Huckleberry Hound — The Scrubby Brush Man

Produced and Directed by Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna.
Credits: Animation – Edwin Parks, Layout – Jim Carmichael, Backgrounds – Dick Thomas, Written by Tony Benedict, Story Director – John Freeman, Titles – Art Goble, Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Huckleberry Hound – Daws Butler; Narrator, Scrubby President, Customer, Butch – Don Messick.
Music: Hoyt Curtin.
First Aired: 1961-62 season.
Plot: Huck, the Scrubby Brush Man, tried to sell a brush to a recalcitrant would-be customer.

The Hanna-Barbera studio kept adding cartoons to its drawing boards and had to keep adding staff as a result. So in Huckleberry Hound’s 1961-62 season (his last with new cartoons), we start to see new names in the credits replacing Ed Love, Ken Muse and others who were moved over to the prime time “Flintstones” and “Top Cat.”

Ed Parks was an animation veteran. He was born on August 25, 1915 in Waterbury, Connecticut, where he grew up. He and his widowed mother arrived in Los Angeles in the mid to late 30s; the 1940 Census lists him as a cartoonist. An inside reference is made to him in the 1949 Goofy cartoon “Tennis Racket.” Parks left Disney in 1961 during/after production of “1001 Dalmations” and spent the rest of his career at Hanna-Barbera, working on pretty much everything the studio produced over the next 15 years. “The Scrubby Brush Man” was either his first or second cartoon for H-B. Parks died on January 31, 1999. You can read more about him HERE.

Among layout artist Jim Carmichael’s stops in animation was Columbia’s Screen Gems studio. During the war, he was employed at the Combat Intelligence Section at Air Force HQ. And writer Tony Benedict had just arrived from UPA. He took over writing most of the Hucks from Warren Foster, who was busy with “The Flintstones,” and rightfully decided Huck would be perfect to drop into a send-up of Fuller Brush door-to-door salesmen. The cartoon has a quick set up before getting into a string of Huck-fails-to-sell-a-brush-to-an-angry-guy gags. Huck, as usual, comments to us on each failure before moving on.

The set-up: no Scrubby Brush salesman has ever returned from, let alone made a sale in, the 13th District, so the boss sends for super-salesman Huck. He’s not considered a dolt by management in this cartoon.

Huck: Howdy, Pres. You wanna buy one of our new brushes? You can have it at half-price, what with you bein’ the boss and all.
President: That’s what I like, Huck. Always pitching.

Huck arrives at a house owned by a guy who clearly doesn’t want to be bothered. Here are the gags:

● Huck tries subliminal advertising by chanting a “buy” suggestion outside a window, then ducking out of sight when the guy inside turns around. But the guy catches Huck and slams the window on his snout.
● Huck sings a commercial jingle through the window on a bullhorn. The guy punches Huck in the head right through the bullhorn. “Some folks don’t know good music when it hits them right smack-dab in the face,” Huck tells us.
● Huck uses a remote camera to hook into the guy’s TV set to give a commercial. The guy punches the screen and his fist comes through the camera and hits Huck in the face. “It’s gettin’ so the commercials have commercials,” growls the guy. Huck decides the customer “has had enough softenin’ up.”
● He ignores signs like “Salesman Go Home” (“Sure signs of weak sales resistance,” Huck opines to us) and rings the doorbell. When the guy answers, Huck observes “I see you have one of our products in your hand there.” The guy bashes Huck on the head with the huge brush. “That’s what we call in the trade ‘the brush off’,” Huck chuckles.



● Huck puts his foot in the door. We hear a chomp. A bulldog clamps on Huck’s leg, runs into the yard and buries him.
● Trying to win the customer’s confidence, Huck gives him a gift of colog-nee. The guy gives Huck a gift. “I think I know what it is on account of it’s tickin’.” Kaboom! “How about that. I was right. A home-made bomb. You get to know all the tricks after awhile.
● A crash helmet doesn’t stop Huck from being crushed by a chest of drawers dropped on top of him from the second storey of the house.

● The best gag is an old one but it’s still funny. Huck knocks on the back door. The door opens and crashes him against the side of the house. Huck tries knocking from the other side. The door opens the other way and crashes him against the other side of the house. “How about that? A two-way door.”

Huck now returns to headquarters. The anxious president wants to know about the sale. It turns out Huck sold a back brush to himself because he needed it. The boss faints. “Hmm. I guess he just couldn’t stand success.” The next five seconds is filled with music and Huck turning to and from the audience to fill the cartoon’s allotted time.

Ah, yes, Hoyt Curtin’s music. We get urgent “Top Cat” music when Huck saunters to the 13th District through the television punch scene. The odd thing is he’s sings ‘Clementine’ during part of the time. The music doesn’t work. Either play ‘Clementine’ in the background or let Daws Butler sing a capella. Later, Huck sings a jingle to the ‘Clementine’ music and the “Top Cat” music is playing. More “Top Cat” music follows during the brush bash scene. The gift exchange scene has a cue used in several series of that era but without the melody line. It should be mentioned Curtin never gave formal names to any of his cues; what names we have here were, I suspect, given to the cues by the late Earl Kress when he was assembling the Pic-a-nic Basket Hanna-Barbera music set for Rhino Records a number of years ago.

Wave Goodbye, Yogi

A few of the earliest Yogi Bear cartoons didn’t involve rangers, pic-a-nic baskets and non-stop hey-hey-hey-HEY dialogue. Joe Barbera, Charlie Shows and Dan Gordon combined on a spot-gag format which, frankly, I wish had not been abandoned. One of the spot-gaggers was “Baffled Bear” (1958).

And in some of the earliest cartoons, Mike Lah was assigned to animate two or three scenes. One of them was in “Baffled Bear.” The expressions are not as outrageous as some in his other cartoons, but they’re effective because you know exactly what Yogi’s thinking, even though he says nothing.

Yogi invents a balloon-o-copter to get across a busy freeway. It works.



Oh, wait. It doesn’t work. Yogi winces when the balloons break, and keeps looking up at the balloons and then at us, back and forth. It’s a really clever use of limited animation. There aren’t many drawings but the combination of Yogi moving his head combined with the moving background drawing of the sky makes it appear lots is happening. Simple drawings, but they work.



Finally, the last balloon breaks. In a Wile E. Coyote-esque moment, Yogi turns to the camera and waves goodbye. Here it is in an endless cycle.



Yogi drops. Ken Muse animated most of this cartoon. He’d never draw Yogi with an open little mouth like this.



My personal preference would be for some Tex Avery-like takes—Lah, as you likely know, animated for Avery for a number of years—and he drew a few in other cartoons, but there’s nothing wrong with the simpler approach.

Lah didn’t stay at Hanna-Barbera long. He opened Cinema Ad in 1958 then moved on to Quartet Films a few years later. It’s too bad because his take on the Flintstones would have been interesting (and probably very off-model).

Pixie and Dixie — Fresh Heir

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – La Verne Harding, Layout – Tony Rivera, Backgrounds – Dick Thomas, Written by Warren Foster, Story Director – Lew Marshall, Titles – Art Goble, Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Mr Jinks, Dixie – Daws Butler; Pixie – Don Messick.
Music: Hoyt Curtin.
First Aired: 1961.
Episode: Production E-171.
Plot: Pixie and Dixie try to scare Jinks out of his new mansion.

Jinks inherits a run-down, empty old mansion from a widow no one has heard of and decides to desert the meeces, who ignore the rejection and scare Jinks back into their happy home. The End.

You know, there isn’t much more to say about this cartoon. It’s not full of witty responses by Mr. Jinks to his spooky predicament. Warren Foster doesn’t seem to be as inspired by the orange house cat as much as he was by a blue hound dog, who comments with ridiculous appropriateness about his situation. Foster could have probably included a scene in about the joyful meece happy to be rid of the cat but then find life dull and plot to bring him back (a kind of reverse of “Lend Lease Meece”). However he spends so much time with the opening scene at the door when the mail arrives there’s no time. And, of course, the Hanna-Barbera animation had started to get so stiff by the fourth season of “The Huckleberry Hound Show;” there are none of the takes like the kind we saw in the first season to enliven the proceedings.

Maybe the most interesting things in the cartoon are some of Dick Thomas’ backgrounds. Well, actually, my favourite part is the smiling, bug-eyed bats.



Thomas went for textured clouds, too.



La Verne Harding is the credited animator. Below, you can see her angular Jinks (and meeces with their eyes wide apart), a weird little run by Pixie where he’s bent over at 90 degrees with arms hanging down, and an outline of Dixie as he runs out of the scene, very much like Brad Case.



Favourite line? Foster pulls off an almost Cole Porter-like rhyme: “This feline is making a bee-line immediately.” And Jinks butchers a word:

Jinks: I do not subscribe to silly stupid-stitions like ghosts and goblins and spooks, or, uh, any of those figments made of, like, uh, ectoplastic.

This and “Bombay Mouse” were the only Pixie and Dixie cartoons to have “Hanna-Barbera” in script on the title card.

Greg Watson or whoever was cutting for him dredges up all kinds of Flintstones music in this cartoon. The minor key not-yet-Flintstones theme is played when Jinks is at the entrance to the mansion, and “Bridge” when Jinks is on the ground until the end of the cartoon. “And That’s the Story” is heard when Jinks is walking away from the meece and they plot to get him out of the mansion. Hoyt Curtin had a pretty good collection of creepy cues, including some with a solo organ.

Kidding Gently

The Hanna-Barbera studio was chugging along when this column dated November 15, 1959 was published.

It was designed to give a little plug to the studio’s newest syndicated series, “The Quick Draw McGraw Show,” and got in a little description about its operations at the time.

There’s no mention of series in development or future plans; the studio would announce “The Flagstones” in about six weeks.

And the tail end of the article gives you an idea how popular Huck, Yogi and Mr. Jinks were with the non-kids in the audience.

The Corner Bar Yields Some Devoted Fans of TV Cartoons
By RON BURTON
United Press International
The hero of a new TV Western series is a gun-slinging horse. His sidekick is a burro with a voice like Desi Arnaz’. “Quick Draw McGraw” is the latest cartoon creation of the fertile minds of William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Quick Draw and the Mexican burro, Bobba Looey, this season joined the successful TV cartoon family begun in 1957 by the Hanna-Barbera outfit. Their characters have names like Ruff and Reddy, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Pixie and Dixie, Snooper and Blabber (they’re a cat and mouse private eye team) and Augie and Doggie (a father-son canine pair).
PROBLEM
The success of the cartoons, now syndicated to 189 TV stations, was not easy to come by. Hanna and Barbera, who turned cut some 200 “Tom and Jerry” movie cartoons, were told that costs would be too high to permit making weekly cartoon series for TV. “We thought it could be done,” Barbera said. “We knew it could not be done on a movie cartoon budget, though. So we planned short cuts. “The biggest financial saving came by our reducing the number of drawings. We have taken away about 80 per cent of the drawings made for movie cartoons of comparable length.
"We use only the essential movements — only what we need to show the action. We use closeups—on the obvious theory that a head will have fewer lines than an entire body. And we let the audience use its imagination.”
The viewer imagination is stimulated into figuring cut what’s happening from time to time in any H-B cartoon. This saves drawings and money and also gives the viewer a little mental exercise — something not often associated with TV fare.
Hanna cited a fight as an example.
IMAGINATION

“We’ll use the off stage sounds of a struggle,” he said, “and then we’ll show the effects of it. It’s perfectly clear what has happened.”
The cartoons are made for Screen Gems, the Columbia Studios TV subsidiary. The staff totals about 150 persons—animators, inkers, cameramen, writers and office personnel.
“The open door policy prevails at our shop,” Hanna said.
“Joe and I have our desks across from each other—as we have for 20 years of making cartoons. If someone wants to come in and discuss something, he comes in. We’ve minimized the memo. We’ve also outlawed the timeclock.”
Barbera said using parody and imposing human-like situations on animal groups are two of the main devices used in their TV cartoons.
Viewers can see without too much trouble who or what is being kidded gently in H-B cartoons—and this season it’s TV westerns and private eyes.
“This makes it possible for our stuff to be enjoyed by adults as well as children,” Barbera said. “And we know adults are in our audience, because a friend told us there’s a bar in Seattle (Wash.) with a sign over the TV set. It’s brought out during our shows.”
The sign reads:
“No loud talking. No tinkling of glasses.
“We are watching Huckleberry Hound.”

Flintstones Weekend Comics, March 1964

Life in the Stone Age was pretty primitive, so it’s no wonder things broke down. At least, that’s the fate that greeted our favourite denizens of Bedrock this this month 50 years ago.

Finding an on-line version of a newspaper that published the Flintstones’ Sunday comics for March 1964 was an adventure in itself. I still can’t locate a full comic for the end of the month (newspapers occasionally dropped a comic and substituted paid advertising, such as half-page cartoons pushing Kellogg’s cereal and a contest). So this is the best I can do. It’s a shame that some publisher hasn’t realised there’s money to be made in collating the old Yogi and Flintstones Sunday comics in a book.


I don’t know why Betty’s annoyed in the March 1st comic. After all, the leak can’t be fixed for a month. What else does she expect Barney to do. If he’d try to fix it himself, Fred would horn in and, well, you can probably hear the Hoyt Curtin music in the background as disaster strikes.

For those of you who get worked up over whether Fred and Barney work together, you’ll notice Fred has a hard-hat and Barney doesn’t. Then again, maybe Barney has an office job.


Fred Flintstones endorsed products for Miles Labs on TV, but apparently they didn’t have a product strong enough to deal with Fred’s sinus trouble. The artwork here’s very nice, especially the happy bull moose that pop up in the final panel, and the sound waves that pour out of Fred in the bottom row, far left. And Fred’s body language is nice in the panel where he and Barney are walking. Fred’s stooped over, so you can tell he’s not well. This is from March 8th.


A TV antenna? Say, that is Stone Age! The comic from March 15th (not too visible) has nice reaction drawings of Dino about what’s going on. If this were the TV, the record player bird (played by Mel Blanc) would comment.


March 22nd has a nice little story. I wish the scan of this was better because I’d like to get a better look at the dopey expression on the dinosaur in the last panel of the middle row. Fred looks kind of dozy himself. This comic may solve the mystery of where Baby Puss went. He seems to have adopted the ranger station as his home, judging by the opening panel. Does anyone know if Dick Bickenbach drew this?


Fred has a new address in the March 29th comic, which builds up to one of those “Soft Fred” moments. Pebbles’ thought balloons would appear more often as the years passed. This is the best version I can find of this comic, sorry.

Click on each comic to expand it. Consider these Flintstones posts as a kind of bonus, as it’s becoming difficult to find complete, viewable versions of the Sunday comics to pass on.

Quick Draw McGraw — Dynamite Fright

Produced and Directed by Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna.
Credits: Animation – Hicks Lokey, Layout – Paul Sommer, Backgrounds – Vera Hanson, Written by Mike Maltese, Story Direction – Alex Lovy, Titles – Art Goble, Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Narrator, Dynamite Kaboom, Brown Hat Cowboy, Sheriff, Assorted Townsmen – Doug Young; Quick Draw, Baba Looey, Snuffles, Snuffles' kids, Paymaster, White Hat Cowboy, Deputy, Assorted Townsmen – Daws Butler.
Music: Hoyt Curtin.
First Aired: 1961.
Episode: Quick Draw McGraw Show M-041, Production J-110.
Plot: Quick Draw and Snuffles try to stop Dynamite Kaboom from blowing up the dam.

What do you do with a cartoon character when he’s only got one piece of schtick? You use him judiciously so he doesn’t wear himself out. That’s what Mike Maltese did with Snuffles. The biscuit-loving dog only appeared in seven Quick Draw McGraw cartoons. His routine never became tired, even with continual reruns of the cartoons.

In “Dynamite Fright,” Maltese added something to make things different—four identical little Snuffles who mimic his actions. Maltese likely had no choice but to use Snuffles; the dog was appearing in commercials for Kellogg’s Gro-Pup dog biscuits and the studio was even putting the packages on screen in Quick Draw McGraw cartoons. Nothing subtle about it.

This was one of six new Quick Draws made for the 1961-62 season, though in looking at the production numbers on the internet (not all of which have turned out to be correct) it was begun before one which appeared on the previous season. Snuffles appeared in two of them.

Maltese uses some pretty matter-of-fact dialogue in the first couple of minutes to set up the plot. Dynamite Kaboom, for reasons left to your imagination, wants to blow up a dam and flood a little western town in the process. There’s a little right-to-left pan over a Vera Ohman Hanson background.


There are townspeople running in fear. Here are Hicks Lokey’s drawings on twos. Anticipation drawings then a quick flee.



Now for some fun Maltese dialogue.

Sheriff: Quick Draw, I sent for you because Dynamite Kaboom is a-goin’ to blow up the new dam. Well, I don’t mind a little rain once in a while, but one big kersplash I don’t like. Uh, will you stop Dynamite Kaboom? For the sake of the settlers?
Quick Draw: I sure will! And thanks for the ten-thousand-dollars reward.
Sheriff: Now who said anything about a ten-thousand-dollar reward? Uh, how about a grand?
Quick Draw: A grand what?
Sheriff: A grand total of fifty dollars.
Quick Draw: I’ll take it.

Now Snuffles is introduced into the cartoon, with a brief appearance by his offspring. All have three hairs on their heads growing from the same place, like Dino on the Flintstones. Snuffles will do anything for a dog biscuit, including jumping through a window. Which he demonstrates.



The second half of the cartoon features the hunt for Dynamite Kaboom, interrupted as Quick Draw proves to himself a stick found by Snuffles is dynamite by blowing himself up. Snuffles captures the bad guy and gets his usual reward (see our post about the ecstasy animation HERE). But Dynamite Kaboom has a timer attached to his bundle of dynamite which threatens to blow up the dam and flood the town any second. Will Quick Draw save the town? There’s some real suspense here only because Quick Draw is so inept in his cartoons, and doesn’t always win in the end, you never know how the plot is going to play out. The uncertainty adds to Maltese’s story.

As it turns out (after Quick Draw says “hold on thar!” to the bundle of dynamite), the dynamite is tossed into the water, Quick Draw is kicked into the water by Dynamite Kaboom, who is kicked into the water by Baba Looey. Neither Quick Draw nor Dynamite Kaboom can swim, but Quick Draw is rescued from under the water because he conveniently has a dog biscuit to bribe Snuffles. The bad guy isn’t as well stocked (“Awww,” says Snuffles, shaking his head over the drowning villain’s plight). But Baba pulls Kaboom out of the water and it’s off to jail.

The wind-up scene has the Gro-Pup product placement, the four sons of Snuffles duplicating dad’s routine after eating biscuits, with Baba ending the cartoon by superfluously remarking “That’s what I call ‘like father, like sons’.”



Quick Draw doesn’t fit in his “I’ll do the thinnin’ around here” or “Oooh, that smarts” catchphrases in this cartoon.

You’ll recognise a number of short Flintstones cues in this cartoon, as well a dramatic horn cue during a shot of the bundle of dynamite that was used later on “Jonny Quest.” There are stretches of the cartoon where no music is heard (like the scene where the sheriff and Quick Draw discuss the reward). “That’s Quick Draw McGraw” accompanies the arrival of our hero, sung by Doug Young.

Songs in the Key of Fake

There are three kinds of Hanna-Barbera records. One kind features music and/or voices that were in the original cartoons. That’s the best kind. Then there’s the other kind where other people pretend to be the characters or the music features different singers. Some are okay (for example, the LP with June Foray as Boo Boo), others aren’t so hot (anything with Frank Milano). And then you have the platters produced by Hanna-Barbera Records, some of which have nothing to do with the cartoons and others leave you stunned.

We have the latter in this post, although someone will likely wail about “happy childhood memories” or some other kind of misty nostalgia as they sigh in delight over what’s below.

“Golden Cartoons in Song Volume One” is one of those albums which precocious little me would have asked my father why he didn’t buy a real Hanna-Barbera album instead. This features songs that were never heard in Hanna-Barbera cartoons sung by people who had no association with the cartoons. At Golden Records on the East Coast, similar songs were cheery, minimally-orchestrated pop tunes. These “themes” from a 1966 HBR album are supposed to evoke rock music but pull their punches. Compare that to Hoyt Curtin’s theme music for the actual cartoons where the brass section cuts loose. And whoever came up with “Jonny Quest” for this album evidently never saw the show. They seem to think it was about spies or secret agents.

Curtin’s name is on the album as one of the composers. So are Stan Farber, Larry Goldberg and Lynn Bryson. Several web sites have a fascination with HBR recordings and you can learn more about Goldberg at them. The lyrics for these songs were by Charlie Shows, who contributed dialogue to the studio’s cartoons in its first two years. His “Augie Doggie” lyrics quoting Doggie Daddy make no sense; it’s more of his rhymes for the sake of rhymes. “I treat Augie like a brother. Why, you’d think I was his mother.” What’s that supposed to mean??

Listen at your own risk.

YOGI BEAR


SUPER SNOOPER


HUCKLEBERRY HOUND


JONNY QUEST


QUICK DRAW McGRAW


F-L-I-N-T-S-T-O-N-E-S


SNAGGLEPUSS


AUGIE DOGGIE


TOP CAT


TOUCHE


DIBBLE


PEBBLES


DUM-DUM


JETSONS

Augie Doggie — Growing, Growing, Gone

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
No credits. Layout – Tony Rivera?, Backgrounds – Dick Thomas?, Written by Mike Maltese, Titles – Art Goble, Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Augie Doggie, Peggy Poodle – Daws Butler; Doggie Daddy – Doug Young.
Music: Hoyt Curtin.
First Aired: 1961.
Plot: Augie decides to act like a grown-up.

There’s a question that has been debated by generations of Hanna-Barbera cartoons fans without a successful conclusion—what happened to Mrs. Doggie Daddy, anyway? She’s as mysterious a figure as, well, if you want a somewhat appropriate analogy, Jimmy Durante’s Mrs. Calabash.

“Growing, Growing, Gone” may supply us with a clue.

There were few female characters in the Augie Doggie cartoons. The next door neighbour in “Treasure Jest” was one. There was the librarian in “It’s a Worm Day.” And, to the left, you see Peggy Poodle. She’s a friendly character who offers to share her lollypop with Augie and tells him she likes him. Augie responds by running as fast as he can for home to get away from her. “Dat’s my who’s growin’ up,” Daddy cheerfully tells us in response. So, we’re left to conclude that Doggie Daddy ran away from his wife years ago and took Augie with him.

(Actually, I suspect the explanation for the lack of a Mrs. Doggie Daddy is partly because Hanna-Barbera worked with a two-character dynamic—Yogi and Boo Boo, Quick Draw and Baba, Chopper and Yakky—with a third character used only as an antagonist/lifestyle interrupter).

Peggy is standing in front of stylised isosceles triangles that are standing in for trees, so I’m presuming the layouts were handled by Tony Rivera. I have two versions of this cartoon and that credits are incorrect on both. I’m really not well-versed on H-B artists after a certain period. For example, the cop in this cartoon is designed with fortune cookie ears. I’ve seen that before but haven’t really compared all the 1961-62 season cartoons to see who liked drawing incidental characters that way.

As for the background artist, both Bob Gentle and Dick Thomas used loops to signify foliage in bushes and by this time, both were using sketchy zig-zags to indicate patches of grass. I’m leaning toward Thomas because of the blue sky and the fairly literal way the exterior of the house is drawn. I haven’t tried to go back and compare artwork on the walls in previous cartoons (either Augie or Pixie and Dixie). Here are some of the backgrounds.



The animator’s even more of a mystery to me, so I put the question to Howard Fein, who’s pretty good at spotting the animators from the Flintstones/Jetsons/Top Cat period of the studio’s life. He thinks it’s John Boersma. The first thing that caught my attention is Doggie Daddy’s eye is partly above his head in the opening scene.



There are some quick exits in this cartoon and they’re all drawn differently. One has brush-strokes, but no character outline, like Hicks Lokey drew.



This one has a character outline, like Brad Case drew in several cartoons.



And there’s one that’s just a standard character-runs-away cycle. Here are a couple of scrunch takes.



Mike Maltese has come up with the kind of story we expect out of Mike Maltese. Augie wants to use a carving knife to sharpen his pencil. No, Daddy says, he’s too young for that. Dialogue sample:

Augie: You’re laughing at me, thoughtless dad. And I abhor ridicule.
Daddy: Dat’s my boy dat said dat. And I wish I knew what it meant.
Augie: Well, it simply means “let there be hilarity and mirth, but let it be tempered with a certain reserve signifying a consideration for the feelings of others.”
Daddy: Never-the-none-the-less, it’s time all little smart boys were in bed. Ipso factori.

Eventually, Daddy tells him the outside world will make him grow up, so Augie runs away into the outside world. That’s Maltese’s set-up for a typical Augie Doggie cartoon story—Doggie Daddy tries various things in front of his son and fails miserably. In this case, it’s trying to go home. Dear old dad apparently didn’t learn in “Watch Dog Augie” or “Pint Giant” that whenever he disguises himself, it never works. It doesn’t here.

● Daddy pretends to be a “spooky ghost.” Augie thinks he’s silly and bashes him twice with one of those satchels on a stick that runaway kids and hoboes have in cartoons. Maltese fits in a “fugitive” reference: “Go haunt a house, you fugitive from a clothesline,” the annoyed Augie says to the ghost.
● “Stick ‘em up, varmint,” says a mustachioed daddy, who claims to be Two-Gun Canafraz, a “really Western outlaw.” Varmint? Canafraz? Maltese is drinking the Warner Bros. cartoon sauce again (yes, “Super Rabbit” with Professor Canafraz was written by Tedd Pierce, but Maltese was at the studio then). Augie dispatches him with a slingshot. There’s an “Abilene” reference, like in one of Maltese’s Quick Draw McGraw cartoons, “Locomotive Loco.”

● “Robin Hood Daffy” anyone? Augie demands that the disguised Daddy prove he’s really Robin Hood. Daddy shoots the hat off a cop (not an Irish one) instead of nailing an airborne duck.

The cartoon ends with the aforementioned Peggy Poodle scene.

Only six Augie Doggie cartoons were made in 1961-62, the final season in first-run for “The Quick Draw McGraw Show.” The Capitol Hi-Q library has been dispatched to gather dust and Hoyt Curtin’s cues are used on them all. That means Flintstones music. “And That’s the Story” accompanies the opening scene where Daddy and Augie are talking and you should recognise “Chase” when Augie’s running away from potential romantic entanglement.