In November 1958, Maltese left for Hanna-Barbera. Despite the restrictions on visual gags imposed by limited animation, and the fact he was now churning out more than a story a week instead of a story a month, his cartoons were still (for the most part) funny.
Maltese departed for a year and a half to re-unite with Jones at MGM in the mid-‘60s only to return to Hanna-Barbera before leaving in frustration several years later.
There are few reminiscences by Maltese about his long career in animation. That fine columnist John Crosby talked to him in 1960; it was posted here. Historian Joe Adamson spoke to him in an interview transcribed in the book Tex Avery, King of Cartoons. And snippets of another interview appear in Mike Barrier’s tome Hollywood Cartoons. But there was a round-table with Maltese conducted on March 14, 1977 involving several top people in animation. It is full of great stories about his time at Warners (grazing over MGM and with only one mention of Lantz). He also talks a bit about his time at Hanna-Barbera. Unfortunately, he doesn’t discuss arriving there. Instead, he focuses sourly on what network television did to the cartoon business. The things Maltese tossed into a Quick Draw McGraw cartoon (such as Quick Draw accidentally shooting himself in the face) in 1959 would never, ever have been allowed a decade later. Maltese certainly wasn’t nostalgic for late ‘60s and ‘70s TV animation.
I’ve transcribed the portions involving Hanna-Barbera; the discussion goes in various directions and simply comes to a stop.
Mike Maltese: In 1958, I went to work for Hanna-Barbera. I quit in 1971 because the network boys were telling me how to write cartoons, and this I didn’t want....
The cartoon is a good business to be in, but rough today. They’ve got to pull out of those Saturday-morning kiddie-cartoon show things—if they can do it. Get the hell away from that. And you have to fight the network boys who tell you how to write cartoons, and, of course the animators have to fight this cutthroat animation in Australia and other foreign countries, where they’ll work for peanuts....
At times a story man worked in tandem with another story man. At other times he could be working in a group. As for myself, I preferred working alone as much as possible, and with directors who gave me that freedom. In that way, a future audience could say, hopefully, “That was a Mike Maltese story; those were Mike Maltese gags.” In that respect, I was fortunate to spend many happy years working with good directors, chief among whom were Chuck Jones at the Merrie Melodies/Looney Tunes fun factory, and, later, Joe Barbera at the Hanna-Barbera nut farm.
They gave me as much freedom as my ego—or whatever prompted me—required. Their guidance and particular talents helped me tremendously. I’m happy to say I enjoyed the good years of animation. Unfortunately, the days of the big studios and theatrical cartoons are all but dead. The big market today is television. Let’s not be satisfied with just Saturday Morning kiddie cartoons; perhaps we should go after prime-time audiences—with the audience values of a Mary Tyler Moore show, or an All in the Family show.
Now I’d like to read a list of some cartoon characters for which I’ve written stories...at Hanna-Barbera: The Flintstones, Super Snooper and Blabb, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy, Quick Draw McGraw and Baba Looey, The Jetsons, Squiddly Diddley, Snagglepuss, Top Cat, The Wacky Racers, Harlem Globetrotters, Josie and the Pussycats, The Impossibles, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, Secret Squirrel, Atom Ant, Magilla Gorilla, Hardy-Har-Har and Morocco Mole, Chopper Dog and Canary [Yakky Doodle], Perils of Penelope Pitstop, Funky Phantom, the Hair Bears, and others I can’t remember. Over 2500 cartoons.
Darrell Van Citters: Did you find that any particular characters were more difficult to write than others?
Mike Maltese: Yeah, the Hanna-Barbera characters like the Harlem Globetrotters and the Wacky Racers, because we were working under the conditions set up by the network bosses. They thought the more characters in a story, the better it was. Trying to make of that stuff funny was impossible. For instance, I went in one day (this was later on, when the network boys had taken over the Hanna-Barbera studio.) Well, before I tell my story to Joe Barbera, he says, “Great—Do another one.”
At Warners’ I did one a month, 12 a year, sometimes one every two weeks. At Hanna-Barbera I did two a week, then three a week. 150 stories a year, and we went like that. (snaps fingers several times). One right after another. We moved from three rooms in the old Chaplin studios on La Brea to where they are now, in Cahuenga. And then the network boys took over, and when I went in one day to tell Joe my story he said, “I like it, but you’ll have to tell the story crew.” They told me, “Drop it on the desk, and we’ll call you and let you know.” Boy, those were rough times.
For instance, there was a series I refused to do completely. I went in one day, and Joe Barbera says, “The head man (I won’t mention his name) at CBS got a helluva idea, he thinks, for an animated series he wants you to work on.” I go, “What is it?” and he says, “It’s a Secret Fighter for Justice Whaaaale.” (Laughter) “And he’s got a name for it—Moby Dick!!!” (Laughter).
“And he’s got all this here sparkling electric stuff—‘beep-beep-beep-“Trouble in Morocco!!”—‘beep-beep-beep-’—The whale is off!—Who cares?
I told him, I says, “Forget it!” He says “Please,” I say, “NO!”...
So I refused, but there was other stuff I had to work on. Finally I said, No more. I quit. If we had had to do the cartoons at the old Warner Brothers studio with the pressure put on us by the network boys, we wouldn’t get a Bugs Bunny done. We wouldn’t get anything finished....
We discovered at Warner Brothers many years ago, that if we write a cartoon for the kids, the grownups aren’t going to like it. But it we write our cartoons for the grownups, the kids are going to like it. They’re gonna like it anyway. Now, many of the Merrie Melodies I wrote some 25 years ago that you see on television still hold up in time. Because I learned long ago to try to write cartoon stories that would hold up in time like Laurel and Hardy, or Chaplin. Abbott and Costello today look real corny. They’re all right, but they don’t hold up as well as Laurel and Hardy. So I tried to learn that much about a cartoon, to write stories that aren’t hurt by time, if possible.
But the kiddie cartoons done later by Hanna-Barbera, they’re (snaps fingers) quick, quick, get ‘em out. Which is all right, but then you have these bosses from the networks telling you how to write them, locate ‘em, and all that, but not only that—You are not allowed to have a cartoon character crash into a wall. “Ummm. Just missed that wall.”
They told us, “No machine guns. No machine-gun bullets.” We had a bunch of these tough little guys with the black shorts and white ties [the Ant Hill mob on Penelope Pitstop], and all—They all jump like the Keystone Cops. And of course, there’s a foul-up and BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG with the machine guns, but they don’t want to use then, even though the machine guns miss. So, I go, “What are we supposed to do?” and Joe Barbera says, “I don’t know.....We’ll...use...cream pies.” So what I did was have ‘em shoot chocolate syrup, and they say, “Here come the fudge!” Those were the rough cartoons to make....
Brad Bird: I was wondering if it was easier to think up gags for full-animation rather than limited animation.
Mike Maltese: There is a difference, but the amount of work is almost the same. You can do a storyboard for full animation, and what they do with it is up to them; you can get a director who’ll say, “Well, I can cut this down to limited animation.” Now the way we used to do that was we’d have Quick Draw McGraw go off-screen; we’d set up the thing that was going to happen to him off-screen. That would require good sound effects. “Hold on thar!!!” He’d walk off-screen, and we’d hear this BOOM-CRASH-BANG—and they you’d cut over and you’d see the result....
No, there isn’t a helluva lot of difference. The amount of work in writing a story—it’s there. You think of the idea. The only thing you show is maybe a few little drawings of the thing happening to the guy. But you had to think about what was happening to him, and then cut it down to fit the limited-animation method. That kind of explains it....
All I can say is that it’s a great business and I hope that someday you’ll be able to take it out of the kiddie-matinee thing, and bring it up to something better, because it’s going to die otherwise. There’s just so much time on Saturday Morning, and you know what they do to make way for the new stuff on Saturday morning is to move this kiddie crap to Sunday.
Now, Hanna-Barbera tried unsuccessfully for prime time with Just Wait Till Your Father Gets Home. Prime time. I know the writers, and we were hamstrung. They were stopped. Experienced writers who know the cartoon business, were stopped by the network boys. They’d say, “We want this, that the other thing—we—I say, “Wait a minute. We know what we’re talking about.”
Joe Barbera was a great salesman. He could sell anything to the networks. I heard that CBS was going to build a cartoon studio in California and compete, and hire, if necessary, the talent from the other studios, and put their boys in charge.
What they did was they went down to the other studios, and would pit one producer against another—“You do it our way, the way we want, or we’ll give it to De Patie-Freleng or Filmation or whoever!” The result was the producers, who never said anything before, shoulda got together and said “The hell with you guys, you do it our way or we don’t wanna play with you guys at all, cause we’ve got the sponsors, the advertisers. Without them, you can’t live!”
But they got chicken. They got chicken and did it their way. The result was great talents like Joe Barbera and the rest of them backed off and made room for these boys put in by the network boys.
Now, Bill told me he was going to retire, he’d had an operation. Joe Barbera will never retire; he’s married to his work; this is his life. I haven’t seen him in six years. I just saw him again this week, and the first thing he says, doesn’t even say “Hello”—he says, “You know what we’re doing, we’re doing Heidi!” “Now, listen to this record, this is a scene where Heidi’s father is forced to leave her...” Like, who the hell cares? I’m passing his room and.. “Mike, listen to this! Guess who’s singing?” I say, “I don’t know.” He says, “Give it a guess, give it a guess!” (Sings hammily) “Heidiiiiii, you arre my lit-tul girllll.” I say, “Herschel Bernardi.” He says “NO NO NO.” His daughter was there. She says (whispers) “He was in Westerns. Used to play the father.”
I say, “Lorne Greene.” Joe says. “How did you know?” I say, “Wellll.” (Laughter.) So I say, “Sorry, Joe, I gotta leave.” I shook hands with him, and I left.
This is the wrong way! Bill wants out. And he should go out. He’s going to be 67 in July, and I was 69 in February. I could still work, but not under those conditions....
John Musker: Has Chuck Jones ever approached you on doing stories on his TV specials? It seems like there’s a pretty noticeable decline in the story content once you left his unit at Warner’s.
Mike Maltese: Yes, he wanted me to come back, but I wouldn’t leave Hanna-Barbera, because I didn’t go want to go back to work for Warners’s. I knew Warners was on the way out. Because Warner Brothers, unlike MGM, who publicized Tom and Jerry, never publicized Bugs Bunny or any of the cartoons. Any publicity on the Warner cartoons was done by word of mouth. The only time I went back to work for Chuck was when I had a hiatus at Hanna-Barbera and Joe Barbera says, “Well, I’ll call you.” It was the end of ’63. I waited about two or three weeks. Chuck called, and says, “I got a chance to get the MGM release, but I have to do a couple of Tom and Jerries. Will you write them for me?” I say, “Sure. I’m not working.”...
I did about 14 Tom and Jerries for him. And Joe Barbera called me up and he says, “How much is Chuck paying you?” I say, “$250 a week.” He says, “I’ll give you $500.” I say, “I’ll be in in the morning.” (Laughter.)...
So I went back in 1965 and I worked on a whole bunch of different things—different type cartoons, that was the whole secret of it—writing various types of cartoons.
Fred Silverman, who was the head of children’s programming at CBS, had three or four crazy characters—Aquaman, Wireman, and all those (who remembers? This was 12 years ago.) And he says, “Could you get a couple of ideas?” I said, “Sure.”
I went home and wrote 15 story ideas. And I knew the villains in each one had to be strong enough to challenge the talents of these four ‘super-guys.’
I had Paper-Man, who could fold himself up and fly like a paper airplane. This one guy, Electro-Man, could appear on a TV screen at some home, and step out and rob the place, just back into the TV screen, jump in a car, and zoom off. Now, it was up to these guys to get him. They trapped him in a phone booth, he disappeared through the wire. They trapped him in the wire, they tied the wire in a square knot! (Laughter.) I had 15 ideas like this, and I called them, “The Impossibles.” Joe Barbera says, “The Impossibles?” I say, “Yeah, call them The Impossibles.” So he told the ideas to Fred Silverman, and he says, “Unless Mike Maltese writes these things, you’re not gonna get the show.” Joe says, “I’ll give you another $100, Mike.”
Like, stupid. I coulda asked for another two or three hundred. I was always eager to work. I say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
The thing is, you go along, and you try to make your buck. I never made the big money, because I never had the opportunity to go into live-action. I’ll tell you one thing, Joe Barbera got fooled by a lot of live-action writers who tried to write cartoons.
He found out that a cartoon writer could write live-action stories—they write Phyllis and a few other TV shows—the transition from cartoon writing to live-action writing is easier than the other way around. Because live-action guys come in and say, “A guy comes in here—and he has a damn funny walk. And the way he walks funny—you know how you guys draw it---he meets this other funny character here—could be an aardvark or a lion, and—oh well, YOU know how you guys do it. I don’t care, if it’s funny, ha ha.” (Laughter.)...
I also had a lot of fun doing the McGraw show, and I also used Snagglepuss, I don’t know if any of you remember him—the guy who talked like Bert Lahr.
Bert Lahr threatened to sue us. I made sure not to use any of the real Bert Lahr material [evidently Maltese forgot the origin of “Heavens to Murgatroyd”], I added my own Bert Lahr-isms, as it were.
“Exit—Stage left!”
“I’ll be with you in a forthwith—in a fifth-with, eee-ven.”
All that stuff. But we had to stop because he threatened to sue....
Well, that’s all, fellows.
How does he think poor Huckleberry Hound feels?
Huck was the star of the show in 1958 that really put Hanna-Barbera in the public view. Huck became a fad on college campuses and elsewhere, culminating with an Emmy win in 1960. But the squeaky wheel gets the grease, to coin a cliché. Featured player Yogi Bear was more brash, more larger-than-life than Huck and, when Warren Foster arrived in 1959 to write for him, was given a codified, definitive format (Boo Boo was made a regular, Ranger Smith replaced generic rangers, Jellystone Park was made a permanent setting). Yogi pretty much eclipsed the gentle, easy-going blue dog who had a different occupation and antagonist every week. When 1961 rolled around, Huck wasn’t the Hanna-Barbera character with his own half-hour-long birthday episode. Yogi Bear was.
That birthday episode took up all three segments of the Yogi half-hour, with Snagglepuss and Yakky Doodle giving up their own seven-minute cartoons on the show to appear in an all-star finale that included all the “Kelloggs” Hanna-Barbera characters. That wasn’t the only thing different. The birthday bash was the product of a huge publicity campaign that involved television stations, newspapers, the sponsoring cereal company, and comic books, no doubt coordinated by Screen Gems publicity guru Ed Justin (the man who came up with the Huckleberry Hound presidential run a year earlier). We’re written about it before, but here’s a piece from the Oakland Tribune of October 1, 1961 to give you an idea of the incredible amount of coordination that had to take place to pull it off.
‘Smartest Bear’ Has Birthday Tomorrow
Back in 1958, when the Huckleberry Hound Show came onto the television scene, one of the characters was a mischievous bear with a penchant for picnic baskets.
Now three years later, the bear is a TV star and will be feted by all his television friends and 100 live fans at a party tomorrow night at the studios of station KTVU, Channel 2.
The prankish bruin with the rhyming diction who was born in 1958 was Yogi Bear. He proved to be so popular with youngsters and adults alike that he soon became the star of his own show, called, appropriately enough, the Yogi Bear Show.
"HEY, HEY!"
Besides acquainting youngsters with a mythical, Jellystone Park and the techniques of filching picnic baskets, Yogi has also added to their vocabulary such expressions as "Hey, hey!" and "I'm smarter than the average bear!"
In the year since Yogi became a star in his own right, he has dominated the "children's hour" on station KTVU, Channel 2, every Monday at 6.30 p.m. At times he has even surpassed the popularity of Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw, also seen on Channel 2. Coincidentally, or perhaps not too coincidentally, all three shows are produced by the creative team of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Not content with success as a television star, Yogi also invaded the newspaper field. In February of this year, he became a member of the Tribune Sunday Comics family, so the admirers of this "smarter- than-the-average'' bear get twice as much of his mirthful antics.
Naturally, a success story like Yogi’s deserves a reward. Tomorrow, all his friends get together to wish Yogi a "Happy Birthday." And where Yogi’s concerned, that could develop into some pretty humorous events, Tribune readers will remember that, two weeks ago, Yogi had a party in the Sunday comics. The television shenanigans should be just as mirthful.
WINNERS’ NAMES
To help Yogi’s television party become a big success, The Tribune and station KTVU sponsored a Yogi Bear Coloring Contest for Yogi fans 10 years of age and younger. The 100 best artists will be guests at the studio party tomorrow. There win be cake and soft drinks, and each young artist will get a book of children's stories, a box of candy and a statutte [sic] of Yogi or one of his friends. Names of the winners appear today in the main news section." All entrants received a gaily-colored certificate with pictures of Yogi and his friends.
Yogi, Huck and Quick Draw proved so successful for their creators, that Hanna and Barbera have produced another cartoon show. Other producers have gotten onto the bandwagon, too, with the result that kids—and adults —win have about 10 televised cartoon shows to pick from this season.
Within a few years, Hanna-Barbera got out of the co-op late-afternoon TV business (shows like The Flintstones were syndicated by Screen Gems without commercial attachments) but plunged into Saturday mornings, turning it into a gold mine for the company. Yogi was revived for several different series and specials, inferior to anything put together in the ‘50s by the likes of George Nicholas and Ed Love, Dan Gordon and Charlie Shows, Bob Gentle and Monty. Of course, these were for network airing, at a time when everyone cow-towed to do-gooder groups, so the studio had to deal with limitations that didn’t exist in the Kellogg’s days.
Maybe Yogi, and by extension, Huck, aren’t in the rarefied realm of popularity as, say, a clumsy Great Dane or a caveman with a Water Buffalo hat. But the pic-a-nic stealing park bear is still well-liked and known by several generations today, and that’s a quite an accomplishment for a character that’s almost 60 years old.
Dancing and motoring were the scenarios upon which were hung the stories for the Flintstones’ Sunday newspaper comics 50 years ago this month.
There lots of neat little things in some of the comics. The opening panel of the April 7, 1968 comic has a blue background with characters and settings that are simply lines, kind of like a UPA cartoon. There’s a little dog yapping at Fred in his car and what I guess is a bird stop light. Fred is enjoying a beer (yes, this is the year he was plugging Busch in an industrial film) and a guest appearance at the end by Yogi Bear. Niece Annie, an exclusive character to the comics, who spends most of her time dancing, shows up as well. Note some panels have a solid colour as background.
April 14th has more panels with just a solid buff colour as the background. Hanna-Barbera loved those motorcycle traffic cops, didn’t they?
Pops, Fred’s dad, shows up on April 21st. He’s a real wolf-asaurus, ain’t he? There are no other Flintstones characters in this one (Fred generally appeared unless it was a Pebbles exclusive). I’ve always liked volcanoes that go “poof;” they showed up through the ‘60s in the newspaper comics.
The taxi in the opening panel on the April 28th comic has a great expression. So does the dopey bus at the end. Fred shows athletic abilities he’s never been noted for. I like the set up for the gag at the end. The final panel is well laid-out by Gene Hazelton or whoever.
Once again, Richard Holliss can be thanked for opening his archive and providing these colour versions.
What does a successful producer do after a failure? Go back to what it was that was a success and put a twist on it.
In 1960, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera took TV sitcom suburbia, put it in the Stone Age and reaped the rewards of prime-time success with The Flintstones. After failing in 1961 with Top Cat, Hanna and Barbera went back to the idea of TV sitcom suburbia and put it in the future. Thus The Jetsons were born in 1962.
I’m not going to get into one of those “which show was better” things that fans like to endlessly debate. But there were several things I liked about The Jetsons, though some of the ideas were expropriated from that Modern Stone Age family. In no particular order:
● Astro. He may actually be the most rounded character on the show. He’s devoted, a klutz, a coward, enthusiastic and talks like a dog in an old vaudeville routine. (Comic: “Fido, where are the shingles on my house?” Talking dog: “Rrroof!” Comic: “Roof?” Dog: “Rrrrright!”).
● Gadgets. The ones on The Flintstones were living beings so they talked. The ones on The Jetsons were sterile and antiseptic, like you would expect in the future. And they’re logical. They seem like something we would have 100 years from now.
● Space Age designs. Buildings of the future? Well, if the future was at the Seattle World’s Fair a few months before The Jetsons debuted in 1962. But who cares. The designs were extremely clever and attractive. And they still look futuristic.
● Music. The title theme is better than The Flintstones’ “Rise and Shine,” even though anyone with a good ear can hear the edits in the closing. Still, you can’t beat Pete Candoli’s trumpet. The electronic instruments used in the cue library were fresh for their time. And how many cartoon scores employed a theremin?
● Uniblab. The ultimate office suck-up of the future. A terrific satire on workplace politics.
● “Jane, Stop This Crazy Thing!” So it’s not original. Fred Flintstone yelled outside his house after problems with a cat during the closing credits, too. But it’s still amusing. I like how Astro and the cat turn their heads, following George’s path on the Treadmill of Forever.
I should probably add the voice work as a factor as well, but it was great in all the Hanna-Barbera series into the ‘60s.
Surprisingly, The Jetsons could have been very much different. We’ve posted some early Ed Benedict designs for the series and, as you may know, Morey Amsterdam and Pat Carroll were signed as leads only to have their voice tracks scrapped. This story from Variety’s Dave Kaufman called “Jetsons Projects TV Into Next Century” fills us in, and lets readers of the soon-to-debut series know what was in store. It was published August 14, 1962.
BILL HANNA and Joe Barbera, who brought the stone age to tv via "The Flintstones," are reversing their field and going in the other direction with their new animation series, "The Jetsons," which takes place 100 years from now. Debuting this fall on ABC-TV, "Jetsons" should provide something new in a medium not noted for new frontiers (no political connotation there).
Actually, a couple of years ago, after "Flintstones" scored, the idea of a series based in the future was suggested to H-B, and Barbera admits sheepishly it was rejected becauae they thought it too corny an idea. However, with the revolutionary developments in the space age in the past two years, H-B quickly changed their views and came up with the future, so to speak. "If ever anyone is responsive to much thinking, it's now," the partners say.
After working on the project six months, they junked their material and started all over again, because too much of it seemed contemporary, in view of what they learned science researchers in industry already have come up with in planning for the future.
In the super-electronic age of tomorrow, as depicted in the series, there will be such devices as a seeing eye vacuum cleaner which goes beyond the push-button stage; on its own, the probing eye cleaner picks up dirt, even lifts rugs and cleans under them. There is a "Spaceburger," a space station restaurant in which the trays come out on a light beam when the space travelers order.
There is a rock "n" roll idol of the times, Jet Screamer, and he leads his pack in a dance taking place on a degravitized floor, so that tomorrow's teenagers terp not only feet to feet, but head to head.
There is a three-hour work day, and a three-day work week. And if you want to play in all this spare time, you can go to Las Venus, which has among its attractions the Supersonic Sands, the Flamoongo and the Riviera Satellite. The Sands is shaped like huge silver dollars, and each one is a room which comes to you and slides back into the hotel when you check in. Each room has a built-in robot dealer for those too lazy to go to the casino; each also has electronically designed slot machines which urge you to play them.
There is a mother-in-law space car in which she's separated by design from the couple involved, and If she yaks too much anyway, she can be dropped by an ejector seat. They don t wash dishes—they're disintegrated after one use. There's a "Slidewalk," local and express; a "You-Rent-A-Maid" service; a 10-sec hairdo; robot dancers for femmes married to guys who don't like to dance. You go to buy a space car, and sit down as they show you on a huge screen on the ceiling an actual video view of the robots assembling the cars, just how they're made, etc. This last bit was shown an auto exec from Detroit, who was more than somewhat startled, as he revealed his company has developed just such a system (minus robots) and plans to spring it for use in about two years,
"We have taken families and their problems and moved them 100 years ahead. All the problems are basic ones. We try to answer everybody's thinking — 'I wonder what it's going to be like 100 years from now'?" remarks Barbera. He adds that "if we get scientific, we're dead. We have to do it with fun."
H-B term a lot of nonsense the feeling that cartoon series put actors out of work, pointing out they use over 230 actors a year. And they use full orchestras and top writers on their shows. They pay top prices on scripts—up to $3,500 for a half-hour show. H-B, who began their operation in 1957 with five on their payroll, now have 230 employes. In terms of footage on the air, "we turn out more animation than any other company," asserts Hanna.
Though The Jetsons was about the future, it is still very much a product of the past. Gadgets didn’t work, bosses were loud jerks and freeways were still ridiculously clogged, but the series reflected a sense of progress and optimism about the future. Today, humanity seems completely cynical and pessimistic about the future, reflected in popular culture today as dystopian not utopian. No wonder people happily look back to the future of the past, something you can see when you watch The Jetsons.
Something was missing from the Huckleberry Hound Show and it was a real disappointment. It was Cornelius the rooster.
Cornelius was the spokes-cockadoodler for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. He appeared in the opening and closing of the Huck show, and fluttered down from the air and knocked on Huck’s dressing room door before the first cartoon. That was in 1958. When the show was syndicated in the mid-‘60s, Kellogg’s wasn’t the sponsor any more. It seems to me Cornelius still knocked on the door but he was cut out of the opening and closing animation. (My fuzzy memory tells me the Canadian version of Huck didn’t have Cornelius, either, but it’s so long ago, I’m not sure).
When the Huck show came out on DVD, I was sure happy to see that roostered animation again. And I sang along with the closing theme, just like I did 55 or so years ago.
Kellogg’s or the Leo Burnett agency employed two of my favourite announcers on Hanna-Barbera series. Dick Tufeld announced the “brought to you by....” on The Jetsons. (Come to think of it, Bill Baldwin did the same thing on The Flintstones and I like him, too). And the great Art Gilmore gave the closing billboard over top of the animation—in the first season only—at the closing of the Huck show, as Cornelius and his jalopy rip a circle after Huck puts his head through it.
The box of Corn Flakes somehow vanished from the car soon after the start.
What?!! Hitchhiking? Doesn’t that teach kids to jump in with perfect strangers?! Boy, you’d never see this on TV any more.
Below, Cornelius turns around the old Tin Lizzie. I love his expressions.
Tony! You’re teaching your kid to hitchhike. What kind of parent are you??
There’s Smacksy the seal. He sold Sugar Smacks. And Sugar Pops Pete. Tony pushed Sugar Frosted Flakes. Someone once observed that you can’t say “sugar” any more because that promotes obesity, yet since the word was taken off the cereal boxes, kids are fatter than they were way-back-when.
Here are the first season (1958-59) titles. Only three animators. Oddly, Bob Gentle’s name is missing from the background list and there’s only one layout artist. Perhaps Mike Lah was working for Hanna-Barbera on a freelance basis. Ed Benedict’s name is missing, too. So is Walt Clinton’s. I couldn’t tell you if there were gang credits for the full season.
Tony Junior bops his head and Huck comes back to rescue him. Because someone will mention it if I don’t, when the series was syndicated in the mid-‘60s, Yakky Doodle was the one whose head got clobbered.
The original animated ending closed with a cut to a Screen Gems title card. The DVD versions don’t. They just stop the tape on this title card.
The animation would have been in colour but Earl Kress told me he couldn’t find it in the Hanna-Barbera archive. I suspect this is from someone’s VHS dub of a 16 millimetre black-and-white print that was sent to one of the TV stations in 1958.
Fans of the Yogi Sunday comics will be a little disappointed in the poor quality of three of our entries this month. Richard Holliss, who has generously shared his colour comics from his archive, only has one Yogi this month and none for May. Our black-and-white source decided to stop scanning the weekend comic section. So what we’ve found is hit-and-miss. Fewer and fewer papers were carrying Yogi and the Flintstones in their weekend sections as more and more ads were purchased (one was for some Campbell Soup noodle product aimed at kids), bumping space from comics.
The colour tabloid is from April 28, 1968. It would seem more appropriate to have published it around St. Patrick’s Day given that a leprechaun is a co-star, but maybe that was too obvious.
Quick Draw and Huck make an appearance in the top row of the April 7, 1968 comic. They’re not part of the plot but it’s nice to see them there.
Boo Boo doesn’t make much of an appearance this month, but we’ve got rangers on April 14th and 21st (including an angry obese one that Doug Young probably would have voiced if it had been a TV cartoon) and Bill Hanna’s beloved Boy Scouts on the 7th. I must admit the house painting story is a little too surreal for Yogi; the bear always had motivation for what he did instead of just doing something silly. Perhaps I’m missing something. I like how Yogi makes an appearance in the window of the final panel on the 21st.
April 7, 1968
April 14, 1968
April 21, 1968
April 28, 1968
