Despises Them Mices

Pixie and Dixie get even with Mr. Jinks for continually destroying their sandcastles, in a little cartoon between the cartoons on the Huckleberry Hound Show. No “illustrated radio” here. There’s a sight gag. I always like the ghost drawings.



You can guess at the animator.

An Assortment of Yogi

Guys in Yogi Bear costumes were still putting on shows around the U.S.A. in 1973. You see to the right an ad from the Naples Daily News of June 17th that year. In addition to the bike, the management at the Wickes Ft. Myers Center signed a deal Scollon Productions to hire its Yogi Bear Show. People dressed as Yogi, Boo Boo and Ranger Smith did three “fun-filled” shows in each of a four-day span.

This post is a hodge-podge of Yogi stuff sitting in a file for four to eight years. Since we’re winding things down here, I’m going to post it. Some of it may be in older posts; I really don’t have time to check.

As you know, Yogi was grabbed by the folks at Kellogg’s to push its version of Cherrios. The fact I’m not saying that Cherrios was General Mills’ version of OKs tells you which cereal was the more popular. Simultaneously, he was on the box of Kellogg’s biggest seller to push his birthday party episode on TV in 1961 (and the Dell Comic version of it) Yogi also found himself in an ad for Kellogg’s All-Stars cereal, featuring the voice of Cyril Ritchard as the Wizard of Oatz. Unlike the Oz version, this wizard wasn’t a wonderful wiz if ever a wiz there was. The cereal wasn’t around all that long. Perhaps he should have teamed with Snagglepuss as a cowardly lion. The ad is from the comic section of a number of newspapers of July 24, 1960.

Incidentally, Sponsor magazine of December 17, 1962 reported on rumours that Kellogg’s was about to create a Yogi cereal (along with a Jethro cereal). Either the rumours were false, or the idea was quashed (would the Jethro cereal be in the shape of double-nought spies?).

Yogi Bear had experience with selling honey (“Bears and Bees”) and eating fried chicken (“Spy Guy”), so why not combine them into a chain of restaurants? The ad to the right is from the Waterloo Courier of July 18, 1971. (The same page has a story about the death of the voice of Touché Turtle, Bill Thompson). There’s an interesting article about the demise of the chain in this web post. How do you fry something in honey anyway?

We’ve had pictures over the years of all kinds of Hanna-Barbera toys, dolls, games, comics, and more from the studio’s best period, namely the first few years when it was at the Kling/Chaplin studio on La Brea and the little cinder-block windowless bunker on Cahuenga (before they moved to the building most fans know about). The pictures we’re put up have been almost always of American productions, but here’s one from England. You can make and paint little sculptures of the main characters in the Huckleberry Hound Show, even though Yogi gets top billing. I realise I’m biased but I think toys were more fun back then. Today, it seems like all kids do is bang their thumbs playing games on their hand-held.

I won’t transcribe the newspaper story on the right; you can click on it and make it bigger. There was a reference to it in a post a few weeks ago. It’s from 1964 and is about a group of guys who got together in 1959 to form a “Yogi Bear Club” and help needy kids at Christmas time. You’ll notice the officers of the club are all named after characters on the Huckleberry Hound Show. Ranger Smith was brand-new in fall of 1959, so the club had a generic “Ranger.” The only down-side to this fine charitable effort is that they didn’t pick Yowp as the name of one of the officers; they chose “Indian” instead (whose name is Li’l Tom Tom, though I don’t think it was mentioned in the cartoon itself). I imagine like many clubs, this businessman’s association is long gone. Carl W. Green mentioned in the story was born about 1914 so I suspect he has passed away, too.

Finally, here’s an endless run cycle from the end of “Droop-a-long Yogi,” a pretty good 1961 cartoon from the Yogi Bear show animated by Ralph Somerville with story direction by Artie Davis. The cycle has six drawings on twos. The animation doesn’t match up with the repeat in the background but it won’t be too noticeable here. This is a little slower than in the actual cartoon.

Dinner With Yogi and Quick Draw (and Maybe T.C.)

Despite what some people and web sites would have you believe, cartoons weren’t just for Saturday mornings way-back-when. In fact, it took until the mid-1960s for animation to bump puppets and most filmed live-action reruns off the Saturday morning schedule.

For those of us of a certain vintage, after-school time was cartoon time. Local TV stations bought all kinds of cartoons from syndicators and ran them to death for years, sometimes with a human host in a costume doing funny routines between them. Late afternoons/early evenings were kids time on TV just as it had been on radio. Hanna-Barbera’s first huge successes were in that time period; the Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw and Yogi Bear shows generally ran somewhere between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. (the rise of half-hour network and local newscasts pretty much pushed cartoons out of that slot).

Since kids could watch cartoons at around dinner time, it’s only appropriate that Hanna-Barbera would help you eat your food while showing you Snooper solving a case at the same time. They licensed TV trays.

Television stations have been around since the late 1920s, but it was 1948 that all the networks had their prime-time schedules filled on weeknights for the first time. And, according to this patent, 1948 was when the TV tray, as we know it today, was invented. Happy 70th birthday, TV tray!

The ad to right is from 1961. All three of Hanna-Barbera’s “Kellogg’s” syndicated half-hours were on by that time. The artwork on the trays is really good and the scenes depicted on them should result in at least a smile. They remind me of scenes in those short cartoons between the main cartoons. Here are some of the trays. I wish I could tell you who the artist was.

There were plenty of opportunities to pull out a TV tray and tune in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon in 1961. The studio had five half-hour series on the air, with the Flintstones and the three pre-prime-time shows joined by Top Cat. Things looked good for Hanna-Barbera; the networks wanted animated shows at night because of the success of the Flintstones. Top Cat beat out Keemar, the Invisible Boy from Format Films, Sir Loin and His Dragon and Shaggy Dog Tales from Creston/TV Spots and Sweetie from Pabian Productions (Jim and Tony) for a prime-time spot. In fact, it was the first foreign show bought by Canada’s new CTV network.

But Top Cat placed second behind Joey Bishop in its debut week with a 32.7 audience share (Bishop had 45.5). The studio had was feverishly working to get more shows ready; by the following February 5th, Variety reported only 24 of 30 episodes were done. Five weeks later, ABC announced the series had been renewed for the following season, but would be moved to Saturday mornings, at the time still pretty much a dumping ground for old cartoons amongst shows like Fury.

Top Cat fans folded up the TV trays and got out the cereal bowls instead.

Season Two For Huckleberry Hound

Bigger is better. Bigger means more profits. That’s the free enterprise system. H-B Enterprises was a business. Therefore, it got bigger.

The Huckleberry Hound Show started life in 1958 as a huge success. Sponsor Kellogg’s wanted more. Hanna-Barbera was willing to oblige. In 1959, it created a whole new cartoon series called the Quick Draw McGraw Show and shopped it to Kellogg’s by early April, according to Sponsor magazine. Huck carried on with a second season, but H-B cut the number of cartoons produced for it from 66 to 39. Evidently, Kellogg’s was content with re-airing cartoons from the first 66; after all, didn’t kids keep tuning in the same Bugs Bunny cartoons over and over and over again? Either that, or the studio didn’t have the staff or equipment in 1959 to make more than that. Ruff and Reddy was still in production, and Screen Gems’ John Mitchell was pushing Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera to take the next logical television step—into prime time.

All of this meant H-B Enterprises (the company changed its name to Hanna-Barbera Productions in August 1959) had to add staff beyond its three animators (a fourth, Mike Lah, had pitched in on occasion). Variety noted on August 19, 1959:

To cope with the largescale output, the H-B plant at Amco Studios here is now on a 24-hour-a-day schedule, its 175-man staff of animators, story editors, camera operators, inkers and others split into three eight-hour shifts.

Hanna-Barbera brought in some solid people. La Verne Harding and Don Patterson came from Walter Lantz (along with story director Alex Lovy, an old colleague of Barbera’s from the Van Beuren studio in New York). Ed Love and Dick Lundy had been at the commercial houses; both had worked at MGM and Disney before that.

Perhaps my favourite out of the group was George Nicholas, who had been animating at Disney and, at age 48, was laid off after completion of Sleeping Beauty. Hanna-Barbera hired him in mid-April 1959. Nicholas was handed the first cartoon put into production for the second season of the Huck Show, the Yogi Bear adventure “Lullabye-Bye Bear.” He gave Yogi wild and insane expressions. He toned it down after that. Whether it was at the behest of management, I don’t know, but I would have loved to have seen more cartoons animated that way.

Love’s name was on the closing credits, but he told interviewer Harvey Deneroff he was never on staff, he worked freelance at H-B. The studio evidently hired others on a freelance basis. Manny Perez and Don Williams both animated a solitary cartoon on the Huck show (Williams did a bit of other work at the studio). Gerard Baldwin animated for Hanna-Barbera as well before jumping at the chance to work in Mexico under a Jay Ward contract later in the year.

Documents from the Leo Burnett files obtained by the late Earl Kress reveal the studio also animated five new opening billboards for the show that year, along with seven closing ones, and something called “opening units” (five) and “closing units” (four). This was not the main or closing title animation and because I’m not in the industry, I have no idea what’s being referred to.

Oddly, the document refers to only one piece of closing animation, with the same production number as the one in the 1958-59 season. But we know part of the animation was re-done. Instead of Huck driving through a hoop, Yogi Bear is now treated somewhat on an equal footing with the blue dog, as the two carry a banner with the Kellogg’s slogan of the day.

Besides animators, additional background and directorial staff were brought in. The biggest impact may have been the decision to hire Mike Maltese from Warner Bros. in November 1958 to write for the studio. He was joined in mid-April by Warren Foster, who had left Warners in 1957 for John Sutherland Productions. Maltese was assigned to handle Quick Draw, Foster (with one exception) wrote the Huck show in 1959. Under Foster, the cartoons seemed to get a lot chattier. Foster also got rid of the idea of solo Yogi Bear adventures and spot-gag cartoons, making Boo Boo a permanent sidekick and creating a permanent adversary out of a bunch of generic rangers used by Joe Barbera and Charlie Shows the previous season. (Interestingly, there is a Ranger-less/Boo Boo-less cartoon this season. It is the last one to feature Yowp, who was then put in the cartoon retirement kennel).

The cartoons continued to feature the Capitol Hi-Q and Langlois Filmusic libraries for mood music. Some different cues were added this season to freshen the sound a bit. As well, Joe Barbera went hunting for additional voice actors. Hal Smith and Jean Vander Pyl were among those hired who join Don Messick and Daws Butler on the Huck series.

Was this bigger Hanna-Barbera better? In 1959, perhaps it was. There were a lot of entertaining cartoons produced that year. But I still think expansion hurt the studio in the long-run; at least I smiled a lot less at Peter Potamus than I did at Yogi getting mixed up with seven dwarfs. I even turned off the TV set while Magilla Gorilla was on.

Here are the cartoons for the second season in order of production. The “K” designation is for the first show the cartoon appeared in. My thanks again to Denise Kress for sending me this documentation.


E-67 Lullabye-Bye Bear (K-028) Yogi/Nicholas
E-68 Grim Pilgrim (K-028) Huck/Muse
E-69 Sour Puss (K-029) PD/Love
E-70 Papa Yogi (K-030) Yogi/Nicholas
E-71 Tin Pin Alley (K-027) Huck/Love
E-72 Rapid Robot (K-028) PD/Vinci

E-73 Bare Face Bear (K-029) Yogi/Baldwin
E-74 Show Biz Bear (K-027) Yogi/Patterson
E-75 Jolly Roger and Out (K-029) Huck/Muse
E-76 King Size Poodle (K-30) PD/Vinci
E-77 Nottingham and Yeggs (K-032) Huck/Love
E-78 Rah Rah Bear (K-032) Yogi/Vinci
E-79 Hi-Fido (K-027) PD/Perez
E-80 Stranger Ranger (K-031) Yogi/Muse
E-81 Somebody’s Lion (K-030) Huck/Lundy
E-82 Batty Bat (K-033) PD/Williams
E-83 Cop and Saucer (K-034) Huck/Love
E-84 Mighty Mite (K-031) PD/Marshall
E-85 Bear For Punishment (K-033) Yogi/Baldwin
E-86 Pony Boy Huck (K-035) Huck/Harding
E-87 A Bully Dog (K-031) Huck/Muse
E-88 Nowhere Bear (K-034) Yogi/Love
E-89 Bird Brained Cat (K-032) PD/Patterson
E-90 Huck the Giant Killer (K-033) Huck/Lundy
E-91 Wound-Up Bear (K-035) Yogi/Patterson
E-92 Lend Lease Meece (K-034) PD/Nicholas

E-93 A Good Good Fairy (K-035) PD/Marshall
E-94 Bewitched Bear (K-036) Yogi/Patterson
E-95 Pet Vet (K-036) Huck/Vinci
From this point, all cartoons are copyrighted “Hanna-Barbera Productions” instead of “H-B Enterprises, Inc.”
E-96 Heavens to Jinksy (K-036) PD/Muse
E-97 Hoodwinked Bear (K-037) Yogi/Nicholas
E-98 Picadilly Dilly (K-037) Huck/Patterson
E-99 Goldfish Fever (K-037) PD/Lundy
E-100 Snow White Bear (K-038) Yogi/Nicholas
E-101 Wiki Waki Huck (K-038) Huck/Marshall
E-102 Pushy Cat (K-038) PD/Vinci
E-103 Space Bear (K-039) Yogi/Patterson
E-104 Puss in Boats (K-039) PD/Lundy
E-105 Huck’s Hack (K-039) Huck/Patterson

Jinks Short-Cuts

Time for a Mr Jinks quiz.

Here are two frames from Jinks’ Mice Device (1958). Can you guess the animator?



This is kind of a trick question, as two different animators are at work. This first drawing is by Ken Muse. The little half-row of teeth, the small tongue and half a lip overlapping the other half gives it away. The second one, the disheveled Jinks who thinks he’s cracking up, is the work another veteran—Mike Lah.

Lah animated two cartoons on his own in the 1958-59 and laid out others, including this one. But he was also given footage, generally 90 seconds worth of gags, inserted into the middle of the cartoon.

Muse was the studio’s footage king, but Lah should have been able to churn out film, too, thanks to a bunch of shortcuts. Lah would hold a character in place and draw the mouth in odd geometric shapes, face-forward, during dialogue. In this cartoon, he also saves work by simply having drawings turned around and then inked and painted on the other side, with the tiniest adjustments.

Here are a couple of examples, first of Jinks on the floor after being run over by a lawnmower, and then an in-between drawing as he gets up. The pushed-together eyes should remind you of Lah’s later work at MGM.



And here are some frames of Jinks exiting, stage right. Oh, that was another character, wasn’t it? These are animated on twos.



Lah carried on with his work in advertising animation while freelancing for H-B; he later took over the operation of Quartet Films. A bunch of new animators came in for the 1959-60; Lah’s distinctive style was missed as the studio’s animation became more refined and tamer.

Producing the Huckleberry Hound Show

So what was the first cartoon made for the Huckleberry Hound Show? The correct answer is “Pie-Pirates,” the Yogi Bear cartoon that actually appeared on the third Huck show.

We know this thanks to the late Earl Kress and all the work he did putting together the Huck Show DVD. Earl was sent a copy of a mimeographed document from the files of the Leo Burnett ad agency dated Aug 3, 1961, with an addendum dated January 22, 1962, listing what it calls “Composition of Units.” It’s something for a real H-B geek, listing production codes for opening/closing titles, sponsor IDs, opening/closing billboards, bridges, the episodes themselves and the individual cartoons.

The latter lists the cartoons made for the show in chronological order. Unfortunately, because this is an agency document and not a studio one, it doesn’t show when production was begun (let alone finished) on each cartoon, which is information I’d be interested in seeing.

I don’t know if the production order has been published anywhere so I’m going to put it up here. The animator credits below are my own.

As always, these kinds of documents lead to questions which, at this late date, can’t be answered. You’ll notice the first 29 cartoons put into production starred Yogi Bear and Pixie and Dixie. The first Huck began with production number 30. Why so late? I’ll avoid speculation. And were more episodes ordered by Kellogg’s after production began? The cartoons that made up shows 22 through 26 were all made pretty much in the order they appeared.

26 episodes allowed two airplays to make up 52 weeks. Eight of the cartoons were reused in episodes, and not near the end of the series.

And you’ll notice Mike Lah appears on most of the earliest cartoons in production. Lah worked on a freelance basis for the studio; evidently he hoped he would be cut in when Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera formed the studio with the financial backing of Columbia Pictures and director George Sidney. It never happened, so he continued his work elsewhere. Animator Mike Kazaleh pointed out some time ago that Lah would be handed a specific chunk of footage in the cartoons, usually somewhere in the middle. I can’t help but wonder if the first cartoons were originally planned to be shorter, then extra gag footage was needed to bring them to about seven minutes (all the cartoons are exactly the same length). I don’t know whether I’ve spotted all the Lah footage; I’m almost certain he did work on a few of the cartoons below where I don’t have him listed (I’ve just finished looking at one that if it isn’t Lah, Ken Muse imitates Lah’s eye and mouth movements instead of his own found elsewhere in the cartoon).

E-1 Pie-Pirates (K-003/017) Yogi/Lah
E-2 High Fly Guy (K-008) Yogi/Marshall-Lah
E-3 Tally Ho-Ho-Ho (K-007) Yogi/Vinci-Lah
E-4 Pistol Packin’ Pirate (K-005) PD/Muse-Lah
E-5 Judo Jack (K-002/15) PD/Muse-Lah
E-6 Little Bird Mouse (K-007) PD/Marshall-Lah
E-7 Yogi Bear’s Big Break (K-001/011) Yogi/Muse-Lah
E-8 Big Bad Bully (K-020) Yogi/Vinci-Lah
E-9 Slumber Party Smarty (K-002/014) Yogi/Marshall-Lah

E-10 Kit Kat Kit (K-003/018) PD/Muse
E-11 Big Brave Bear (K-006) Yogi/Vinci
E-12 Scaredy Cat Dog (K-006) PD/Marshall
E-13 Baffled Bear (K-009) Yogi/Muse-Lah
E-14 Cousin Tex (K-001/012) PD/Vinci-Lah
E-15 Foxy Hound-Dog (K-005) Yogi/Marshall-Lah
E-16 Jinks’ Mice Device (K-004/021) PD/Muse-Lah
E-17 The Ghost With the Most (K-009) PD/Muse-Lah
E-18 The Buzzin’ Bear (K-013) Yogi/Vinci
E-19 Jiggers..It’s Jinks! (K-008) PD/Marshall
E-20 Brave Little Brave (K-010) Yogi/Muse-Lah
E-21 The Stout Trout (K-021) Yogi/Vinci-Lah
E-22 The Ace of Space (K-010) PD/Muse-Lah
E-23 Jinks Junior (K-011) PD/Marshall-Lah
E-24 Be My Guest, Pest (K-016) Yogi/Vinci
E-25 Duck in Luck (K-018) Yogi/Vinci
E-26 Puppet Pals (K-016) PD/Marshall
E-27 Jinks the Butler (K-013) PD/Muse
E-28 Bear on a Picnic (K-019) Yogi/Vinci
E-29 Runaway Bear (K-015) Yogi/Muse
E-30 Mark of the Mouse (K-017) PD/Vinci
E-31 Sheriff Huckleberry (K-005) Huck/Muse
E-32 Sir Huckleberry Hound (K-004/019) Huck/Marshall
E-33 Lion-Hearted Huck (K-002/013) Huck/Muse
E-34 Rustler Hustler Huck (K-006) Huck/Marshall
E-35 Huckleberry Hound Meets Wee Willie (K-001/010) Huck/Muse

E-36 Hookey Days (K-014) Huck/Vinci
E-37 Tricky Trapper (K-003/K016) Huck/Muse
E-38 Cock-a-Doodle Huck (K-008) Huck/Vinci
E-39 Two Corny Crows (K-009) Huck/Muse
E-40 Freeway Patrol (K-007) Huck/Muse
E-41 Dragon Slayer Huck (K-012) Huck/Muse
E-42 Fireman Huck (K-009) Huck/Muse
E-43 Sheep-Shape Sheepherder (K-017) Huck/Vinci
E-44 Skeeter Trouble (K-015) Huck/Vinci
E-45 Hokum Smokum (K-020) Huck/Vinci
E-46 Hypnotize Surprise (K-020) PD/Marshall
E-47 Bird House Blues (K-021) Huck/Vinci
E-48 Jinks’ Flying Carpet (K-014) PD/Muse
E-49 Prize Fight Fright (K-021) Yogi/Muse
E-50 Dinky Jinks (K-019) PD/Vinci
E-51 Barbecue Hound (K-018) Huck/Muse
E-52 Brainy Bear (K-022) Yogi/Muse

E-53 Nice Mice (K-022) PD/Muse
E-54 Postman Panic (K-022) Huck/Vinci
E-55 Robin Hood Yogi (K-023) Yogi/Muse
E-56 King Size Surprise (K-023) PD/Marshall
E-57 Lion Tamer Huck (K-024) Huck/Lah
E-58 Daffy Daddy (K-024) Yogi/Vinci
E-59 Cat-Nap Cat (K-024) PD/Muse
E-60 Ski Champ Chump (K-023) Huck/Marshall
E-61 Scooter Looter (K-025) Yogi/Vinci
E-62 Mouse Nappers (K-025) PD/Muse
E-63 Little Red Riding Huck (K-025) Huck/Marshall
E-64 Hide and Go Peek (K-026) Yogi/Muse
E-65 Boxing Buddy (K-026) PD/Muse
E-66 Tough Little Termite (K-026) Huck/Muse


There was only one main title and one end title for the Huck show in the 1958-59 season. That means only the regular artists and voice actors were listed (sorry Frank Tipper and June Foray). There were all kinds of mini-cartoons. There were 11 opening and closing billboards, two sponsor IDs, 11 Huck bridges, 11 Pixie and Dixie bridges, 11 Yogi Bear bridges and 11 “opening units” (along with four “closing units”).

Leo Burnett also, at one time, had two 35mm prints of the shows, with another 54 16mm prints in storage (in 1961). It’s a shame the either didn’t exist or weren’t available when the Huck DVD was made so there would have been better quality than some VHS dubs of the programming elements.

The Burnett files have production numbers for all the cartoons in the Huck series (including the Hokey Wolfs). Earl also had a similar document for the Yogi Bear show. If he had one for Quick Draw McGraw, it’s still in his filing cabinet.

My thanks to Denise Kress for going to the time and expense of mailing these to me.

Pixie and Dixie — Tiny Trappers

This post is merely an excuse to display these great poses of Mr. Jinks on a sheet put together by Dick Bickenbach in 1960.

But let’s give you a bonus as well. Here’s a four-pager from a May 1962 Dell comic. I always enjoy silhouette panels and there are a few of them here.

Ol’ Jinksie is one of my favourite characters in the Hanna-Barbera stable. He was saddled with fairly indistinct co-stars and some cartoons where the dialogue could have been sharper (Warren Foster toward the end of the run). But I love the way he fancies himself to be a hip, clever cat. At times he is. At times he outsmarts himself. This story line in this comic is a good example.

Spokes-lepuss

The animated commercials in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon shows for Kellogg’s could be as amusing as the cartoons themselves. My favourite is the one where Jinksie and the meeces do a Beatles spoof song for Raisin Bran.

Here’s a nice one, too, starring Snagglepuss, who was the spokes-puss for Cocoa Krispies for a time. The writer at Leo Burnett, Kellogg’s agency, came up with a clever premise, where Snagglepuss explains how he got the job on the cereal package balancing a bowl on his finger.



His act started in the circus. He dropped the bowl, then himself.



Then he tried films, kind of a combination of the MGM lion in the Warners shield with the 20th Century Fox fanfare. Did Ed Benedict lay out this commercial? The security guard reminds me of a Benedict drawing.



Finally, Kelloggs hires him and powder-puffs him for his commercial. He keeps dropping the bowl. Not very, cocoa-lossal, Snagglepuss.



You’ll notice the voice credit to Daws Butler. This apparently was the result of Bert Lahr’s prickliness (need I explain that Snagglepuss’ voice is a take-off on Lahr’s?). Lahr got upset that commercials for Lestoil, a cleaning product, starred a cartoon duck that sounded like him. He sued Adell Chemical, the makers of the cleaner, and Robert Lawrence Associates, the New York company that made the commercials. The New York Times of May 29, 1962, tagged its story on the lawsuit with “Mr. Lahr...may also sue the Kellogg Company, manufacturer of cereals. The company is the sponsor of the ‘Yogi Bear’ program, a children’s entertainment. Mr. Lahr contends that a character in the cartoon program, Snagglepuss, also is using an impersonation of his voice without permission.”

Whether Lahr went ahead with a suit against Kellogg and/or Hanna-Barbera is unknown but, as you can see above, he did threaten one. If the credit to Daws was, in fact, because of Lahr’s threat in 1962, then this commercial wouldn’t have been seen on the Yogi show when it debuted the previous year.