Quick Draw McGraw—Cattle Battle Rattled

Produced by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Animation: Dick Lundy?; Layouts – Ed Benedict; Backgrounds - ?; Story – Mike Maltese; Story Sketches – Dan Gordon; Title – Lawrence Goble; Production Supervisor – Howard Hanson (no credits available).
Cast: Wife, Cowboy, Quick Draw, Baba Looey, Cattlemen’s Assn. Head, Snuffles – Daws Butler; Narrator, Husband, Phantom Rustler, cows – Hal Smith.
Released: November 30, 1959 (Los Angeles).
Plot: Quick Draw and his occasionally faithful dog Snuffles try to bring the Phantom Rustler to justice.

Yowp note: I apologise in advance for the washed-out TV screen caps below. A pox on WHV for not spending the money on music rights needed to release these cartoons on DVD.

Take something familiar and exaggerate it to the point of absurdity. Laughs will generally follow. And maybe that’s why Snuffles in the Quick Draw McGraw cartoons is so memorable, despite not appearing all that often (reruns excepted). Everyone knows dogs love dog biscuits and even the prospect of one gets them hyper. Mike Maltese took this fact to a ridiculous extreme.

In fact, Maltese uses the idea as a running gag in Snuffles’ second appearance, Cattle Battle Rattled. That could get tiresome in the hands of a lesser writer, but Maltese embroiders the cartoon with other silliness and stupidity. Combine that with some fun layouts and poses and you get an entertaining seven minutes.

There are no credits on this cartoon, so someone is going to have to help me here. The animator’s one of the three H-B added to its staff in 1959—Dick Lundy, Don Patterson or George Nicholas, all ex-Disney types. The BCDB says it’s Lundy. I can’t tell. Here’s where experts can help us all learn by telling how they can tell who is animating this one. The layouts I can guess at.

The first great layout comes right at the beginning. Any fan of 1950s design will like the wife who is serving a scoop of brown mush to her husband, as the narrator intones “At the turn of the century, the beef-hungry north wanted cattle.” The angry husband objects. “Something’d better be done about us beef-hungry northerners!” he cries, raising his fork into the air in declaration.

“And so the cattle drive was started.” We get a cowboy with a similar nose-eye-ear design to what Ed Benedict came up with Hustler Rustler Huck. The cowboy orders his animals to ford a river. So the cows dive in. We only see two of them but the drawings are really funny. I like how the second cow plugs his nose.


Ah, but a pan to the left reveals the villain of the piece, The Phantom Rustler.


Maltese loved having the narrator carrying on conversations with the on-screen characters in Quick Draw cartoons. And he did it right away in this one with an old vaudeville gag that George Burns and Gracie Allen used as a signature. “Say hello to the folks, Phantom,” requests the narrator. So the rustler turns to the camera and repeats the words verbatim. Then he orders the cattle to “stick ‘em up” and we get another fun drawing of the cows.

The shot dissolves to Quick Draw and Baba Looey in the Cattlemen’s Association building. The head of the group points to a map showing where the rustler will strike again. “He must be stopped. Can you do it, Quick Draw?” Quick Draw is so stupid, he looks behind him and says “All right, Quick Draw, speak up. Can you do it?” “Psst, Quick Draw. I think he means you,” Baba suggests. Quick Draw agrees to take on the job and introduces the star of the cartoon.

I really love the drawings of Snuffles in this one; they’re better than what Ken Muse came with in the first cartoon. Look at his dopey expression when Quick Draw calls and then the enthusiasm when told a dog biscuit awaits.


Everyone who knows these cartoons knows how Snuffles hugs himself in ecstasy after eating a biscuit, springs into the air and floats down. But the animator adds a few big-eyed drawings. Then Snuffles bicycles with his feet when rising into the air, and descends in a different position that when he rises. And when he finally lands, he stretches out using five different drawings.



So off they go on the trail of the rustler. His hideout shack is sniffed out by Snuffles, who gets another dog biscuit before pointing it out to Quick Draw. The ecstasy animation gets re-used here, to the ecstasy of the Hanna-Barbera accountant.

Quick Draw decides to use his “old noodle” to capture the rustler, after warning Baba “Now don’t you start thinnin’ around here.” So our hero puts on a pair of cow horns to “make like a juicy T-bone steak” and begins lamely moo-ing outside the rustler’s open door. However, the rustler is prepared with a Hanna-Barbera branding iron. We don’t see Quick Draw’s immediate reaction; instead the director cuts to Quick Draw flying with smoke trailing from his butt. “That’s using the old noodle?” Baba asks the audience.


Our hero orders Snuffles to get snarrrlling (Daws stretches the “ar”) to “flush out that rustling varmint.” We get a repeat of the first part of the ecstasy animation but before Snuffles can bicycle into the air, Quick Draw demands some action. But, no, Snuffles wants yet another biscuit. “Uh uh. Get a goin’!” orders Quick Draw. Snuffles begins angrily muttering, much like Muttley and other dogs in Hanna-Barbera’s future.

Snuffles zooms inside and barks at the rustler, all right. But the bandit is prepared with his own dog biscuit, in a very abrupt cut going from a frame where Snuffles is growling to one where he is sitting silently looking up as the rustler holds the treat in the air. Before giving it he demands a favour, which he whispers in Snuffles’ ear. “I have a feelin’ Snuffles is behind me all the way,” Quick Draw. You know what’s going to happen next. After, a quick cycle of two drawings to show the pain, the shot cuts to Snuffles with his teeth in our hero’s posterior.

The dog rushes back to collect his reward. Since we’ve seen the ecstasy animation 2½ times, we get a cutaway reaction shot of the rustler (who does little more than blink to save more new drawings). “I wonder what he sees in those things?” the rustler asks himself and decides to find out. We get a funny little sequence here with the rustler copying Snuffles poses, except the bicycling feet is replaced by thrusting feet.


“Stick ‘em up, Phantom Rustler. You’re under arrest!” the armed Quick Draw orders. “Who cares?” sighs the bad guy. “And so the Phantom Rustler was jailed, never to rustle again,” intones the narrator, as we get a shot of both the rustler and Snuffles in jail, begging for biscuits. I can only presume Snuffles is there on an assault charge.


“I wonder what they see in them dog biscuits?” Quick Draw puzzles. So he tries one. And nothing happens. So he strolls back into the sheriff’s office and slams the door. But Quick Draw shows he’s just a little slow. We get five seconds of a shot of the building with Quick Draw making his own Snuffles-like noises, again saving a whole bunch of work for the cameraman. The shot pans over to a window where a sliding cell of Quick Draw floating down. And, like in a bunch of Maltese-written H-B cartoons, a character turns to the camera to give the closing line. “I theen Quickstraw is not only brave, he’s also bashful,” Baba tells us.

Someone has asked why Snuffles wasn’t given his own series. It’s a question that’s certainly debateable. On one hand, he had more personality than Precious Pupp, who inherited Snuffles’ “ratzin’-fratzin’” under-the-breath complaining. But, on the other, the dog-biscuit orgasm may have worn out its welcome every week. It was probably smarter for Hanna-Barbera to use him judiciously in a few cartoons. And he was never animated better than he was in this one.

A lot of Jack Shaindlin’s Langlois Filmusic library seems to have been used in this cartoon. As I don’t have copies of most of the music, I can’t identify it. There’s a harmonica version of Oh, Susannah which could be from the Sam Fox Variety library. SF-11 is a Sam Fox cue that was in the Hi-Q library. None of the composers are identified on that reel so it could be any number of them. However, the cue has been re-released by the folks at Carlin with “arranged by Lee Jacobs” as the composer. There are other Carlin cues with the “Jacobs” credit that were actually done by L.E. (Lou) DeFrancesco, who was composing in the early days of sound film, so I’m guessing this is another one by him.

As for the harp music when Snuffles descends, it’s not in the harp cues in Hi-Q reel L-39 that I can hear, so it may be in one of the Hi-Q ‘S’ series reels.

0:00 - Quick Draw sub-title theme (Curtin).
0:16 - tick-tock/flute music (Shaindlin) – Wife serves husband goop.
0:28 - OH SUSANNAH (trad.) – Cattle drive scene.
1:01 - GR-472 HICKSVILLE (Phil Green) – Quick Draw asked to find rustler, accepts.
1:41 - unknown jig (?) – Quick Draw calls Snuffles, Snuffles eats biscuit.
2:12 - CRAZY GOOF (Shaindlin) – Snuffles snuffs out rustler’s cabin; eats another biscuit, Quick Draw puts on horns.
3:32 - circus running music (Shaindlin) – Quick Draw moos, flies after being branded.
3:50 - CRAZY GOOF (Shaindlin) – Snuffles gets another biscuit, barks at rustler, rustler hold biscuit.
4:40 - GR-96 BY JIMINY! IT’S JUMBO (Green) – Rustler makes offer to Snuffles.
4:47 - circus medium march (Shaindlin) – Quick Draw chomped.
5:15 - SF-11 LIGHT MOVEMENT (DeFrancesco?) – Rustler gives biscuit to Snuffles; has one himself.
5:47 - tick-tock/flute music (Shaindlin) – Jail scene, Quick Draw eats biscuit.
6:47 - Quick Draw sub end title theme (Curtin).

Yogi’s Bongo Walk

As remarkable as it seems, there was a time that characters in a TV cartoon didn’t all move the exact same way. But I’m guessing it was a time that didn’t last very long.

There’s a funny cartoon called Hoodwinked Bear where George Nicholas did a little leap-walk with Boo Boo as he fills in for Red Riding Hood. I thought the bear was just imitating Red’s walk for the sake of comedy. But it turns out Nicholas used that as a standard walk; Yogi walks that way Lullabye-Bye Bear.

But only a couple of years earlier, Carlo Vinci developed a walk that only Yogi Bear could pull off, shifting Yogi’s bottom weight around in a 16-drawing cycle that has been dubbed “the bongo walk.” The moniker is based on the fact that, in most cartoons, the animation was accompanied by different pitches of a drum being banged by hand. Later, someone must have realised the banging distracted from the dialogue so it was not used which, unfortunately, lessened the effect of the animation.

I don’t know the last time Vinci used this, but below are all 16 drawings of the walk. This is from Be My Guest Pest. The animation was done on twos.


And, since you really want to know this, it took 124 frames for the background to repeat. Yes, I counted them all.

Huckleberry Hound — Two Corny Crows

Produced by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera
Credits: Animation – Ken Muse; Layout – Dick Bickenbach; Backgrounds – Sam Clayberger; Dialogue and Story Sketches – Charlie Shows and Dan Gordon; Titles – Lawrence Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Cast: Huck, Ziggy – Daws Butler; Iggy – Don Messick.
Released: November 27, 1958.
Plot: Farmer Huck vs. hungry crows vs. the clock.

So, there’s this cartoon where this character is on guard trying to stop someone else from stealing what he’s guarding. But the twist is they’re just doing they’re doing this as a 9 to 5 job. They’re really friends before and after their battle of wits and resultant bashings while at work.

Yes, that’s an apt description of the Wolf and Sheepdog series at Warners. But Hanna-Barbera wasn’t above borrowing ideas from the great theatrical cartoon directors of the day; in this case, Mr. Ptui to Illustrated Radio, Charles Martin Jones. For H-B simply took the Ralph Wolf-Sam Sheepdog concept, glued it on Huckleberry Hound and came up with Two Corny Crows.

And you don’t have to squint too hard to see another influence come into focus—direct from the Woolworth’s of Animation. For a case could be made that the title characters bear somewhat of a small resemblance in personality to Paul Terry’s best bargain-basement product, Heckle and Jeckle.

Of course, it’s unfair to compare this made-for-TV-on-a-shoestring product to the cleverly posed and timed Jones cartoons or even the quickly-paced talkiness of the low-budget TerryToon magpies. But, once again, we’re dealing with a cartoon that, once the plot really gets underway, consists of maybe four gags. The rest of the time Charlie Shows and whoever else developed this one are content to let the situation double as a gag, or we wait for something funny to happen. And it doesn’t.

Still, the cartoon isn’t a total loss. There are some nice little drawings, such as the opening shot, either from a Dan Gordon story sketch or a Dick Bickenbach layout. We see silhouetted crows with funny hats on a tree, with a colourful cornfield behind them and a plowed hill in the background. The silhouette draws our attention to the crows. And since corn ripens in the fall, there’s a lone tree framed by foreground branches that has appropriately lost its leaves. UPA veteran Sam Clayberger supplies the colour.

The camera trucks in and dissolves to a close-up of the crows snoring. There’s an alarm clock in the tree which goes off, and is turned off by the straw-hatted crow, then the birds go back to sleep. The alarm rings again, the crows awaken and the camera pans over Clayberger’s background to stop at Huck’s farmhouse (with purple shingles?).

We now move into on Huck’s bedroom where the same make of alarm clock is ringing. “Time to go to work,” says Iggy. The other crow is Ziggy, with the Ed Gardner voice that Daws Butler would later use for Snooper. They fly over to a fence and wait for Huck, who arrives on the scene singing and whistling ‘Clementine’ to pad for 19 seconds (he’s not in time with the calliope music but that’s probably a plus). Huck and the crows exchange some small talk and then Huck checks his watch. Somehow, the time has gone from 6 o’clock to when the crows landed on the fence to 10:15. Oh, well. You’ve got to love the stylised cornstalks by Clayberger. He doesn’t draw any ears of corn. Instead, we get different shades of green leaves overtop of a wall of yellow that represents the corn.


The whistle on top of the barn, the sound of which is well-known to fans of several versions of the opening of The Flintstones, bellows to mark the start of the work day and the plot begins in earnest (we are now well into two minutes of the cartoon). The crows run off the fence with one of those Charlie Shows rhymes: “Let’s blow.” “Go, Joe, go!” as Huck fires his rifle at him (it’s a rhyme for the sake of rhyming as no one is named Joe in this cartoon).

The crows return to their tree branch (their clock has somehow vanished) as Ziggy taunts Huck by telling him he “couldn’t hit the side of a...” At that point, Huck’s bullet hits its target and blows the feathers off his body. Ziggy beats a hasty retreat.


Unfortunately, that may be the best gag. The crows use their beaks to rip the leaves off an ear of corn then remove kernels without even eating them, which would seem kind of pointless. Huck captures the pesky birds in a milk can. Shows gives us churn-it-out dialogue like “Corn on the cob, comin’ up.” “You mean canned crow, comin’ up.” OK, maybe we’ll get laughs in the next scene.

Not really. As Huck snoozes, Ziggy uses Iggy’s beak to get them out of the milk can (the top of which is covered by an anvil). “How about this,” remarks Ziggy. “A crow can opener. What a keen idea. I’ll make a for-tune.” “Close your mouth and open the can, man,” answers Iggy in another of Shows’ rhyming pairs of words. Not only is the dialogue little more than filler (though I can hear Hubie and Bertie at Warners making it work), before the birds escape, we get the voices of both crows coming out of one of them.

All this does is set up an explosion gag. The crows say “hi” to Huck, who wonders why they aren’t in the can and goes to investigate. Huck’s topper line: “Those crows have such a corny sense of humour.” It’s a cartoon about corn and they have a “corny” sense. That’s the gag. Maybe we’ll get laughs in the next scene.

Huck booby-traps a cob to a rifle. The crows respond by grabbing the corn—and we don’t know how they get it without springing the trap because it’s off camera—and substituting a wallet. Huck, naturally, sees it, chats a bit to himself, goes to pick it up and blam! Another patented Charlie Shows ‘ass pain’ joke. Huck’s response? “Very funny.” All right, maybe the NEXT scene.

Huck dresses up as a scarecrow. The crows aren’t fooled. They fly over and engage in witty banter like “What’s this supposed to be, Ziggy?” “It looks like a low-budget scarecrow.” “A scarecrow? You’re kiddin’.” One of the crows takes a pencil and draws a moustache on Huck and blackens his teeth. Huck doesn’t take kindly to the laughter (from the crows, not the audience) and zips off camera. Time for a Shows rhyming two-some: “He’s mad, dad.” as the crows race to hide in a nearby mailbox.


Huck trains his gun, the crows plead with him not to shoot, but then the whistle sounds to end the work day. Huck pulls the gun away from the birds and they exchange pleasantries about the good day’s work they’ve done before bidding farewell until tomorrow. The gag here is the sudden turnaround in behaviour which isn’t any different than what Jones was doing at Warners a few years earlier. “Nice people, that Huck,” remarks Iggy. “Yeah, just like kin-folks,” adds Ziggy, as Huck heads back into his house, whistling ‘Clementine.’

Evidently, H-B thought they could weave animated dross like this into marketing gold. They stuck the crows in another cartoon that season, Birdhouse Blues, and featured them in some marketing. The concept was good but the crows never lived up to their potential. Their wisecracks just weren’t wise-guy enough and the characters vanished unnoticed and unlamented.

There’s a period of almost 30 seconds where there’s no music or sound effects, just dialogue, and it actually works pretty well. Otherwise, we get Clementine (on a calliope) twice and several very familiar background tunes.

0:00 - Clementine/Huck sub main title theme (Hoyt Curtin).
0:26 - TC 303 ZANY COMEDY (Bill Loose-John Seely) – Crows, Huck wake up.
1:27 - CLEMENTINE (trad.) – Huck strolls out of house, chats with crows.
2:00 - no music – Whistle blows, Huck shoots at running crows; shoots feathers off Ziggy.
2:29 - LAF-5-20 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) – Crows strafe cob, Huck captures crows in milk can.
3:05 - TC 432 HOLLY DAY (Loose-Seely) – Crows escape from milk can; put dynamite in can, Huck peers in can, can blows up.
4:24 - TC 201 PIXIE COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Booby trap corn/wallet gag, Huck dresses scarecrow.
5:45 - LAF-7-12 FUN ON ICE (Shaindlin) – Crows draw on Huck, Huck corners them in mailbox, “Quittin’ time,” crows praise Huck.
7:04 - CLEMENTINE (trad.) – Huck strolls into house.
7:10 - Huck sub end title theme (Curtin).

Pixie and Dixie—A Good Good Fairy

Produced by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Animation – Lew Marshall; Layout – Dick Bickenbach; Backgrounds – Dick Thomas; Story – Mike Maltese; Story Direction – Paul Sommer; Titles – Lawrence Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson (from BCDB).
Cast: Pixie – Don Messick; Dixie, Jinks – Daws Butler; Fairy Godmother – Jean Vander Pyl.
Released: November 7, 1959 (BCDB date); December 26, 1959 (Chicago).
Plot: Pixie and Dixie’s fairy godmother mouse takes care of Jinks.

You can’t get more quintessentially Pixie and Dixie than the start of this cartoon. You can’t get more odd than what happens at the end. And in between, you get a bit of a new take on a cartoon staple—the fairy tale. Oh, and you also get what may have been Jean Vander Pyl’s first appearance in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

In the first season of the Huck Hound show, there were a grand total of two female voices, both of which sound like they belong to Ginny Tyler. The next season, H-B added the Quick Draw McGraw Show to its production schedule, and Julie Bennett came on board as Sagebrush Sal (in Masking For Trouble, released April 11, 1960). But I can’t find a cartoon earlier than this that Vander Pyl appeared on.

The start consists of Pixie and Dixie being chased by Jinks past the same chair and cabinet countless times (if you count, it’s 20 and a bit, including the shot of Jinks alone) while Jack Shaindlin’s Toboggan Run whizzes along in the background. Jinks bashes the meece with a broom but, this being limited animation, the victims don’t squash and stretch when they’re hit; the broom just comes down on them and they disappear for a few frames.


The mice lament that they’ll be stuck in their mouse hole for a long time when there’s a yellow flash and a female rodent (with transparent wings) descends. “I’m the mouse fairy godmother,” she pleasantly explains. “I grant wishes, help mice in trouble and all that jazz.” Pixie and Dixie are too “sos-phisticated” to believe in “kids’ story book stuff.” This gives Warren Foster (though the BCDB says it’s Mike Maltese) a chance to roll out a tale of woe for the Vander Pyl mouse to lament, sticking out her front teeth while whistling her s’s.

“Oh, that’s the trouble. Nobody believes any more. Everybody’s a wise guy. To them, I’m just an old lady with a star on a stick.” She waxes on about the “good old days” and relates the tale of Cinderella and how she lived happily ever after. The mice are sold. They believe in the fairy godmother who remarks “You are two of the good ones,” a line which got mileage in a bunch of Yogi Bear cartoons.

“Shall we warm up with a little wish first?” asks the fairy godmother. Dixie asks for a piece of cheese. The mice aren’t impressed. It’s everyone’s favourite cartoon gag cheese. “You didn’t say what kind, you know. Besides, I’m kind of pushing limburger this week,” she remarks.

Now we get into the real plot. Dixie asks the fairy godmother to take care of Jinks, whose minding his own business sleeping by the mouse hole. Suddenly, he’s lifted into the air and crashes to the floor as the invisible fairy godmother laughs.


The mice emerge from their hole. “How’s tricks, fur-face?” asks Pixie. (Wait. Don’t mice have fur, too?). Before the cat can do anything, two cymbals of unknown type appear to smash Jinks’ face between them. Then a vase magically turns into a boomerang to clobber the cat in the face.


The mice decide to investigate what’s in the cookie jar. The cat pops up from inside to use a fly-swatter on them. They run into a closet. The fairy godmother turns them into large dogs just before Jinks arrives.


Here’s Jinks’ exit from the closet, on twos. He leads with his head, then his lower body runs out from under him and stretches as he zips off frame. I don’t think this series of drawings was ever tried again.














The mice-as-dogs chase Jinks but turn into mice as they run (with a flash of light in between, eliminating the need for transformation animation). We get some cute poses of Jinks here. “Spare me! I’m a good pussycat!” he prays to whomever cartoon cats pray to. Then he notices he’s being barked at by mice, who engage in a gag ripped off from Tex Avery (see the end of Ventriloquist Cat) by slowing down their “bow wows” when they see Jinks has caught onto them.


“I do not know what made me think them meeces were dogs. But I’m throoooo fighting fair,” exclaims the rifle-toting Jinks, as Daws Butler has fun stretching a few vowels. Jinks fires the gun at point blank range but a balloon emerges, rises, then explodes on the cat’s face after another yellow flash.


Back into the closet run the mice, and when Jinks opens the door, two alligators are standing there, with Pixie and Dixie’s voices. “Somebody musta, you know, like turned my record over to the flip side, like.” Jinks lopes away ill.


The fairy godmother bids farewell, urging them to call if they need her. And they do. You see, the fairy godmother left her magic wand and they wonder if it will work for them. And it does. As the bedraggled cat watches, the mice have somehow turned themselves in an apple and a banana. Jinks moans that “In broad daylight, yet. I’m having like night-time mares.” So in this cartoon no one wins, including the viewer who is left to think “WTF” as the iris closes.

(One person has written in to explain the ending thusly: “The cartoon is another example of the latent homosexuality of Hanna-Barbera characters. Pixie and Dixie not only share the same bed but in this cartoon they are shown to be “fruits,” which was slang for “gay” in the 1950’s.” Dear Anonymous: get a life.)

The sound cutter decided to switch back and forth between a couple of beds here. As well, there’s a creepy melody used in a bunch of H-B cartoons I can’t place that has a wah-wah trumpet that sounds like it was recorded in a bathroom. Faithful reader Errol has heard it on a bunch of 1950s live-action shows, and pointed out an episode of The Adventures of Hiram Holliday (1956) where it makes an unmistakeable appearance (the music guy on that show was Raoul Kraushaar). So maybe came from Omar Music Service (which had a Capitol connection) as that’s who Kraushaar was connected with.

0:13 - LAF-5-20 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) – Jinks chases meece with broom into hole.
0:26 - TC-303 ZANY COMEDY (Bill Loose-John Seely) – Mice fear they’ll be stuck in their hole.
0:58 - TC-25 HEAVENLY HARP (Loose-Seely) – Fairy godmother appears.
1:03 - UNTITLED TUNE (Shaindlin) – Godmother sighs how no one believes in her anymore, cheese appears, godmother agrees to deal with Jinks.
2:56 - TC-25 HEAVENLY HARP (Loose-Seely) – Fairy godmother disappears, Jinks snoozes.
3:09 - LAF-1-1 FISHY STORY (Shaindlin) – Jinks lifted off floor and crashes, cymbals appear.
3:55 - L-75 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Spencer Moore) – Jinks grabs vase, turns into boomerang.
4:12 - LAF-2-12 ON THE RUN (Shaindlin) – Boomerang flies into Jinks.
4:18 - LAF-7-12 FUN ON ICE (Shaindlin) – Mice go to cookie jar, Jinks pops out.
4:30 - ZR-47 LIGHT MOVEMENT (Geordie Hormel) – Mice run into closet.
4:36 - LAF-7-12 FUN ON ICE (Shaindlin) – Mice turn into dogs, Jinks skids into them.
4:45 - ZR-47 LIGHT MOVEMENT (Hormel) – Jinks runs from dogs/mice.
4:55 - LAF-7-12 FUN ON ICE (Shaindlin) – Mice bark at Jinks against wall; Jinks trots after them with rifle; balloon explodes on Jinks’ nose.
5:45 - LAF-2-12 ON THE RUN (Shaindlin) – Mice run into closet.
5:53 - reverbed muted trumpet mysterioso (?) – Jinks opens door; mice are alligators, fairy godmother leaves, mice yell for help.
6:39 - fast circus-type newsreel music (Shaindlin) – Mice, as fruit, run past Jinks.

Hanna-Barbera’s Forgotten Star

Hanna-Barbera’s stars of 50 years ago are still stars today, right? After all, Yogi Bear is still one of the most popular TV cartoon characters of all time; a string of 73 franchised Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Parks can attest to that. Newspaper stories still compare people to Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw (including misguided attempts at humour involving a TV talk-show doctor with that last name).

And then there’s Loopy de Loop.

Who? Is that, like, an animated airplane?

No, Loopy is a wolf with a bright-sounding Quebecois voice by Daws Butler (by contrast, his Powerful Pierre voice in the Huckleberry Hound cartoons is harsher). He was Joe and Bill’s lone attempt at theatrical shorts after leaving MGM. I can only presume Loopy solely existed because it was a condition of the deal that saw Columbia Pictures pump money into the Hanna-Barbera studio. At least, that’s my guess because I can’t see other possible reason for his existence.

Columbia must have thought it had a winner. Here it was getting brand-new cartoons by the duo responsible for the most talked-about animation in television. Instead, it got the forgotten step-child of the H-B studio.

Loopy was even at the bottom of the quality ladder when it came to Columbia’s own cartoon releases. The studio was still sending old UPA shorts to theatres. So, in November 1959, Columbia re-released the atmospheric The Tell Tale Heart and the Oscar-nominated Trouble Indemnity with Mr. Magoo. And on the 5th of that month, 50 years ago today, the first Loopy short—Wolf Hounded—flickered on the big screen.

In a way, I really feel sorry for Loopy. It was like he was designed never to succeed. H-B used their best concepts in their television cartoons, like spoofs of clichés in westerns and detective shows, and a battle of wits between a big-hearted rogue and a guy in a uniform. All Loopy had was one premise—he wanted to overcome the stereotype that a wolf was bad. That would make for great subtle social commentary in the right hands but that’s a whole different league than what Hanna-Barbera played in. Instead, we get the first of what Joe and Bill were starting to churn out in shorts—a one-note character in warmed-over parody.

Loopy is plain, old dull.

It’s too bad. The first cartoon was a promising start. You can tell by the thin row of teeth that Ken Muse handled the animation. June Foray provided several familiar but funny voices in a rare bit of work for Hanna-Barbera (including the UPA-ish Granny who is a semi-greyish colour). The house designs were cool, characters on a storybook page talked and moved, and there’s a Rube Goldberg-type sight gag (I smell Mike Maltese at work) where Loopy used a brick down a chimney to get a basket of cookies to fly to him out a window. Boxoffice magazine reviewed a couple of the early Loopys and rated them “good,” but hinted to viewers to expect the same plot over and over. And that’s the biggest problem with them—repetition of old bits by a one-dimensional character.

All this leaves you unsympathetic about someone whose sole purpose is to gain your sympathy. Loopy simply fails. He’s just not fun like Quick Draw or Mr. Jinks.

Worse still, this is a theatrical series without full theatrical animation. It looks like a TV cartoon, and at a time when H-B’s animation was starting to get less interesting. A noteable exception is Just A Wolf At Heart (1963), where Jack Ozark’s crudish, but occasionally expressive drawings remind me of Carlo Vinci’s early H-B work (though a sheepdog design was ripped off from Touché Turtle). Even Lawrence Goble’s simple title cards look cheap and elementary.

The only additional expense on these seems to have been hiring Hoyt Curtin to compose some underscores, which certainly saved the trouble of negotiating with Capitol to use the Hi-Q library theatrically. H-B got mileage out of the underscores; you can hear the same melodies over and over on Wally Gator, Lippy the Lion, the aforementioned Turtle and even the Flintstones. And while you could hear Loopy’s bassoon music on TV in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, you would almost never see the Loopy cartoons there, which accounts for his lack of fame today among those of us who grew up ingesting almost every Hanna-Barbera cartoon.

Columbia started re-releasing old (?) Loopys in the mid-‘60s until he just quietly vanished from screens along with the studio’s other shorts. To add insult to his career, he was cast in the pointless and consultant-reeking TV series Yo Yogi!

So bon anniversaire, Loopy de Loop. Here’s at least one place where you’re still remembered. But, unfortunately, not that well.

More Phil Green Cartoon Music

The Yowp request line has been ringing off the hook, or would be if phones had hooks any more.

Actually, it’s a metaphoric phone. For people have been writing wanting to hear more of the music in the Hanna-Barbera cartoons before Hoyt Curtin wrote underscores starting in the 1960-61 TV season.

Much of the music came from the Capitol Hi-Q Library. I’ve promised a full post on the library and that’ll come in the weeks ahead. But suffice it to say the library was created in 1955 and released for commercial use, from what I can tell, the following year. Hi-Q featured cues written for it as well as some from other libraries, including Capitol’s sister company, EMI. And the music for that library is credited to composer Harry Philip Green.

Phil Green wrote gobs of music for the EMI Photoplay series of 45s. Most were written in what he called “suites,” perfect for films and, especially, television. Green would start with a theme. Then he would arrange one version for a main title and another for end titles. He’d then expand a bit with an underscore version, perhaps some bridges to be used in and out of scenes, and a couple of variations on the theme, say a comic or a dramatic version or a romantic arrangement.

One whole series of discs—EMI Photoplay Q2—was designated ‘Comedy Cartoon.’ These found their way into the Hi-Q library, along with a bunch of his suites in other Photoplay Q series (music companies sure loved the letter ‘Q’ back then). And starting with the Quick Draw McGraw Show, Hanna-Barbera widened the number of cues it had been using to include material written by the very prolific Green.

I’ve posted links to some of them at this post but below you’ll find a bunch more. I’ll avoid boring you with the minutiae of these cues but I’ll mention a couple of things. The “GR” designation was used only by EMI. Capitol renamed Green’s material either “EM,” “PG” or “UP” (what the difference is supposed to be, I don’t know). Three of the cues in Big City Suite No. 2 (there were six in all, GR-247 to GR-252) were put on Hi-Q reel L-27 with the names EM-130 Metro M.T., EM-130A Metro E.T. and EM-130B Light Activity. All three are below with EMI names, though only GR-248 was used in cartoons. I don’t have EMI names for some of the others, so I’ve had to use the Capitol names.

EM-107D has left me baffled; I had presumed when Rhino released it in 1996 as part of the ‘Augie Doggie underscore’ in its H-B music collection that it was from of one of the Big City Suites. But it doesn’t fit the description of any of the cues in the two Suites in the EMI catalogue.

The longer Green material below was placed in the Hi-Q ‘L’ series, but the bridges were put in the ‘S’ (for ‘short’) series. Hanna-Barbera used them in exactly that manner; they were used to bridge from one scene to the next. Most of these cues in this post are bridges and under 30 seconds.

The volume varies on the cues as they came from different sources. Just click on the cue name and it should download into your media player in glorious mono. My personal favourites are EM-107D, GR-248 and GR-58.

EM-107D LIGHT MOVEMENT
GR-154 PICNIC OR COUNTRY SCENE
GR-155 PARKS AND GARDENS
GR-247 BIG CITY SUITE No 2 TITLES
GR-248 STREETS OF THE CITY
GR-252 BIG CITY SUITE No 2 END TITLES
GR-58 GOING SHOPPING
GR-75 POPCORN SHORT BRIDGE No 1
GR-76 POPCORN SHORT BRIDGE No 2
GR-78 CUSTARD PIE CAPERS BRIDGE No 1
GR-79 CUSTARD PIE CAPERS BRIDGE No 2
GR-81 FRED KARNO'S ARMY BRIDGE No 1
GR-88 SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD BRIDGE No 1
PG-168J FAST MOVEMENT
PG-171 PERIOD FANFARE
PG-181F MECHANICAL BRIDGE
PG-182D LIGHT MECHANICAL BRIDGE
PG-186E LIGHT MECHANICAL
PG-186F LIGHT MECHANICAL
PG-188E LIGHT MECHANICAL
PG-188F LIGHT STATEMENT

Snooper and Blabber — Switch Witch

Produced by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Ken Muse; Layout – Dick Bickenbach; Backgrounds – Fernando Montealegre; Story – Mike Maltese; Story Sketches – Dan Gordon; Titles – Lawrence Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Cast: Snooper, Gretel, Marvin, Judge – Daws Butler; Blabber, Witch, Hansel – Jerry Hausner.
Released: October 6, 1959 (IMDB unconfirmed)
Plot: Snooper and Blabber testify how they rescued Hansel and Gretel at the trial of the kidnapping witch.

A note from Yowp: Yes, I know you thought for Hallowe’en, I’d run down a cartoon featuring J. Evil Scientist. Sorry. J. Evil Scientist and his one-gag family are on my list of lame H-B characters along with Cindy Bear and Yakky Doodle. Instead, we’ll feature another character appropriate to the season.

It didn’t take long for Mike Maltese to dip into his old oaken bucket into the reservoir of Warner Bros. tricks after arriving at Hanna-Barbera from the Chuck Jones unit. This cartoon combines the plots of a couple of Warners cartoons and Maltese shamelessly lifts a line out of one of them.

First, Maltese borrowed a little more than a pinch of this and a dash of that from Jones’ Bewitched Bunny (1954), written by—surprise!—Mike Maltese, which featured Witch Hazel trying to eat Hansel and Gretel but ends up thwarted by Bugs Bunny. Added to that is the basic plot of Friz Freleng’s The Trial of Mr. Wolf (1941) written by—surprise again!—Mike Maltese, where a wolf testifies in court in his defence against a fairy tale character and makes himself out to be the victim. The character, in that case, is Little Red Riding Hood.

So, now Maltese has his plot. And the cartoon opens with Snooper and Blabber tooling down a city street in their late-‘50s finned car (very similar to the one in their previous effort Puss N’ Booty) as Blabber reads a newspaper headline we can all read for ourselves. The two are set to testify in the trial of a witch, who proclaims her innocence, claiming Hansel and Gretel set her up. One thing Maltese couldn’t borrow from Warners was the voice of Witch Hazel, the wonderful June Foray, so Joe Barbera handed the role to Jerry Hausner who was briefly at H-B at this time. Hausner sounds closer to Jonathan Winters doing Maudie Frickert, but it works anyway.


Anyway, the witch begins to weave her tale of two bratty kids who knock at her door while she’s baking a chocolate pie. “How’s about a handout, sister?” Hansel smugly remarks. The witch hands them the pie. They’re not satisfied. Maltese comes up with some oddball substitutes. They want ketchup malts and mustard sundaes. Before throwing the pie back at her face, Hansel sneers “Ahh, your mother rides a vacuum cleaner” proving he must have seen Bewitched Bunny, too, because Maltese put those words in Hansel and Gretel’s mouths to the witch in that cartoon, too. A nice touch before the scene fades out is the sound of the metal pie plate hitting the ground.

We iris in to Hansel and Gretel on the stand. “She tried to make a smorgas-boy out of me,” says the innocent-looking Hansel, and we fade to their version of what happened. The dialogue’s cute here. Hausner and Daws Butler, as Gretel, read their lines like they’re badly reading a script. “We are lost, kind lady.” “We seek food and shelter.” The witch bids them to come in and take a ride in a “sports car”. She even gives them little sports car-riding caps. The sports car turns out to be a roasting pan with wheels (clever, that old crone), as the witch slams the lid on top and kicks “my little blue plate specials” into an old-fashioned stove. The kids escape through the burner holes and are chased around the house “until Snooper and Blabber Mouse came to our rescue.”


Now we dissolve to Snooper and Blabber on the stand, who relate their version of the events. The next scene is in Snooper’s office, where he kicks the ringing phone off the hook and grabs it. Who rang? And how did they know they were in the witch’s cottage? We’re left to assume the caller probably saw Bewitched Bunny, too. The design choice is really neat here. I like the lines on the stones of the cottage, and in the shutters.


Snooper explains they spotted “a veritable frankenfurter monster.” The witch, upon hearing they’re detectives looking for the missing children, tells them the only one in her home is Marvin, her pet gorilla, which is a little reminiscent of Paul, the pet tarantula of Witch Hazel in Broom-Stick Bunny (1956) written by—need we tell you? The sceptical detectives get a bit of proof.

What now? “Alimentary, me dear Blabber Mouse,” says Snooper. And they run away. But not so fast. They see, and hear, the kids cry for help. Isn’t that a great little attic shot? I wonder if Dick Bickenbach came up with that in layout or Dan Gordon drew it first. Our heroes decide to batter down the door to the cottage. The witch opens the door, the detectives enter the home, and the stove, still carrying the log. They roll out in the wheeled roasting pan and the witch beats a hasty retreat.


Here are a couple of Monty’s interior backgrounds. Not as outrageous as Ernie Nordli and Maurice Noble’s designs for Witch Hazel at Warners, but I really like the broken, crooked stairwell anyway.


We get a nice little French bedroom farce-like chase scene involving the witch, Marvin, the children and Snooper and Blabber over the sounds of Jack Shaindlin’s Toboggan Run. It quickens the pace of the cartoon nicely. First, it’s Snooper and Blabber into a room with the witch. Then it’s the gorilla after the detectives. Then it’s the gorilla after Hansel and Gretel into a room. Then it’s the witch in the roasting pan after the children. Snooper times it perfectly to put the cover on the pan, and the witch, to bring her to justice.

It’s not over yet. Into the room they go, and the gorilla chases Snooper, who tries to hide under a ceiling light.

Blabber: Say, Snoop. What are you doing up there?
Snoop: I’m reading a book because the light is better.

Snooper tells Blab to go down to the cellar, get a saw and saw the gorilla from below. But Blab screws up the instructions and saws around the light from above and Snooper lands on Marvin instead.

So the chase is on again. Snooper and gorilla run into another room. Snooper bolts out and tells Blab to shut the door. He does. There’s a bang. It’s the flattened witch.

While I’m at it, let me apologise for the poor quality screen caps. If WHV would bother to spend the money on music rights and put these out on DVD, I’d be very happy.

Now comes the courtroom climax. The witch demands to bring in a surprise witness. Out she goes and in comes Marvin (the chair at the witness stand has changed somehow in the last few seconds), who testifies “The witch is a sweet old lady. Them kids is guilty.” Hansel indignantly shouts that the gorilla is fibbing “Just like that ugly old witch.”

“Ugly?! Who’s ugly?” says the gorilla, who now has the witch’s voice. And it turns out the witch is really Marvin as she removes her head. She realises her faux pas as the judge declares her guilty. “Well, hee hee, can’t blame a girl for trying,” says the witch philosophically to end the cartoon.

Some of the music selections are a little unusual for a Snooper cartoon, which avoided using tunes by Bill Loose and John Seely. And I don’t believe Toboggan Run was used again; there was other Shaindlin chase music in later cartoons and you can hear some of it here. All Phil Green compositions are the original names from EMI except PG-186F which is from the Capitol Hi-Q library as I don’t have the EMI name (I’m missing that set of EMI Photoplay discs).

0:00 - Snooper and Blabber Main Title theme (Hoyt Curtin)
0:24 - TC-432 HOLLY DAY (Loose-Seely) – Blabber reads headline, witch on stand, flashback to Hansel and Gretel arriving at witch’s cottage.
1:30 - L-1139 ANIMATION COMEDY (Moore) – Hansel and Gretel testify.
1:46 - Suspenceful music (Shaindlin) – Kids put in “sports car”; witch chases them in house.
2:39 - GR-75 POPCORN SHORT BRIDGE (Philip Green) – Snooper and Blabber on the stand, Snoop answers phone.
2:55 - GR-78 CUSTARD PIE CAPERS SHORT BRIDGE (Green) – Snoop and Blab get in car.
3:08 - PG-186F LIGHT MECHANICAL (Green) – “What’s wrong with a little hero worship?”
3:21 - GR-93 DRESSED TO KILL (Green) – Snooper and Blabber arrive at witch’s cottage, gorilla pounds on Snooper, kids scream for help.
4:31 - F-5-20 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) – Battering ram, chase, witch captured in roasting pan.
5:05 - circus music (Shaindlin) – Snooper and Blabber carry pan.
5:27 - vaudeville music (Shaindlin) – Snoop hides in light, Blab saws down Snoop.
6:04 - circus music reprise (Shaindlin) – Snoop runs from gorilla; witch runs into door.
6:19 - GR-90 THE CHEEKY CHAPPY (Green) – “Excuse me, madame”, Witch demands to bring in surprise witness.
6:37 - GR-96 BY JIMINY! IT’S JUMBO (Green) – Gorilla testifies, Hansel cries “liar.”
6:55 - GR-77 CUSTARD PIE CAPERS (Green) – Witch reveals she’s gorilla.
7:09 - Snooper and Blabber end title theme (Curtin).

Nick and Bick and Model Sheets

There’s something attractive about model sheets and pencil tests, when you can look at cartoon characters and see how they’re created from geometric shapes, without backgrounds, sounds or anything else to distract you.

This is about as good a place as any to put in a plug for Kevin Langley’s blog, which features model sheets and other fun cartoon stuff.

Someone awhile ago was selling model sheets that were billed as being from the George Nicholas collection. Nick’s obit from a Pennsylvania newspaper, likely the source of an L.A. Times story a couple of days later, may not be altogether accurate.

George Nicholas, 85.
Worked as an animator for Walt Disney.
George “Nick” Nicholas, 85, of Edinboro, formerly of Los Osos, Calif., died Saturday, Nov. 23, 1996, at his home.
He was born in Vermilion, Ohio, Dec. 14, 1910, son of the late Isaac William and Frances Hatch Nicholas. Mr. Nicholas’ family moved to Los Angeles when he was 10 years old. He was hired as an animator at the Walt Disney Studios in 1931. He was an animator for Hanna Barbera, Chuck Jones, and many others including Walt Disney. He was honored for 50 years of service to the cartoon industry at the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonist Guild Golden Awards banquet in 1986. Among his accomplishments are screen credit on the Disney features “Lady and the Tramp,” “Cinderella,” “Sleeping Beauty,” Church [sic] Jones’ “Riki Tiki Tavi” and “The White Seal,” and also the 1971 Academy Award-winning animated version of “The Christmas Carol.” Mr. Nicholas was also a painter and wood sculptor.
He was preceded in death by his wife of 56 years, Dorothy McMannamy Nicholas; a sister, Mary; and three brothers, Fred, John and Bill. Survivors include his daughter, Donna, with whom he resided; two nieces, Lynn Nicholas of Salt Lake City, Utah, and Marjorie Jane Albin of Sacramento, Calif.; three nephews, Jack and Bill Nicholas of Los Angeles, and Fredrick M. Nicholas of San Francisco, Calif.; two brothers-in-law; and many friends.
Calling hours will not be observed. Funeral services will be held Wednesday at 11 a.m. at the Thompson-Smith Funeral Home, 345 Main St., Conneaut, with the Rev. Clyde A. McGee of the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church officiating. Burial will be at Kelloggsville Cemetery. Memorials may be made to the Conneaut Station No. 3 Rescue Squad.

The factoid about “Disney in 1931” may be a trifle premature. Nick appeared on credits at the Lantz studios in the mid-30s, and he’s even in a staff picture circa 1933 found in Joe Adamson’s biography on “the other Walt.” He seems to have moved to Disney by 1939-40, then on to Hanna-Barbera in time to work on the first season of Quick Draw McGraw. So he wasn’t at H-B when the models of the studio’s first stars, Ruff and Reddy, were drawn.


I strongly suspect the sheets are by Dick Bickenbach, who drew these model sheets of Quick Draw and Baba Looey (they are signed “Bick”).


Bick was born in Indiana on August 9, 1907. His family settled in Glendale by the 1920s where he went to high school before studying art at Chouinard. In the 1930s, he found employment animating for Ub Iwerks and then at Schlesinger/Warner Bros. under Friz Freleng, then in Frank Tashlin’s unit (later taken over by Bob McKimson) before moving over to MGM and connecting with Hanna and Barbera about 1947. He replaced Harvey Eisenberg doing layouts for them then moved with them to their studio.
Animation wasn’t Dick’s sole interest. He was a baritone and it’s conceded he provided a Frank Sinatra-style singing voice in Tashlin’s Swooner Crooner (1944). To my not-exactly-trained ear (and I’ll stand corrected), it sounds like him again in Tex Avery’s Little ’Tinker (1948) when the two of them were at M.G.M. His wife Dorothy Mae was a singer as well. They married in 1933, likely due to their involvement in the Grandview Presbyterian Church in Glendale where they both worked with the children’s choir. He was a soloist at an installation ceremony of Tujunga Chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star in 1949 (a co-ed group connected with the Masons); Dorothy was a member of the Star but the Grand Lodge of California reports Bick was not a Mason.
Newspaper clippings also show an interest in photography and he won a photo contest sponsored by the L.A. Times in 1938.
Bick is reported to have had a quote of Mark Twain on his wall at Hanna-Barbera: “Truth is such a precious article. Let us all economize in its use.”
During the ‘30s and ’40s, Bickenbach lived at 1161 Rosedale Avenue in Glendale. Perhaps coincidentally, that address (actually 1161B) was, in 2003, the home of an animation studio where The Toy Warrior was produced.
Bick retired to Palm Desert in 1975 where he and Dorothy continued to be active in church work, and then moved into a retirement home in Redlands in 1984. He died in San Bernardino on June 28, 1994.