The Yogi Bear Anniversaire

Kellogg’s said to Hanna-Barbera “We want another half-hour cartoon show.” So, they got one. Thus, 50 years ago today, Yogi Bear picked up his porkpie hat, walked off the set of The Huckleberry Hound Show and onto the set of his own.

Whether it was the sponsor’s idea, or the studio’s, to make Yogi the centrepiece of a cartoon show is anyone’s guess. It doesn’t really matter. Nobody had to look far to find a star. Yogi was already being treated like one in the studio’s merchandising and by the sponsor itself as it introduced new products. The Los Angeles Times revealing the impending arrival of Yogi’s spinoff in its September 4, 1960 edition.

As hard as it is to fathom, there almost wasn’t a Yogi Bear at all. Joe Barbera’s autobiography reveals there was a snag (not a Snagglepuss) after a sponsor was found for the Huck show in 1958:

My elation over the sale was short-lived. After I got back to LA., I received a panicked phone call from Kelloggs.
“We can’t use the bear.” What was I going to say, “No refunds or exchanges”? So all I said was, “Huh?” “Another cereal company has Honey Bear on their box. The industry doesn’t have room for two bears.”
Alas, poor Yogi. Bill and I endured two or three days of hand wringing and had resigned ourselves to coming up with another show for Kelloggs when another phone call came through. The company had decided that Yogi was sufficiently distinct from Honey Bear — who was, after all, only a logo, not a television star — to identify with Kelloggs. The show was on again.

Evidently I’d never win at Jeopardy if the category was ‘Cereals of the 1950s.’ I don’t remember a Honey Bear. I do remember a Sugar Bear who was made into his own TV cartoon a few years later.

When Hanna and Barbera created the Huck show, they borrowed from MGM theatrical cartoons. When they created the Quick Draw show, they borrowed from other TV genres. When they created The Flintstones, they borrowed from Jackie Gleason. When they created the Yogi show, they borrowed from themselves, which soon became an established tradition. For Yogi’s secondary shows, they borrowed an orange, theatrical antagonist from several cartoons, and a self-pitying little duck who bothered Yogi and Doggie Daddy, but whose roots went back to Tom and Jerry at MGM. He even had roots at Warners, for writer Mike Maltese borrowed the concept of a gruff bulldog who is smitten by a little creature from the Marc Antony and Pussyfoot cartoons he wrote for Chuck Jones.

Giving them all a regular series changed them. The original Snagglepuss was a wonderful throwback to the 1940s. He was a lippy opponant, reminiscent of Daffy Duck in his best stage (occasionally vs. Porky Pig), brimming with clever lines and behaviour that was off-the-wall, yet seemed logical. Making Snagglepuss a protagonist took away a lot of the craziness and craftiness. Instead, Maltese added more theatricality and made him the victim far too often (Spring Hits a Snag with the selfish Lila is a good example). He was still a good character, thanks to Maltese’s ear for dialogue, just not quite the same one who parked himself in Doggie Daddy’s home and wouldn’t leave. I’ll avoid any editorialisation on the change of his colour from orange to pink.

Cartoons with Yakky Doodle (né Biddy Buddy) bashed viewers with the same “Ain’t that cute?/Close your eyes, l’il feller” catchphrases out of Chopper every episode but actually improved along the way. Maltese quickly dumped the duck’s pity-party routine and built cartoons around reactions (and comments to the viewers) by Fibber Fox. Tony Benedict was brought in to write and developed Alfy Gator, who cleverly parodied production elements of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, such as the Hitchcock silhouette and the tease before the commercial fade out.

As for Yogi, a decision was made to make him a permanent resident of Jellystone Park with Boo Boo by his side. Solo adventures would be seen in reruns only. No more would he be in narrated spot-gag cartoons fishing for trout, rescuing native children with the help of little animals or being beaten by a New York housewife while pretending to be a rug. And no more generic, anonymous park rangers. Most of Yogi’s cartoons would consist of a psychological battle between the bear and Ranger Smith. It was a smart decision, since those are the Yogi cartoons that are pop culture references to this day, not ones about trying to get across a freeway. But formulas, by nature, can be limiting, and I feel Yogi lost a little something by not being allowed out on his own as he was in Huck’s first season. And, of course, when you have Ranger Smith as an antagonist, you don’t need Yowp as one. Yowp cartoons came to an end.

Something else that seems to have ended was distinctiveness in the artwork. Takes got tamer and layouts were such that the cartoons looked as if they were being performed on a stage. When Yogi got his own cartoons, the pose-to-pose jerkiness of Yogi Bear’s Big Break was gone, but so were overhead views of the ground as in The Buzzin’ Bear and the maniacal laughing Yogi in Lullabye-Bye Bear. New artists came in—all of whom had strong theatrical credentials—but, somehow, the cartoons started looking and moving alike. However, they’re still enjoyable to watch with good personality through dialogue, strong character design and, it should go without saying, top calibre voice work led by Daws Butler and Don Messick. And, occasionally, something interesting would pop up, like the stylised drivers in Yogi in the City.

The Yogi Bear Show was a great success and was loved by critics the same way Huck and Quick Draw were. Here are two reviews. The first one appeared in newspapers of January 31, 1961, the day after the show hit the air in some cities (there were 130 or 160, depending on what source you believe):

Yogi Bear Show Beamed Especially for Adults
BY FRED DANZIG
NEW YORK (UPI) – Since there is no reason for mature men and women to feel self-conscious or apologetic about sitting down to watch an adult television program, I am proud to recommend for your viewing pleasure a brand new series.
The title: “The Yogi Bear Show.”
Unfortunately, this cartoon show has been described in some misinformed brochures as a kiddy show. We all know, of course, that the kids are too busy watching “adult” Westerns, exotic adventure and crime shows to be side-tracked into watching kid stuff.
Yogi Bear, who carries on in the noblest side-of-the-mouth tradition of Art Carney’s monumental contribution to contemporary folklore, Ed Norton, is making his syndicated debut across the nation this week as the star of his own show, thanks to those unselfish cartoon stylists, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, and their worldly agents, Screen Gems.
Yogi has had stardom in his future ever since he made his first appearance in 1958, as a supporting player in the “Huckleberry Hound” series. At last this giant of Jellystone Park has arrived.
Parents who want to watch “The Yogi Bear Show” with their children are warned, however, that the youngsters may interrupt their concentration to ask, “What does Yogi mean by, “exit-stage left?” or “What does he mean by, “Loquacious?” or “What’s a ‘worthy adversary’?” If the kids want to watch, you have two alternatives.
Get them their own TV set or try to convince them they’re too young.
Tell ‘em to go watch “Bonanza” or “Surfside 6” and leave you with Mr. Bear and his associates.

Two days later, another UPI reporter did another rah-rah story. This one focused familiar P.R. ground, the ironic rise to fame of two kids named Bill and Joe who had been kicked to the curb by MGM.

Any Similarity Between...
Yogi Bear’s Batting 1.000
By JACK GAVER
NEW YORK, Feb. 2 (UPI)—If pressed to designate my favorite television actor—and it would be difficult to think of anything less pressing—Yogi Bear would have to get the nod.
So, it comes as welcome news that this featured player on “The Huckleberry Hound” series became a star in his own show, beginning last Monday.
Although Yogi’s program is not a network affair, it has been syndicated so widely through sales to individual stations that the weekly half-hour episodes will be seen almost everywhere.
Yogi is the animated cartoon creation of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, who couldn’t get themselves paged in a third-rate hotel three years ago but now constitute one of the most thriving and solvent businesses in the country.
Saved by TV
Television, which helped put them on the skids, has been their salvation. After 20 years of turning out more than 125 “Tom and Jerry” animated cartoons for movie theaters for MGM, the changing movie scene, as a result of the inroads of TV, practicably put cinema short subjects out of business, and Hanna and Barbera were minus jobs.
“Television obviously liked animated cartoons,” Barbera said, “because it had been running repeated repeats of the ones created for movie houses from the year one. People we approached would have liked to have had new material, but the full animation process used for movies cost too much for TV. Neither did they want the crude, inexpensive animation style developed for a few early shows.
“We showed them our concept which is not too costly, yet which provides good animation. In our process, we simply cut out a lot of extra drawing work, and expense, by sticking to essentials.”
First Success
“Huckleberry Hounds” got the Hanna-Barbara firm off the ground, then came “Ruff ‘n Reddy” and “Quick Draw McGraw.” At the beginning of this season, the firm made a daring departure from the usual animal characters of cartoon and got their “Flintstones” series about humans on the ABC network. This Stone Age situation comedy which parallels satirically the problems of modern life, has been a big hit.
And now it is “The Yogi Bear Show.”
Yogi talks much like the wonderful Ed Norton character Art Carney created for the old Jackie Gleason “Honeymooners” shows. Carney, by the way, does not provide Yogi’s voice.
To New York Yankees fans the bear’s name and build are a constant reminder of that most likeable of baseball stars, catcher Yogi Berra.
“Any similarity,” Barbera explained, “was pure accident.”

We’ll get back to Joe Barbara’s incredible statement in a moment. But let me point out a couple of things.

It’s a puzzle as to why Yogi’s Show started in January. Considering the mish-mash method in which shows are pulled off and put on the air these days, it’s hard to remember there was a time that television was orderly and followed the trail blazed by network radio—shows debuted in the fall and had summer replacements. In 1966, the third (and, therefore, last) place ABC promoted something it called ‘The Second Season’, an ingenious concept that allowed it to dump shows in January and trot out a pile of replacements (Batman may be the best-known). But at the time Yogi’s show debuted, it wasn’t common to premiere a programme in January. It could be the cartoons simply weren’t ready or perhaps Kellogg’s hadn’t either cleared the television time or was late signing a deal with Hanna-Barbera.

Contrary to “facts” on some internet sites, Yogi did not leave The Huckleberry Hound Show before he got his own. Huck apparently made his third season start on the week of September 26, 1960. From the limited television listings I’ve found, it seems new Yogi cartoons aired on shows when Huck and the Meeces were in reruns and vice-versa. When Yogi left, Hokey Wolf (né Wacko Wolf) took his spot, as Bill and Joe borrowed from themselves to create a tall schemer with a short, more naïve sidekick.

We’ll wrap up our little birthday card to Yogi’s show by going back to Joe’s insistence that the name ‘Yogi Bear’ was a mere happenstance, just remarkably coincidental that it was similar to popular baseball player Yogi Berra. What did Mr. Berra think about this? In this day and age, of course, Mr. Berra’s lawyer would be on the case faster than a failed-rehabbed Hollywood star on a 40-pounder of vodka. Several baseball reporters covering spring training in 1960 noted:

Yogi Berra admitted in Florida that he never heard of the TV cartoon character, Yogi Bear, until his kids discovered the show, when confined to quarters at St. Petersburg [this year]. “My kids love it,” Yogi told writers, “because they say the bear reminds them of their old man.”

As for a lawsuit, Mr. Berra told UPI Entertainment reporter Vernon Scott in a column published on August 13, 1963:

[T]elevision is big enough for both me and Yogi Bear. I was going to sue the Yogi Bear program for using my name, until somebody reminded me Yogi isn’t my real name—it’s Lawrence.

The response is so quintessentially Yogi, it Berras repeating.

Quick Draw McGraw — Who is El Kabong?

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Hicks Lokey; Layout – Paul Sommer; Backgrounds – Dick Thomas; Story – Mike Maltese; Story Direction – Alex Lovy; Titles – Lawrence Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Quick Draw, Baba Looey, Grumble Weed, Badwater Bill, Newsboy, Man 1, Man 3 – Daws Butler; Narrator, Norton South, Cactus Charlie, Cheyenne Shorty, Man 2, Man 4 – Don Messick.
Music: Jack Shaindlin, Phil Green, Geordie Hormel.
Production: Quick Draw McGraw Show M-034, Production J-113.
First Aired: week of January 23, 1961 (repeat week of June 12, 1961).
Plot: El Kabong crushes a crime wave begun by Norton South.

This cartoon pretty well epitomises why people love El Kabong:

• Multiple, off-key guitar bashings.
• Mike Maltese’s silly dialogue

There isn’t much else to speak of in this one, but that’s enough, even though the cartoon really consists of two extended bits—the kabongging in the first half and the answer to the short’s title in the second. Well, yes, the “kabong” poses are funny and I like the design of the little bandit but there’s really nothing that stands out in the animation end of things.

This is another Quick Draw cartoon where the characters talk to the narrator, with Norton South revealing to the narrator he’s travelling west after his gang in the east was broken up. So we’ve got a directional pun to open the cartoon.

After South’s train arrives in the west, he rounds up “some of the worst bandits in the west” in his secret hideout, and dispatches them to rob various things. The funny part here is the contrast—Cheyenne Shorty is supposed to be a vicious desperado, but he’s puny with one of Don Messick’s meek little voices. Here’s the gang after their first haul to give you a look how the character designs are all different.


Norton South decides to send out his band on a repeat mission (“Oh, goodie!” cries Shorty). There’s a shot of a couple of townsmen sitting on wooden chairs on a porch. Let Maltese take it from here:

Narrator: Soon, the headlines were shouting the bad news.
(shot of newsboy in street)
Newsboy: Extry, extry! Crime wave hits the west! Sheriff up a tree! Weatherman predicts rain! Sheriff gets umbrella, goes back up tree!
(shot of townsmen)
Narrator: And the citizens were in a quandary.
Man 1: My question is, uh, how do we get out of this quandary?
Man 2: And my question is, what’s a “quandary”?

However, the townspeople cheerfully exclaim that El Kabong will save them. And that’s his cue to swing into action on a rope hanging from nowhere. This bit of animation appears several times in the cartoon, predating the repetitious Spider-Man swinging on the Grantray-Lawrence cartoons of 1967. I’m not sure if I’m crazy about the green sky colour and there’s something awkward about El Kabong’s head I just can’t place. He also appears to be at an awkward angle with the rope.

Anyway, El Kabong quells the baddies one-by-one. You won’t have noticed this, but Grumble Weed (a name used in ‘Scary Prairie’) and Cactus Charlie have somehow exchanged voices and assignments from earlier in the cartoon. However, you will have noticed Maltese shows his wonderful sense of the absurd here. Charlie points his gun points at a locomotive and says “Stick ‘em up, train,” as if the engine were a real person; Grumble Weed does the same with the stagecoach. And Cheyenne Charlie shows how polite he is by saying “Stick ‘em up, please. Smoke if you wish.”



Ah, but El Kabong’s on a roll. We get the immortal observation of Baba Looey to the audience.

Baba: The kabongs are as thick as flies around here.
El Kabong: Kabong!!!
(a guitar smashes on top of Baba Looey)
Baba: Hey, watch it, Quickstraw.
El Kabong: Garsh. I’m sorry, Baba Looey. I was overcome by a kabongging frenzy.


The gang returns to Norton South’s hideout. They all still have the smashed guitars on their heads (Grumble Weed and Cactus Charlie have regained their original voices) and explain their failure to Norton South (“I don’t feel so good, sir,” whines Shorty). “Who is this El Kabong?” demands South. Just then, there’s the sound of a door shutting and Baba Looey strolls in with an envelope. South reads the message. Quick Draw has goofed again.

South (reading): Dear Eastern-type gangster. If you’re not out of town by sundown, I’m comin’ after you. And dooonn’t you for-get-it. Signed, El Kabong. P.S. Only my faithful companion Baba Looey, the bearer of this message, knows who I really are.

With that comes a hat-take. Consecutive frames:



The sombrero lands over Baba’s eyes in a nice little touch.

Maltese pulls out an obvious old gag by demanding Baba Looey to “talk” and the burro responds with a stream of gibberish meant to approximate Spanish (or one of Desi Arnaz’s outbursts on I Love Lucy). South then threatens him to answer before he counts to two. He stops, brightens and talks to the audience: “I would count to three but I never finished high school.”

Baba caves in and points out the window where Quick Draw is playing with, and singing about, a yo-yo. Both South and Baba break into laughter together over the idea that Quick Draw is a masked hero. But when South starts menacing with his gun again (“Hurry, Quickstraw! He can only count to two”), El Kabong olés to the rescue. Only he doesn’t quite make it through the window, giving him a chance to say “Ooh. That smarts.”



Though there hasn’t been a lot of dramatic action, we’ve now reached the climax of the cartoon with an obligatory sword-fight. The bad guy stops it for a moment.

South: By the way, Kabong, I got your letter. I must say your grammar is atrocious.
El Kabong: It are?

The bad guy buries a gun in El Kabong’s snout and is about to shoot when we hear the cry of “Holé!” off-scene. The shot cuts to Baba in an El Kabong outfit, flying through the air with a guitar. He makes it through the window just fine and kabongs his target (with a “Kabong! I theen.”).



South: That does it. My best hat is ruined. Good-bye, wild west!”

And with that, Norton South whooshes stage right and out of the cartoon. Quick Draw isn’t grateful for being rescued.

El Kabong: Baba Looey, by what right do you dare to wear an El Kabong outfit?
Baba: I just thin’ you maybe wished to open a small, branch office, Quickstraw.

The burro laughs at the camera as the iris closes.

There are a couple of neat little things in the cartoon. When Norton South is in his railway car at the beginning, the camera shakes up and down a bit to simulate the train’s movement. And Cactus Charlie actually twirls his gun before telling the train to “stick ‘em up,” a luxurious bit of animation.

The sound cutter was busy with stock music in this one. Some snippets are about five seconds long. I don’t know whether the harmonica rendition of ‘La Cucaracha’ is from the Hi-Q library or something Hoyt Curtin whipped up.

0:00 – Quick Draw Sub-Main Title Theme (Curtin).
0:18 – GR-348 EARLY MORNING (Green) – Newspaper headlines.
0:23 – EXCITEMENT UNDER DIALOGUE (Shaindlin) – Train, South in railway car.
0:49 – GR-98 BY JIMINY! IT’S JUMBO Bridge No. 2 (Green) – Shot of hideout.
0:58 – GR-87 SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD (Green) – South gives gang their orders, bandits return, South decides on another job.
1:39 – ZR-39A WESTERN SONG (Hormel) – Newsboy hawks papers, townsmen excited about El Kabong.
2:16 – LA CUCARACHA (?) – El Kabong swings, kabongs Charlie.
2:38 – fast chase music (Shaindlin) – El Kabong bashes other bandits and Baba Looey.
3:10 – GR-76 POPCORN SHORT BRIDGE No. 2 (Green) – Baba Looey annoyed.
3:18 – GR-457 DR. QUACK SHORT BRIDGE No. 1 (Green) – Bandits in hideout.
3:32 – GR-98 BY JIMINY! IT’S JUMBO Bridge No. 2 (Green) – “Who is this El Kabong?” “Pardon me, sir.”
3:36 – GR-99 THE DIDDLECOMB HUNT (Green) – Baba brings message.
4:06 – GR-96 BY JIMINY! IT’S JUMBO (Green) – Sombrero take, Baba talks, South peers out window.
4:44 – CRAZY GOOF (Shaindlin) – Quick Draw plays with yo-yo. Baba and South laugh, Quick Draw rushes from window.
5:34 – SIX DAY BICYCLE RACE (Shaindlin) – Baba says “hurry,” El Kabong smashes into building.
5:44 – GR-81 FRED KARNO’S ARMY BRIDGE No 1 (Green) – “Oooh. That smarts.”
5:49 – tick tock/flute music (Shaindlin) – Sword fight.
6:04 – jaunty bassoon and strings (Shaindlin) – South complains about letter; puts gun in El Kabong’s face.
6:30 – rising scale vaudeville music (Shaindlin) – Baba Looey on rope, kabongs South, South rushes away.
6:45 – GR-472 HICKSVILLE (Green) – El Kabong and Baba final dialogue.
7:01 – Quick Draw McGraw Sub-End Title theme (Curtin).

Warren Foster With Guest Star Mike Maltese

A lovely surprise has come via e-mail from Tony Benedict who, 51 years ago, joined the writing team at Hanna-Barbera which consisted of the grand total of two—Mike Maltese and Warren Foster. Tony has saved a bunch of stuff from his time there, including caricatures of co-workers. Such drawings seem to have been a by-product of life at an animation studio, either inspired by boredom or something that happened over the course of the work-day. If you’ve read either of Chuck Jones’ autobiographies, you’ll see some of Maltese and others, including a couple drawn by a young, soon-to-be-fired Warners writer named Bill Scott.

Here are two by Foster of Maltese. This first one is from 1964:



This one features Mike and Tony, undated.



Tony sent a couple of other sketches we’ll get to in a minute.

Someone reading my posts about Mike Maltese asked me about Warren Foster. The best source about him is Mike Barrier’s exhaustive Hollywood Cartoons. Not a lot of information about him exists. Foster and Maltese both worked together at the Fleischer studio in the ‘30s and both were native New Yorkers. Foster was born in Brooklyn to Charles C. and Marion B. Foster on October 24, 1904. He seems to have been the oldest in the family; he had a younger brother named Leslie.

Foster was musically inclined. It-May-Be-True-Pedia claims he was educated at Brooklyn Tech and the Pratt Institute. Maltese told Mike Barrier that Foster “was a cut-rate music school owner on Broadway who [had] folded up.” Foster later wrote songs not only for the Warners cartoons, but also for the children’s division of Capitol Records in the 1950s, either with Tedd Pierce or Maltese, and for Allied Record Sales (which pressed the Mercury and Disney labels). Foster became an opaquer at Fleischer’s by October 1935, three months after Maltese.

Maltese left for the West Coast in 1937 but kept in touch with Foster, who desperately wanted to make the same move. Maltese put in a good word for him and Foster was hired in 1938 to write for the Bob Clampett unit, apparently replacing Clampett’s high school buddy Ernie Gee. Foster moved to the Frank Tashlin unit in April 1943, and finally settled in at the end of the decade with Friz Freleng, who had rather unceremoniously wrested him from the Bob McKimson unit, much to McKimson’s dismay.

Charles M. Jones doesn’t seem to have been too enamoured with Warren B. Foster, telling Mike Barrier he liked to downgrade the other writers. But the late Lloyd Turner, who briefly ascended from the assistant animating ranks to co-write for the Art Davis unit in the later 1940s, got along well with Foster and told some wonderful stories. If you haven’t read them, click HERE. Let’s give you a snippet of one. Turner and Foster used to hang out. Turner was 19. Foster was just past 40.

So I'm into this thing of calling Warren “Dad”—I don't even realize it, it’s just a pet name I’ve picked up. The next day, or the next week when we went to work, he came in, and he sat down, and he started to giggle. I said, “You're getting ready to tell me something. What is it?” He said, “I want you to cool it with the ‘Dad’ thing. I’m out with this girl, she’s only twenty-something, and you're calling me ‘Dad.’ Find another name.”

Warners closed the cartoon studio for a number of months starting in June 1953, but Daily Variety reported Foster was one of ten staff members who remained. Foster finally left near the end of 1957, about a year before Maltese. The two ended up at Hanna-Barbera but that wasn’t Foster’s first stop. He had quit Warners to work at the John Sutherland studio and actually arrived at H-B after Maltese. Foster was originally tasked with writing The Huckleberry Hound Show.

Foster was interviewed by no less than the New York Times about the characters on the show. We’ve posted his observations elsewhere on the blog, but here are some of them again. From August 28, 1960:

“I think of Huck as human,” he said. “He is a sort of Tennessee-type guy who never gets mad no matter how much he is outraged. He is the fall-guy, and a large part of his humor is the way he shrugs off his misfortunes. To Huck nobody is really bad.”
Yogi Bear, the incurable filcher of picnic baskets from visitors to Jellystone Park poses two problems.
Since he is “bright in a stupid sort of way,” his adventures must show ingenuity as well as blunders. Second, there is the problem of what to do about the morality of thievery.
“So we let him get his picnic basket—and then we get him punished.”
Mr. Foster is happy about the philosophical quality of the mice, Dixie and Pixie, toward the cat, Mr. Jinx [sic]. “The mice make allowances for the occasional attacks on them by Jinx. They understand he is not evil. He is just a cat and he can’t help being himself. They are disillusioned each time the cat’s thin veneer of civilization cracks. The important thing in these stories is to keep out the rough stuff and mayhem.”

The late designer Iwao Takamoto worked with Foster upon his arrival at Hanna-Barbera, and this is what he has to say in his autobiography.

Warren Foster was technically considered a writer, but like all cartoon writers from the old days, he drew his scripts. Warren had been on the staff of the Warner Bros, cartoon studio for decades, but once he moved over to Hanna-Barbera, he all but took over “The Flintstones” for its first season, and I believe his influence was one of the key factors for its success. I say this because one time Bill Hanna told me: “Joe and I wrote the first episode and Warren wrote all the rest of them.” He put it as simply as that. I remember Joe describing Warren sitting at his desk, working like crazy, drawing and writing a sequence down, and periodically breaking out in laughter. Warren just couldn’t contain himself, he was having such a good time, and Joe [Barbera] used to love to stand around outside his door and just watch him.

Foster loved parodies; fairy tale reworkings were a specialty at Warner Bros. and Foster did a bunch at Hanna-Barbera featuring the usual suspects: Snow White, Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs. But he took a cynical aim at television when he arrived at Hanna-Barbera. Several of his cartoons involved the disposability of TV outsiders with stars in their eyes—Yogi in Showbiz Bear, Fred in The Monster of the Tar Pits (Director: “By the way, did the writer write an ending?” Writer: “You’re joking. Do you know what a writer costs?”) and George in Elroy’s TV Show (Foster envisions a future where special interest groups will have shamed everything but educational shows off television. TV producer to his writers about viewers: “You’ve educated them so much, they’re too smart to watch TV”). Both he and Maltese loved word-play. Foster’s the one who, with Daws Butler, put mangled English in the mouth of Mr. Jinks (in A Wise Quack, he facetiously laments “I’m dispic-a-bih-a-buh-a-bob-bob-ble, like”) and the cat’s many asides to the audience (after creating a robot mouse in Mouse Trapped: “And only I know she is a masterpiece of electronic ingenuity. Which is, uh, pretty good, you know, when you consider, like, I’m only a cat”).

Hanna-Barbera went into the action/adventure business with Jonny Quest but Foster stuck with the comedy cartoons. He decided to retire around the time Joe and Bill sold out to Taft after working on A Man Called Flintstone (1966) and died December 13, 1971 at age 67.

Finally, a couple of other drawings from Tony’s collection. Among the writers hired after Tony to work on Loopy De Loop and the TV shorts was Dalton Sandifer, who had been added to the Walter Lantz staff in the late ‘50s after Homer Brightman left. No one, except his mother perhaps, called him Dalton, as you can see by this undated drawing.



One of Bill Hanna’s accomplishments at MGM, besides winning a bushel of Oscars with Joe Barbera for Tom and Jerry, was providing a scream used whenever necessary for Tom. After opening Hanna-Barbera studios, Bill’s responsibility was the production end of the cartoons and, by several accounts, was noted for raising his voice in a not-quite-Tom scream in an effort to keep everything flowing on schedule. Tony saved one of those screams for posterity in this 1962. Bill was proud of his accomplishments with the Boy Scouts but evidently his vocabulary could be something that wouldn’t earn him a merit badge.



Tony’s agreed to have a chat about his time at Hanna-Barbera when the studio was creating half-hour cartoon sitcoms watched for years and carving out a dynasty of Saturday morning shows. And I hope he’ll talk about the many people he worked with, including a couple of the best cartoon writers of all time you’ve read about in this post.

Huck, You’re Our Second Choice

There was a time when Hanna-Barbera cartoons could do no wrong. Well, almost. Syndicated columnist Harvey Pack remarked in 1960 “Joe [Barbera] has an excellent record for selling. In fact, he told me about a couple of episodes of The Flintstones and I was hysterical laughing before I realized that I had seen two of the episodes in question and thought they were awful.”

Joe didn’t really have to do anything to sell the studio’s cartoons before then. The cartoons practically sold themselves. Viewers loved them. The Emmys loved them. Critics and columnists unanimously loved them. The story was the same. They weren’t those tired, old, overplayed theatrical cartoons nobody wanted to see any more (except kids). They were funny and smart enough for adults to watch.

Still, the studio had a well-functioning P.R. machine and having finished pushing the premiere of The Flintstones in September 1960, it switched gears and pumped out hype about the studio’s next coming attraction—The Yogi Bear Show, debuting 50 years ago next week. In fact, not one but two UPI reporters wrote glowing reviews about two weeks apart before the show even aired.

Perhaps the most unusual preview can be found in the Hutchinson Sun on January 20, 1961, less than two weeks before the Yogi show aired. We’ve all heard how Yogi was a part of The Huckleberry Hound Show in 1958, grew into a star and became the first spin-off in TV cartoon history. Both Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera told the story in their autobiographies. But this story is a little different. It has no byline and no source, and I haven’t found it anywhere else. It could have been concocted by a writer at the paper but it seems obvious the information came from a studio handout. Huckleberry Hound was not Bill and Joe’s first choice for stardom.

Yogi Bear Becomes Star in Own Rights
HOLLYWOOD - One of the corniest Hollywood success stories is presently being unraveled about a blustering bear whose body belongs to a pot of paint, whose voice belongs to an anonymous actor, and whose soul belongs to a couple of cartoonists.
The star in question is Yogi Bear. This month exuberant Yogi finally gets to star in his own series, the Yogi Bear Show, which debuts on some 130 TV stations coast-to-coast.
Three years ago, when Screen Gems set out to sell the first all original half-hour animated program, cartoonists Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera recommended a boisterous bear as the lead. At that point, they had over 100 possible names for the character, running from Abby Bear to Zippy Bear. Someplace in the middle of the list was Huckleberry Bear, Then, toward the end was Willy Bear, Yucca Bear, Yogi Bear, etc.
But the sponsor, who was about to plunk down some millions for a first-of-its kind series, was not feeling bearish at that moment. They were afraid that a bear might be confused with a couple of other popular characters, such as one being used to fight forest fires.
So the lead role went instead to a lovable, lethargic little hound dog that Hanna and Barbera were doodling with. Running down the ever expanding name list again, “Huckleberry” stood out as a natural for the star. And Yogi Bear (they swear it had nothing to do with that major – league catcher) the combination just sounded right) was given feature billing.
In the two-and-a-half years that the Huckleberry Hound show has been on, Yogi has cheerfully held down the number two spot. When the show won the Emmy last spring, the pictures showed Huck holding the statue. When Huck ran for president last summer, Yogi was campaign manager.
Nobody would bother or even dare to survey it, but insiders suspected that the bear was at least as popular as the hound. Sure, Huck had an island in the Antarctic named after him; but Yogi gave his name to Britain’s entry in the international model aeroplane race. Huck became mascot of the Hull (England) Marching and Jazz Society; Yogi became the mascot of an Ohio based wing of the Strategic Air Command.
So it went.
When the sponsor decided this fall that it wanted still another animated show, there was little question that Yogi would be its star, one of the few instances in television in which a supporting player has been promoted to lead.
Nobody but Hanna – Barbera has such a promotion-from-within policy. The two major continuing featured roles in the new Yogi Bear Show are going to a couple of characters that have previously done service on H-B shows. Snagglepuss, a hammy lion, made his debut last season as an inept sheep poacher on the “Quick Draw McGraw” show. The second new featured player is a little duck named Yakky Doodle, who made his first appearance in one of the very first Yogi Bear films, two-and-a-half years ago.

Of course, there was no question Yogi was star material, even in the executive suite of the initially-reluctant sponsor. Yogi adorned boxes of Kellogg’s OKs starting around 1959 and occasionally on Corn Flakes in 1961. And Huck is obviously the back-up to his secondary player in this full-page contest ad from May 1960, eight months before he got his own show.


But there’s one other, and more unusual, connection Yogi had with his sponsor. Kellogg Community College was opened in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1956. And like colleges all over the U.S., it is football crazy and has a college team—the Bruins. And that provided a natural tie-in with a certain cartoon bruin. A newspaper clipping from January 11, 1961 about a game with Benton Harbor Community College reveals:

Battle Creek led once more at 32-31. The Bruins went ahead just after they had received inspiration from the arrival of six tardy cheerleaders and a Yogi Bear, not to be confused with the television personality also sponsored by Kellogg.

Call me a cynic, but having Yogi supporting a football team supported by his sponsor’s college doesn’t strike me as a mere coincidence.

Unfortunately, Yogi wasn’t sent into the game to win it, like he was in Rah Rah Bear (1959). Kellogg lost. But Yogi proved more valuable to the company in other ways. As Joe Barbera revealed in his memoir:

A few years later, when “The Yogi Bear Show,” sponsored by Kellogg’s, was a big hit, the folks from Battle Creek launched a door-to-door survey in which they showed families and children a picture of Yogi and Boo Boo and asked, “What does this make you think of?” Overwhelmingly, the response was “Kellogg’s Corn Flakes.”

And to think Kellogg’s almost killed him and Huck before they were born. That story coming soon.

Background Artist Richard H. Thomas

There’s something about the southwestern United States that attracts artists by the colony. As someone who was born a weary seagull’s flight away from the Pacific Ocean and has spent most of my life not far from beaches, mountains and sundry shades of green, I’ve never understood the attraction of the desert. Yet it’s more than just a baking, barren brown land. Perhaps that’s why artists flock to it; cartoon background artists especially. Joe Montell of MGM settled in Arizona, Bob Gribbroek of Warner Bros. loved Taos, New Mexico (and felt uncomfortable during a sojourn to the U.S. Pacific Northwest), and so did Dick Thomas, known to inveterate watchers of cartoon credits as Richard H. Thomas. Taos is where he finished the last few years of his life.

By coincidence, both Montell and Thomas were hired the same year to work at Hanna-Barbera in 1959 when it was starting up The Quick Draw McGraw Show and Loopy De Loop theatrical cartoons.

Richard Hastings Thomas started in animation on the Warners lot at age 22 in 1937 when the art on screen was quickly evolving. Leon Schlesinger had employed old-timers like newspaper cartoonist Griff Jay and Art Loomer to take care of settings on its cartoons. Soon, the ranks were staffed with new artists like Gene Fleury, Paul Julian and Bob Holdeman (Johnny Johnsen, Avery’s background man, was also an old newspaper artist). The backgrounds started looking less simplistic, even in the black and white cartoons. Thomas had gone to Hoover High School in Glendale with Bob Clampett and, perhaps coincidentally, was put in the Clampett unit, which was later put in the hands of Norm McCabe, then Frank Tashlin, then Bob McKimson.

The Hole Idea, 1955 (layouts by Dick Thomas)
Hillbilly Hare, 1950 (layouts by Cornett Wood)
Cat-Tails for Two, 1952 (layouts by Bob Givens)
Thomas is probably best known as McKimson’s background man and was one of the few people who returned to the studio to work with McKimson after the 3-D shutdown in 1953. But McKimson couldn’t keep him, either, and he bolted for Disney a couple of years later (a former Disney artist named Bob Majors took over), then landed at Hanna-Barbera when people who had worked on Sleeping Beauty started being let go.

McKimson was the least adventuresome of the Warners directors in the ‘50s and Thomas seems to be the least adventuresome of the background artists when he arrived at Hanna-Barbera, even when constructing layouts by UPA-loving Ed Benedict. Daytime skies were blue, grass was green and trees were generally shaped like trees, not a symbolic blotch of colour. Still, they provided good backdrops for the cartoons and that’s the job of a background artist. You can see the reflections, light and shadow; very traditional.

Gone to the Ducks, 1960 (layouts by Bob Givens)
Tee Vee or Not Tee Vee, 1959 (layouts by Bick Bickenbach)
Thomas’ backgrounds weren’t as abstract as, say, Art Lozzi’s, which made him ideal to paint the settings for Jonny Quest (1964); he did at least one-half hour all on his own. Realistic backgrounds came in handy when Thomas went to work on Grantray-Lawrence’s Spiderman series in 1967.

Thomas stayed when Ralph Bakshi took over production (Grant Simmons led a unit in Los Angeles). The cartoons became increasingly bizarre. This could be his work in the cult favourite Revolt in the Fifth Dimension, which shares virtually the same story and artwork with the Rocket Robin Hood cartoon Dementia Five (both 1970). John Vita and Bob Owen share background credits but the second frame below reminds me of Thomas.


Revolt in Fifth Dimension/Dementia Five, 1970 (layouts by Gray Morrow)
There’s very little about Dick on the internet and, as you might expect, some of it is wrong. The Animation Guild site points out he spent some time in the ‘60s at Eagle Animation Corp., on Cahuenga right across from the Hanna-Barbera studios. Eagle looks like a fascinating story in itself. It was owned by Dale Robertson and produced a feature called The Man From Button Willow with animation talents that were, in some cases, slumming from across the street, and a voice cast that included Robertson, Herschel Bernardi, Verna Felton, Cliff Edwards, Pinto Colvig, Thurl Ravenscroft and Ed Platt (the Chief on Get Smart). Martha Sigall’s wonderful memoir mentions Dick had an interest in a company called Spectacolor that made acrylic paint for cels.

When Dick finally retired from animation after work on Garfield in the late ‘80s, he settled in Taos Canyon, New Mexico in February 1994; a daughter was going to college in the state. It wasn’t easy at first. They claimed “discrimination against the handicapped” and filed a civil suit against their landlord. Both Dick and his wife had medical problems. He was in a wheelchair in September and broke his leg the following month.

Dick and his wife were together for 31 years when he died December 30, 1996 (internet sites which say he died a day later are incorrect). The Taos News wrote a wonderful feature on January 23, 1997 which tells us a bit about his personal life. I’ve deleted paragraphs about his survivors and funeral.

Animation artist Richard H. Thomas dies
Bugs Bunny ran all over Richard H. Thomas’ work, and so did Sleeping Beauty and the Pink Panther.
But Thomas loved working among the antics of countless cartoon characters who romped, shot at, splattered, chased, guffawed and mugged their way across movie screens during the heyday of cartoon animation. Now, one star in the Looney Tune horizon has dimmed.
Thomas, 81, died Dec. 30 in Taos of kidney failure, according to his wife, Fran Thomas.
The couple had moved here three years ago and lived on a quiet street near the center of town. Lured by a friend at Warner Brothers studios who had visited Taos years ago, Richard Thomas wanted to live in a place that was conducive to his health and his creativity. He found both in this northern New Mexican community famous for its pleasant climate and a vital colony of artists and writers.
“He loved it here,” Fran Thomas said.
Richard Thomas was born Jan. 3, 1915, in Hackensack, N.J. He attended the Greer School in New York and graduated from Hoover High School in Glendale, Calif. He later attended Cornish Art School in Seattle, Wash., and Otis Art School in Los Angeles, on scholarship. He completed several years of study before serving in World War II in the United States Merchant Marines.
“He was a very quiet man,” his wife said. “His parents had split up during the Depression, and he was put in an orphanage. He really had a terrible childhood. But for someone who came from that background, he turned out to be a wonderful father. He had eight children altogether from two marriages. One died before him. But he adopted my three children, and then we adopted two more together.”
Thomas lived for many years in Malibu, Calif., and worked during the golden era at Warner Brothers Cartoon Studio, creating their unique background style. He worked with famous cartoon directors Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and Bob Clampett. He also spent five years working the Walt Disney Studio doing art direction and background scenes for their "Sleeping Beauty” feature.
In addition, he worked for nine years at Hanna-Barbera Studios and 10 years at Depatie-Freleng Studio, where he worked on the “Pink Panther” series of cartoons.
“He was a wonderful person who did his art work and, working in the studios for almost 60 years, he didn’t get involved in (studio) politics,” Fran Thomas said. “He just did his art work, because he was just a very good person. I have over 30 sympathy cards, and everyone said, ‘He was a good man.’ And I thought, ‘That’s all you can ask for.’”
Currently, many of the scenes he painted for classic cartoons are part of an exhibition touring Germany, in the Frankfurt and Potsdam film museums, this after appearing in a Warner Brothers exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Asked once by a journalist how he found the inspiration for creating his distinctive backgrounds, Richard Thomas said, “Well, I just knew that’s how they had to be.” It was that kind of instinctive approach that made Thomas’ contribution to his work and his life, as a man, a father and a husband, so valuable and enduring.
Thomas was a member of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, Trancas Riders and Ropers in Malibu and the Taos Rotary Club.

Oddly, while an earlier obituary revealed “He formerly sponsored Malibu Girl Scout Troop 242 for six years and donated much time to Boy Scouts and school programs in Southern California”, nowhere does it mention his middle name.

Finding pictures of old artists is a challenge. There’s a Warner’s Club News photo of the McKimson unit from 1945 that is so small, it can’t be blown up too well to see Thomas. However, Thad Komorowski, who is always happy to share animation historical matters, recently posted the 1938 photo of the Bob Clampett unit. The arrow points to Dick Thomas. Click on the photo to enlarge it.


Mike Barrier did a full interview with Dick about 20 years ago. Perhaps, some day it’ll be published. We hope this post will do for now.

Augie Doggie — Watch Dog Augie

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Carlo Vinci; Layout – Dick Bickenbach; Backgrounds – Fernando Montealegre; Story – Mike Maltese; Story Sketches – Dan Gordon; Titles – Lawrence Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Doggie Daddy – Doug Young; Augie, Burgurglar – Daws Butler.
Music: Jack Shaindlin, Emil Cadkin/Harry Bluestone, Phil Green, Hecky Krasnow.
First aired: week of October 19, 1959 (rerun, week of April 18, 1960).
Production: Quick Draw McGraw Show No. M-004, Production No. J-17.
Plot: Daddy agrees to let Augie be a watchdog, then disguises himself as a burglar just as a real burglar arrives.

You have to wonder whether animation writers 20, 30 years ago looked at this cartoon with a bit of envy. Because it couldn’t get made in 1980. Maybe even in 1970.

There have always been do-gooder claques that feel programming directed at children must be either educational or cultural. Nothing else. They coughed up asinine lists in the 1950s of “bad” shows. The nascent television industry ignored them. Critics ridiculed them. Roy Rogers was on the list. How could Roy Rogers be bad, the critics rhetorically asked. Everyone knew Roy Rogers. Everyone knew he wasn’t bad.

But the turbulent ‘60s were a time of loud protest. New groups rose up and with them came studies about “violence” and other evils that filled children’s programming, complete with figures and learned opinion (after all, these were “experts” talking, not concerned moms like in those ‘50s groups). Television had become a huge cash cow like radio had in the ‘40s and inherited radio’s absolute paranoia about offending anyone lest the ratings fall. Critics jumped on the bandwagon. They still knew Roy Rogers. But they didn’t know The Herculoids and were willing to take the word of the new claques about “bad” action/adventure shows like it, especially if that made them look they were on the High Road of Morality. And so TV cartoons got emasculated. Suddenly, all kinds of things couldn’t be shown in cartoons that kids had seen for a couple of generations. “Imitative violence,” said the do-gooders. “Nonsense” is, more or less, what Joe Barbera and other producers said in interviews in the ‘70s and beyond.

Which brings us to this cartoon. The main gag involves a gun. Wielded by a child. Shooting his father. In 1960, no one would have thought twice about it. Comic violence, you know. Ten, twenty years later, it never would have passed the every-situation-is-grave censors. It probably wouldn’t today, unless it was on at night when cartoons seem to be able to do and say almost anything.

However, that’s a debate for another time. Let’s look at this early Augie effort without all that baggage.

Being early in the series, there are a few things that are different in this cartoon. Daddy has a buckle on his collar in close-ups, and both the father and son have triangular dots on the muzzle in some shots, both likely from Bick’s layouts (Yogi Bear originally had the same dots). And the premise is different than what Mike Maltese would have used as the series wore on. It’s difficult to believe the later scientific-genius version of Augie would have balked at the idea of going to college (he even had a pennant in his room in one cartoon).

It seems there was a conscious decision at Hanna-Barbera as the Augie series was going into production to try to use flat designs for the inside of the Doggie household. Otherwise, I can’t see Dick Bickenbach giving it a try. One would expect them from Ed Benedict, considering the look he gave ‘Deputy Droopy’, ‘Billy Boy’ and a bunch of other cartoons at MGM. You can view a toned-down example in ‘Nag Nag Nag,’ the third Augie cartoon to be aired. Bob Givens laid out the first one, ‘Foxhounded Hounded Fox’ with a similar design philosophy. This cartoon was the fourth and Bick has come up with a pretty simple, basic, flat living room design in the opening, one that’s not as much fun as Ed’s stuff.

Your animator is Carlo Vinci, which means you get to see all of Carlo’s little trademarks—thick bars of teeth, back-up-then-stretch-dive exits out of scene, a lot of rubbery head shakes, and even a bit of semi-smear animation.




Carlo occasionally gave characters angular walks in the first season of the Huck show. Here, he’s giving Augie an angular run to open the cartoon (and we see him run past the same chair four times) before coming to a little stomping stop. Carlo liked angular poses, too, as we see when Augie emulates Sylvester, Jr. and strikes up his “oh, the shame of it” look.

The set-up that opens the cartoon is simple. Daddy wants to know why Augie isn’t studying so enable him to go to college. Hero-worshipping Augie whips out a book called ‘How To Be a Watch Dog’ and says he’s studying that to learn to be just like his dad. Daddy doesn’t want that (judging by the plot of ‘Million-Dollar Robbery’, watchdogging doesn’t pay well). Augie laments he can’t be like his dad and after the Sylvester Jr. bit, he theatrically vows “I’ll just have to eat a wiggily worm and die!” There’s a cut back to Daddy, then a cut back to Augie as a visual punch-line to the worm line.

Augie’s hyper jumping finally annoys Daddy enough that he agrees to let his son be a watchdog for the night. While Augie marches back and forth in the back yard with a rifle, Daddy decides to “disguise myself as a boiglar and scare Augie out of wantin’ to be watchdog.” At this point, a real burglar appears behind the backyard stone wall and decides to hit up the Doggie house. He lifts Augie by the barrel of the rifle (Augie is now marching in place, in the air, upside down, like nothing is happening) and drops him in a nearby metal garbage can. Finally, the pup realises “it’s dark in here”, pops his head up and spots the “really bur-gur-glar.” The extra syllable is something Daws Butler loved throwing in dialogue; the “really” is a Maltese-ism used by Augie in ‘Foxhound Hounded Fox.’



Augie rushes into the house to grab Daddy’s “really rifle.” You know what’s going to happen and I know what’s going to happen. Yup. Daddy gets blasted by the rifle the rest of the cartoon. There’s lots of running. And there’s padding to fill the cartoon. Daddy spends 10½ seconds going through a jumping, arm-waving cycle to scare Augie. Oh, the crook gets it, too. First after he gets blammed after trying to get into a piggy bank that drags on a little too long then when he tried to break into the wall safe (how many suburban homes have a wall safe, anyway?). Maltese gives a pun:



Robber: Do me a favour, will ya, kid? Go heckle the other burglar?
(blam!)
Robber: Forget it, sonny. I’ll get the heckle out of here myself.

For reasons of plot and not logic, Daddy simply doesn’t remove the mask to show who he is. He keeps telling Augie he’s not a burglar, only to be greeted with endless numbers of bullets. Finally, Daddy hides in an oak barrel but Augie jumps on top, pounds a lid onto it with a hammer and nails, then sits with satisfaction. But Daddy finally gets his wish. Augie decides catching a burglar is “too easy” so he’ll go to college, just like his dad wants.

Daddy peers through a knothole in the barrel. The camera moves in for a close-up and the final line:

Daddy: There’s only way to bring up a boy. And I wish I knew what it was.

Fathers in 1959 peeking at their TV set while the kids were watching probably agreed. And most, I suspect, didn’t fall victim to the do-gooders groups’ fears that their kid would grow up and shoot them with a rifle because of a cartoon. It never happened to my dad.

The only oddity in the music track is a lone snare drum used when Augie is marching. Whether Hoyt Curtin did this, or it was a specialty production piece on a library, or someone edited a drum march intro from a Phil Green bed, I don’t know. I don’t have titles to some of the Shaindlin music, alas, and ‘Fireman’ is a partial title waiting for Earl Kress’ memory to kick in so he can remember the rest of it.

0:00 - Augie Doggie Main Title theme (Curtin).
0:24 – EM-107D LIGHT MOVEMENT (Green) – Daddy tells Augie to go to college, Augies vows to eat worm.
1:07 – CB-89A ROMANTIC JAUNT (Cadkin-Bluestone) – “You’re going to college foirst” to end scene fade.
1:31 – snare drum (?) – Augie marches, Dad looks out window.
1:46 – GR 256 TOYLAND BURGLAR (Green) – “It’s up to his dear old dad...”, Daddy in front of mirror.
2:08 – snare drum (?) – Augie marches.
2:16 – CB-86A HIDE AND SEEK (Cadkin-Bluestone) – Burglar appears, dumps Augie in garbage, Augie grabs rifle, Daddy appears through door.
3:18 – GR-255 PUPPETRY COMEDY (Green) – “I hate to scare Augie this way” , Daddy turns to scare Augie.
3:42 – ‘FIREMAN’ (Shaindlin) – Daddy “scares” Augie. Rifle fires.
3:45 – fast chase music (Shaindlin) – Daddy runs away.
4:04 – CB-86A HIDE AND SEEK (Cadkin-Bluestone) – Augie hears noise, robber with piggy bank is blasted,
4:38 – fast chase music (Shaindlin) – Robber runs away, Augie shoots Daddy, Daddy runs away.
5:11 – EXCITEMENT UNDER DIALOGUE (Shaindlin) – Robber peeks from behind house, shot opening safe, runs away.
6:07 – jaunty bassoon and skipping strings (Shaindlin) – Daddy skips up to Augie, Augie shoots Daddy.
6:28 – fast chase music (Shaindlin) – Daddy jumps through window, hide in barrel, Augie ceils barrel.
6:52 – THE HAPPY COBBLER (Krasnow) – Augie decides to go to college, Daddy’s eye.
7:09 – Augie Doggie End Title theme (Curtin).