Flintstones Weekend Comics, April 1963

A familiar idea and some great shapes highlight the Flintstones Sunday comics (Saturday in Canada) from 50 years ago this month. Fortunately, only one of the story lines involves Pebbles. Alas, Baby Puss doesn’t even rate a background-of-the-first-panel appearance.



You loved the Flintstone Flyer (né the Barney Copter). Now, Fred’s come up with his own flying machine in the April 7th comic. I wish I could find decent versions of these on-line to get a better look at the composition. I like how the first panel in the bottom row has the perspective looking up at the action and the next panel’s looking down. It’s followed by a silhouette panel and the crashed copter. Dino makes an incidental appearance in the opening drawing.

By the way, as a comparison, here’s the Flintstone Flyer by the wonderful Carlo Vinci. I’d love to know if Ed Benedict designed it.





“Eugene” rates a mention in the list of Water Buffalo members on April 14th. The coincidence between the name and the fact Gene Hazelton was in charge of the H-B comics is too great. So perhaps he came up with the story. It’s not his artwork; the way he draws eyes on the characters is quite distinctive and you can already see them in the Flintstones daily comics published at this time. You guess is as good as mine who the other Water Buffalos are named for (maybe one is Clarke Mallery).



The highlights of the April 21st and 28th comics are the great shapes; the tied-up dinosaur in the former and the toothy mouth in the latter. Well, and Fred’s expressions in the latter, too. Mr. Slate doesn’t exist yet; Fred has an unnamed boss.

Click on any of the comics to enlarge them. It seems most of the papers available to me on-line didn’t pick up the Flintstones Sunday comics. There are a lot more Yogis out there.

Huckleberry Hound — Fast Gun Huck

Produced and Directed by Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna.
Credits: Animation – Brad Case; Layout – Walt Clinton; Backgrounds – Dick Thomas, Written by Warren Foster; Story Director – Alex Lovy; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Huckleberry Hound, Dying Man, Flesh Wound Bystander, Neighbour, Bar Patrons – Daws Butler; Narrator, Teeny Terwilliger, Shooter, Bar Patrons, Sheriff – Don Messick.
Music: Spencer Moore, Jack Shandlin, Bill Loose-John Seely, Victor Lamont, Geordie Hormel.
First Aired: week of January 9, 1961 (rerun week of May 29, 1961).
Episode: Huckleberry Hound Show K-047, Production E-132.
Plot: Huck, the fastest gun in the West, brings in Teeny Terwilliger, the second-fastest gun in the West.

Tedd Pierce was the one writer that Hanna-Barbera didn’t hire from Warner Bros. but that didn’t stop Pierce’s Warner material from showing up at H-B from the writers it did—Mike Maltese and Warren Foster. Maltese decided Sylvester Jr’s back-of-the-hand-to-the-head “Oh, the shame of it!” would work well for Augie Doggie (first used in Pierce’s “Who’s Kitten Who”). In this cartoon, Foster has borrowed a more obscure gag from Pierce. Teeny Terwilliger loads a rifle to shoot Huck. “First, the ball,” he says. “Then the powder. Then the waddin.’ Now, I’ll ram it down tight.” The rifle explodes in Teeny’s face. “I must have done somethin’ wrong. I’ll put in the waddin’ in first this time…” If you don’t recognise the gag, it comes from “The Slap-Hoppy Mouse,” a cartoon released in 1956 where Pierce gives similar dialogue to Sylvester and the same two explosions in the face.

The funniest part of the whole scene is something that Foster came up with himself. While all this is taking place, Huck is completely oblivious to it. He’s entirely wrapped up in his steady line of patter to the bad guy so he has no idea what’s going on around him. Foster comes with some really good bits. The only thing that’s jarring is first few seconds. It’s just plain ugly. Dick Thomas’ background resembles a child’s drawing and the gunman clomping down the street looks like something out of a Gene Deitch Tom and Jerry. But then we get into better stuff.

Actually, the first scene has no direct bearing on the plot. It’s a shootout, with the angle mimicking the title card—we see a guy getting shot (in silhouette, and in cycle animation) through the bow-legs of a gunman. The gagline: “Call me bow-legged, will ya’?” Don Messick digs up his serious narrator’s voice and is accompanied by some very effective stock music. We actually get into the action in the second scene when Messick intones famous names of the Old West, dropping the seriousness to ask “Quick Draw McGraw?” when the inside reference comes up on the screen. We’re now introduced to the Huckleberry Kid, the Fastest Gun in the West. The basic premise of the cartoon is everyone is afraid of whoever the fastest gun is—except the second-fastest, who wants to be number one.

But being the fastest gun has its drawbacks. The narrator points out that Huck is steely-eyed and always ready to draw, and the scene cuts to our hero bouncing up and down on his faithful horse (“named ‘Horse’,” the narrator informs us). Huck looks at us. “You know, this always bein’ ready to draw shore crimps up my arms.” And it also has people high-tailing it out of towns before Huck arrives. “I don’t get it,” Huck tells us. “I read in the papers where the West is really buildin’ up. But all I ever see is empty towns.” And then he tells us his burden, as the corny melodramatic “Winter Tales” plays in the background. “This bein’ fastest gun in the west is a lonesome life. Only ones that’ll speak to me are the lawmen.” And even the sheriff in this cartoon is hiding behind an uprighted saloon table in fear. “Would you please stop that steely-eyed stuff and put your arms down?” the sheriff asks.




Huck agrees to take on the job of bringing in Teeny Terwilliger, the second-fastest gun. “I get so lonesome, I’ll talk to anybody.” Foster makes fun of a Western cliché in the next gag. Huck has his hands ready to draw, walking toward the door, the sound of spurs jingling on the soundtrack. He stops and looks at us. “You know, I just cain’t figure out that jinglin’ noise. I’m not even wearin’ spurs.”

Huck arrives at Teeny’s hideout badly singing a chorus of “Clementine” over some randomly strummed guitar strings. He wants to “talk a bit before blastin’.” Teeny isn’t impressed. He calls Huck a “no-good, wart-headed varmint” (can you tell Foster wrote for Yosemite Sam at Warners? Teeny calls Huck a “horny-toad” later). Huck apparently hasn’t talked to anyone for so long, he has no conception he’s been insulted. “Sure is nice to find a feller that’ll engage in some perlite conversation with you,” he confides to the audience. Teeny looks at us. “Yack, yack, yack. I never heerd nobody yack so much.” Now we get the rifle scene mentioned above.

“I better quit while I’m behind,” Teeny says to us. The cartoon has reached its climax and we get a bizarre gun battle. “I’m fightin’ ya fair and square because I have no other choice,” Teeny says to Huck, who informs the bad guy he has a lightning draw. And he does. A lightning bolt comes out of Huck’s gun and zaps Teeny. It’s a visual pun that you don’t expect. And then Huck has another surprise. In exchange for the return of stolen gold, he offers to retire from the fast-gun racket, making Teeny number one.



The cartoon ends with civilian Huck being greeted by townspeople—and Teeny popping up from inside a rain barrel where he’s hiding. Teeny can’t stand being the Fastest Gun. His friends run away from him. He cries that no one has spoken to him in three months. “Poor feller. I know just how he feels,” Huck says. Then he has an offer for viewers. “If anyone wants to be the Fastest Gun, I can get you a really good deal.” The cartoon ends with Huck winking.

Some appropriate music has found its way onto the soundtrack. The first cue reminds me of Spencer Moore’s material on the Capitol Hi-Q “D” series. I’m missing about a half-dozen reels of the first 20 and I suspect it’s on one of them. A couple of nice Western cues and the tinkly “Winter Tales” work really well. It and “Home on the Range” are among some solo old-time piano cues Victor Lamont arranged for the Sam Fox library (“Man on the Flying Trapeze” was another one, but it wasn’t used in cartoons as far as I know).

0:00 - Huckleberry Hound Sub Main Title Theme (Curtin).
0:13 - Dramatic Underscore (Moore) – Gunfight scene.
0:40 - ZR-39A WESTERN SONG (Hormel) – Scroll of names, Huck ready to draw guns.
1:02 - TC-205 LIGHT MOVEMENT (Loose-Seely) – Huck on horse.
1:20 - off-key banjo – Huck sings.
1:30 - TC-205 LIGHT MOVEMENT (Loose-Seely) – Narration, Huck rides in empty town, bar patrons take off.
2:00 - WINTER TALES (Lamont) – Huck regrets being a fast gun, sheriff talks to Huck, “buckin’ for first place.”
2:50 - HOME ON THE RANGE (Lamont) – “Only the fastest gun,” jingling gag.
3:13 - L-1154 ANIMATION COMEDY (Moore) – Huck on horse.
3:22 - off-key guitar – Huck sings.
3:31 - L-78 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) – “That’s the Huckleberry kid,” “…yack so much.”
4:27 - L-80 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) – “I’ll put a stop to it,” wadding gag.
5:09 - L-75 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) – Huck talks about a stagecoach, lightning gun scene.
5:55 - LAF-10-7 GROTESQUE No 2 (Shaindlin) – Huck offers to quit the fastest gun racket, Huck walks down street, talks to off-camera people.
6:22 - zig-zag strings/bassoon music (Shaindlin) – Twerwilliger in barrel scene.
6:58 - Huckleberry Hound Sub End Title theme (Curtin).

Cue the Music, Q the SL and Bracco…what?

Die-hard Hanna-Barbera fans have heard of—and maybe even seen—the 1970 summer replacement series “Where’s Huddles?” A similar question arises in thumbing through a 1963 edition of Broadcasting magazine—Where’s Hoyt?



Nowhere in the BMI ad above is there any mention of Hoyt Curtin, the man who wrote the music for Hanna-Barbera cartoons at the time this ad appeared. It’s not like Curtin’s music wasn’t licensed through BMI; a check of the company’s site finds 1,779 of Curtin’s works under its wing.

Curtin confirmed Bill Hanna wrote the lyrics to the earliest H-B theme songs. I’ve never figured out what Joe Barbera’s involvement was, other than listening to the songs, but he’s handed a composer credit through a number of publishing companies. Charlie Shows is also credited as a composer as well. Just not in the ad above, since he was a member of ASCAP. Shows’ ASCAP listing is a little curious. For example, he has a composer cue for “Bear on a Picnic.” There are no songs in the cartoon with that name and the only music is stock music. Perhaps he wrote continuity for a record of that cartoon.

Let us cleverly segue into the world of H-B characters on Little Golden Records and also into a thank-you to faithful Yowp readers who have passed on notes or pictures of items that would interest early Hanna-Barbera fans. Unfortunately, I can’t recall who sent everything. Sorry. Anyway, back to the records.



Hanna-Barbera had a few different record contracts before the H-B Records label was established in the mid-‘60s. One was Colpix, the record arm of Screen Gems, owned by Columbia Pictures, which partly bankrolled the cartoon studio when it began in 1957. Another was New York-based Golden Records, which put out kids’ 78s and 45s. We’ve linked before to some H-B tunes released by the company, but someone has sent along pictures of record sleeves.

What’s interesting is the Flintstones’ record advertises “The Original TV Voices.” The main problem with the Golden Records is Daws Butler was sewn up by Colpix, the story goes, so he was unable to voice characters for Golden. Hence some not-very-good Daws imitators were hired to play Yogi et al. You’ll notice the Huck cover says “Video Cartoon Voices,” which doesn’t categorically mean you’ll hear Daws or Don Messick on the sides. And the Quick Draw cover tells you in teeny-weeny letters that the voices are supplied by Gil Mack and Don Elliott. Thanks to this link via Andrew Morrice, you can hear how weak another member of the Golden stock company, Frank Milano, sounded as Hokey Wolf.



While we’re on the topic of weak, Scott Shaw passes on this very nice one-sheet for theatres that really wanted to promote Loopy De Loop cartoons on their screens.



I’m not a Loopy fan. Huck, Quick Draw and Yogi were far more likeable cartoon characters. Frankly, I’d rather watch Wally Gator, and the studio’s short cartoons were already sliding down hill by the time Wally came along in 1962. Loopy first appeared three years before that.

How was it that Columbia Pictures began distributing Loopy cartoons to begin with? I’d sure love to know what was in the bankrolling deal the movie studio had with Hanna-Barbera. It doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to conclude that someone like Columbia’s Harry Cohn barked “We own a cartoon studio. Why do we need to distribute those over-budget, artsy-schmartsy UPA cartoons anymore?” Cohn never seemed concerned about the quality of shorts so long as they were ground out on budget and, even if he was concerned, might have concluded that kids in theatres would accept limited animation just as they did on TV. It’s a real shame the H-B artists were saddled with Loopy instead of getting the money to do full personality animation on a new character with embellished sight gags like the kind Warren Foster and Mike Maltese wrote at Warners, with the score accenting and augmenting the artwork.

Columbia had released Scrappy cartoons some 25 years earlier. Scrappy’s biggest fan, Harry McCracken (note the segue again), has posted this interesting and, we suspect, home-made QSL card featuring Pebbles and Bamm Bamm from the ‘70s.



QSLs go back to the earliest days of radio when stations were experimental and listeners were hobbyists. A radiophile would tune in a station far away then send its engineers a reception report. The station would, in turn, reply with a thank-you postcard; some may still do it today. This card is for picking up some one’s CB radio transmissions from Port Alice, a somewhat remote mill town on Vancouver Island. Note the “Monitor 19” on the card. CBers generally use Channel 19 in Canada; some on the west coast use Channel 1. Chatting via CB and ham radio seems a little old-fashioned now, but you can meet some very genuine and friendly people that way.

Shortwave stations, too, sent QSL cards, like Italy’s RAI. And while we’re on the subject of Italian telecommunications (yeah, that segue is a real stretch), he’s something Charles Brubaker has discovered. It’s an Italian TV commercial from 1967 featuring Huckleberry Hound. Huck is known in Italy as “Broccobaldo.” I plugged the word into one of those Italian-to-English on-line translators to find out what it means. I got “Huckleberry Hound.” Therefore, I’m left to conclude the word didn’t exist before Huck’s creation in 1958.

Huck gains weight during the middle of the commercial, which has light backgrounds like a ’30s cartoon and some unidentified background music (besides the Huck theme).



Lest anyone think Huck is appearing as a twin in drag, Chris Sobieniak supplied this helpful information:

"Actually the girl is Huck´s girlfriend, Kitty, and the puppy is his nephew. These characters never appeared in Huck´s American cartoons or comic books; instead, they appeared in Italian comics with material featuring the Hanna-Barbera characters. drawn by local artists. In his Italian stories, Huck even had a mean grouchy grandpa, mirroring Donald Duck´s relationship with Uncle Scrooge. Oh, and the mole appearing at the beginning had originally appeared in one of Huck's comic books published in the early 60´s by Dell, in a story drawn by Harvey Eisenberg."

You’d think his girl-friend would be named Clementine.

My thanks to the contributors to this post. Others have sent neat little things which will find their way into a future writing on this blog.

Pixie and Dixie — Party Peeper Jinks

Produced and Directed by Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna.
Credits: Animation – Dick Lundy; Layout – Tony Rivera; Backgrounds – Bob Gentle; Story – Warren Foster; Story Direction – Alex Lovy; Titles – Lawrence Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voices: Dixie, Mr. Jinks, Cat – Daws Butler; Pixie, Rocky, Grey Cat – Don Messick.
Music: Jack Shaindlin, Spencer Moore.
Episode: Huckleberry Hound Show K-044, Production E-122
First Aired: week of November 28, 1960.
Plot: Jinks won’t invite Pixie and Dixie to his birthday party, so the dog next door gets revenge.

If you’re expecting a lot of gags in this cartoon, guess again. “Party Peeper Jinks” is more of a personality piece than anything. Jinks is a greedy jerk. The meeces just want to be friends. The dog feels he has to right a wrong. And that’s just about it. Witness this dialogue to start the cartoon, as Pixie and Dixie are in their hole, rehearsing a birthday song to Jinks:

Dixie: Hold it, hold it, Pixie.
Pixie: What’s the matter, Dixie?
Dixie: You’re singin’ off key.
Pixie: Oh, gee, I’m sorry.
Dixie: Okay. Let’s try it again.
(Cut to Jinks in his basket)
Jinks: Shee. Why, you’d think a chap could, you know, could get some sleep on his birthday morning.

Where’s the comedy you ask? That’s a really good question. Other than a misspelling gag and a few observations from Jinks, there sure isn’t much. The cartoon’s like one long set-up with not much of a punch line. But perhaps writer Warren Foster was going for mood and wanted viewers merely to get satisfaction that Jinks gets his comeuppance at the end.

After comparing the meeces’ singing to having a tail caught in a trap, Jinks declares: “Call me commercial if you wish but, uh, on my birthday, I want presents. P-R-E-Z-N-T-S. Gifts.” Ah, but the two did get Jinks a gift. He reads a card. “A present in your name has been sent to the National Foundation for Homeless Cats?” he asks. “Oh, yeah, great. I like, uh, nothin’ better than to have my present sent to a bunch of tramp cats.” With that, Jinks orders the meeces out of the house and tells them “My party is for my friends, which you two are not numbered among, like.”

A scene follows where Rocky, a dog who has whiskers (and one of Don Messick’s growly voices), learns the meeces aren’t invited to Jinks’ party and decides to get back at the cat because of it. So Rocky gets on the phone and makes a bunch of calls, pretending to be all of Jinks’ cat friends who bail on the party because of “laryn-gity-is.” Well, Malcolm also broke his leg. “Is your leg too bad to hobble over with my present?” Jinks asks. “Malcolm. Chee. Some name for a pussycat,” says Jinks after a loud unintelligible voice apparently says “no.” Foster apparently used names of the H-B staff for some of the cats, who are named Charlie, Malcolm, Joe (Barbera), Alex (Lovy), Bill (Hanna), José and Sam, who doesn’t have laryngitis. He has the measles.




So Jinks stacks all the plates back in the kitchen. “Some birthday. You know, uh, you think you have friends until the chips are down and it’s time for presents. Aw, why kid myself. I have no friends.” At that moment, the meeces appear in the window with noisemakers to wish Jinks a happy birthday. He’s touched and invited them in. The meeces then stand on Jinks’ cake and sing their little birthday song as the cat appears proud. I don’t know if I’d want footprints on my cake. Then again, Pixie and Dixie may not want a piece considering the cake has liverwurst frosting, ‘Happy Birthday’ spelled out in sardines and catnip sprinkled on top. Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door. It’s Jinks’ cat buddies with presents. One is a grey cat who sounds like Doug Young in the first sentence and Don Messick in the second. “You guys and your larynx-gityis-es! Beat it!” exclaims Jinks before he slams the door in their faces. Then he realises they showed up on time—and with his presents (Jinks comes down with a case of Instant Watch Syndrome, a common malady of cartoons where a character wears a watch only for the brief period it’s needed in the plot, but at no other time). The cartoon ends with a solo shot of Jinks running after his friends invited them back to the party. “Come back with my presents, you guy-uys!” he shouts, after telling us he hates those two meeces to pieces.




Only Jack Shaindlin and Spencer Moore’s cues are heard in this cartoon. The cue sheet is confusing because it reads that only 1:07 of LAF-93-2 (title unknown) was used. Either the sheet is missing a piece of music, the cue was edited into itself, or the time is wrong.

0:00 - Pixie and Dixie Main Title theme (Hanna-Barbera-Curtin-Shows).
0:22 - Meeces sing a birthday song.
0:28 - LAF-93-15 woodwind and strings (Shaindlin) – “Hold it!”, meeces sing again.
0:40 - LAF-93-2 comedy flute and quack cue (Shaindlin) – Jinks in basket, Jinks and meeces talk, meeces run out of house.
2:22 - L-78 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) – Meeces on lawn, talk to Rocky.
3:29 - LAF-27-6 UNTITLED TUNE (Shaindlin) – Rocky on phone, calls from Charlie and Malcolm.
4:45 - LAF-10-7 GROTESQUE No 2 (Shaindlin) – Calls from Joe, Sam.
5:23 - L-75 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) – Jinks in kitchen, meeces sing song.
5:59 - L-1139 ANIMATION COMEDY (Moore) – Knock at door, cats with presents, Jinks accuses meeces.
6:33 - LAF-74-2 LICKETY SPLIT (Shaindlin) – Jinks runs.
6:56 - Pixie and Dixie End Title theme (Curtin).

Mars, 1960

Outer space and futurism go hand-in-hand. I mean, you never see astronauts land on a planet where aliens are driving something that looks like a ‘51 Nash.

The Hanna-Barbera studio visualised the ultimate in futurism in The Jetsons, but it used futuristic designs in some of its earlier space cartoons. In fact, H-B’s first series, Ruff and Reddy began with a space adventure. Aliens invaded Jellystone Park in “Space Bear.” And Snooper and Blabber ended up on Mars in “Outer Space Case” (1960-61 season), a cartoon designed by Don Sheppard with scenes painted by Dick Thomas.



These buildings wouldn’t be too out of place in the Jetsons’ world. The grille on the oval speaker above the door isn’t in perspective but that’s not too big a deal.



Here are a couple of interiors. The kitchen isn’t as futuristic as Jane Jetson’s, but the floor’s nice and shiny. Unfortunately, I can’t get a clear shot of the hallway (the only two Mars interior backgrounds in the cartoon). But I like the painting of the King on the wall.



Here’s the planetary surface. Not terribly elaborate, but it doesn’t overpower the action.

The credits have been removed from all the old Jetsons episodes so I couldn’t tell you if Sheppard worked on the original series. He was a storyboard artist on the 1990 movie. Thomas eventually provided some backgrounds for the spacey-est of all ’60s TV cartoons: Spider Man’s “Revolt in the Fifth Dimension.”

Quick Draw McGraw — Bullet Proof Galoot

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Animation – Don Patterson, Layout - Dick Bickenbach, Backgrounds – Dick Thomas?, Story – Mike Maltese, Story Director – Alex Lovy, Titles – Art Goble, Production Supevision – Howard Hanson (no credits).
Voice Cast: Quick Draw, Baba Looey, Bank Teller – Daws Butler; Narrator, Townsman, Fast-Gun Finnegan, Little Man – Doug Young.
Music: Phil Green, Jack Shaindlin, Harry Bluestone/Emil Cadkin.
Episode: Quick Draw McGraw Show M-028, Production J-84.
First Aired: 1960.
Plot: Quick Draw tries to bring in a bad guy while dealing with a mechanical sheriff.

“Fight fire with fire, and tin with tin, I always say!” declares Quick Draw McGraw. And so, dressed in armour made from an old hot water heater (with pipes sticking out of his hat), our hero walks into battle, hand ready to reach for his gun—and take on the good guy.

Good guy?!? Yes, it’s another inspired story from Mike Maltese, who came up with the concept of a mechanical sheriff years before Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles—one that has a brain buried in that tin, as we discover. Quick Draw spends the cartoon trying to prove to a town that they need him as sheriff, even though it clearly doesn’t, and he wins in the end—but only temporarily.

Some of the poses are pretty nice. They’re by Don Patterson. I especially like how Quick Draw’s snout becomes pancaked by Clarence’s fist.



Here’s Baba’s mouth in an “o” shape as he yells “Yahoo!” The lips are stretched out forward, like something out of an early ‘30s cartoon from New York.



And here’s one of Patterson’s drawings of Quick Draw zipping out of the scene. The animation’s used twice in the cartoon.



The lack of credits is annoying. Who did the backgrounds? The clouds are like Art Lozzi’s but the two-tone mountains and mesas are the same as Dick Thomas drew in the Snooper and Blabber cartoon “Outer Space Case” (which does have credits). So, I’m going with Thomas. Note there’s a sign in this cartoon drawn like the one in “Bad Guys Disguise” in the first season.

Dick Bickenbach was the layout artist on that one, and he draws the townsman’s ear like he did Tombstone Jones in the earlier cartoon; it’s shaped like a fortune cookie. You’ll notice Baba’s eyes are closed like a baseless triangle dissected down the middle, typical of Patterson at Hanna-Barbera at the time.



And here’s part of the town we see at the beginning. It’s another one with pale rose-shadowed mountains in the background.



The cartoon opens with a pan over the background above, with Doug Young’s narration explaining that Fast-Gun Finnegan was tougher than Billy the Kid and the James boys, and “could not be brought to justice.” The narrator is interrupted by Quick Draw McGraw, who promises to do it. Baba Looey then adds that “any minutes now, Fast-Gun Finnegan will come a-runnin’ to give hisself up.” How? “You tell ‘im, Baba boy. I’m too modest. And don’t leave nothin’ out.” The cartoon now flash-backs to the morning when Quick Draw and Baba arrive in Peaceful Gulch, a town with no sheriff, and doesn’t need one, as Quick Draw is told when he applies for the job. Quick Draw decides to prove the town needs a sheriff by staging a fake bank hold-up so he can arrest the bandit. Baba to the audience: “I’ll give you one guess who’s going to be the bandit.”

“Now, remember,” Quick Draw says to Baba to start the next scene. “Shoot twice-t over your shoulder and yell ‘Yahoo’,” —the “sig-giginal” (Daws Butler’s word-bending at work again) for Quick Draw to make the phoney arrest. Baba gets nowhere. The bank teller pushes a button to activate Clarence, the mechanical sheriff. Baba gives the signal, but also fires his gun which brings down the bank sign on top of Quick Draw’s head, which gives him temporary amnesia (“Who am I? What am I? Besides bein’ good lookin’,”) and thus has no idea what the signal is. Clarence throws Baba on top of Quick Draw’s head to restore his memory.




Baba explains to Quick Draw the town has Clarence so they don’t need him as sheriff. “Hold on thar! Anybody named Clarence couldn’t be such a much.” Quick Draw goes to the entrance of the bank and ends up getting socked by the mechanical man, after thinking a teeny man coming out of the bank is Clarence and challenges him to a punch. The scene’s a little puzzling. The little man says “I couldn’t hit anybody,” says the meek man. My hands have small bones.” Quick Draw replies with “Now, don’t hurt your small-boned hand,” even though he can see the mechanical man in front of him; in fact, Clarence brushed off his nose. So I don’t understand why Quick Draw still mistakes one for the other. Catchphrase after the punch: “Ooo. That smarts!”

Catchphrase to start the next scene: “I’ll do the thinnin’ for both of us...” This is when Quick Draw dresses up in the stove outfit and shoots at Clarence. I love how Quick Draw is so satisfied with himself when he’s ravingly incompetent. The bullets just bounce off Clarence’s metal, but Quick Draw says “That’s pretty good shootin’, eh, Clarence?” The metal sheriff simply bends at 90 degrees, turns himself into a cannon and fires. We hear a bell sound effect when the cannon ball hits Quick Draw.



Oh, yes, Fast-Gun Finnegan. Now he shows up in the story to rob the bank. Quick Draw warns him about Clarence. “Anybody named Clarence couldn’t be such a much,” laughs Finnegan. The cartoon now returns to the present with Baba talking to the narrator. Just then, a clothing-torn Finnegan runs screaming to be locked up. Clarence isn’t around so the audience is left to assume what happened (saves animation, too). What’s Quick Draw going to do with the reward for the capture? Take apart Clarence bolt-by-bolt so he can be sheriff. Clarence may be mechanical, but he understands the situation and fires more cannon balls at Quick Draw. The cartoon ends with our hero running from a bunch of cannon balls toward “Arizony.” Baba’s tagline: “That’s what I like about Quickstraw. Once he finishes a job, he’s off to a new place. Whether he likes it or not.” Yeah, it’s not strong, or even a pun. But Maltese seems to have made a decision a quip from Baba should end all cartoons (it does in all 13 of them in the second season) so that’s what he came up with.

The sound cutter gives Clarence his own little theme. It’s Jack Shaindlin’s “Six Day Bicycle Race.” Phil Green dominates the rest of the soundtrack and we get a harmonica version of “Red River Valley” which may be from the Sam Fox library.

0:00 - Quick Draw McGraw Sub Main Title theme (Curtin).
0:15 - Red River Valley (Trad) – Pan of town, poster, “Hold on thar!”
0:30 - GR-99 THE DIDDLECOMB HUNT (Green) – Quick Draw talks to narrator, sign scene.
1:17 - GR-255 PUPPETRY COMEDY (Green) – Quick Draw talks to townsman, teller presses button.
2:23 - SIX-DAY BICYCLE RACE (Shaindlin) – Clarence rolls out, Quick Draw loses memory, regains memory.
3:04 - GR-87 SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD (Green) – “Hold on thar!” Quick Draw talks to little man, teller presses button.
4:06 - SIX DAY BICYCLE RACE (Shaindlin) – Clarence rolls out, clobbers Quick Draw.
4:24 - GR-87 SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD (Green)) – Quick Draw’s nose is pancake, Quick Draw as stovepipe.
5:04 - SIX DAY BICYCLE RACE (Shaindlin) – Clarence rolls out, cannon fire, Quick Draw talks to Finnegan.
6:04 - CB-87A COME AND GET ME (Cadkin-Bluestone) – Baba talks to narrator, Finnegan yells for help, Quick Draw with gun on Finnegan.
6:31 - SIX DAY BICYCLE RACE (Shaindlin) – Clarence rolls out, Quick Draw runs to Arizona, Baba talks to camera.
7:00 - Quick Draw McGraw Sub End Title theme (Curtin).