One episode of the Quick Draw McGraw show starts with our hero welcoming us to his ranch. “The show will start before you can count to three,” Quick Draw tells us. Off camera, you can hear “Four!” then...
“Now, hoooold on thar!” shouts our hero. Cut to Augie Doggie apologizing, “But I hollered fore!” Doggie Daddy’s mouth moves like he’s laughing but no sound comes out.
For some reason, the stars of the other cartoons are playing golf on Quick Draw's ranch.
“Hand me my number nine mashie giblet, Blab. I’m going to knock both golf balls for a hole in one.”
Snooper wonders where his golf balls have gone. Quick Draw leans into the frame. “Does this answer your question?” I like how Quick Draw turns to look at the TV audience, though he wouldn’t be able to see them.
Quick Draw is convinced to take a swing. He fails badly. Unfortunately, the best in-betweens of the golf swing can’t be seen on the video because of overlapping frames. There’s a swirl cycle of three drawings.
Cut to a close-up. “Anyway, folks,” confides Quick Draw, “Get ready for a fooooour-star cartoon show!” He shakes his muzzle on “four.” (Or is it “fore”)?
Ed Love does a fine job animating this little cartoon-before-the-cartoons. Daws Butler speaks for Quick Draw, Baba Looey, Snooper, Blabber and Augie Doggie, while Doug Young has a line as Doggie Daddy.
Thanks to Steve Hanson for posting this 16mm print.
He sings! He dances!
He’s Don Messick.
Don would have turned 100 today, and I can think of nothing better than to highlight a likely unknown aspect of his career.
An extremely long shopping list of his various roles at Hanna-Barbera (and elsewhere) would waste your time. And we’ve already written extensively about Messick’s radio and ventriloquism careers in Maryland before coming to the West Coast to work in radio, then attracting the attention of both Tex Avery at MGM and puppet show meister Bob Clampett.
But 60 years ago, Messick tried for something new. He was hired for an American Musical Theatre Workshop production of Guys and Dolls. The Santa Barbara News-Press of Sept. 2, 1966 reviewed the musical.
A real pair of pros, Les Magann and Don Messick, were the hustling gamblers, Nicely-Nicely Johnson and Benny Southstreet. They account for some of the brightest moments in the evening. Magann was outstanding in the rolicking “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat.” And the two con-men were great in the title song.
In 1969, Messick was hired for what was hoped to be a network TV success. No, not that Great Dane show. Daily Variety of Feb. 28 that year reported:
Western Video Productions and Marineland today begin production of new weekly half-hour tv puppet show, “Fish ‘n Chip,” planned for Saturday-morning net viewing.
Program will use a dozen Marineland puppet characters, with voices provided by Daws Butler, Don Messick, Joe Boyes and Chris Allen.
Don was sought after for commercials, with Variety stating in its June 14, 1963 issue that he, Daws, Paul Frees, June Foray and Mel Blanc were all pulling in $100,000 a year. No doubt continued cereal campaigns helped, but Don also was the voice of Lemon Pledge and Lincoln/Mercury dealers.
Let’s end with a little story told to the Hollywood Citizen-News in its Jan. 25, 1967 by none other than Space Ghost, Gary Owens.
Another friend, Don Messick, who does hundreds of voices for Hanna-Barbera’s many cartoons, told me his interest in dubbing for animation came from ventriloquism. Maybe that’s where the art has gone. While we were discussing nostalgia, I attempted to play one of my favorite jokes on Don. THE FAMED IMITATION INK BLOT TRICK (“Imagine the horror of a careful housewife,” the ads used to say, “When she suddenly discovers a huge blot of ink on a valued tablecloth or a costly book.”) Then you furtively lift up the giant blot of ink and put it in your pocket, making it disappear, because the blot was made of cardboard or tin. The joke didn’t impress Don too much, however, because I used it under my pencil.
Mark Evanier knew Don Messick and wrote this touching remembrance in 1997. Don M. had died on Oct. 24 at the age of 71.
Pixie is playing table tennis with Jinks in a little cartoon before the next Pixie and Dixie cartoon. Dixie is just standing there. To save money by hiring Don Messick, Pixie's voice is coming out of Daws Butler.
"Get this one, smarty cat!" says Pixie and whaps the ball high into the air.
Back goes Jinks in a four-drawing cycle as he passes the same tree three times.
Jinksie runs backwards into a mailbox.
"What can I do, Jinks?" asks Huck. The mail slot opens to reveal the cat's head. "Like, uh, get me a stamp," is his response.
Yeah, not the greatest line but I don't know what he could say. Personally, I'd like to have seen him splash backward into a fountain and say "I guess, like, my game's all wet."
“The boys are givin’ me a hand with the mail this week,” says Quick Draw McGraw in one of short cartoons before the end credits of his show.
The gags aren’t terrific, but pleasant.
Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy are wrapping parcels. Somehow, Doggie Daddy wraps Augie in a package.
Snooper and Blabber are sending an airmail letter to Cactus Sam by rocket. But the rocket expectedly returns. “You forgot to put a stamp on the letter,” observes Blab.
The final gag is a Western cliché. Quick Draw gets a special delivery letter from Chief Little Runt, who appeared in Scat, Scout, Scat (Production J-5, 1959). The letter is in smoke signals. It reads: “Our next cartoon show is a special delivery of laughs.”
Cut to Baba. “And don’ts you forgets it, folks,” he reminds us.
It’s a month from today the Quick Draw Blu-ray will be available for purchase, and we hope the mini-cartoons like this (this one from a 16mm film in Steve Hanson’s collection) will be a part of it.
There were occasional boo-boos at the Hanna-Barbera studio, and we don’t mean the little bear kind. Mouths on separate cels would be out of register, colours wouldn’t match. This also happened at the major theatrical studios where they had more time to lavish care on cartoons than the TV operations had. I'm surprised mistakes didn't happen more often at Hanna-Barbera, but the studio was filled with veterans who knew what they were doing.
Here’s an example from Nowhere Bear, a 1959 Yogi cartoon. Here’s Yogi turning his head. Two cels don’t have the correct muzzle colour on them for two frames each.
The same thing happened earlier in the cartoon. Two cels, two frames each. This is the version broadcast on the Boomerang cable channel in the U.S.
But here's something odd. The current version of the cartoon you can find on-line has the colour error repaired.
The layout artist on this cartoon was the Father of Design at Hanna-Barbera, Ed Benedict, with the animation by the newly-arrived Ed Love, perhaps best known for his work with Tex Avery at MGM (Benedict was Avery's layout artist/designer in the '50s). Ranger Smith has a unique appearance in this one. I suspect it was a little too stylised for Bill Hanna's liking.
For the first few years at H-B, Love had little mouth movements, some not much more than squiggles. He liked two or three teeth taking up the whole mouth. Below, it looks like Yogi is auditioning for The Alvin Show.
The backgrounds in this one are by yet another MGM vet, Bob Gentle. What I like about the background art in these early H-B cartoons is they were full of interesting colour choices, though the artists knew full well they aired in black and white. The one below is panned left to right to end on the animation overlaid on top. The different blue-green shades are very attractive. Gentle didn't churn this out; this could easily fit in a mid-'50s MGM short. I also like the composition of the entrance to the cave. You can click on the image file to make it bigger.
Gentle, Monte, Lozzi, they all did fine background work on these 1950s cartoons.
Ranger Smith was going through an evolution in Foster’s stories, from a rather world-weary character to the stern-voiced, exasperated version. In the second half of this cartoon, Mr. Ranger works together with Yogi to rescue Boo Boo, which I find a refreshing change, with short gag sequences like you’d find in a Roadrunner cartoon.
This is an enjoyable cartoon, and I think we can forgive the slight colouring errors.
