Take Me To Your Leader

Were the 1950s the Golden Age of Outer Space? People sure seem preoccupied with it back then, judging by all the movies and TV shows made about it. Even cartoons. Warner Bros., Paramount (Famous) and Walter Lantz all had cartoons about space exploration or aliens. Gerald McBoing Boing ended up on the Planet Moo. And the very first Ruff and Reddy adventure involved robots from the planet Muni-Mula (“That’s aluminum spelled backwards,” Don Messick would remind you).

So it was that space craft and such found their way into a couple of the bumpers on the Huckleberry Hound Show.

Watching this opening mini-cartoon frame-by-frame, you can see how a character will move one body part in the next frame, and then hold it while one or two other parts move in the following frame. Heads are moving in all kinds of directions, too. I admire Frank Paiker or whoever it was working the camera trying to keep all those cel instructions in order.

If you’ve seen some of these great first-season circus setting bumpers, you’ll have noticed Huck stretching his head and rounding his lips to make an “Oooo” sound (as in “cartoon”). Even Yogi does it in this mini-cartoon.



I love Mr. Jinks. Here are some good expressions. Not a lot of animation, but you know what the cat is thinking when he says “Featuring yours truly, Jinks the Vill-i-an.”



Yogi wags his head. Five positions from almost head-on to profile.



Yogi dips his head, looks at his knuckles and scratches them against his body. This is one of those bits of business that add to a character.



The premise behind this cartoon-between-the-cartoons is Huck descends to the ground from his saucer and acts like an alien. “Take me to your leader, Earth folks,” he says to the rest of the cast. Pixie and Dixie beg off. They’re getting ready to show some Pixie and Dixie cartoons. Yogi puts in a word for his cartoons. Huck reveals that he’s the leader, as we’ll see in the next Huck cartoon. The cast, in the saucer, flies left to right across a repeating background. Fade out.

And here’s the evil Jinks, slowed down.