Park Avenue Indians

Anyone recognise the characters in this drawing by Ed Benedict? The only series I can think of featuring native Americans never got off the ground. And it kicked around Hanna-Barbera for two years.

During the late ‘50s and into the ‘60s, Daily Variety reported on a number of things the studio was proposing or developing that never reached the screen. Two of them were mentioned in a front-page story in the edition of November 30, 1962. The studio wanted to follow the Walt Disney route—shorts to features to live action, though it was a little hesitant about one of its concepts.

Here’s what the trade paper had to say:

Hanna-Barbera Prepping 4 Pilots
Hanna-Barbera Productions is planning four half-hour comedy pilots, and their program includes an expansion into the telefilm series area, as distinguished from animation, which has been company's principal activity to date, with such series as "The Jetsons" and "The Flintstones."
Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna said yesterday vehicle planned as a regular series is untitled, that it's a period (1910) piece. That and "The Park Avenue Indians," a tentative title, may go either animation or regular series route, he said. Joanne Lee has been signed to pen an original for "Indians," which will deal with experiences of a N.Y. model who becomes involved in real estate.
They also reported H-B has acquired its first property for feature filming, but said negotiations are now on for various facets of it, so he could not disclose deals. H-B is also working on an animation feature of its "Yogi Bear" for Columbia release.

Joanna Lee’s name should be familiar to people who watched the credits on the first Hanna-Barbera prime-time shows, as she worked on “The Flintstones,” “Top Cat,” “The Jetsons” and “Jonny Quest.” She also wrote for a number of top live-action sitcoms.

What the period piece was, neither Bill Hanna nor Joe Barbera apparently disclosed to the press. And “Indians” seemed to be shelved for almost two years, when it was re-announced in Daily Variety on October 21, 1964. Mike Connolly’s column in the October 28th edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette went into a teeny bit of detail:

Actress-turned-writer Joanna Lee sold an original, “The Park Avenue Indians,” to Hanna-Barbera. It will be the first full-length live-action feature for the cartoonists. It’s about some Tenth Avenue Redskins who stumble onto a snafu in Peter Stuyvesant’s old real estate contract and discover they own most of Manhattan.

Nothing about fashion models. In fact, the concept for “Indians” now sounds suspiciously like a TV show where some poor people unexpectedly discovered they were filthy rich—so they loaded up their truck and they moved to Beverly. Hills, that is. Well, if Hanna-Barbera borrowed from “The Honeymooners” and “Bilko,” why not grab something from the Number One TV show of 1963?

Joe Barbera was talking about the project as well. In one newspaper interview published on October 24th, he revealed “Indians” was one of three live-action feature films in the works, the other two being “Mr. Mysterious” and “Father Was a Robot.” We talked about those two in this post.

But this little flurry of press activity seems to have been it. I haven’t found any further reference to the film. In the meantime, Hanna-Barbera moved in another direction—creating brand-new cartoons for Saturday morning network television; what new cartoons existed on Saturday mornings before the 1965-66 season were made on the East Coast. It was far more lucrative for the studio than any native American movie comedy could possibly have been.

Oh, the answer to the question above. Joecab mentioned in the comment section the second season Flintstones episode “Droop A-Long Flintstone.” Well, here are some of the Indians as drawn by Carlo Vinci. It looks like some of Benedict’s designs above found their way into this shot, complete with raised big toe.



They’re only seen later in the cartoon as a clump in cycle animation that gets reused. Ken Muse drew them here.



Thanks to all of our commenters who helped put together the pieces of this H-B puzzler, and to Shane Glines for the Ed Benedict drawing that sparked the post.