Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Lew Marshall; Layout – Paul Sommer; Backgrounds – Dick Thomas; Story – Warren Foster; Story Director – Alex Lovy; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Huckleberry Hound, Instructor, Herald (off-screen), Blond Knight, Moustached Knight, Grey-Haired Knight – Daws Butler; Narrator, King Arthur, Dragon, Bearded Knight, Brown-Haired Knight, One-Card Knight – Don Messick.
Music: Jack Shaindlin, Geordie Hormel, Bill Loose/John Seely, Spencer Moore.
Episode: Huckleberry Hound Show No. K-043, Production E-120.
First Aired: week of April 24, 1961.
Plot: Huck earns his membership in the Knights of the Round Table.
Huckleberry Hound is a pleasant guy so his cartoons are pleasant, even when there’s nothing uproariously funny going on. There are a few good moments in “Knight School,” but it’s not a laugh-out-loud fest. Still, the cartoon’s hard to dislike because Huck’s personable enough to carry it off.
“Knight School” consists of an introduction and three vignettes. The last one is a reworking of the Huck vs Dragon idea in the first season cartoon “Dragon-Slayer Huck,” which, frankly, was more enjoyable than this little film. It involved a contest between Huck and a funny fire-breathing dragon that sold dragon souvenirs. Here, the dialogue-less dragon burns Huck a couple of times before his flame gets put out (an almost predictable conclusion) and he runs away. The humour in this scene is fairly typical of Huck—it depends mainly on Warren Foster giving him funny lines for his commentary to the audience about what’s happening in the cartoon. “He’d make a ginger-peachy cigarette lighter,” Huck tells us and “You don’t frighten me, Mr. Dragon with all your smart-alecky flamin’ and roarin’.” But there’s also talk for the sake of talk. “I think I’d better get out of here,” Huck says. As he has turned around and is running away, we can already see he’s “getting out of here.” It’s dialogue for dialogue’s sake.
The first vignette comes after a nice establishing shot of a Dick Thomas background (with transparent clouds) and a narrator telling us young men from far and wide desired to be knights of the Round Table. Huck corrects the narrator. He doesn’t want to become one. “I was drafted,” he says. I didn’t realise there was a draft at the time the cartoon was made that would be the subject of humour.
Huck goes to the Knight School that’s the title of the cartoon. “Hmm. Knight school in the daytime. It’s gettin’ confusin’ already,” he inevitably puns to us. “Private” Huck gets crushed a couple of times and comments to the camera. Foster pulls out the old “Just call me Shorty” line. The instructor has Daws Butler’s Phil Silvers voice except he adds kind of an English tinge to it at times. The vignette ends with a scene a fight we don’t see (it’s off-stage) that’s indicated by sounds and a shaking camera. But there is animation; Lew Marshall has the English sergeant turn to the camera and give us a goofy look. Huck wins the fight. Turns out a fat guy fell on him and by the time he got up, the rest had of the would-be knights beat each other up.
So the King knights Huck and leaves him with a bump on the head. “You ever think about usin’ an aluminum sword, sir?” Huck asks.
The second vignette is the best. The knights cut cards and the high-card holder must slay the fire-breathing dragon of Shropshire. “Thanks, your majesty,” says the nervous Huck, “But I never play cards.” Huck draws a three. But it turns out to be the high card. Three knights draw twos. One draws a one. Not an ace. A one. The card has a one on it.
The third vignette has the dragon non-fight and then the wind-up scene has another card-cutting for the honour of doing battle with an ogre in Chettingham. Huck is ready this time. “You know, you cain’t have a card lower than a zero,” he tells us as he pulls out a card with a zero on it. Ah, but this time, the low number goes. “Shucks. No wonder they use a round table. Nothin’s on the square around here,” laments Huck. And, with that, the cartoon ends.
The artwork is serviceable. Lew Marshall’s nose-bobs, though not as pronounced as in Huck’s first season, are still there. He avoids anything resembling a medium-sized take. When the sergeant is shocked to see Huck has survived the fight amongst the would-be knights, the guard’s eyes don’t grow big. Marshall merely has the guard lift his head up two positions with a blank expression (two frames per drawing), close his eyes for three frames then drop his head back down to where to was before. Marshall saves drawing, too. When the dragon shoots flames out of his nostrils at Huck, the drawings of the the dragon are merely flipped over and inked on the other side. Sommer’s layouts are never daring; his character designs and props work fine (though he has an Englishman wearing American sergeant stripes in the Middle Ages). I like his chairs and red drapes in the chamber of the round table. Dick Thomas takes the time to put a varnish shine on the various background drawings of the table.
I suspect the knights are not marked individually in the script. Two of the knights change voices in mid-scene; one talks like Daws Butler then Don Messick later in the scene and the other vice versa.
The sound cutter edits the stock music, when necessary, so it fits in a scene. Hanna-Barbera used three of the cues from the X-9 reel that contained Olde England-invoking cues and they’re all in this cartoon.
0:00 - Huckleberry Hound Sub Main Title Theme (Curtin).
0:22 - ZR-126 ENGLISH MAIN TITLE (Hormel) – Opening narration scene.
1:00 - LAF-10-7 GROTESQUE No. 2 (Shaindlin) – Huck reads sign, shield scene, helmet scene.
2:23 - LAF-25-3 bassoon and zig zag strings (Shaindlin) – graduate fight scene.
3:01 - ZR-103 PERIOD MAIN TITLE (Hormel) – Huck knighted.
3:23 - TC-303 ZANY COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Knights at table, card cutting scene.
4:44 - C-19 LIGHT ACTIVITY (Loose) – Huck on horse.
5:11 - ZR-127 PERIOD CHASE (Hormel) – Dragon appears, attacks Huck, Huck jumps in lake.
6:00 - L-78 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) – Dragon puts head in lake, Huck: “And what do they do?”
6:23 - ZR-48 FAST MOVEMENT (Hormel) – Dragon runs away.
6:31 - LAF-25-3 bassoon and zig zag strings (Shaindlin) – Huck at round table.
7:00 - HUCKLEBERRY HOUND SUB END TITLE THEME (Curtin).
Saturday, 31 August 2013
Wednesday, 28 August 2013
Hunter Huck Storyboard
Here’s a post where we get to combine two fun things—storyboards and the little cartoons between the cartoons on the old half-hour syndicated shows.
Here are storyboard drawings I snagged a long time ago for one of the Huck bumpers. I’ve blown them up about as much as I can before they get too fuzzy. Notice some colour instructions. I don’t know who the artist is; it don’t think it’s Dan Gordon or Warren Foster. Huck looks pretty good here. I like the poses on Jinks. He was funnier in these mini-cartoons than he was in some of the longer ones. (Note: see the comment section for more on this).
These little cartoons added a lot to the enjoyment of watching the Huck, Yogi or Quick Draw half hours. If you’ve seen the Huck DVD, you’ll notice more care was put into animating some of them than the actual cartoons; there’s far more body movement. Here’s one you’ve probably seen before. I’ve been told Ed Love animated this and others, although he did no cartoons in Huck’s first season, and his style is a lot jerkier in his first H-B cartoons (see Mike Kazaleh’s comment on who actually animated this).
Here are storyboard drawings I snagged a long time ago for one of the Huck bumpers. I’ve blown them up about as much as I can before they get too fuzzy. Notice some colour instructions. I don’t know who the artist is; it don’t think it’s Dan Gordon or Warren Foster. Huck looks pretty good here. I like the poses on Jinks. He was funnier in these mini-cartoons than he was in some of the longer ones. (Note: see the comment section for more on this).
These little cartoons added a lot to the enjoyment of watching the Huck, Yogi or Quick Draw half hours. If you’ve seen the Huck DVD, you’ll notice more care was put into animating some of them than the actual cartoons; there’s far more body movement. Here’s one you’ve probably seen before. I’ve been told Ed Love animated this and others, although he did no cartoons in Huck’s first season, and his style is a lot jerkier in his first H-B cartoons (see Mike Kazaleh’s comment on who actually animated this).
Saturday, 24 August 2013
Pixie and Dixie — Missile Bound Cat
Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Lew Marshall, Layout – Tony Rivera, Backgrounds – Dick Thomas, Story – Warren Foster, Story Director – Alex Lovy, Titles – Art Goble, Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Mr Jinks, Dixie, Space Cat – Daws Butler; Pixie, TV Announcer, Captain Mouse, Dispatcher, Exalted Leader – Don Messick.
Music: Bill Loose/John Seely, Jack Shaindlin, Phil Green, Roger Roger, Raoul Kraushaar?, unknown.
Episode: Huckleberry Hound Show K-48?
First aired: week of January 30, 1961 (rerun, week of June 12, 1961).
Plot: Mr Jinks discovers that Pixie and Dixie’s TV hero, Space Cat, is real.
Warren Foster has all the elements of a good story in “Missile Bound Cat,” but something goes wrong. And I don’t mean the fact there’s no missile in the cartoon.
The climax simply doesn’t deliver as well as it could. Mr. Jinks is brought before the mouse king of the cat planet. But there’s no real confrontation that builds between the two characters. Jinks simply grabs a broom and chases him. It’s like Foster realised he was running out of time so he had to wrap up the cartoon as soon as possible. And then he adds a second chase by the character Space Cat. Sorry, Warren, you’ve already pulled the gag. Granted, he included it to set up the final scene, though it would have worked just as well with Jinks handing Space Cat the broom and, implying the cat, fading to the final scene. The actual chase doesn’t make the scene funnier.
Well, perhaps I’m being hyper-critical. Jinks gets in a few good lines and Lew Marshall tosses in some effective, though not elaborate, poses. Jinks emulates Daffy Duck in “This is a Life?” (released by Warner Bros., 1955) by saying “Easy, stomach” to himself. Hmm. Come to think of it, the writer of that cartoon was. . .
Dick Thomas is the background artist and sticks to a traditional colour scheme. Wood is brown, the sky is blue, bushes are green, brick walls are grey and the TV is black-and-white. I like his shades of blue in outer space as Space Cat drags Jinks toward his planet. Space Cat blasts off, so supposedly he has a jet pack, but we don’t see one or a trail of exhaust. Saves money animating it, you know. Tony Rivera handled the layouts so he designed Space Cat and his effective disintegrator gun.
The story premise is a good one. Pixie and Dixie have a favourite TV show—“Space Cat.” This cat goes around protecting mice. “Only those whose, uh, mentality has, like, been arrested would watch such drivel,” Jinks tells us after being woken up the noisy Space Cat theme. The meeces tell Jinks that Space Cat is their hero. “Space Cat is, like, just an imaginary from your figment. . . . You meece and your idiotcyncracies,” insists Jinks, who sets out to prove Space Cat isn’t real by yelling a challenge to him out the window. Jinks then chases the meeces with a green broom (he never does hit them) then shouts more defiance to Space Cat out the window.
“Your hero is a zero,” says Jinks to Pixie and Dixie. But the scene is interrupted by thunder, with grey, white and black cards inserted between frames of Jinks to simulate lightning. There’s a breeze sound effect and Marshall draws a little cycle of three drawings of Pixie and Dixie’s heads with their eyes closed, indicating the wind is blowing them back into their hole. Space Cat then slides (without moving his feet) into the scene next to Jinks. Foster saves his best dialogue for now. “That, stranger, is, uh, a pip of an entrance,” says Jinks, “And don’t let anybody tell you diff-er-ent.” Jinks then makes fun of him. “Let me clue you in, Spacerooni-boy. You need a good tailor. Padded shoulders is out. Like hula hoops.” Space Cat responds by making Jinks’ head invisible with a disintegrator gun (shouldn’t his head disintegrate?) but makes it reappear with an atomiser bulb at the request of the meece (the sound editor wisely has Jinks’ voice muffled when his head is invisible).
Space Cat decides to take Jinks back to his planet so the leader can decide his fate. So now we reach the climax scene where the leader is revealed to be a mouse who demands that Jinks kneel. At that point, Jinks grabs a convenient broom and starts chasing the king. Space Cat smiles. “Say! That looks like fun,” says Space Cat, who tries to clobber the expressionless king with the broom. That’s right. No shouting, crying in fear, nothing. Marshall just draws a six-drawing running cycle of the mute mouse with only the feet moving, flipping the drawings over the second time so he can run in the other direction. Pretty lame.
Somehow, Jinks is back on Earth for the final scene, where he pretends to be asleep as Pixie and Dixie are about to watch their favourite show. They’re shocked to see Space Cat chasing the king on the screen. Well, “shock” is them shaking their heads and looking at the screen blankly. Not even a mild take, let alone a wild one. They’re interrupted by Jinks and his broom, who proposes “a rerun. Like, live.” This gives Jinks a chance to sound off with his “hate meeces to pieces” catchphrase just before the iris closes.
There are some odd choices and inspired ones when it comes to the stock music used in this cartoon. Space Cat has his own little fanfare and percussion theme but I can’t find it in my collection. There’s a nice little chase theme when Space Cat comes to the rescue of Captain Mouse and I suspect it’s on a Capitol Hi-Q ‘D’ Series reel I’m missing; it sounds similar to other cues I have and I believe it was used in one other cartoon. The cartoon inexplicably opens with Roger Roger’s “Chopsticks” which doesn’t seem to fit. And what I think is a mysterioso theme by Raoul Kraushaar is put underneath a chase scene where the counterpoint oboes don’t work at all. During the King Mouse chase scene, another unfamiliar cue is heard which sounds like Jack Shaindlin’s work.
0:00 - Pixie and Dixie Main Title theme (Hanna-Barbera-Curtin-Shows).
0:14 - CHOPSTICKS (Roger) – Pixie and Dixie wake up, Jinks snores.
0:30 - Period Fanfare (?) – Jinks wakes up, Pixie and Dixie watch TV, Jinks clenches fists.
0:48 - EM-147 DOCUMENTARY MAIN TITLE (Green) – Jinks talks to camera, Mouse captain cries to be saved.
1:15 - dramatic chase cue (?) – “Hold on, Captain Mouse,” … “arrived just in time.”
1:28 - Period Fanfare (?) – Announcer, “easy stomach.”
1:38 - EM-147 DOCUMENTARY MAIN TITLE (Green) – “Tune in next week,” “protect mice from harm.”
2:02 - TC-204A WISTFUL COMEDY (Loose-Seely) - Jinks “proves” there is no Space Cat.
2:31 - creepy reverb trumpet music (Raoul Kraushaar?) – Jinks looks at meeces, chases them with broom, yells out window.
3:01 - L-81 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) – Jinks turns to meeces in hole, lightning, “Pixie, look!”
3:24 - Period Fanfare (?) – Jinks blows in wind, Space Cat enters.
3:29 - creepy reverb trumpet music (Raoul Kraushaar?) – Jinks complements Space Cat on entry, Jinks head disintegrated.
4:02 - LAF-25-3 zig zag strings and bassoon (Shaindlin) – Meeces plead, Space Cat and Jinks blast off.
4:36 - LAF-5-20 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) – Space Cat and Jinks in space.
4:47 - TC-432 HOLLY DAY (Loose-Seely) – Jinks in throne room, grabs broom.
5:18 - busy street scene music (Shaindlin?) – Jinks chases King, Space Cat chases King.
5:48 - creepy reverb trumpet music (Raoul Kraushaar?) – Jinks chuckles, “back to earth.”
5:57 - LAF-27-6 UNTITLED TUNE (Shaindlin) – Jinks snoozing, Pixie and Dixie talk.
6:11 - Period Fanfare (?) – TV announcer, meece shake head.
6:18 - dramatic chase cue (?) – Space Cat on TV, Pixie and Dixie shake heads
6:34 - LAF-7-12 FUN ON ICE (Shandlin) - Jinks with broom, hates meeces, chuckles.
6:58 - Pixie and Dixie End Title theme (Curtin).
Credits: Animation – Lew Marshall, Layout – Tony Rivera, Backgrounds – Dick Thomas, Story – Warren Foster, Story Director – Alex Lovy, Titles – Art Goble, Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Mr Jinks, Dixie, Space Cat – Daws Butler; Pixie, TV Announcer, Captain Mouse, Dispatcher, Exalted Leader – Don Messick.
Music: Bill Loose/John Seely, Jack Shaindlin, Phil Green, Roger Roger, Raoul Kraushaar?, unknown.
Episode: Huckleberry Hound Show K-48?
First aired: week of January 30, 1961 (rerun, week of June 12, 1961).
Plot: Mr Jinks discovers that Pixie and Dixie’s TV hero, Space Cat, is real.
Warren Foster has all the elements of a good story in “Missile Bound Cat,” but something goes wrong. And I don’t mean the fact there’s no missile in the cartoon.
The climax simply doesn’t deliver as well as it could. Mr. Jinks is brought before the mouse king of the cat planet. But there’s no real confrontation that builds between the two characters. Jinks simply grabs a broom and chases him. It’s like Foster realised he was running out of time so he had to wrap up the cartoon as soon as possible. And then he adds a second chase by the character Space Cat. Sorry, Warren, you’ve already pulled the gag. Granted, he included it to set up the final scene, though it would have worked just as well with Jinks handing Space Cat the broom and, implying the cat, fading to the final scene. The actual chase doesn’t make the scene funnier.
Well, perhaps I’m being hyper-critical. Jinks gets in a few good lines and Lew Marshall tosses in some effective, though not elaborate, poses. Jinks emulates Daffy Duck in “This is a Life?” (released by Warner Bros., 1955) by saying “Easy, stomach” to himself. Hmm. Come to think of it, the writer of that cartoon was. . .
Dick Thomas is the background artist and sticks to a traditional colour scheme. Wood is brown, the sky is blue, bushes are green, brick walls are grey and the TV is black-and-white. I like his shades of blue in outer space as Space Cat drags Jinks toward his planet. Space Cat blasts off, so supposedly he has a jet pack, but we don’t see one or a trail of exhaust. Saves money animating it, you know. Tony Rivera handled the layouts so he designed Space Cat and his effective disintegrator gun.
The story premise is a good one. Pixie and Dixie have a favourite TV show—“Space Cat.” This cat goes around protecting mice. “Only those whose, uh, mentality has, like, been arrested would watch such drivel,” Jinks tells us after being woken up the noisy Space Cat theme. The meeces tell Jinks that Space Cat is their hero. “Space Cat is, like, just an imaginary from your figment. . . . You meece and your idiotcyncracies,” insists Jinks, who sets out to prove Space Cat isn’t real by yelling a challenge to him out the window. Jinks then chases the meeces with a green broom (he never does hit them) then shouts more defiance to Space Cat out the window.
“Your hero is a zero,” says Jinks to Pixie and Dixie. But the scene is interrupted by thunder, with grey, white and black cards inserted between frames of Jinks to simulate lightning. There’s a breeze sound effect and Marshall draws a little cycle of three drawings of Pixie and Dixie’s heads with their eyes closed, indicating the wind is blowing them back into their hole. Space Cat then slides (without moving his feet) into the scene next to Jinks. Foster saves his best dialogue for now. “That, stranger, is, uh, a pip of an entrance,” says Jinks, “And don’t let anybody tell you diff-er-ent.” Jinks then makes fun of him. “Let me clue you in, Spacerooni-boy. You need a good tailor. Padded shoulders is out. Like hula hoops.” Space Cat responds by making Jinks’ head invisible with a disintegrator gun (shouldn’t his head disintegrate?) but makes it reappear with an atomiser bulb at the request of the meece (the sound editor wisely has Jinks’ voice muffled when his head is invisible).
Space Cat decides to take Jinks back to his planet so the leader can decide his fate. So now we reach the climax scene where the leader is revealed to be a mouse who demands that Jinks kneel. At that point, Jinks grabs a convenient broom and starts chasing the king. Space Cat smiles. “Say! That looks like fun,” says Space Cat, who tries to clobber the expressionless king with the broom. That’s right. No shouting, crying in fear, nothing. Marshall just draws a six-drawing running cycle of the mute mouse with only the feet moving, flipping the drawings over the second time so he can run in the other direction. Pretty lame.
Somehow, Jinks is back on Earth for the final scene, where he pretends to be asleep as Pixie and Dixie are about to watch their favourite show. They’re shocked to see Space Cat chasing the king on the screen. Well, “shock” is them shaking their heads and looking at the screen blankly. Not even a mild take, let alone a wild one. They’re interrupted by Jinks and his broom, who proposes “a rerun. Like, live.” This gives Jinks a chance to sound off with his “hate meeces to pieces” catchphrase just before the iris closes.
There are some odd choices and inspired ones when it comes to the stock music used in this cartoon. Space Cat has his own little fanfare and percussion theme but I can’t find it in my collection. There’s a nice little chase theme when Space Cat comes to the rescue of Captain Mouse and I suspect it’s on a Capitol Hi-Q ‘D’ Series reel I’m missing; it sounds similar to other cues I have and I believe it was used in one other cartoon. The cartoon inexplicably opens with Roger Roger’s “Chopsticks” which doesn’t seem to fit. And what I think is a mysterioso theme by Raoul Kraushaar is put underneath a chase scene where the counterpoint oboes don’t work at all. During the King Mouse chase scene, another unfamiliar cue is heard which sounds like Jack Shaindlin’s work.
0:00 - Pixie and Dixie Main Title theme (Hanna-Barbera-Curtin-Shows).
0:14 - CHOPSTICKS (Roger) – Pixie and Dixie wake up, Jinks snores.
0:30 - Period Fanfare (?) – Jinks wakes up, Pixie and Dixie watch TV, Jinks clenches fists.
0:48 - EM-147 DOCUMENTARY MAIN TITLE (Green) – Jinks talks to camera, Mouse captain cries to be saved.
1:15 - dramatic chase cue (?) – “Hold on, Captain Mouse,” … “arrived just in time.”
1:28 - Period Fanfare (?) – Announcer, “easy stomach.”
1:38 - EM-147 DOCUMENTARY MAIN TITLE (Green) – “Tune in next week,” “protect mice from harm.”
2:02 - TC-204A WISTFUL COMEDY (Loose-Seely) - Jinks “proves” there is no Space Cat.
2:31 - creepy reverb trumpet music (Raoul Kraushaar?) – Jinks looks at meeces, chases them with broom, yells out window.
3:01 - L-81 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) – Jinks turns to meeces in hole, lightning, “Pixie, look!”
3:24 - Period Fanfare (?) – Jinks blows in wind, Space Cat enters.
3:29 - creepy reverb trumpet music (Raoul Kraushaar?) – Jinks complements Space Cat on entry, Jinks head disintegrated.
4:02 - LAF-25-3 zig zag strings and bassoon (Shaindlin) – Meeces plead, Space Cat and Jinks blast off.
4:36 - LAF-5-20 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) – Space Cat and Jinks in space.
4:47 - TC-432 HOLLY DAY (Loose-Seely) – Jinks in throne room, grabs broom.
5:18 - busy street scene music (Shaindlin?) – Jinks chases King, Space Cat chases King.
5:48 - creepy reverb trumpet music (Raoul Kraushaar?) – Jinks chuckles, “back to earth.”
5:57 - LAF-27-6 UNTITLED TUNE (Shaindlin) – Jinks snoozing, Pixie and Dixie talk.
6:11 - Period Fanfare (?) – TV announcer, meece shake head.
6:18 - dramatic chase cue (?) – Space Cat on TV, Pixie and Dixie shake heads
6:34 - LAF-7-12 FUN ON ICE (Shandlin) - Jinks with broom, hates meeces, chuckles.
6:58 - Pixie and Dixie End Title theme (Curtin).
Thursday, 22 August 2013
Yogi Bear Weekend Comics, August 1963
The old “tie-a-tooth-to-the-door” routine must date to silent films. It gets trotted out by the author of a Yogi Bear comic strip that appeared in weekend newspapers 50 years ago this month. We also get a “boing” and a “voing,” but no guest appearances from other Hanna-Barbera characters.
Kids in these comics were almost never neutral. They were either syrupy nice or real jerks. We get a real jerk in the August 4th comic. The oddest thing is he grows in size in the last panel.
Yogi leads Ranger Smith on a wild goose chase for the sake of a corny pun on August 11th. I’m presuming this is a Harvey Eisenberg comic by the angular fir trees in the last panel and the cute little squirrel observing things in the first one. Note how Yogi’s gestures change from panel to panel. Somehow, Jellystone Park is high in the mountains, but also on the ocean, as there’s a guy with a surfboard.
Oh, Cindy Bear! Yogi is fooling around on the side yet he can’t help it, as the final panel of the August 18th comic shows. The gag fits Yogi’s character nicely. Lots of wavy lined-mouths and little tongues.
If I had to guess, I’d say Harvey Eisenberg also drew the August 25th comic with Yogi in a variety of nice poses. You can’t tell too well (Heh. A Yogi rhyme) from the lousy copy of this drawing that the Hanna-Barbera copyright notice is on the side of the Acme Transfer truck in the last panel. If anyone knows more about who drew what, please leave a note. It’s not exactly an area where I’m very knowledgeable.
You can click on each comic to try to get a better look. Again, I don’t have good newspaper source copies for these and these versions were the best I could find out of maybe a half dozen. You can see 2/3rds of each in colour, as usual, as at Mark Kausler’s blog.
Kids in these comics were almost never neutral. They were either syrupy nice or real jerks. We get a real jerk in the August 4th comic. The oddest thing is he grows in size in the last panel.
Yogi leads Ranger Smith on a wild goose chase for the sake of a corny pun on August 11th. I’m presuming this is a Harvey Eisenberg comic by the angular fir trees in the last panel and the cute little squirrel observing things in the first one. Note how Yogi’s gestures change from panel to panel. Somehow, Jellystone Park is high in the mountains, but also on the ocean, as there’s a guy with a surfboard.
Oh, Cindy Bear! Yogi is fooling around on the side yet he can’t help it, as the final panel of the August 18th comic shows. The gag fits Yogi’s character nicely. Lots of wavy lined-mouths and little tongues.
If I had to guess, I’d say Harvey Eisenberg also drew the August 25th comic with Yogi in a variety of nice poses. You can’t tell too well (Heh. A Yogi rhyme) from the lousy copy of this drawing that the Hanna-Barbera copyright notice is on the side of the Acme Transfer truck in the last panel. If anyone knows more about who drew what, please leave a note. It’s not exactly an area where I’m very knowledgeable.
You can click on each comic to try to get a better look. Again, I don’t have good newspaper source copies for these and these versions were the best I could find out of maybe a half dozen. You can see 2/3rds of each in colour, as usual, as at Mark Kausler’s blog.
Tuesday, 20 August 2013
Chicken Coop of Crushing Pain
Shake-takes fell out of favour at Hanna-Barbera fairly quickly, and I don’t know why. You find them sprinkled throughout the first season of The Huckleberry Hound Show and only rarely after that. Maybe it had to do with the arrival of Mike Maltese, Warren Foster and Alex Lovy at the studio; stories got an awful lot more talky after that. Or maybe the takes were deemed too old-fashioned or clichéd.
Carlo Vinci and Mike Lah were masters of these kinds of takes. Carlo wasn’t far removed from a 20-year career at Terrytoons and sometimes his artwork looks like it would fit in a Mighty Mouse cartoon with its thick ink-lines and unusual proportions. But he came up with some fun drawings.
Here’s a Carlo take from “Cock-a-Doodle Huck.” A fox reaches into a chicken coop to grab a chicken. Instead, farmer Huck bashes his hand (paw?) with a hammer. The fox reacts in pain.
Here are the anticipation drawings.
Then, the fox stretches in pain. Carlo re-uses some of the drawings, but they’re not in a cycle. They’re exposed on twos.
And then the take ends.
Within a couple of years, a take in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon consisted of barely stretching the eyes into a large oval and opening the mouth. It’s like the cartoons regressed back to the mid-‘30s. Imagine how much funnier the later H-B cartoons would have been if animal characters had similar types of takes as the one above.
Here’s a look at Carlo’s animation slowed down (though not all that well). Unfortunately, you have to put up with the jerky sound; I couldn’t mute it when making this clip.
Carlo Vinci and Mike Lah were masters of these kinds of takes. Carlo wasn’t far removed from a 20-year career at Terrytoons and sometimes his artwork looks like it would fit in a Mighty Mouse cartoon with its thick ink-lines and unusual proportions. But he came up with some fun drawings.
Here’s a Carlo take from “Cock-a-Doodle Huck.” A fox reaches into a chicken coop to grab a chicken. Instead, farmer Huck bashes his hand (paw?) with a hammer. The fox reacts in pain.
Here are the anticipation drawings.
Then, the fox stretches in pain. Carlo re-uses some of the drawings, but they’re not in a cycle. They’re exposed on twos.
And then the take ends.
Within a couple of years, a take in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon consisted of barely stretching the eyes into a large oval and opening the mouth. It’s like the cartoons regressed back to the mid-‘30s. Imagine how much funnier the later H-B cartoons would have been if animal characters had similar types of takes as the one above.
Here’s a look at Carlo’s animation slowed down (though not all that well). Unfortunately, you have to put up with the jerky sound; I couldn’t mute it when making this clip.
Saturday, 17 August 2013
Quick Draw McGraw — Two Too Much
Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: none. Animation – Ed Love, Layout – Walt Clinton, Backgrounds – Fernando Montealegre?, Story – Mike Maltese, Story Director – Alex Lovy, Titles – Art Goble, Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Narrator, Billy the Kidder – Don Messick, Horse Face Harry – Doug Young; Quick Draw, Baba Looey, Warden – Daws Butler.
Music: Phil Green, Jack Shaindlin, Hoyt Curtin.
Episode: Quick Draw McGraw Show M-029, Production J-85.
First aired: week of January 30, 1961.
Plot: Horse Face Harry, the unspeakable outlaw, looks exactly like the heroic mainstay of law and order, Quick Draw, and the lawman discovers a way to turn this to his advantage (LA Times summary).
One of my favourite bits of Quick Draw dialogue is in this cartoon:
Warden: Can you do it, Quick Draw?
Quick Draw: Can a swim duck?
Actually, there are a few other pieces of fun, silly dialogue sprinkled throughout the cartoon. A shame it ended on a weak pun. Mike Maltese seems to have set up a Quick Draw template whereby Baba Looey had to have the last word of the cartoon while looking at the camera. It was simply up to Maltese to fill in the blank with whatever he could think of.
This is the third and final appearance of Horse Face Harry. Too bad, because he was a good character. There’s a bit of confusion about his name. A ‘Wanted’ poster in this cartoon calls him “Hoss-Face.” The voice actors use both “hoss” and “horse.” I’ve never seen the dialogue sheets, so I’m going with “horse.”
There are no credits on the versions of this cartoon I have but it’s easy to pick out the animator. Ed Love likes little weird mouth shapes in dialogue. And Horse Face’s evil, toothy grin reminds me of what Ed did with Buzz Buzzard as the end of the Woody Woodpecker cartoon “Drooler’s Delight” about 10 years earlier.
Walt Clinton is the layout artist. You can tell with the collar-height ears of the incidental characters.
I won’t try to identify the background artist. I like the toned clouds; several H-B artists seem to have used this effect. I also like the idea of Billy the Kidder’s hideout being labelled “Hide Out.”
But a pretty basic background drawing of the Western State Penitentiary opens the cartoon.
Maltese gets into the silly dialogue right away. The narrator explains the notorious bank robber Billy the Kidder has been captured and is being grilled by the prison warden about the location of stolen money.
Warden: Tell ya what. Talk, and you’ll get barbecued prairie dog every Sunday. Oh, joy!
Billy: With sagebrush dumplin’s?
Warden: Yes!
Billy: And tumbleweed pie?
Warden: Yes, yes!
Billy: No, thanks. I’m not hungry.
Yeah, it’s not as ridiculous as Maltese’s “Rabbit au gratin de gelatin under tooled leather” from the Warner’s cartoon Rabbit Fire, but it’s suitably Western.
Warden Lock N. Keys locks away Billy for 99 years but gets an idea to con Billy into divulging the location of the stolen money, upon seeing a wanted poster for Billy’s partner, Horse Face Harry, and noticing the resemblance to Quick Draw McGraw (“I get it. You want me to impersonate this handsome fellow,” says Quick Draw). As an added touch, the warden sings the Quick Draw McGraw theme song while on the phone trying to reach our hero. Quick Draw’s main concern about being in the same cells as Billy: “I hope he doesn’t snore.” What about Baba Looey? “I don’t look like Horse Face Harry,” he protests. “I look like my grandmother.”
So off to jail goes Quick Draw as Horse Face who’s “meaner than a barrel of angry wildcats.” Quick Draw gives us a wildcat snarl for good measure. Typical Ed Love mouth drawing; unfortunately Ed’s stuff got toned down as Hanna-Barbera cartoons got toned down. Baba Looey breaks the two out of jail and they make a run for the hideout. “Hello, there, Hide Out,” says Quick Draw when Billy introduces him to the shack. Quick Draw asks Billy to get him “some hot bank money...Over easy.”
“As fickle fate would have it,” the narrator begins, the real Horse Face shows up at the hideout. So the rest of the cartoon involves no one being able to tell Horse Face and Quick Draw apart. Billy hands the bag of stolen money to Horse Face and then runs back and forth between the two in different rooms of the hideout. “Must be that cactus cough medicine I’ve been takin’,” says the confused Billy, who decides to go back to jail and runs through the shack’s wall to get there. Then Baba thinks Horse Face is Quick Draw, thinking the heat is responsible for the change in voice (Horse Face is voiced by Doug Young). Baba grabs the cash (“Hey! He stole my stolen money!” yells Horse Face) and more identity confusion follows with Horse Face finally walking away with the money head to “San Francisco and a good time” (reminiscent of the bad guy in Quick Draw’s “Riverboat Shuffled” who announces he heading “to New Orleans, the Mardi Gras and some jolly fun”).
Quick Draw skids into the scene. “Where’s the money?” he asks Baba. “You just took it,” he replies, “And there you go, Quickstraw.” “Hold on thar, Quick Draw McGraw!” shouts our hero. “Drat! It’s the good-lookin’ buttinsky Quick Draw McGraw,” opines Horse Face. Now the Warden appears and there’s still more confusion, which carries on to the end of the cartoon with Quick Draw and Horse Face both yelling “I’m Quick Draw McGraw” at each other. Maltese may have been tempted to finish the gag with a “rabbit season/duck season” turnabout like he wrote at Warner Bros. but Quick Draw simply isn’t a bright enough character to carry it off. Instead, he prefers to let them argue with Baba adding a weak pun gag line: “You know something? I think I am quickly withdrawing. Adios!” And the cartoon ends.
I mentioned the Quick Draw theme on the piano making a quick appearance on the soundtrack. The rest of the music is pretty familiar.
0:00 - Quick Draw McGraw Sub Main Title theme (Curtin).
0:15 - GR-348 EARLY MORNING (Green) – Opening narration.
0:33 - GR-96 BY JIMINY! IT’S JUMBO (Green) – Warden grills Billy the Kidder, dials phone.
1:15 - (THAT’S) QUICK DRAW McGRAW (Curtin) – Warden sings Quick Draw theme.
1:21 - GR-357 DR QUACK SHORT BRIDGE No 1 (Green) – “Why none other than Quick Draw McGraw.”
1:26 - GR-472 HICKSVILLE (Green) – Quick Draw-Baba-Warden scene.
2:22 - GR-96 BY JIMINY! IT’S JUMBO (Green) – Quick Draw walks to cell.
2:35 - GR-99 THE DIDDLECOMB HUNT (Green) – Quick Draw put in cell, Baba saws window bars.
2:59 - LFU-117-1 MAD RUSH No 1 (Shaindlin) – Quick Draw, Baba and Billy run.
3:07 - GR-99 THE DIDDLECOMB HUNT (Green) – Quick Draw outside hideout, Billy goes to get money.
3:28 - CAPERS (Shaindlin) – Horse Face walks, shoots at Billy.
3:51 - ‘FIREMAN’ (Shaindlin) – Billy skids into room with Quick Draw, Billy goes back and forth, runs through wall.
4:26 - CRAZY GOOF (Shaindlin) – Horse Face has money, talks to Baba, Baba grabs money and runs.
4:50 - fast circus chase music (Shaindlin) – “Hey!” Horse Face falls in cellar, Baba walks out of room.
5:06 - CRAZY GOOF (Shaindlin) – Baba and Quick Draw talk about money, Baba runs out.
5:29 - fast circus chase music (Shaindlin) – Horse Face grabs money, Baba realises who it is, Warden shoots at Quick Draw.
6:24 - CRAZY GOOF (Shaindlin) – (Shaindlin) – “Hold on thar, Warden!” Quick Draw and Horse Face argue.
6:36 - GR-79 CUSTARD PIE CAPERS BRIDGE No 2 (Green) – Baba talks to camera.
6:44 - Quick Draw McGraw Sub End Title theme (Curtin).
Credits: none. Animation – Ed Love, Layout – Walt Clinton, Backgrounds – Fernando Montealegre?, Story – Mike Maltese, Story Director – Alex Lovy, Titles – Art Goble, Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Narrator, Billy the Kidder – Don Messick, Horse Face Harry – Doug Young; Quick Draw, Baba Looey, Warden – Daws Butler.
Music: Phil Green, Jack Shaindlin, Hoyt Curtin.
Episode: Quick Draw McGraw Show M-029, Production J-85.
First aired: week of January 30, 1961.
Plot: Horse Face Harry, the unspeakable outlaw, looks exactly like the heroic mainstay of law and order, Quick Draw, and the lawman discovers a way to turn this to his advantage (LA Times summary).
One of my favourite bits of Quick Draw dialogue is in this cartoon:
Warden: Can you do it, Quick Draw?
Quick Draw: Can a swim duck?
Actually, there are a few other pieces of fun, silly dialogue sprinkled throughout the cartoon. A shame it ended on a weak pun. Mike Maltese seems to have set up a Quick Draw template whereby Baba Looey had to have the last word of the cartoon while looking at the camera. It was simply up to Maltese to fill in the blank with whatever he could think of.
This is the third and final appearance of Horse Face Harry. Too bad, because he was a good character. There’s a bit of confusion about his name. A ‘Wanted’ poster in this cartoon calls him “Hoss-Face.” The voice actors use both “hoss” and “horse.” I’ve never seen the dialogue sheets, so I’m going with “horse.”
There are no credits on the versions of this cartoon I have but it’s easy to pick out the animator. Ed Love likes little weird mouth shapes in dialogue. And Horse Face’s evil, toothy grin reminds me of what Ed did with Buzz Buzzard as the end of the Woody Woodpecker cartoon “Drooler’s Delight” about 10 years earlier.
Walt Clinton is the layout artist. You can tell with the collar-height ears of the incidental characters.
I won’t try to identify the background artist. I like the toned clouds; several H-B artists seem to have used this effect. I also like the idea of Billy the Kidder’s hideout being labelled “Hide Out.”
But a pretty basic background drawing of the Western State Penitentiary opens the cartoon.
Maltese gets into the silly dialogue right away. The narrator explains the notorious bank robber Billy the Kidder has been captured and is being grilled by the prison warden about the location of stolen money.
Warden: Tell ya what. Talk, and you’ll get barbecued prairie dog every Sunday. Oh, joy!
Billy: With sagebrush dumplin’s?
Warden: Yes!
Billy: And tumbleweed pie?
Warden: Yes, yes!
Billy: No, thanks. I’m not hungry.
Yeah, it’s not as ridiculous as Maltese’s “Rabbit au gratin de gelatin under tooled leather” from the Warner’s cartoon Rabbit Fire, but it’s suitably Western.
Warden Lock N. Keys locks away Billy for 99 years but gets an idea to con Billy into divulging the location of the stolen money, upon seeing a wanted poster for Billy’s partner, Horse Face Harry, and noticing the resemblance to Quick Draw McGraw (“I get it. You want me to impersonate this handsome fellow,” says Quick Draw). As an added touch, the warden sings the Quick Draw McGraw theme song while on the phone trying to reach our hero. Quick Draw’s main concern about being in the same cells as Billy: “I hope he doesn’t snore.” What about Baba Looey? “I don’t look like Horse Face Harry,” he protests. “I look like my grandmother.”
So off to jail goes Quick Draw as Horse Face who’s “meaner than a barrel of angry wildcats.” Quick Draw gives us a wildcat snarl for good measure. Typical Ed Love mouth drawing; unfortunately Ed’s stuff got toned down as Hanna-Barbera cartoons got toned down. Baba Looey breaks the two out of jail and they make a run for the hideout. “Hello, there, Hide Out,” says Quick Draw when Billy introduces him to the shack. Quick Draw asks Billy to get him “some hot bank money...Over easy.”
“As fickle fate would have it,” the narrator begins, the real Horse Face shows up at the hideout. So the rest of the cartoon involves no one being able to tell Horse Face and Quick Draw apart. Billy hands the bag of stolen money to Horse Face and then runs back and forth between the two in different rooms of the hideout. “Must be that cactus cough medicine I’ve been takin’,” says the confused Billy, who decides to go back to jail and runs through the shack’s wall to get there. Then Baba thinks Horse Face is Quick Draw, thinking the heat is responsible for the change in voice (Horse Face is voiced by Doug Young). Baba grabs the cash (“Hey! He stole my stolen money!” yells Horse Face) and more identity confusion follows with Horse Face finally walking away with the money head to “San Francisco and a good time” (reminiscent of the bad guy in Quick Draw’s “Riverboat Shuffled” who announces he heading “to New Orleans, the Mardi Gras and some jolly fun”).
Quick Draw skids into the scene. “Where’s the money?” he asks Baba. “You just took it,” he replies, “And there you go, Quickstraw.” “Hold on thar, Quick Draw McGraw!” shouts our hero. “Drat! It’s the good-lookin’ buttinsky Quick Draw McGraw,” opines Horse Face. Now the Warden appears and there’s still more confusion, which carries on to the end of the cartoon with Quick Draw and Horse Face both yelling “I’m Quick Draw McGraw” at each other. Maltese may have been tempted to finish the gag with a “rabbit season/duck season” turnabout like he wrote at Warner Bros. but Quick Draw simply isn’t a bright enough character to carry it off. Instead, he prefers to let them argue with Baba adding a weak pun gag line: “You know something? I think I am quickly withdrawing. Adios!” And the cartoon ends.
I mentioned the Quick Draw theme on the piano making a quick appearance on the soundtrack. The rest of the music is pretty familiar.
0:00 - Quick Draw McGraw Sub Main Title theme (Curtin).
0:15 - GR-348 EARLY MORNING (Green) – Opening narration.
0:33 - GR-96 BY JIMINY! IT’S JUMBO (Green) – Warden grills Billy the Kidder, dials phone.
1:15 - (THAT’S) QUICK DRAW McGRAW (Curtin) – Warden sings Quick Draw theme.
1:21 - GR-357 DR QUACK SHORT BRIDGE No 1 (Green) – “Why none other than Quick Draw McGraw.”
1:26 - GR-472 HICKSVILLE (Green) – Quick Draw-Baba-Warden scene.
2:22 - GR-96 BY JIMINY! IT’S JUMBO (Green) – Quick Draw walks to cell.
2:35 - GR-99 THE DIDDLECOMB HUNT (Green) – Quick Draw put in cell, Baba saws window bars.
2:59 - LFU-117-1 MAD RUSH No 1 (Shaindlin) – Quick Draw, Baba and Billy run.
3:07 - GR-99 THE DIDDLECOMB HUNT (Green) – Quick Draw outside hideout, Billy goes to get money.
3:28 - CAPERS (Shaindlin) – Horse Face walks, shoots at Billy.
3:51 - ‘FIREMAN’ (Shaindlin) – Billy skids into room with Quick Draw, Billy goes back and forth, runs through wall.
4:26 - CRAZY GOOF (Shaindlin) – Horse Face has money, talks to Baba, Baba grabs money and runs.
4:50 - fast circus chase music (Shaindlin) – “Hey!” Horse Face falls in cellar, Baba walks out of room.
5:06 - CRAZY GOOF (Shaindlin) – Baba and Quick Draw talk about money, Baba runs out.
5:29 - fast circus chase music (Shaindlin) – Horse Face grabs money, Baba realises who it is, Warden shoots at Quick Draw.
6:24 - CRAZY GOOF (Shaindlin) – (Shaindlin) – “Hold on thar, Warden!” Quick Draw and Horse Face argue.
6:36 - GR-79 CUSTARD PIE CAPERS BRIDGE No 2 (Green) – Baba talks to camera.
6:44 - Quick Draw McGraw Sub End Title theme (Curtin).