Two-Frame Takes by Carlo Vinci

It’s impossible for me to pick a favourite cartoon and it’s impossible for me to pick a favourite animator from the early days at Hanna-Barbera. George Nicholas has great expressions. But the guy with some of the funniest and most outrageous takes is Carlo Vinci.

Carlo would have been 105 today were he still with us.

You probably already know Carlo’s background. He was no hack artist, despite the fact he spent about 20 years of his theatrical career at the self-proclaimed Woolworth’s of Animation—Terrytoons. One of his co-workers in the early days there was Joe Barbera, who offered him a job across the continent at MGM when Hanna and Barbera took over the cartoon studio in 1955. When the studio shut down two years later, Barbera arranged for Disney to give a job to Carlo (and Art Lozzi, for that matter) until the Hanna-Barbera Studio was open and ready to produce Ruff and Reddy. Carlo remained at the studio through the end of the ‘70s, though he also animated on Ralph Bakshi’s Heavy Traffic (1973). Bakshi might have thought Carlo’s New York, Italian background would help, but he apparently admired the work of old-time animators; lord knows, there’s a who’s-who of them on that film.

I’ve pointed out some of Carlo’s tell-tale traits a couple of times before on the blog but, in honour of his birthday, let me post a few of his “shake takes.” It’s an effect I’ve always liked.

Because of the budget and time constraints of television animation, Carlo used a take that simply involved two drawings being alternated on ones, at least one of them with a jagged version of the character. He used it to have a character register pain or shock. It wasn’t new. You can see the same kind of thing in silent Felix the Cat cartoons. But it was very effective at Hanna-Barbera.

I’ve slowed down the animation here to let the drawings register a little better. Sorry you can’t enlarge the take.




BIG BAD BULLY




COUSIN TEX




THE BUZZIN’ BEAR




HOOKEY DAYS

Unfortunately for Huck, Yogi and Quick Draw, Carlo moved into production on The Flintstones and other artists who displayed less individuality and panache took over.

Many people in animation exhibited their non-cartoon work. Generally, they were background artists. But Carlo did, too. Here’s a brief story from the Van Nuys News of December 11, 1969.

Work of Valley Artist Shown in Studio City Bank
Paintings by Carlo Vinci are on view in the Bank of America, 12175 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, through Dec. 31.
Vinci’s forte is portraiture. In the display is a painting of himself which earned him a first prize at a recent show sponsored by Hanna Barbera Studios. He is a New York artist schooled at the National Academy of Design of that city and winner of the Tiffany Fellowship and highest award in draftsmanship.
His paintings have been exhibited at the American art gallery, the Grand Central and the National Academy Galleries.
He is a member of the Valley Art Guild and has many awards from local exhibitions.

The folks at Animation Archive have a lot more about Carlo’s life and work. You can read it HERE and HERE.

And, for handy reference, here’s a list of the birth (and death) dates of the main animators who worked on the first two seasons of The Huckleberry Hound Show.

GERARD BALDWIN: January 7, 1929
CARLO VINCI: February 27, 1906 - September 30, 1993
ED LOVE: May 24, 1910 - May 6, 1996
KEN MUSE: July 26, 1910 - July 26, 1987
LEW MARSHALL: August 10, 1922 - August 20, 2002
DICK LUNDY: August 14, 1907 – April 7, 1990
MIKE LAH: September 1, 1912 - October 13, 1995
LA VERNE HARDING: October 10, 1905 - September 25, 1984
GEORGE NICHOLAS: December 14, 1910 - November 23, 1996
DON PATTERSON: December 26, 1909 - December 12, 1998

Yogi Bear Sunday, March 1961

Yogi Bear’s earliest adventures in the Sunday comics (Saturday, in Canada) have echoes of Warren Foster’s stories used in the television cartoons. Certainly Gene Hazelton and Harvey Eisenberg, et al, didn’t use them verbatim. But you can spot similarities in plots, or portions of them.

Let’s look at photocopies from the colour comics section of the papers for March 1961. These come from the Ogden Standard-Examiner. That paper was like many others and only printed the last two rows of panels to save space. Too bad.

Bears and Bees featured Yogi’s brainstorm of filling jars with honey from inside a log and bartering them with Jellystone tourists for pic-a-nic baskets and other goodies. The March 5th comic borrows the honey-in-a-log concept and moves in a different direction. The comic and the cartoon came out about the same time.


A couple of different cartoons may have inspired the comic of March 12th. Yogi and Ranger Smith spent half of Nowhere Bear trying to rescue Boo Boo from a ledge. And in Bewitched Bear, he’s forced by Ranger Smith to rebuild his cabin after a missile chasing Yogi gets lodged in the door and explodes.


The March 19th comic grabs part of Missile Bound Yogi, in which Yogi gets caught in the middle of war games (in a national park?!?). The cartoon didn’t air until the 1961-62 season, so it’s possible it borrowed the comic strip story idea. It’d be interesting to learn when the cartoons actually went into production. I really like the explosion drawing.



A witch’s broom-stealing Yogi being chased by military rockets from Bewitched Bear makes an appearance again on March 26th. Even the “lower the broom” line that ended the cartoon gets used here. Harvey Eisenberg—at least, I’m presuming it’s Harvey—gives us a nice silhouette and a pretty cool smoke trail.


Since you’ve had to put up with black-and-white scans of comics, allow us to try to fit in our colour quota. Jim Engel has sent a wallpaper he’s made based on one of the pieces of publicity art for The Huckleberry Hound Show drawn in 1958 by (I’m guessing) Dick Bickenbach. I hope you enjoy it.

Yogi Bear — Duck in Luck

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Animation – Carlo Vinci; Layout – Bick Bickenbach; Backgrounds – Fernando Montealegre; Dialogue and Story Sketches – Charlie Shows and Dan Gordon; Titles – Lawrence Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson (no credits).
Voice Cast: Yogi, English Hunter – Daws Butler; Yowp – Don Messick; Biddy Buddy – Red Coffey.
Music: Bill Loose/John Seely, Jack Shaindlin, Geordie Hormel.
First Aired: week of January 26, 1959 (rerun, week of July 27, 1959)
Plot: Yogi Bear begs a hunter to spare the life of a tiny duck and succeeds when the hunter decides he wants bigger game—bears (L.A. Times summary).

Bill and Joe had recurring characters in their Tom and Jerry cartoons at MGM, so it was only natural they would try to build a stable of recurring characters (which could be marketed, as they discovered) at their own studio. They mixed and matched some secondary characters in this cartoon by combining Yowp and his English hunter owner from ‘Foxy Hound Dog’ with Biddy Buddy, the helpless blue duck from ‘Slumber Party Smarty’ who later morphed into Yakky Doodle.

Biddy is far more likeable and sympathetic in this cartoon than he is in any of the others, and that includes the ones at MGM featuring his prototype. He’s trying to escape a killer. Ironically, he’s the least sympathetic when he’s whining no one loves him, he’s all alone, wah-wah-wah, in an attempt to get sympathy.

The English hunter is merely a plot engine and never appeared in another cartoon after this. Yowp, of course, is fabulous once again, as Don Messick projects emotion out of the dog’s solitary vocabulary and that great animator Carlo Vinci gets a range of feelings across, despite the confines of limited animation.

Here’s a great example in the opening scene where you can see Carlo following the basic tenets of old school theatrical animation. The hunter isn’t just standing there motionless with a zip line approximating a bullet coming out of the gun. The barrel widens and bends. The recoil moves the hunter’s hat. Yowp closes his eyes because of shock of the noise. Later TV cartoons devolved so you wouldn’t see much of that any more. Now add Monte’s scenery. The blades of grass in the foreground are several different shades. He uses brush strokes to indicate foliage on the trees in the background. All together, it’s an attractive opening scene (after some pretty ugly flying ducks).


“My word! I bagged a bird!” says the hunter in one of Charlie Shows’ rhyming couplets, and then we see Biddy falling head first. Off goes Yowp after him. Carlo’s on the job so that means we get a stretched-diving exit from the scene for the dog and a stretched-flying exit for the bird.



Yogi is snoozing against a log when Biddy skids into the scene and begs him for help. And Charlie Shows is present, meaning an ass-violence joke is present. Biddy points to his posterior as being the location where he was shot. Now the cartoon becomes a battle of wits between Yogi and Yowp. What’s great here is Shows doesn’t bring the cartoon to a stop with a bunch of unnecessary chatter like he did in other cartoons. There’s a steady stream of action as the plot motors along, with the two characters not waiting to out-do each other.

The dog wins the first round. He matter-of-factly lifts up Yogi’s hat, grabs the hidden bird and rushes off, but not before shoving the hat back on top of Yogi’s head in a bit of old school squash-and-stretch (with a cowbell sound when the hat is plonked back in place).

“This calls for Yogi-type stragedy,” we’re told. Yogi parks himself behind some bushes, grabs two leaves from a tree, puts them against his nose like the hunter’s handlebar moustache and pretends to be Yowp’s master. “Good fetching, wot? ‘And me the bloomin’ bird, boy. Pip pip!” says the bear in a scripted-sounding accent, though he doesn’t wait for Yowp. He sticks his hand through the shrubs and toddles off on his knees. The dog looks shocked then puzzled as he comprehends what just happened. Yowp clues in when he sees the bear emerge from the bushes.



The bear races to a lake, places Biddy on the water and tells him to go. Yowp skids into the scene and gives the camera a disgusted look. But he’s—dare I say?—smarter than the average duck. A rouged female duck swims toward Biddy who, being an innocent little bird, simply says “you’re cute” instead of engaging in Avery or Clampett-like man-sees-woman histronics. Ah, but it’s really a toy duck used as a lure by a very smug Yowp.



“Help! Save me!” cries Biddy. Yogi leaps behind the bushes. Here’s how Carlo does it.




This calls for the old pepper gag. But Yowp doesn’t sneeze when he passes through the cloud of pepper. He swallows the duck instead. Yogi’s hat jumps up and land in a different spot (with a cowbell clunk) during the surprise take. Yogi reaches into the dog’s stomach, smiles, then pulls out the duck. Then he leads Yowp on “a wild duck chase” by poking his head out from behind a tree, calling “quack, quack,” then hiding out of sight by the time the dog gets there. However, as we mentioned earlier, Charlie Shows worked on this cartoon so, naturally, Yogi’s butt sticks out at an inopportune time and chomp goes Yowp.



The next gag has Yogi emulating a carnival barker conducting the old shell game, complete with “now you see it, now you don’t patter,” except it’s with Biddy and two identical decoys. Yowp guesses the right duck, which is more Yogi can do, and takes Biddy to the hunter. “Hold it!” cries Yogi and pleads for the duck’s life.



But it turns out the hunter is a sporting chap. “Right-o. Egad, I feel like a cad,” he says. “I’m through with beastly duck hunting. I’ll never hunt another duck.” With that, Biddy thanks the hunter and zips away. The hunter decides “from now on, I’m going to hunt big game.” “Uh, about how big?” asks Yogi, likely knowing the answer. The hunter holds up his hand to the level of Yogi’s head. “Ohhh, about your size,” replies the hunter. Carlo gives us a bit of a smear drawing as Yogi quickly turns, runs and jumps in the lake. An anguished Biddy swims over. “They got him! They got my friend,” he wails (or what’s supposed to be a wail; Red Coffey reads all the lines the same way). A little duck swims over. But it turns out to be the decoy that Yowp wore on his head earlier in the cartoon. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, little Biddy Buddy,” exclaims Yogi after popping his head up. And the two of them happily quack to each other as the camera fades.

The cartoon’s a welcome change from the Yogi vs. Ranger shorts that became the basic template by the time the bear got his own series in 1961. There’s no need for a ranger here; Yogi already has an antagonist and it appears the bear is in a generic woods anyway, not Jellystone Park. Boo Boo would clutter the plot, too, so he’s wisely out of sight. Conversely, once the Yogi-Boo Boo-Ranger Smith formula was permanently in place, there was no place for plots involving the previous incidental characters, thus ending the screen careers of the English hunter and Yowp (who appeared in one cartoon the following season, the last without either Boo Boo or a ranger).

0:00 - Yogi sub-main title theme [vocal] (Hanna-Barbera-Curtin)
0:14 - ZR 48 FAST MOVEMENT (Hormel) – Hunter shoots at Biddy, Biddy pleads with Yogi to save him.
1:20 - TC 303 ZANY COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Yowp goes to Yogi’s hat, grabs Biddy.
1:34 - LAF-7-12 FUN ON ICE (Shaindlin) – “Capital fetching!”, Yogi imitates hunter, Yowp grabs Biddy from water, Yogi jumps behind tree.
3:05 - bassoon and zig-zag strings (Shaindlin) – Yogi gets out pepper, Yowp swallows Biddy, Yogi runs off scene.
3:28 - LAF-1-1 FISHY STORY (Shaindlin) – Yogi looks down Yowp’s throat, rescues duck.
3:43 - LAF-5-20 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) – Yogi runs with Biddy behind bush.
3:48 - LAF-21-3 RECESS (Shaindlin) – Yogi talks to duck, hides behind tree, Yowp bites Yogi’s butt, shell game.
5:20 - TC 432 HOLLY DAY (Loose-Seely) – Yowp grabs Biddy, Yogi pleads with hunter, hunter releases Biddy and decides to hunt bears.
6:30 - LAF-5-20 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) – Yogi runs into water.
6:37 - bassoon and zig-zag strings (Shaindlin) – Duck swims into scene, Yogi pops up out of water with decoy on head.
6:58 - Yogi closing theme (Curtin).

Alex, Art and Aliens

Alex Lovy was the first person to be given credit as ‘Story Director’ on Hanna-Barbera cartoons and it’s a little confusing for some of us not in the animation business to figure out what Lovy did. The cartoons also boasted a ‘Director’ credit (to Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera) and in the 1960s, they also listed an ‘Animation Director’ (Nick Nichols, ex Disney) and a ‘Story Supervision’ credit (to Art Pierson, a former actor and writer and director of Broadway musicals).

To try to clear things up a bit, I asked Tony Benedict about it. Tony was the studio’s third writer and was hired in 1961. He explains:

Story Directors would time out the action and voice over recordings on to exposures sheets for animators.

Mark Evanier, probably known to TV watchers for his work on Garfield, wrote for Hanna-Barbera after Bill and Joe sold the company. He elaborates:

Alex did storyboards and directing. Hanna and Barbera were still officially the directors...which meant that Hanna was supposed to be the director. But more and more, he had other guys assisting him to the point where they did a lot more of it than he did. I would assume Alex was doing most of the timing and a lot of the boarding.

I'm sure H-B paid better [than Walter Lantz, where Lovy was a director before going to Hanna-Barbera] ...and Lantz was going through a period then when he didn't have a lot of work and all his people were looking around for other employment to fill in gaps and such. I'm sure Alex thought he had a much rosier future with H-B and a better paycheck.

Alex was an incredible board guy. I don't recall if he got the credit on it but he did the storyboard on that Yogi Christmas Special I wrote. Another guy originally boarded it and used up all the time on the schedule that they had for boarding (about a month)...then handed in something completely unusable. Alex was called in and he had to board the thing in about four days.

It’s possible Alex was hired after production began on the 1959-60 season of cartoons (the second season of Huck, the first season of the Quick Draw McGraw Show and the Loopy De Loop theatricals). Some of the cartoons give a ‘Story Sketches’ credit to Dan Gordon. Lovy’s credit displaced Gordon’s, though Gordon was still at the studio.

Whether it’s a case of Lovy’s timing or the writing of Warren Foster and Mike Maltese, I don’t know, but the cartoons seemed to feature a lot of more dialogue about this time.

Lovy was the studio’s only story director until 1961 when others started getting credit, including former animator Lew Marshall, Paul Sommer (ex Columbia director) and Art Davis (ex Columbia and Warners director). A few years later, Art Scott’s name appears. By that time, Lovy had moved up to ‘Associate Producer.’

Lovy was born in Passaic, New Jersey on September 2, 1913. Available Census records suggest he was an only child and raised by his mother Charlotte. They were in New York City in 1930 where, three years later, Lovy went to work for the Van Beuren Studio, which also was the employer of one Joseph Roland Barbera (and Carlo Vinci and Dan Gordon). It closed in 1936 and Lovy began drawing comic books. Mike Barrier reveals Lovy migrated to California in 1937 when he was hired by Walter Lantz as a story sketch artist for writer Vic McLeod. He became a director the following year and not only directed the first Andy Panda cartoon but came up with the first, goofy-looking design for Woody Woodpecker. He was drafted into the Navy in 1942 and returned to cartoon directing at Columbia in 1947. He left the following year. Edith Gwynn’s syndicated Hollywood column of July 1, 1948 has this curious tidbit:

Walt Disney will soon have independent competition in the cartoon field. One Alex Lovy is heading a new outfit with a revolutionary pastel color process.

That’s going to remain a mystery for now. Lovy’s name doesn’t appear in theatrical cartoons again until 1955 when he returned to Walter Lantz to direct before being hired at Hanna-Barbera (his final cartoon for Lantz was released in 1960). H-B was his home until 1988, except for a year-and-a-bit-long period directing Warners cartoons (1967-68) and creating the forgettable Cool Cat and Merlin the Magic Mouse. He also set up his own company, filing for incorporation in California on December 17, 1962.

Lovy doesn’t strike one as a ladies man but it seems he had no problem attracting them. His first marriage—Lantz signed the marriage certificate as a witness—came to a somewhat unusual end. This is from the Los Angeles Times of April 4, 1939:

WIFE SEEKING DIVORCE GOES TO COURT IN WHEEL CHAIR
She had lots of signatures, but not the one she wanted.
This was the experience yesterday of Monte Maxine Lovy, 23-year-old auburn-haired waitress, when she appeared in a wheel chair in the court of Superior Judge J.T.B. Warne seeking a divorce from Alex Terry Lovy, cartoon animator, on the grounds of cruelty.
The signatures in possession of the young woman were on the plaster of Paris cast she wore on her left leg as the result of a break received about six weeks ago in an automobile accident. The signature she most wanted was that of the judge, who couldn’t grant the decree until there was corroborating testimony.
Through her attorney, F. Murray Keslar, Mrs. Lovy explained that her witness had failed to appear and the court continued the case until today. The couple were married last May 15 and separated one month and 15 days afterward when Lovy assertedly told her he was dissatisfied.

Lovy was married again by 1943. His wife’s maiden name was Dotzler and her sister had married Frank Tipper, an animator at the Lantz studio. California Voter Registrations don’t show a Mrs. Lovy in 1944 or ’46, but he remarried in July 1947 to Vivian Jean, who was also a cartoonist. Their daughter Nicki had a career, starting in 1966, at Hanna-Barbera and several other studios.

Both Lovy and Art Scott were story directors on shows like Peter Potamus and Secret Squirrel and both moved up to become associate producers (don’t ask me what it is an associate producer does). Scott’s animation history has been documented far better; you can read about him in THIS 2000 story from Animation World and especially in THIS great interview with John Culhane from 1978 (from Didier Ghez’ Walt’s People, Volume 9).

Scott was born in Astoria, Oregon on October 18, 1914. He grew up in Vancouver, B.C. and died in Los Angeles on May 19, 1999. In between, he provided Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallee voices in 1930s Warners cartoons, spent time at Disney (originally as Dick Lundy’s assistant in 1940), produced and drew cartoons that accompanied Capitol kids record soundtracks, and attained immortality by singing the “ooo-OOOON” in the opening and closing of the Beany and Cecil cartoons; he was Bob Clampett’s animation director.

But Tony Benedict remembers him best as someone who traded a lot of good-natured barbs with Alex Lovy. Oh, and for aliens. The space kind. More on that in a moment. Here are some great drawings by Tony of Art and Alex in action. Click on them to enlarge.



Kids, if you’ve ever wanted to draw your own Art Scott, Tony shows you how. I can only presume the tea is a leftover habit from Canada.


Tony explains that Art took an immense interest in creatures from another world. Naturally, Tony had to satirise that.


The one thing I haven’t touched on is Alex Lovy’s special talent—his ambidexterity. He spoke to historian Joe Adamson about it and explained he could write with both hands at the same time, the writing of one hand being the mirror image of the other. How? “I don’t know,” he said to Adamson. “All I know is it sure makes a hit with girls.”

Maybe that’s why Lovy and Art Scott got along so well. Writing with both hands is a talent that, to most of us, is alien.

Snooper and Blabber — The Case of the Purloined Parrot

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Animation – Ken Muse; Layout – Dick Bickenbach; Backgrounds – Bob Gentle; Story – Mike Maltese; Story Direction – Alex Lovy; Titles – Lawrence Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson (no credits).
Voice Cast: Snooper, Blabber, Barnacle Bilge – Daws Butler; Sam Scuttle – Don Messick; Alfy Parrot – Doug Young.
Music: Phil Green, Jack Shaindlin.
Production No: Quick Draw McGraw Show M-020.
First Aired: week of Feb. 8, 1960 (rerun, week of July 11, 1960).
Plot: Snooper and Blabber rescue Alfy the Parrot from turncoat second-mate Barnacle Bilge.

It would, on the surface, appear improbable that master filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock would have any influence on fairly low-budgeted television cartoons. But he did. Or, rather, his television programme did.

Mike Maltese and Tony Benedict must have been a fan of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which first appeared on small screens in 1955 and has likely never been off since. Benedict concocted a wonderful adversary for Yakky Doodle named Alfy Gator, with a voice and call-for-a-station-break demeanour like the master filmmaker (Hoyt Curtin added his touch with an inversion of Hitchcock’s theme ‘Funeral March of a Marionette’). But before Alfy’s debut in 1961, Maltese borrowed the Hitchcock silhouette opening and closing, and introduction style for this cartoon. Naturally, he makes a travesty of it as Blab backs into the silhouette the wrong way.

By the way, the Warners cartoon parody of Hitchcock, ‘The Last Hungry Cat’, came out at the end of 1961, almost two years after this one. Usually, ideas from Warners cartoons ended up at Hanna-Barbera, not the other way around.

Well, that kind of borrowing also happens in this cartoon. Maltese does a variation on his famous gag from one of the best Bugs Bunny cartoons of all time, Rabbit Hood (1949). You’ll all remember how Bugs rushes to mix and bake a cake just in time for the woozy Sheriff of Nottingham to fall into it. Here, the parrot mixes and bakes a cake just in time to throw at the bad guy as he opens a door. Maltese makes it a birthday cake as a bonus.



After Snooper informs us “purloined means stolen, in case you flunked English”, the “fascinating story” moves to the “fascinating old mansion” of Captain Sam Scuttle. A little gag has the flag on his mailbox suddenly flipping up to reveal a skull and crossbones.


A conversation’s taken place between the retired pirate and his parrot—perhaps not coincidentally named Alfy—revealing only the two of them know where the treasure is buried. Alfy vows he’ll never spill the location. Overhearing the conversation at the window is one Barnacle Bilge.


We switch to Snoop’s office. The phone rings. It’s Sam. Alfy’s been bird-napped by Bilge. Sam offers a thousand pieces of eight for the return of his parrot. “Throw in a few whole eights and I’ll be right over,” counters Snoop.

The plot is pretty simple and straight-forward the rest of the way. Snooper and Blabber end up on Bilge’s pirate ship. We get a walk-under-the-plank gag, a cannonball-bowling ball gag, a tripped-with-rope (off camera) gag and a waterlogged gun-still-fires-when-looked-at gag, as well as the cake-for-the-sake-of-a-gag gag. But after expressing pleasure Sam has sent someone to find him, Alfy switches gears and insists he really doesn’t want to be rescued. Finally, the parrot gives in to Bilge’s demand to reveal the location of the treasure or else see Blab, who has an anchor tied to him, dropped into the sea. What? How can that happen if Bilge cuts the anchor’s rope under Blab? Wouldn’t the anchor fall and Blab stay put?



Anyway, they all row to Gooney Island where the parrot reveals the treasure chest he doesn’t want to give up. It’s full of crackers. As in “polly wanna.” Bilge clobbers Snoop on the head with the chest. The scene now switches back to the set of the Hitchcock-like show. “And so ends the Case of the Purloined Parrot,” Blab tells us, and in the final gag, Snoop walks into a silhouette with a tall bump on his head from chest.



The animation and backgrounds are functional. The best part of the cartoon is the odd or silly dialogue Maltese comes up with.

When the parrot pledges not to reveal the location of the treasure:

Alfy: No one will ever find out from me. It’s “Polly wants a cracker” here and “Polly wants a cracker” there. And, outside of that, I’m as mum as a bloomin’ stuffed barracuda.

There’s a song lyric pun when Snoop hears about the case:

Sam: And, if he talks, it’s back to piracy on the ‘igh seas for Sam Scuttle.
Snoop: Then it’s me boundin’ main duty to find Alfy, and keep you off the straight and narrow plank.
Blab (to audience): Snoop has a soft spot for pirates.

Alfy and the detectives meet for the first time.

Alfy: Ahoy, mates. ‘Ow’s me shipmate, Captain Sam Scuttle?
Snooper (like he’s reading a script): ‘E’s a bit of all right, ‘e is.
Blab (to audience): A good private eye has to be speak several languages.

And when Barnacle Bill fantasises about the treasure that Snooper is digging up on the island:

Bilge: At last! I’m goin’ to live like a bloomin’ Duke. Sippin’ me tea out of a golden sau-sah!
(more dialogue, then the chest reveals its contents)
Snooper: Don’t look so disappointed, Bilge. Crackers is swell with tea.

Some random notes:

• The case is a 603: “A retired pirate’s stolen parrot.”
• Snoop doesn’t say “Halt in the name of...” in this cartoon.
• Snooper’s car drives past the same house in the background 13 times on his way to meet Sam and eight more times on its way to the dock, where he arrives “just in the knick-knack of time.”
• When everyone lands on Gooney Island, a bird sound effect is heard that was used in practically every movie and TV show involving a jungle into the 1960s. I think it’s from the Valentino Library.
• While Doug Young did incidental voices later in his career, he seems to have restricted himself mostly to appearances as Doggie Daddy in the 1959-60 season. Don Messick or Hal Smith handled most minor characters. I believe this is Young’s first Snooper cartoon (one is missing in my collection).

All but one of the cues is by Phil Green, all originally in the Q-2 Comedy Cartoon series of EMI’s Photoplay Library. Nothing sea-going, though.

0:00 – Snooper opening bumper music (Curtin).
0:05 – GR-453 THE ARTFUL DODGER (Green) – Snooper and Blabber enter.
0:13 – GR-456 DOCTOR QUACK (Green) – Blab apologises, camera closes in on mansion.
0:47 – GR-93 DRESSED TO KILL (Green) – Sam and parrot talk.
1:22 – GR-98 BY JIMINY! IT’S JUMBO SHORT BRIDGE No. 2 (Green) – “You’ll talk, me feathered bucco...”
1:28 – GR-90 THE CHEEKY CHAPPIE (Green) – Snooper office scene.
1:52 – GR-334 LIGHT AGITATED BRIDGE (Green) – Snoop and Blab drive to Sam’s.
2:04 – GR-90 THE CHEEKY CHAPPIE (Green) – Sam is questioned, drive to docks, parrot walks underneath plank.
3:22 – PG-161G LIGHT COMEDY MOVEMENT (Green) – Parrot and Snoop talk.
3:34 – GR-77 CUSTARD PIE CAPERS (Green) – Bilge runs with sword, cannonball gag, “Please let us save you.”
4:13 – GR-75 POPCORN BRIDGE No. 1 (Green) – Bilge points gun at parrot, gun goes off.
4:27 – SIX DAY BICYCLE RACE (Shaindlin) – Bilge chases parrot into galley, cake scene.
5:05 – GR-453 THE ARTFUL DODGER (Green) – Blab tied to anchor,
5:47 – GR-255 PUPPETRY COMEDY (Green) – Desert island scene.
6:33 – GR-77 CUSTARD PIE CAPERS (Green) – Blab talks to audience, Snoop has bump on head.