Credits: Animation – Ken Muse, Mike Lah (uncredited); Layout – Dick Bickenbach; Backgrounds – Bob Gentle; Dialogue and Story Sketches – Charlie Shows and Dan Gordon; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Cast: Jinks, Dixie - Daws Butler; Pixie - Don Messick.
Episode: Huckleberry Hound Show K-009, Production E-17, First aired: week of Monday, November 24, 1958.
Plot: Dixie pretends to be a ghost after Jinks bashes him with a coal scuttle. A frightened Jinks acts as a slave to Pixie until he finds out the truth and tries the ghost bit himself.
Daws Butler and Charlie Shows save this cartoon. Because the clean-up and painting work sure don’t.
People decry Hanna-Barbera’s original product for being devoid of animation and full of short-cuts. That’s understandable, given the fact they were created cheaply for television. Unfortunately, the low budgets apparently meant glaring errors couldn’t be fixed by the time the finished artwork was sent to the camera.
The most glaring errors are in this sequence where Jinks’ arm continually passes his mouth when he pokes Dixie, but you can see his mouth through his hand. And, for a second, someone got the instructions screwed up and Jinks changed hands and lost his mouth for a few frames.
Setting that aside, it’s still a charming cartoon. The writing shows a nice relationship between between the mice and the cat. Sure, they’re playing their assigned roles in nature, but the adversaries actually care about each other. And Daws has great fun with the script, infusing extra syllables and pulling off goofy emphasis, as he is apt to do, which makes him a joy to hear.
Jinks is worried he’s killed Dixie, so the mice conspire to scare him some more by putting a sheet on the southern mouse so he can pretend he’s a ghost. Pixie squeaks a door, rattles some chains, then rolls up a window shade as Jinks does this great shake-take. And like you’ll find in most early H-B cartoons, the take is made up of two frames alternated in a cycle in lieu of full animation. You can make an animated .gif of these and create your own Hanna-Barbera cartoon; I’ve tried it and may post them later.
This whole scene, including the take, is by Mike Lah, who takes over the animation after the sheet-clad Dixie leaves the mousehole (Dixie puns “Here ghosts” for “Here goes”). Muse is back when Jinks is in the chair saying “I’ll probably get the hot seat for this.” You can tell it’s Lah by the wide-eyed look he gives Pixie (and there’s no tongue as the mouse’s mouth moves on his face during dialogue) and the joint eyes and jagged teeth on Jinks. Lah’s versions of the characters tend to look less polished that Muse’s, but Hanna seems to have liked giving Lah scenes with fun expressions.
Jinks leaves behind a note (which is superfluously read for us by Dixie) and then does the ghost bit himself. Daws’ funniest reading may be right here, where Jinks lamely tries to impersonate a ghost. He manages to keep Jinks’ odd emphasis and stretched vowels while, at the same time, add the odd emphasis and stretched vowels like a clichéd ghost in a Boris Karloff movie. You try doing both. You can’t. Daws was a master.
Bill Loose and John Seely are credited with a whole side of “Ghost” cuts in the Capitol Hi-Q library (‘L’ series, reel 39) and while “Sublime Ghost” is used fairly often in Hanna-Barbera cartoons, and several others appeared in the Looney Tune Gopher Broke, none of them appeared here.
0:00 - Pixie and Dixie opening theme (Hanna-Barbera-Hoyt Curtin).
0:26 - LAF-21-3 RECESS (Jack Shaindlin) - Jinks bashes Dixie; thinks he's killed him.
2:01 - TC 432 HOLLY DAY (Loose-Seely) - Dixie dresses up as ghost.
2:47 – ZR-49 LIGHT EERIE (Geordie Hormel) - Mice scare Jinks; Dixie promises to haunt Jinks.
4:28 - TC 201 PIXIE COMEDY (Loose-Seely) - Jinks becomes slave to mice; jumps out window.
5:52 - L-78 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Spencer Moore) - Mice think Jinks is dead; Jinks pretends to be ghost.
7:03 – PIXIE AND DIXIE THEME (Curtin) - Mice bow to Jinks and laugh.
7:10 - Pixie and Dixie closing theme.