrator, sets up the plot.
One of those cartoons was Bear For Punishment, which first aired on the Huckleberry Hound Show on the week of November 30, 1959. The studio added background painters that year, as it added the Quick Draw McGraw Show to its workload. Fernando Montealegre, Bob Gentle and Art Lozzi were joined by Dick Thomas and Joe Montell. Thomas had originally been Bob Clampett’s background man at Warners and eventually left the studio in the mid-1950s to work for Disney. Montell’s first job was with Tex Avery at MGM and, when the unit was disbanded, he ended up (with Warren Foster, who wrote this cartoon) at John Sutherland Productions.
Montell is responsible for the backgrounds in this cartoon. After a shot of cars (on a cel being moved to the left) over a woodsy, repeating background, he came up with this for the second scene.
Bill Hanna then cuts to another background drawing, which is panned to the right. There has been no animation yet. That begins when the shot stops on Yogi and Boo Boo, and they begin snoring. The heads are the only things that are animated.
The next cut is to a long, repeating background. Notice how the bare pine and right-leaning whatever-it-is tree on the left of the painting are the same as on the right.
This background gets a good workout as cel overlays with cabins (as well as the animation) are placed on top. Here’s an example, just after Hanna cuts away from Yogi and Boo Boo. The cave is placed over top of the tree slanting to the left and the fir next to it. There are two overlays, one of the left half of the cave entrance and the other of the right, allowing the two bears to leave the cave. Below, you can pretty much see where the right overlay is placed.
Montell’s style is pretty easy to spot. He loved dots. See the dots he has next to branches or on top of stems? And dots he uses for rocks? That’s Montell. You can see the same thing in some of his cartoons for Avery and at Sutherland.
The animator of this cartoon is Gerard Baldwin in his first go-around at Hanna-Barbera. He started his animation career at UPA in the 1950s, and moved to Sutherland where he has an animation screen credit on that studio’s magnum opus, Rhapsody of Steel (1959). He has an odd way of drawing the bear, with two roundish parts to his muzzle in certain views, a little loop for a mouth, and sometimes with a stretched neck with his nose up. We’ve shown some examples in this post about the cartoon.
Here’s a bit of Baldwin dialogue animation. When Boo Boo (in one of many close-ups in this cartoon) asks “Why don’t we eat nuts and berries like other bears?”, Yogi responds with “Nuts and berries? Yechhh.” The drawings below are on twos.
My wild guess is the studio would not have used this many drawings in later years. It would go from profile, two in-betweens, front view, then the mouth-only animated to say “Nuts and berries? Yechhh.”
Both Baldwin and Montell left the studio for Jay Ward Productions before the season was finished. Montell ended up in Mexico supervising the work of Gamma Productions. Baldwin returned to H-B some years later and garnered some Emmys. He (and a number of others) never got screen credit on the end titles of the Huck show in the 1959-60 season but Montell did.
How long have animated cartoon characters been “running” for the U.S. presidency?
Well, Popeye and Bluto did. So did Betty Boop (as the crowd chanted her name to the “We Want Cantor” musical vamp). Olive Oyl dreamed she was president.
But that was only on the screen. There were no real-life campaign appearances or newspaper articles with promises or anything suggesting an actual (but phoney) run for the office.
Whether Huckleberry Hound changed all that, I don’t know, but the Hanna-Barbera publicity machine got into high gear in 1960. Broadcasting magazine revealed in its August 8, 1960 issue the idea was the brainchild of “Honest” Ed Justin at Screen Gems and, before anyone knew it, “Huck For President” ads were airing during the Republican National Convention. You can read more about it in this post.
The Palm Beach Post of August 28, 1960 reported on the size of the campaign to date. There is no byline.
“if I’m elected. . .”
He may be just the answer for thousands of confused voters. Huckleberry Hound, TV's Emmy winning cartoon hero, is running for President, and the mythical canine's bandwagon is rolling right along.
A comic book, Huckleberry Hound for President, is now out. A record company has waxed an L.P. album about Huck's campaign. Some five million campaign buttons have been made, along with banners, balloons, picket signs and TV slides. In Mason City, Iowa the grandstand at the State Fair was plastered with Huck's picture.
Last week, Toledo, Ohio and Evansville, Indiana had "Huck" rallies, and next month Spokane, Washington plans a three-day shindig.
The biggest turnout so far was in Honolulu. Recently Huck, Yogi Bear and Quick Draw McGraw (portrayed by actors in costumes) arrived in Honolulu for a "nominating convention." The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported, "10,000 people at the airport for Huckleberry Hound . . . more than President Eisenhower had at the airport also more than greeted the Shah of Iran or the crown Prince and Princess of Japan." One of Huck's "campaign managers" has this to say: "This may be the worst organized political campaign in history. Our candidate can't tell the White House from a dog house. His campaign manager, Yogi Bear, is a mythical inhabitant of a mythical park. There's no platform, and an awful lot of our supporters are below voting age.
"But, unlike the other candidates, Huck can't lose.”
This may the dog-gonedest campaign year yet.
The Post wasn’t the only newspaper that got a campaign press kit. The TV Editor of the Tampa Times led her column of August 27, 1960 with Huck (Hanna-Barbera got a bonus, as her second story was on the pending arrival on ABC-TV of The Flintstones.
The first, and perhaps only "Huckleberry Hound for president" button in the area, arrived at my desk last week, along with details announcing the lovable pooch's campaign Is now in full swing.
Apparently Huck doesn't have the big money interests behind him, because the button is only about the size of a nickel and doesn't look worth that much. To be frank—it looks like something you might get out of a cracker jack box. A Bare Item!
But it is a rare item in these parts—thereby giving it some questionable value. Would someone REALLY like to have it? If anyone cares to be the only area resident with a genuine "Huckleberry Hound for president" button—write, and I will present it to the person who offers the most interesting reason why they would support Huckleberry for president. Just write me—that's Tish Gray, in care of The Times.
Checked to see if Huck has any plans to campaign or flood Tampa Bay with his election insignia but at present, the local outlet, WFLA-TV (8), says no. However any interest shown, might get them to change their minds, and then all of us could have Huckleberry Hound for president buttons.
The Huck campaign never got to Election Night. Perhaps Ed Justin’s team felt they had milked the idea until it ran dry. Broadcasting magazine told the story in its October 17, 1960 edition.
‘Huck for President’
A decision has been made in smoke-filled rooms that will change the complexion of the presidential race. Huckleberry Hound will withdraw his hat from the ring and throw his weight to the other candidates.
It has been an open secret in the trade but closely guarded from the public. In fact, there’s another Huck-for-President rally scheduled by Rich’s department store and WSB-TV in Atlanta next week. Only last week the tv hound addressed more than 5,000 at a Freedomland rally in New York after stumping other cities across the country. His campaign assistant, Quick Draw McGraw, led a rally at St. Louis’ Busch Stadium. The presidential bandwagon got rolling last summer (BROADCASTING, Aug. 8) and inspired local promotions in many of 180 markets where Huckleberry Hound is on the air for Kellogg’s (through Leo Burnett Co.). Screen Gems spearheaded the drive. Stations and department stores carrying Huckleberry Hound merchandise rallied around with their own tub-thumping.
Now more than a third of the stations have received a series of recorded announcements containing the political secret that will swing the child vote in two other directions. Actually it is a public-service campaign to pressure parents and other fans of age to register and vote.
The first in the series of transcriptions is a standard “Vote for Huck” appeal. The second, planned for use during local registration season, urges fans to register for the vote. In the last, containing the political bombshell, the candidate announces he is quitting the race (“a joke’s a joke’), but he asks all voters to report to polls election day. This is for release shortly prior to Nov. 8. All run behind the standard Huck-for-President slide.
The Freedomland appearance was the last of the season for the paid act packaged by Screen Gems. The gate Oct. 8 was 11,000, up 2,500 (on a World Series day) from the Saturday before, with the help of promotion by WPIX (TV) New York, where Huckleberry Hound appears, and Macys department store. Performer Eddie Alberian, who plays the hound part on the amusement park-fair circuit, will take to the road with the cartoon company again next spring promoting also Quick Draw McGraw (he’s on the same Kellogg lineup) and The Flintstones, which just debuted on ABC-TV. All are Hanna-Barbera Cartoons productions.
There are 25 more department store promotions between now and December using local talent, tieing in with stations at football games and local special events, but the race for the White House has been conceded by one of the politicians’ best friends.
One last news release was sent out by Honest Ed’s P.R. people. Here’s how Joe Bryant of the Fort Lauderdale News put it in his Showtime column of November 4:
Huckleberry Hound Releases Voters
Huckleberry Hound, who for months has waged a dogged campaign for the Presidency, today withdrew from the race and released all of his voters.
"I'm downright dee-lighted with the wonderful support the public has given me, and although I have consistently-placed first at all poles, I feel it is the best interests of the country that I withdraw," Huck said.
“For one thing,” the flop-eared politician continued, "I have an unofficial ruling from the attorney general that even if elected by the populace, I would not be allowed to serve.
"I am told that my opponents will seek a strict interpretation of the Constitutional provision that a president must be at least 35 years of age. And while, in a literal interpretation, my competitive age as a dog would enable me to qualify, I don't hardly know a dog around who can meet the strict interpretation of that ruling.
"At feast, I don’t know any four-legged dogs who can," he added thoughtfully.
“Any-how," the ex-candidate mused, “I’d probably be out of place in Washington. I don't give a hoot for golf or fishing. Baying at the moon is my favorite sport and I’m afraid I’d be outclassed at this on Capitol Hill.”
What was Huck doing on election night? We know what he was doing in the Los Angeles area. Election Night is on a Tuesday. So was The Huckleberry Hound Show. Columnist Art Ryon of the Los Angeles Times was a big Huck fan, and he noted for posterity in his column of Friday, November 11:
In the frenzy of Tuesday night’s election returns, KTTV dropped everything to present, as scheduled, Huckleberry Hound.
This was a comforting gesture.
It shows that the Huckleberry Hound-for-President is still very much alive. And, while the recent campaign bogged down—mostly because of the arrogance of the Eastern and Midwest cliques in the Party—we are looking forward to ’64.
The nation needs Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear!
Unfortunately for Huck, the 1960 election campaign marked the peak of his career. Hanna-Barbera was already planning a feature-length movie, but it was to star Yogi Bear, not Huck. When H-B got into the syndicated newspaper comic business, the one-panel comics starred Yogi Bear, not Huck. The strips featured the Flintstones, not Huck. And when the ’64 that Art Ryon awaited finally arrived, the presidential ticket featured Yogi Bear, not Huck.
As time rolled on, the gentle Southern hound didn’t have an Ark Lark or Space Race or Yahooeys. No one said “Yo, Huck!” (which was probably a good thing). Oh, Huck was still around but, by the end of the 1960s, another Hanna-Barbera dog surpassed him in popularity (and ubiquity).
Regardless, you still have to like ol’ Huck. He’s pleasant and easy-going, even when he’s dealing with poundings or other adversity. Sometimes he wins, sometimes he loses. Maybe he wouldn’t have been a good president, but he’s a pretty good TV cartoon character.
If you want to read the Huck presidential comic, CLICK HERE. If you want to hear the Huck presidential campaign L.P., CLICK HERE. We warn you these are not the original cartoon voices. You will not hear Daws Butler or Don Messick. You will hear New York actors instead, including Mason Adams as Bert on the first track.
If I say “Yogi Bear” to you, you’ll likely think of pic-a-nic baskets and “The ranger won’t like it, Yogi.” But that isn’t how Yogi started out.
Warren Foster came to Hanna-Barbera in 1959 to take over writing The Huckleberry Hound Show in its second season. Because all the players are dead, we don’t how it specifically happened, but there seems to have been a conscious decision to calcify the Foster stories into the bear-vs-ranger template.
Yet it was different in the first season. By various accounts, Joe Barbera himself came up with the storylines, fleshed out by writer Charlie Shows, with Barbera’s old Van Beuren studio buddy Dan Gordon sketching out the story (though Shows could draw). Their versions of Yogi were a little different. Frankly, I find them appealing. TV audiences must have too, as the following year, Yogi found his way into the closing animation on the Huck show, and a costumed Yogi joined a costumed Huck on personal appearances. And there were Yogi clubs in addition to Huck clubs.
What kinds of Yogi did they come up with?
1. The Helpful Bear.
In a number of cartoons, Yogi altruistically aided less fortunate creatures. He saved a little fox from a hunter and clever dog Yowp in Foxy Hound-Dog and a duckling from the same pair in Duck in Luck.
He reluctantly gave a home to the same duck in Slumber Party Smarty and tried to teach a little eaglet to fly in High Fly Guy. .
Yogi assisted larger animals in distress, like the escaped circus elephant in Hide and Go Peek.
He rescued children as well, such as Li’l Tom-Tom in The Brave Little Brave and a toddling boy in Daffy Daddy.
Boo Boo is absent in all of these, which makes for a cleaner plot.
2. The Hungry Bear.
This is one aspect Foster carried over. The very first Yogi cartoon put into production deals with the subject as he tries to get past a guarding dog in Pie-Pirates and a bull to taste some honey in Big Bad Bully. Closer to his behaviour with Ranger Smith, he feigns illness to get food from the home of a Professor Gizmo (of Ruff and Reddy) lookalike in Tally Ho Ho Ho.
3. The Spot Gag Bear.
In a couple of cute cartoons, Yogi loses against an adversary in spot gag cartoons. One involves a wily fish in The Stout Trout and the other is against semi-humanised cars in Baffled Bear. Both have humorous narration by Don Messick, but no Boo Boo. I really wish more of these kinds of cartoons had been made.
4. The Disobedient Bear.
Foster’s Yogi found convenient ways to get around Ranger Smith’s rules. Various generic rangers appeared in the first season as Yogi did what he felt like and suffered the consequences. He stole a motorised scooter in Scooter Looter and a helicopter in The Buzzin’ Bear. In both, generic rangers try to stop Yogi before he causes much more damage. He tries to get past a ranger and escape from Jellystone in Yogi Bear’s Big Break, where he learned things weren’t great on the outside.
At least one cartoon goes in the direction Foster would head. In Robin Hood Yogi, our hero endeavours to steal “goodies,” including a picnic basket. This cartoon has two rangers, one of whom Yogi cons into pretending to be Friar Tuck.
There were other Yogi cartoons in that first season, but this gives you an idea of the variety of plots. I think this made him a stronger character, but the studio disagreed, and Yogi went on to become one of the A-listers at Hanna-Barbera, even eclipsing poor old, Tex Avery-inspired, Huckleberry Hound.
The last of Hanna-Barbera’s voice actors from the 1950s has passed away.
Elliot Field was 97. He died last Monday, the 23rd.
Elliot was the afternoon drive jock at KFWB in Los Angeles when Joe Barbera hired him to play the voice of Blabber Mouse opposite Daws Butler in the Snooper and Blabber segments of The Quick Draw McGraw Show. This was back in a wonderful era in radio when disc jockeys invented characters and did their voices on the air. What became the Blabber voice was apparently one of them.
The Snooper cartoons where you can hear him are Puss N’ Booty, Switch Witch (he also plays the witch, another radio voice), Desperate Diamond Dimwits and Real Gone Ghosts (he is also one of the ghosts). He was also the narrator in the Quick Draw cartoon Scary Prairie, the first cartoon put into production on the series.
Elliot explained to me that soon after being hired, he had to be hospitalised for an illness. At that point, Daws took over both Blab’s role. That wasn’t the end of his time with Hanna-Barbera. Flintstones fans will know him as Alvin Brickrock, the Alfred Hitchcock-esque neighbour. He was also a newscaster on the Superstone episode and provided several voices in Flintstone and the Lion.
Elliot was involved in a strike at KFWB in 1961 and, soon after, took a management job at a radio station in Detroit. He came back west in the late ‘60s and settled in Palm Springs. He served on the city council and was acting mayor at one point.
Being a disc jockey in the 1970s (and briefly again in 1988), I enjoyed Elliot’s stories of life on radio. There was plenty of creativity on the air and in promotions back in those days before consultants, computerised playlists and liner cards.
Below is an interview with him about his career. Unfortunately, he starts talking about his Hanna-Barbera career at the end when it's cut off. There doesn't seem to be a Part 2.
My thanks to Jeff Falewicz, who maintains some web sites and is one of those veterans who truly loves radio, for passing along the sad news. My sympathies go to Elliot’s family.
My favourite Hanna-Barbera series first appeared on television screens 65 years ago today.
The Quick Draw McGraw Show was Hanna-Barbera’s attempt to gently lampoon the types of shows popular on television at the time—detective series, the family sitcom, and the ubiquitous Western.
The name “Quick Draw McGraw” pre-dates the series. It was the name of a character (who doesn’t appear) in the Ruff and Reddy episode “Slight Fright on a Moonlight Night,” which aired March 15, 1958. As the dialogue on the series was written by Charlie Shows, it may be safe to assume that he came up with the name.
Mike Maltese arrived at Hanna-Barbera from Warner Bros. in November 1958. The Quick Draw series was already in development—model sheets were made by Dick Bickenbach, dated Nov. 25—and Maltese ended up writing all 78 episodes of the first season of the series. In one interview he said he was doing two and later three stories a week for the studio.
Kellogg’s agreed to sponsor the show, and it was originally sold on a barter basis to stations across the U.S., the same as The Huckleberry Hound Show (stations got the show for nothing, but had to run the half-hour intact, including the commercials for Kellogg’s). KTTV in Los Angeles, WNAC-TV in Boston, KSD-TV in St. Louis and WTTG Washington, D.C. were among the stations which put Quick Draw on the air on September 28, 1959. Sponsor magazine that month said 150 stations had signed to air Quick Draw (compared to 175 for Huck).
Both Huck and Quick Draw were nominated for Emmys that season, with Huck winning.
The show’s theme song, “That’s Quick Draw McGraw,” was copyrighted on August 24, 1959, with the lyrics credited to Joe Barbera and the music to Hoyt Curtin and Bill Hanna.
There were two slight differences between the two shows. In the press, Joe Barbera said he was looking for new voice actors for the studio; Huck had pretty much exclusively employed Daws Butler and Don Messick in the 1958-59 season. He found some. Hal Smith, Jean Vander Pyl and Julie Bennett show up on a regular basis on Quick Draw’s first season. Barbera cast two new regular voices as well. KFWB disc jockey Elliot Field was hired to play Blabber Mouse opposite Daws Butler’s Snooper, and Daws recommended truck driver and ex-radio actor Doug Young to be Doggie Daddy.
Elliot explained to me his Blabber career (he did incidental voices as well) ended not long after he was hired as he got sick. A decision was made to have Butler do both voices, though Field came back for a Flintstones episode before moving to Detroit. Young imitated Jimmy Durante. Daws had done the same imitation for Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera at MGM but felt his voice wasn’t up to it and suggested Young, who gave winning performances. Mark Evanier mentioned that Peter Leeds, who was in Stan Freberg’s voice stock company, had auditioned as well, and you can hear him narrating the Quick Draw cartoon “Scat, Scout, Scat.” And Vance Colvig, Jr. shows up in the Quick Draw cartoon Bad Guys Disguise more than a year before he returned to the studio to play Chopper.
The Augie Doggie/Doggie Daddy relationship was based more on Garry Moore and Jimmy Durante's interactions from their variety show on radio for Camel cigarettes than any TV sitcom (which tended to include long-suffering wives and bubbly-but-angst-ridden teenage daughters). “Dat’s my boy who said dat!” Durante would bark to the audience about Moore. Baba Looey sounded like Desi Arnaz’s Ricky Ricardo on I Love Lucy, except Baba substituted ‘thinnin’ for ‘splainin’ (Arnaz actually talked that way. Before Lucy, he was known for singing "Babalú," hence the character's name). Snooper was a take-off on Ed Gardner’s Archie from Duffy’s Tavern, though Daws insisted there was some of actor Tom D’Andrea in the voice. Quick Draw was just another Western dullard, like Red Skelton’s Clem Cadiddlehopper. [Note: Joe Bevilacqua has written saying Daws created Quick Draw's voice by adding a western twang to Charlie Butterworth. As Joe was a long-time friend of Daws, I don't doubt that's correct.]
The other difference is one you may not have noticed. Hanna-Barbera had been utilizing the brand-new Capitol Hi-Q production library for both Ruff ‘n’ Reddy and The Huckleberry Hound Show. Hi-Q was also heard on Quick Draw, but there appears to have been a deliberate attempt to use different music than what was heard on the other two series. Many of the cues were composed by Englishman Phil Green, and were originally pressed on 78s in the EMI Photoplay library. Like the other two shows, the Langlois Filmusic library, which credited Jack Shaindlin as the composer, was also used.
While Quick Draw was on drawing boards in November 1958, and production of the Quick Draw and Snooper and Blabber cartoons was underway in December, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy needed a bit of time in development. Variety reported on January 8, 1959 that Screen Gems had approved production of the father-and-son series Pete and Repete. By January 28th, the characters were now, according to Variety, Arf and Arf. The March 23rd edition of Television Age mentions the segment was named for Augie Doggie; Augie was named for an in-law of Mike Maltese. Production numbers suggest the Augie cartoons were started well after the other two segments of the Quick Draw show.
Maltese came up with memorable side characters for the show as well. A pink mountain lion named Snagglepuss shows up to heckle in all three segments; in the Quick Draw cartoons, he’s animated by George Nicholas. Quick Draw was assisted in his sheriff-ing by Snuffles, who loved dog biscuits so much he’d float into the air in ecstasy after eating one, and do the bidding of whoever had them, hero or villain. And Maltese told columnist John Crosby he was inspired by the silent Doug Fairbanks’ movie The Mark of Zorro (1920) to invent Quick Draw’s alter ego of El Kabong.
Two cartoons Maltese wrote for Augie and dear old dad featured one of Bill and Joe’s favourite characters—the duck that would become Yakky Doodle, voiced by Red Coffey.
Why do I like Quick Draw? The characters make comments to the viewer, there are lots of wisecracks and puns, Quick Draw is incompetent but enthusiastic about righting wrongs, which makes him likeable.
Now if only the series was available on home video.
{Late note: Jeff Falewicz has written to say that Elliot Field passed away last Monday at the age of 97. He was the last of the studio's pre-Flintstones voice actors].
Kids like to laugh. Kids like a bit of adventure, too. That’s why Jonny Quest turned out to be such a success.
You’d think that a TV show that lasted one season was a failure. Maybe in live action it is. But Hanna-Barbera took three cancelled cartoon series—Top Cat, The Jetsons and Jonny Quest—and made them into hits. They were put into front of kids' eyes over and over in reruns and all were eventually re-booted (an all-new Quest series appeared in 1986).
Jonny Quest was filled with humans (and a comic-relief dog) involved in adventure and suspense. Kids ate up this kind of stuff in comic books and the Sunday colour comic pages. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera knew what their staff could do. Their studio had artists who had worked on Sleeping Beauty at Disney so they were familiar with animating humans in some form.
Today marks 60 years since The Adventures of Jonny Quest debuted on ABC-TV. Yes, I was among the viewers even though I had no interest in high adventure shows. But this was a cartoon, so I watched.
Was it Walt Disney who said the key to success in animation is story, story and story? Quest—for my eight-year-old eyes and ears, anyway—had great stories. You wanted to see what happened next. And Jonny had maturity. Television was filled with kids who were "precocious" jerks or goody-goodies. Jonny was capable of thinking and standing on his own in tight situations.
Oh, did I mention the eyeball walking on spider legs?
Way back in the early days of the blog, we reprinted this fine feature story from the Levittown Times a few weeks before the series debuted. Here is a little shorter one from the Anaheim Bulletin, Sept. 12, 1964. As it is unbylined and appeared in various newspapers, I presume it is an ABC press release.
‘Jonny Quest’ To Fill High Adventure Void Joe Barbera, the ebullient half of the creative animation team of Hanna-Barbera, believes their new half-hour series ABC-TV’s “Jonny Quest” will fill a recent void in entertainment.
“We haven’t had anything where kids can identify with high adventure,” he pointed out. “Jonny Quest is escapism, the stuff of which dreams are made. It’s Tom Swift, the Rover Boys and Jack Armstrong all rolled into one.”
The series is the most unusual and ambitious undertaking at the ink factory that has produced the likes of “The Flintstones,” “Yogi Bear” and “Huckleberry Hound.” It employs 350 artists and costs a third again as much as the firm’s other shows.
The principal difference is in technique. Barbera refers to “Quest” as staged illustration rather than a cartoon style.
“It’s a brand new style for TV,” he added. “Every master shot is a work of art.”
Barbera said the program takes its principals, 11-year-old Jonny, son of an American scientist and international trouble-shooter and his young Hindu companion, Hadji, on an imaginative adventures in a different world-wide locale every week.
“There is lots of action,” he said, “and we use the Douglas Fairbanks approach, where in the villains are disposed of in a flamboyant virtually comedy style.
Extensive research safeguards accurate representation of the ethnic and topographic qualities of the areas depicted, Barbara said. This gives a soft-sell educational aspect to the series.
“That is a happy by-product,” he went on. “Our primary target is entertainment.”
Watching and listening to Barbera effuse about the program is an experience in itself. A swarthy, handsome ex-New Yorker who began his career as an accountant with a bent for drawing, he moves swiftly about his large, tastefully appointed office grabbing for multi-pictured storyboards, character studies or research material to punctuate each point.
Barbera plays all the parts. And he can recite the plots of every one of the 26 episodes without stumbling once.
His partner, quiet, analytical Bill Hanna, a one-time structural engineer from New Mexico, lets the fiery Barbera make the spiels. Both are casual dressers. They don’t believe in reams of inter-office memos. Thus, the atmosphere about their new three-story, $1 ¼-million studio bespeaks quiet efficiency under the burden of a staggering workload.
With the addition of “Jonny Quest,” Hanna-Barbera have 13 TV properties being viewed by 300-million people in 42 countries, plus a feature length film, their first, entitled “Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear.”
Hanna-Barbera’s eventual layout chief, Iwao Takamoto, explained the genesis of Jonny Quest in his autobiography. Doug Wildey had been hired to find a way to animate the old kids’ radio serial Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. Then Joe Barbera changed his mind. Why not go for something with a little more action, like Milt Caniff’s Sunday newspaper comic Terry and the Pirates?
To quote from Iwao:
“Jonny Quest” was an example of how sophisticated planned animation had become, particularly in the hands of an incredibly clever layout man like Bill Perez. Bill and another artist named Tony Sgroi were exceptional at figuring out how to reuse drawings without making it look like they were being repeated, by “fielding” them, or presenting them in camera range, in different ways. Between the two of them, they used every bit of the trickery that went into planned animation in the first place and came up with a few new tricks of their own. This way they were able to keep their episodes within the budget, which was already high for an animated television show. Some of the other artists, particularly the ones from the comic-book field, who were not accustomed to the techniques of planned animation, tended to run rampant with the budgets, and the costs of these episodes skyrocketed.
Many people have asked why such a great show lasted only one season, and the reason is very simple: it just cost too damned much to continue to do it at the same level of quality. Money proved to be the thing that accomplished what “Dr. Zin” and all of the show’s other villains could not do, which was stop Jonny Quest. When Bill Hanna estimated the price tag for a second season, the network simply said no thanks. Perhaps that is just as well, because that one season of “Jonny Quest,” I feel is a highlight of the studio’s history.
There was another factor Iwao omits. The Flintstones was being crushed under a boulder of higher ratings by The Munsters over at CBS. ABC reacted by moving the Modern Stone Age Family into the Quest time slot to get the numbers needed to ensure renewal for another season (and enable Hanna-Barbera to sell more Flintstones merchandise). Quest moved opposite The Munsters. Cancellation followed. After a bit of a break, Jonny Quest’s old episodes surfaced on Saturday morning re-runs in the 1967-68 season, finding an eager audience.
Bill Hanna once said the prime time run of Quest pushed the studio in a direction which put Space Ghost, The Herculoids and The Fantastic 4 on Saturday mornings. The series certainly should be considered, the Fleischer Superman shorts notwithstanding, the father of action-adventure cartoon shows in North America.
We can't let a post on Jonny Quest go by without referring to the theme song, and composer Hoyt Curtin's desire to make it so complicated for trombonists, there was no way they could play it. The mood library he (and others) created for the series is a true masterpiece. Here are two versions of the opening theme.
Curtin composed another "theme" for Jonny Quest, one that sounds right out of the James Bond movie Dr. No. It can be heard on the H-B Records album Jonny Quest in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. You can hear it by clicking below.
I had thought Greg Ehrbar, who knows more about H-B Records than anyone alive, profiled this album, but I can not find it [Late note: See Greg's comment]. But Greg has done Hanna-Barbera fans a great service and tracked down Jonny himself. He interviewed Tim Matheson about playing the boy adventurer and you can listen it here.
