One of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera’s first hires when they (with silent partner George Sidney) opened their own studio in July 1957 was someone who hadn’t worked with them at MGM. It was a writer named Charlie Shows.
Charlie was a former police detective from El Paso who ended up working on, and/or creating, children’s TV shows in Los Angeles, including Time For Beany. He came up with KNBH’s Adventures of Patches, which starred Don Messick as the voice of Patches (Larry Harmon was Wacky Rabbit). In 1951, he was named honorary mayor of Sun Valley, California.
Long-time readers know I’ve been tough on Charlie. He loved rhymes and, to me, too many were really forced or hokey. But he was a good artist and when he worked on Ruff and Reddy, his dialogue comes across better because the series was aimed at younger kids.
(Side note: I give Charlie credit for the immortal words “I hate meeces to pieces.” Whether he came up with it, or Joe Barbera did, I honestly don’t know, but it sounds like something Shows wrote).
Mr. Shows peppers the 12th Ruff and Reddy cartoon, Reddy’s Rocket Rescue, with his (in)famous rhymes. Narrator Messick talks of “Professor Giz, the rocket whiz,” Ruff adds a “Gee whiz, Giz,” and Gizmo observes that “Redd is dead ahead” and to “stand by for a dizzy dive” as he and Ruff make the aforementioned rescue.
As usual, the cartoon starts with a close-to-30-second recap (with re-used animation) from the last episode, when the “whiz” shoots off Reddy’s propeller from his metal beany, and we see the plummeting pooch dropping to his doom.
The adventure continues with Gizmo using a “secret weapon.” It’s an ordinary toilet plunger. “It’s lucky the professor has a bag of tricks, ‘cause Reddy is falling like a bag of bricks,” narrator Messick exclaims. Gizmo proves to be an accurate shot.
Silhouette drawing.
Reddy is his usual belligerent self. “Put me down, you clown!” he gripes. “Oh, gee, Reddy,” responds Ruff, adding “What an attitude! Where’s your gratitude?” It’s no quirk. Reddy’s a jerk (See, Charlie? I can write that way, too).
“What happens to me shouldn’t happen to a dog,” is the episode’s ironic comment.
The troubles aren’t over. The Muni-Mula Air Force, their propellers moving in cycle animation, return. Gizmo uses his “super-secret weapon”—a package that reads “Do not open until Christmas” that has a Fourth of July cracker in it. The “noisy rascals” stare at the package. It explodes. End of Air Force. (Fourth of July? On Muni Mula?).
“You’re a whiz, Gizmo,” says Reddy. “Just call me ‘Giz’,” is the response in more of Shows’ sparkling dialogue.
The three decide to head back to Earth. But look! A mammoth meteor is heading toward them. Will it hit them? We’ll have to wait for the next episode.
Shows left Hanna-Barbera in 1958 to work for Larry Harmon on his Bozo the Clown TV cartoons, but was re-hired in the mid-1960s to craft stories and even lyrics for record albums starring the Hanna-Barbera characters in various tales. He certainly contributed to the studio’s legacy.
Two cues from Bill Loose and John Seely are heard in the background of this episode.
0:00 – No music – Title card.
0:06 – TC-219A CHASE MEDIUM (Loose-Seely) – Recap, Reddy pulled into spacecraft.
1:51 – No music – Reddy in the capsule complains about his treatment.
2:01 – TC-217A CHASE MEDIUM (Loose-Seely) – Muni Mulas fly in formation, end of cartoon.
There’s a generation out there that gets wistful for afternoon blocks of syndicated cartoons, or an American cable channel that pumped out nothing but animation.
Your yowping reporter pre-dates that. I go further back, back to a time when you got more than cartoons on pre- and after-school shows on TV. You got live hosts, introducing cartoons and kibitzing with others in front of the camera. Their routines could be silly and funny and, if I may editorialise, more entertaining than the cartoons (A sign of a successful show was hearing cameramen break up in the background).
These shows were all over the United States, and they were the ones that Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had in mind when they developed the Lippy the Lion, Touché Turtle and Wally Gator cartoons. The five-minute comedies could be dropped into kids shows, or even run on their own if a station was too cheap to hire live talent.
This is a bit of a long-winded way to get into this picture I snagged off the internet.
This is from The Pappy Show on WICU-TV in Erie, Pennsylvania.
There were people dressed up as Yogi Bear who toured North America in the late ’50s and early ‘60s, putting on shows at fairs and department stores. This version of Yogi isn’t one of them. He's a little emaciated. I don’t have the background behind the photo, so I don’t know if this Yogi appeared with Pappy regularly.
(Pappy was a chap named Skip Letcher. He had been a disc jockey CHVC in Niagara Falls, Ontario. On-camera cohort Bernard Abbey died in 1964 at the age of 39).
Since I mentioned Lippy, etc., I will use this as an excuse to post this newspaper supplement cover. The characters are on model, so this must have been studio artwork, though I’m not certain why Touché is floating in mid-air. The Lippy, etc. cartoons were viewed in our home, using a special antenna, from KTNT-TV in Tacoma on the Brakeman Bill Show. The best part of the show was a hand puppet named Crazy Donkey. Even my dad would stop and watch Crazy Donkey do or say something ridiculous.
It’s a shame the live host period ended. You can blame those people who watered down cartoons to “protect” children. Hosts on some stations plugged things, and there was a lot of concern about advertising aimed at kids. The hosts vanished. (So did a droll series called Linus the Lionhearted, starring Post cereal spokes-cartoons).
We didn’t need a “Cartoon Network” back then. There was, at least where I grew up, plenty of animated fun after school. I could watch a live kids show that included cartoons, then switch to a half hour of The Flintstones in reruns, then switch to another channel with Warners and Fleischer Popeyes, then switch to another channel that aired Quick Draw McGraw or Huckleberry Hound. That took up a good couple of hours and you could get your cartoon fill for the day.
I’m pretty sure there are readers here who fondly remember the live, ad-lib kid shows on their TV set. The hosts were just as popular as the cartoons they showed. Bravo to them.
We’re not exactly dealing with the brightest characters at times in the Ruff and Reddy cartoons. Witness the events in 11th part of the Muni Mula adventure, Crowds in the Clouds, which first aired on NBC on January 18, 1958 as the first of two R & R segments that morning (it was repeated on July 20, 1958).
Narrator Don Messick recaps the action in the 10th part, followed by brainiac Prof. Gizmo activating a smoke screen around his spaceship to hide from the Muni Mula army.
So far, so good. The camera operator appears to have been given some instruction to put a filter over one scene to make it look like the interior of the spaceship is filled with the smoke screen.
The cloud cover works!
“Meanwhile, back the ranch, uh, planet...” says the narrator as the cartoon switches scene. By the way, was the phrase “Meanwhile, back at the ranch” ever heard in a motion picture? Reddy and the Muni Mulas are animated running past some overlays.
Reddy “ducks into the nearest building” after pointlessly passing it, running back and running in. Maybe Hanna needed extra footage to fill. Note how the legs become wheels.
Reddy discovers he’s a room with flying Muni Mula men, who ascend to try to capture Reddy and the professor. They’re “taking off like a herd of birds.” Someone tell writer Charlie Shows that birds don’t come in herds. Or maybe that’s another of his forced rhymes.
Reddy decides to escape skywards. Still, so far, so good.
Ruff now shows he’s not so bright. He looks out the spaceship window sees Reddy in the stratosphere. “Professor, look! One of the Muni-Mula airmen!” He can’t tell his own buddy from a robot that’s a different shape and colour. Gismo activates his “big gun” and aims it at Reddy. Ruff then realises who it is, tells the professor, who doesn’t pay any attention, and fires. Gizmo was still adjusting his site when Ruff shouted the warning. Some smart guy he is.
“Maybe he’ll be lucky and land on his head,” says the encouraging Mr. Messick, as we’re urged not to miss the next episode.
This is a pretty good cliff-hanger. Can you guess what happens next?
The sound cutter puts three Capitol Hi-Q “D” series cues behind the action.
0:00 – No music – Title Card
0:05 – TC-15 CHASE-MEDIUM (Bill Loose-John Seely) – Start of recap, Muni Mula air force, Ruff and Gizmo at window.
0:53 – L-1203 EERIE HEAVY ECHO (Spencer Moore) – Rocket stops.
1:25 – TC-15 CHASE-MEDIUM (Loose-Seely) – Robots fly past cloud, Reddy chased, knocking.
1:57 – L-653 EERIE DRAMATIC (Moore) – Robots outside door, Reddy flies up, rocket, end of cartoon.
The Yowp blog has some great readers.
Earlier this year, we posted some pictures of a Quick Draw McGraw board game sold by Milton Bradley in 1960.
The rules were helpfully included.
Reader Stephen Spurling has discovered that someone has digitised this game and you can play it on line.
Maybe I'm a little slow, but I'm still a little confused by the game (it's also early in the morning and I'm heading to work). I also think it'd be more fun to play in person, instead of on the internet (you have no control over the spinner; you just click on something) but it's better than nothing.
Thanks to Stephen for passing this along.
How’s this for an in-between?
I’ve mentioned before I’m not a big Ruff and Reddy fan, but some of you reading this are, so here are some frames from Surprise in the Skies, the tenth cartoon from their first adventure.
Professor Gizmo tells Reddy their spaceship needs a push to get off the planet Muni Mula. Reddy dashes away to go outside. These are the basic drawings, although Gizmo’s left arm on the lever is on a separate cel than the rest of him. The arm moves. The rest doesn’t.
The Ruff and Reddy cartoons didn’t cut corners altogether. You’ll notice in the shots that show the three characters inside the space ship control room that the same background art isn’t used. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera could have saved some money by using the same background, but didn’t.
On the other hand, there are run cycles taking up footage. One doesn't even show Reddy's feet. Reddy simply bobs up and down in four drawings for eight seconds. When narrator Messick says Reddy thinks his pals "are a couple of skunks," skunk tails simple pop onto the back of the characters, who are immobile through the scene.
Whether they came from Dan Gordon's story sketches or from the layout artist (likely Bick Bickenbach), I don't know, but silhouette drawings make things visually interesting in the first Ruff and Reddy cartoons. The animation is limited in this scene; only Gizmo's moustache moves in four drawings. No need to animate a mouth!
Hanna and Barbera also use overlays in this cartoon. The Muni Mulas are behind whatever the ragged purple thing is.
Even though the cartoons originally aired in black and white, the background man goes for different shades of purple, as well as outlines in both white and black. You can see green vines that are sponged onto the painting and wispy white clouds. This is exactly the same as you’d find in an MGM theatrical, which would have had a larger budget.
In this scene, the clouds are on an overlaid cel.
The battered S.S. Gizmo II shooting through the stratosphere after bashing through the metal planet, Muni Mula. The rocket is on one cel, the smoke coming out of back is on a three-cel cycle, and some of the clouds are on an overlay.
The team at H-B Enterprises tries to make up for the lack of animation by making this science fiction adventure visually interesting. I like the interiors in this one. This one of inside the space ship can't look much more 1950s in design.
Here's an example of simulating animation. The Muni Mula army is on a cel, moved up from behind the front of the space ship, which is on an overlay. Director Bill Hanna doesn't maintain the same shot. He cuts in closer to the same cell-under-overlay movement.
The Muni Mulans have Don Messick's tongue waving voice that you heard on The Herculoids.
This cartoon aired with The Creepy Creature on January 5, 1958. I can’t find any TV listings mentioning the Columbia theatrical short also seen on the show.
Greg Watson or Warner Leighton or whoever the sound cutter was only uses two piece of Bill Loose/John Seely music from the Capitol Hi-Q "D" series on this cartoon.
0:00 – no music – spinning title card
0:06 – TC-217A CHASE MEDIUM (Loose-Seely) – Ruff, Reddy, Gizmo run into spaceship; need a push.
1:31 – no music – “A push?”; Reddy zips out.
1:33 – TC-219A CHASE MEDIUM (Loose-Seely) – Ruff pushes to end of cartoon.
One of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera’s first hires when they (with silent partner George Sidney) opened their own studio in July 1957 was someone who hadn’t worked with them at MGM. It was a writer named Charlie Shows.
