Saturday 31 December 2016

Huckleberry Hound Strikes a Pose

Huckleberry Hound trivia? Here’s a piece from Frank Rizzo, who interviewed various rock stars in 1985 about their first musical memory. The answer he got from Michael Stipe of REM:
“It was ‘Moon River.’ It used to make me cry when I was a kid. I liked it a lot because there was a line in it about ‘Huckleberry friend.’ But I thought it was about Huckleberry Hound which would give you an idea of how young I was, about 5.
With that, here are some drawings of Huck from the early days. Whether they’re Ed Benedict’s or Dick Bickenbach’s, I don’t know. The drawings of Huck in the Stone Age and the dinosaur come from Caveman Huck (about 1961), with layouts by Tony Rivera.



And one other piece of Huck trivia. Bob Hope sneered at Huck’s TV audience. From the Wall Street Journal, April 2, 1963:
CHICAGO—Bob Hope’s theory about the current ruckus over the accuracy of TV audience rating systems is that it all started “when Huckleberry Hound topped the President’s State of the Union message.”
In Chicago to receive an award from the National Association of Broadcasters, Mr. Hope spotted Newton Minow, Federal Communications Commission chairman, in the audience, and commended him for his “needling, suggestions and constructive prodding.” These efforts, he said, have “led the industry up the path to the Beverly Hillbillies,” a popular situation comedy.
“That’s all we needed,” Mr. Hope added, “an outhouse in the vast wasteland.”
This is the same Bob Hope that brought you those highbrow TV specials featuring Charo, college football cheerleaders and obvious glances at cue cards.

9 comments:

  1. Considering Bob picked up on Paul Henning's formula for having the hottest women possible as eye candy on his specials (as Paul did on "Hillbillies", "The Bob Cummings Show" and his other efforts of the 1950s and '60s), he might wanted to take that one back.

    As for the cartoons, Minnow's contempt for TV as of the summer of '61 made it open season for people, celebs or not, to show their refined tastes by bashing network fare, where the cartoons dotting stations' evenning lineups were the easiest target. (And while Hope may have dissed Huck, MGM and Warners where the hound's creators came from also had ignored Bob during their animation heyday -- his co-stars Bing and Jerry got their charactures, along with Jack, Frankie and other celebs, but Hope's cartoon appearances were more or less limited to his home studio at Paramount. So he may have already been irked by the snubs....)

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    1. Old Ski Nose is pretty much bashing Minow and CBS, telling him his campaign for high-and-flighty television has resulted in "The Beverly Hillbillies." Hope seems be treating it like it's the "WSM Barn Dance." "Hillbillies" had some social satire and parody in its first few seasons until it became a parody of itself.
      In a way, Hope had a point about people wanting light entertainment instead of being told about the issues of the day but, realistically, long, raw speeches tend to be on the snooze-off side of things except for die-hard political junkies.

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  2. Hi, everyone here and reading in the future..as Arte Johnson would say, "Verrrry interesting" Bob Hope comment, on his feelings about certain cartoons. BTW I watched my Beverly Hillbillies DVD, with one of the first episodes, "Jethro goes to school"... and everyone reading this, Happy New Year (here where I am, Southern Calif, and Yowp, up in Vancouver,BC, it;'s just beeen New Year for 20 minutes, back on the East Coast for J.Lee, it's been three hours of a New Year Day!

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  3. Thanks for this site , LOVE those old late 50s cues!
    Sure would be great to somehow find the creepy waahwaah .. waahwaah muted trumpet cue!!!
    It always reminded me of exploring abandoned houses and sleeping out ghost storys and the like,as a kid!

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  4. Funny, my parents had Andy Williams' recording of " Moon River ". The first thing this six year old thought of was Huck when he sang that famous line. Gary, Jack Shaindlin had a famous Wa Wa Waaa in " Fishy Story ", ala the Cinemusic library. But the extremely hard to find Raoul Kraushaar/Omar Production library had some creepy trumpet cues also.

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    1. Erroll, it's most certainly (despite the Jack Shaindlin-esque sound) a Kraushaar tune, since it was used in some shows "Lassie" and the obscure Wally Cox "Hiram Holiday". Thanks, as always, for your comment..!

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  5. In "Breakfast at Tiffany's", Audrey Hepburn or George Peppard, I forget which, wears a Huckleberry Hound mask.

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  6. I love Bob Hope, but the less I know of his "serious" thoughts, the better.

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  7. Yet Hope didn't seem to mind having his own comic book. I wouldn't have minded having that comic about me either! The Adventures of Bob Hope was AWESOME! Or at least the artwork was! Bob Oskner and Owen Fitzgerald drew some HOT women! Almost up there on the same level as that god among men Dan Decarlo!

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