The Hanna-Barbera Tricks

Hanna-Barbera was given X amount of time and X amount of money to make TV cartoons. “X” in TV cartoons didn’t equal “X” in theatrical cartoons. There was less time and less money. Chuck Jones could sneer at “illustrated radio” all he wanted, but if someone handed him $300 and told him to buy a car, he wouldn’t be getting a new Cadillac. He’d get the best he could for $300.

Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera didn’t invent held drawings, background pans and walk cycles. You could find them in theatrical cartoons, too. But the H-B studio had to rely on them more than the old theatrical cartoon factories because it didn’t have the time or money to do it any other way.

Here are some examples from the Yogi Bear cartoon “Big Brave Bear” (1958).

The cartoon opens with the camera fixed on of one of Monty’s well-composed background drawings; the same kind of establishing shot you’d find in some Bob McKimson cartoons at Warners. No cels to ink and paint, no time-consuming movement by the cameraman. Frank Paiker, or whoever was operating the camera, simply clicked the number of times indicated on the exposure sheet and then cross-faded into the next scene.

Here’s a recreation of the second scene. The camera panned slowly left to right over a background drawing and came across Boo Boo and Yogi. The only animation is a cycle of Yogi’s right lower leg lazily going up and down. There’s just enough movement to keep the scene from being static. This stock cue from Geordie Hormel plays in the background.


Opening dialogue? It’s as simple as it can be. No wild gestures. No body movement. There’s no time or money. Yogi and Boo Boo remain stuck on a cel as the mouth changes shape to reflect vowels in Daws Butler’s and Don Messick’s voices. If you look closely, though, you will see the backgrounds are not the same as in the pan shot.



Carlo Vinci animated this cartoon. At least for the first few years at Hanna-Barbera, Carlo tried to avoid stiff walk cycles. Here’s a loping little walk in eight drawings, each exposed on two frames, with the background moved slightly. I’m sorry I can’t isolate Boo Boo so you can see it better; the jerking background may be distracting. But you can see Boo Boo changes in every drawing; it’s full animation.



Hanna-Barbera cartoons appear rife with repeating backgrounds, where Pixie and Dixie would run past the same light socket six times, or Huckleberry Hound would stroll in front of the same trees five times. Pixie, Dixie and Huck would all move in cycle animation. But there were times in the first number of cartoons on the Huck half-hour where there would be no movement at all; something would slide across a background until the background ran out and had to start again. Here is an example where the gangster’s car doesn’t move; not even the wheels. It takes 32 frames (16 frames per second) for the car to reach one end of the background to the other before repeating. What you see below been slowed down. I admire the early Hanna-Barbera background work. The trees are outlines, the colours are sponged over top. (Dick Bickenbach seems to have loved cars with no doors in medium-long shot).



Though the animation isn’t exactly lush in TV cartoons, Carlo fitted in some nice expressions in some of the early Huck shows, including “The Buzzin’ Bear” and “Hookey Daze.” I like this realisation/shock take from Boo Boo below in this cartoon. It’s a shame things got tamer as the years went on.



Overall, the animation short-cuts the H-B staff had to go with in the early cartoons were used pretty well. Combined with good voice work, pleasing art and (though not in every short) solid stories, the studio got a lot of mileage for their “X.” Certainly the cartoons pleased kids 60 years ago and, I’d hope, do so today.

Spoofing Westerns and Private Eyes

Mike Maltese seems to have had an affinity for Western characters. At Warner Bros., he invented Yosemite Sam. Then about 15 years later, he came up with Quick Draw McGraw for Hanna-Barbera.

Quick Draw is my favourite series. Maltese managed to make fun of pretty much every Western cliché. For good measure, he added in Snuffles, the dog who was loyal only to whoever would feed him a biscuit. For even better measure, he added Quick Draw’s Zorro-like alter ego, El Kabong, who was feared or respected by other characters despite his obvious incompetence. And, just to add to things, several cartoons pitted Quick Draw against the sheep-stealing orange Snagglepuss, who may have been funnier as a villain than as the pink thespian of his own series. Plus, Maltese borrowed bits of dialogue and ideas from his old Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck cartoons (For example, orange Snagglepuss, in Lamb Chopped, cries “Yoicks and away!” a la Daffy Duck in Robin Hood Daffy, released about a year earlier).

The Quick Draw McGraw Show debuted on the week of September 28, 1959. It was nominated for an Emmy but lost to H-B’s other syndicated effort for Kellogg’s, the Huckleberry Hound Show.

This National Enterprise Association column appeared in newspapers starting around October 24, 1959. I am pretty much 100% certain I posted it in this blog years ago but I can’t find it. Perhaps I deleted it by accident. Regardless, here it is. Why the writer decided to omit the Augie Doggie/Doggie Daddy element on the show, I don’t know. However, he picked up on some of Maltese’s funnier ideas, and gives you a good idea why I’ve always liked the show.

Westerns, Private Eyes Get Kidded—By Animal Kingdom
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
NEA Staff Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (NEA) — Quick Draw McGraw knew exactly how and where to handle the problem. The damsel in distress who had written, "Am in danger, need help at once," signed her initials, "T. H. L. Q."
With born horse sense, Quick Draw — who is a HORSE and TV's newest fast gun — knew the initials meant "Typical Helpless Lumber Queen."
All the boys were there for the private eye convention and among them were: H. Two Oh, famous underwater private eye; Sky Hi, space private eye; Forchoon Cookie, well-known Chinese private eye, and Snooper, a cat, and his partner, Blabber, a mouse.

Today I give you Quick Draw McGraw and his partner, Bobba [sic] Looey, a Mexican burro, and Snooper and Blabber, private eyes, as proof that at least someone has a sense of humor about TV western heroes and private eyes.
The "Someones" are Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, who for 20 years were responsible for the hilarious cat and mouse MGM cartoon team, "Tom and Jerry."
When the studio fired them two years ago, they moved over to TV to become the only company turning out new and original cartoons made especially for television.
"RUFF and READY," [sic] "Huckleberry Hound" and "Yogi Bear" were their first animated cartoon TV stars and this season they've caught up with the western and private eye cycle.
Horselaughing with them, via 150 TV stations today, is Quick Draw McGraw, a talkin', shootin' horse and the only western star able to look a "bad man in the eye while swishing his tail and standing on four legs.
Helping Quick Draw tame the west is his slightly dumb sidekick, Bobba Looey, the burro. As Bat Masterson is proficient with a cane, Quick Draw is handy with a guitar, even becoming a singing horse at times.
But spoofing desperate human western heroes, on the adult level, gives Producers Hanna and Barbera their biggest laughs for an audience reported to be 60 per cent adult.

SNOOPER, "the world's greatest private eye," is a cat and his assistant. Blabber, a mouse, and they LOST their first case (proving that Hanna and Barbara can thumb their noses at Madison Ave.)
Like most all the TV's private eyes, Snooper and Blabber wear trench coats, collars up, and they even have a girl Friday. She's never seen but her voice comes over the telephone in their car.
"She's not too bright," Blabber explains, "but she's kind to her parakeet."
While other private eyes on TV are concerned only with murder, Snooper and Blabber wrestle with other problems, such as "The Case of the Missing Bank Building."
WHEN THEY WERE FIRED by MGM, Hanna and Barbera offered to produce cartoons for the studio's TV production company. MGM said it couldn't be done so Hanna and Barbera became the first do-it-yourself-kids in the TV animation business.
Today one sponsor spends 12 million dollars annually on Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw and a staff of 150 artists and technicians are working on around-the-clock shifts for the multi-million-dollar Hanna and Barbera Productions.
With the assembly-line planning and the use of 80 per cent fewer drawings — "without sacrificing quality" — they have produced in two years more cartoon shows for TV than they did in 20 years at MGM.

Meet the You-Know-Whos

“An inked disaster” is how the venerable New York Times referred to the debut of The Flintstones in 1960 (read the review HERE). Some critics weren’t all that impressed when the series first aired, partly because they it kept being pushed by ABC and Screen Gems as an “adult comedy,” they thought it would be a little more sophisticated and satiric.

The series turned out to have simple but creative spoofs of suburban living conditions of the 1950s transposed to the Stone Age, or at least the impressions everyone had of it. The audience was quite happy with that.

Here’s a full-page feature story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s “Sunday Magazine” of February 19, 1961. The writer evidently wasn’t altogether impressed (he had already written about the series before it aired; you can read what he had to say HERE). The interesting thing to me is the revelation that The Flintstones never had a pilot film. For some time, people have been referring to a 90-second-or-so reel of animation of The Flagstones as a “pilot,” which it never was. Could we please put that to rest now?

The spelling of Bill Hanna’s name is his. The publicity set-up photos came with the article.

Meet 'The Flintstones' of Bedrock
By Arnold Zeitlin
JOSEPH BARBERA AND William Hannah are two of the most inventive men in the television business and in the face of nervous concern by paid-in-full members of the Screen Actors Guild they are demonstrating a canny facility for inventing flesh-and-blood actors off your home television screens and replacing them with their own pen-and-ink creations.
Their most recent contribution to the attrition of live talent on television is the weekly series, "The Flintstones," seen Friday nights over Channel 4. The series of half hour animated cartoons, which they insist are for adults, has compounded the reputation the adept pair earned with the appearance of "Huckleberry Hound" on television screens across the country. The program, which was created with the kiddies in mind, is seen on Channel 2.
FOR VIEWERS SEEKING sophisticated comedy or devilish satire, "The Flintstones" would be a dead waste of time. Despite considerable promise before the start of the current television season, the program's first, 'The Flintstones" is a situation comedy to rank with the ranker days of "Life with Riley" and other such efforts.
"The Flintstones" sounds and looks better on paper than it does on the screen, a circumstance which makes easily believable the story behind its sale to sponsors.

Barbera, a dark haired, dark complexioned man with an earnest and disarming approach [sic], did not stoop to taking a pilot film with him when he met with potential buyers in New York City.
Instead, he spread the story board (sketches of the finished program) around a Madison Avenue office and proceeded to act all the parts himself. "The Flintstones" became a purchase.
'The Flintstones" seems to have caught on, despite, or perhaps, because of the puerility of its content. The program has a saving grace for the watcher who is excited by invention. It is crammed with the wildest contraptions since the heyday of the Rube Goldberg spectacular.
“The Flintstones” tell the story of an ordinary couple, their neighbors, their work-a-day world. With one difference. The couple, Fred and Wilma Flintstone, live in the Stone Age.
Barbera and Hannah, therefore, boyishly have invented one fantastic anachronism after the other to suggest modern times.
WIILMA VACCUM cleans her home, a stone hut of course, with the leathery trunk of an elephant with elephant still attached. A big beaked Dodo bird was resurrected from extinction to serve as record player needle ("So, it's a living," the bird confesses to the audience).
Fred operates a dinosaur-powered crane for the Rock Head & Quarry Cave Construction Company. A lizard serves as the brake for Fred's coupe with the stone wheels. He uses his feet for locomotion. Name of his city is Bedrock ("Any city in the United States could be this town." insists Barbera), it has a newspaper called the Bugle, chipped in stone tablets.

WHEN A STONE AGE movie company arrived in Bedrock one episode to make the movie, "Monster of the Tarpits." it came from a place called Hollyrock. A lizard with bucked teeth, for instance, is Wilma's can opener.
"Have you ever tried to cast a can opener?" said Barbera.

To demonstrate their basically generous attitude toward live actors, Barbera and Hannah have employed four good ones to supply voices for their animated offspring. Alan Reed and Jean Vander Pyl play the Flintstones. Bea Benaderet and Mel Blanc speak for the Barney Rubbles, the neighbors.
Huckleberry Hound was the first Barbera-Hannah character of consequence ("I love Huck," says Barbera, “he's so pure.”)
The two animators had worked 20 years from 1937 for MGM Studios, producing “Tom and Jerry” cartoons. In 1957, ( "business was on its ear": Barbera), the two men quit before they were fired. Shortly afterward, MGM discontinued 'Tom and Jerry" production.
THE SUCCESS OF HUCK and his cohorts, most singularly a character named Yogi Bear (who probably will get his own series) attracted letters from adults, inspiring the idea of a series in so-called adult hours.
The fears of live television actors notwithstanding, more animated cartoon programs doubtlessly will dot the schedule starting next fall. Barbera and Hannah will be leading the way, of course.
Barbera recalls it was considered a full year's work when they turned out six “Tom and Jerry” features (eight minutes each) for MGM. Last year, they produced 52 half hours, with more scheduled.
"I'll never understand," says a mystified Barbera. "what the hell we were doing in those days."

Wilma and Brickrock

Today we can enjoy DVDs or on-line streams of our favourite old cartoons (or bootlegs in some cases). A generation ago, baby boomers ooh-ed and aww-ed about the latest home entertainment technology of the day—video cassettes. Yes, people could actually see some of their favourite cartoons without having to wait for them to appear on TV.

Who better to give free plugs for these wondrous new products than the people who appeared on the cartoons?

Mel Blanc and Jean Vander Pyl were the only main cast members of The Flintstones who were alive when episodes of the ‘60s show first started appearing on home video. Blanc had a whole new career at the time as a raconteur, showing up on talk shows to gab about the old days of the Jack Benny radio show and throw in samples of the voices of his characters (mainly the Maxwell, an English horse and Warner Bros. cartoon stars) that everyone instantly recognised. Vander Pyl seems to have been less in demand. Of the four main actors, her career was arguably the one with the lowest profile. She wasn’t known for much more than being Wilma Flintstone.

Still, we’ve stumbled across this story dated August 27, 1987. In the few interviews I’ve read, she strikes me as a modest, open person, and I’m glad to see she got more recognition in her later years (especially when the live-action Flintstones movie came out). The columnist asks the right (if obvious) questions—“What about the Honeymooners connection?” “Are the old cartoons better than the new ones?” “Are you surprised with the show’s success?”

The many voices of the Flintstone family the work of one
By Mike Cidoni
Gannett News Service
Jean Vander Pyl is never alone, even when she’s by herself.
Forget Sybil. Vander Pyl is a REAL mistress of multiple personalities. Each of hers collects a paycheck.
And there’s another check on the way, as Vander Pyl — the voices of Wilma and Pebbles Flintstone as well as eight occasional characters on “The Jetsons” — picks up her profits from the videocassette “The Flintstones: The First Episodes” (Worldvision, $29.95). The tape (arriving Aug. 29) features the animated series’ first four shows, which aired on ABC in the fall of 1990. When Vander Pyl picks up the phone, you half expect a blast from that past, you expect to hear Wilma; perhaps Pebbles and Bamm Bamm cooing in the background; maybe a few of Fred’s brontosaurus burgers broiling on the grill.
What yon get is a voice that’s husky, warm, matronly.
You get a feeling that Vander Pyl loves creating the voices of Wilma and Pebbles Flintstone. She loves to review the show’s original episodes. She has a gay old time whenever she returns to Bedrock.
Yon also get a little perplexed and a lot bedazzled.
Give Vander Pyl a cue. Any cue. And out comes a quiver. Then a nasally quake.
“Fred!”
One word reveals it all. It’s Wilma, alright.
“And you’ll never believe it," says the 67-year-old Vander Pyl. “That’s all I need to say and I get surrounded by people. I’m more popular now than I was 20 years ago. It’s still a big deal.”
And it still gives the San Clemente-based Vander Pyl a bounty of work. She says her character is featured in a new series of ads, including one for MasterCard of England.
While she’s grateful for the recent Flintstone gigs, Vander Pyl agrees that they don’t make ’em — or write ’em — like they used to.
“Amen,” she says. “The writing, that parody, that wit. It was really ahead of its time. The originals — from 1960-66 — that we did ... Everybody says they’re the best. I have met so many people, kids 35 and 40, who grew up with the originals.”
Those first “Flintstone” shows, which make up the longest-running animated series in prime-time history, are now in syndication. They’ve also inspired a string of spin-offs including the Saturday-morning series “Pebbles and Bamm Bamm” and ABC’s current “The Flintstones Kids.”
Hanna-Barbera also is in pre-production with its big-budget live-action “Flintstones” feature starring Jim Belushi as the hard-headed Fred.
Vander Pyl hopes the new projects will recapture the spirit and success of the earliest episodes.
“(Producers) Mr. Barbera and Mr. Hanna were such pioneers,” she explains. “They had seen that something like 90 percent of ‘Huckleberry Hound’s audience was over the age of 19. So they decided to try an experiment an animated series strictly for adults that would air in prime time.”
The late Alan Reed gave a voice to Fred. Mel (“Bugs Bunny”) Blanc played neighbor Barney Rabble. Vander Pyl originally auditioned for the role of Barney’s wife, Betty. But she lost the part to the late Bea Benaderet (who simultaneously played Kate, the mother, on CBS’ “Petticoat Junction.”)
“Almost all of us came from radio,” Vander Pyl says. “And in radio days, if you couldn’t do two or three characters in one show, you didn’t work. Who’s gonna pay for three actors if you can get just one to do three parts?"
Impressed with Vander Pyl’s versatility, Barbera cast her as Wilma.
“He showed us some drawings and told us ‘This show was kind of inspired by “The Honeymooners’.” So, at first, Vander Pyl based Wilma on Jackie Gleason’s “Honeymooners” wife, Audrey Meadows.
“You know what I mean,” Vander Pyl explains. Then she breaks into flat, through-the-nose Meadows impersonation. “Oh, Raaalph!”
She says Barbera’s direct command to clone “The Honeymooners” separates “The Flintstones: The First Episodes” from the rest in the series.
"When we first started the show, we were all striving — more or less — for that ... I have to come out and say it. We were copying THEM,” she says, laughing. “But it only lasted for about three or four shows because we quickly eased into our characters. Now, I think Wilma’s more like me. A caricature version. People that know me well can spot me in Wilma. I get awfully angry at men sometimes.”
Oddly enough, in its debut season (1960-61), “The Flintstones” scored a higher Nielsen ranking than its original inspiration. It also had a longer run (the original “Honeymooners” ran just a season, “The Flintstones” ran for six).
“And nobody really expected it to go that long. It was just something they were going to try out,” she says.

Vander Pyl may have won the audition for Wilma, but it wasn’t her first role at Hanna-Barbera. When the studio expanded in 1959 to add the half-hour Quick Draw McGraw Show, Joe Barbera went out to look for new voices. One was Vander Pyl, whose first role was Mrs. J. Evil Scientist on a Snooper and Blabber cartoon.

Vander Pyl and the Flintstones’ cast received an unexpected honour in the series’ second season. This is likely a news release from studio PR flack Arnie Carr and appeared in the Binghamton Press of January 6, 1962.

Flintstones Are Invited To Film Festival

A new honor has just been bestowed on the ABC-TV television program, The Flintstones, in the form of an invitation to enter the Monte Carlo TV Film Festival being held this month.
The invitation specifically requested that the Flintstone episode, "Alvin Brickrock Presents," represent the Flintstones show in the comedy category.
"Alvin Brickrock Presents" has to do with a neighbor of the Flintstones and the Bubbles, Alvin Brickrock, whose strange activities with spades, shovels, and coffin-like boxes leads Flintstone and Rubble to suspect that Alvin has done away with his wife — whose absence from the Brickrock home is not satisfactorily explained.
To qualify for the Monte Carlo Festival, the "Brickrock" script had to be translated into French and dubbed with French subtitles. Elliot Field, well-known Hollywood "voice," stars as Alvin Brickrock. Wilma and Fred Flintstone are played by Jean Vander Pyl and Alan Reed, Betty and Barney Rubble by Bea Benaderet and Mel Blanc.

Someone else hired at Hanna-Barbera in 1959 appeared in the cartoon mentioned above. It was Color Radio KFWB disc jockey Elliot Field. Elliot was hired as the voice of Blabber Mouse and appeared in the first four Snooper and Blabber cartoons (and provided incidental voices). However, he explained to me once he ended up in hospital for surgery and when he was fit again, Daws Butler had taken over the role. As you can see, he came back to the studio, but any further cartoon work was cut short by a radio career move to Detroit.

Elliot sent a note several days ago to let me know he’s still out there. He’s the last of the pre-1960 Hanna-Barbera voice actors kicking around (Jimmy Weldon wasn’t hired to be Yakky Doodle until late 1960). We wish Elliot good health and hope to hear from him again. His book about his time in ‘60s rock-jock radio, commercials and animation is still available.

Jumping With Jinks

The Huckleberry Hound Show was more than a few amusing cartoons. It was a full half-hour programme with all kind of things going on in between the cartoons, things that disappeared when the cartoons were later syndicated on their own.

The show, for a time in the early going, centred around a circus motif, which worked really well. Here are some frames from one of the pre-closings of the show, where Huck and the other characters are on a trampoline urging us to tune in again.

This scene features Mr. Jinks failing to catch the meeces. Notice how Jinks’ hand grows for emphasis sake; I’ve pointed out on the Tralfaz a few instances on the same thing being done in theatrical animation. The meeces are, naturally, self-satisfied, knowing they’ll win because Jinks is the bad guy and the bad guy always loses in cartoons.



Jinks has an awful lot of angles, doesn’t he? Even his tail hangs down at an angle instead of having an ‘s’ shaped bend. I don’t know who animated this but my wild guess is it’s someone different than whoever animated Huck (Phil Duncan?) earlier in the sequence.

Some Hanna-Barbera Publicity Art

The artists at Hanna-Barbera drew more than cartoons and comic strips. There was publicity art as well.

To the left, you can look at a really attractive drawing that was the cover of the TV sections of the Long Beach Independent-Press-Telegram from 1960. It isn’t promoting any of the cartoons (since Huck, Yogi and Quick Draw never appeared together back then). The caption refers to Fourth of July celebrations that were marked on various channels in the area. I wish I could tell you the artist.

Of course, there was art promoting the series as well that papers could use with accompanying articles. Below is one from 1959. In this case, there was no article. There was only a caption below it. This piece may have been in colour, judging by the shading in the photocopy.



The characters got together in a little logo that was printed on game boxes and elsewhere. In later years, they showed up on the final title card on the TV cartoons themselves. The Huck cast is from after 1961, when Yogi left and Hokey Wolf was added. The Flintstones cast is from 1964 when Hoppy was added to the cast in yet another publicity gimmick. This copy was with an article in a trade magazine. I’ve never understood why the women are posed with their left arm extended. If anyone has an idea, let me know.



We’ve posted other H-B publicity art elsewhere (there seems to have been all kinds of it); this is the last that’s sitting in our hard drive.

Hard Landing Huck

Hanna-Barbera cartoons in the early going displayed some of the design principles you’d find in animated TV commercials and theatrical shorts of the mid-to-late 1950s. Not as stylised as, say, an MGM cartoon from the studio’s last days in 1957, but still visually modern for their time.



I can’t clip together the full background from this cartoon-between-the-cartoons starring Huckleberry Hound, but here are a couple of frames. I really like how this patio is rendered. The chairs are transparent, the grass isn’t green and the table is not in real perspective. I’ll bet you this is the work of Fernando Montealegre. Note the anchor in the window.



Here, the house isn’t painted in. It’s a simple line-drawing with geometric shapes of colour. The foliage of the tree has no outline. I gather (please correct me if I’m wrong), that Monty cut out the shape of the greenery on a cel then used a sponge to daub the paint onto the background. I guess this style became passé but I think it’s pretty attractive.

Now onto character stuff.



A proud-looking Huck. Maybe he’s proud his swimming trunks can hold themselves on their own.



Whoever wrote this telegraphs the gag, at least if you’ve seen enough cartoons. Huck stops in mid-air and looks worried. Yeah, you know there’ll be no water in the pool.

If this were done a few years later, Huck would simply drop out of the frame, there’d be a camera shake followed by a cut to Huck prone on the cement. However, we get to see the impact.



And if this scene were animated a few years later, Huck would be rigid except for his muzzle. Here, his head changes direction and he gestures as he explains to us he’s lucky there was no water in the pool because he can’t swim. This looks like Ed Love’s work.

These mini-cartoons may not be grab-your-gut hilarious, but they’re pleasant and nice enough to look at and, for 20 seconds of TV animation, that’s good enough for me.

Sam Clayberger 1926-2018

Few very of the credited artists from the earliest Hanna-Barbera series are still around and we’ve lost one more.

Sam Clayberger died on May 2nd. He was 92.

Clayberger was mainly a teacher and a painter. His name may be most familiar to television cartoon fans from Rocky and His Friends. Clayberger painted the backgrounds from Roy Morita’s layouts for the pilot film and told historian Keith Scott when the series sold in 1959, producer Jay Ward added him part-time to his new studio’s staff. He handled some of the “Fractured Fairy Tales” until he left in 1964 to teach art.

It’s quite possible Clayberger was working at Hanna-Barbera on a freelance basis. It’s impossible to tell now when he arrived at the studio as there are no credits on the first series, Ruff and Reddy. But he did get credit on The Huckleberry Hound Show’s first season in 1958-59, including the first Huck cartoon that made it to air. You can see his backgrounds in:

Mark of the Mouse (Production E-30, aired week of January 1959)
Huckleberry Hound Meets Wee Willie (E-35, aired week of September 29, 1958)
Hookey Days (E-36, aired week of December 29, 1958)
Cock-a-Doodle Huck (E-38, aired week of November 17, 1958)
Two Corny Crows (E-39, aired week of November 24, 1958)

Huckleberry Hound Meets Wee Willie background.

Two Corny Crows background.


Cock-a-Doodle Huck establishing shot.

There’s a nice little remembrance in a post on this blog and, of course, another on The Art of Jay Ward site. You can view some of Clayberger’s art work on his own web site. And we posted about him way back when with a link to an interview.

Our sympathies, and no doubt those of anyone reading here, go to his family.

Not-Quite-Duckpin Duck

Daws Butler and Don Messick provided almost all of the voices for Hanna-Barbera cartoons during the first two years of the studio’s life. One notable exception was someone who provided a speciality voice—nightclub comedian Red Coffey or Coffee (he used both spellings through the 1950s and finally settled on the double-e ending).

Coffey found his way into cartoons when he was hired to voice a duckling for MGM’s Tom and Jerry series. His first cartoon was apparently Little Quacker, released to theatres at the start of 1950. Evidently Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera loved the pathetic duck character, as he flew over to H-B about a year after MGM shut down its cartoon operations and was cast in an early Yogi Bear cartoon, Slumber Party Smarty (1958), on the Huckleberry Hound Show. A few more H-B cartoon appearances followed. But when the duck went through a bit of a makeover and emerged as Yakky Doodle in 1961, Jimmy Weldon provided his voice (though Coffey voiced in him in a few of the mini-cartoons that aired during the Yogi Bear Show).

We cobbled together some information about Coffey in this post. We’ve got a side-bar on him, courtesy of this piece in the Los Angeles Times of April 26, 1959. He seems to be trying out jokes for his act more than anything.

A few people have written in over the years saying they worked with Coffey and his wife and he was a pleasant enough chap. He comes across that way in this story. Sorry the picture isn’t of better quality.

Red Coffee Bowls for Laughs and Strikes Up High Averages
By DON SNYDER
There is hilarity in the bowling sport because of one of its participants. The participant is Red Coffee.
“As a little boy I took up the game. Now that I’m a grownup, the game is taking me.”
Coffee, a night club entertainer, averaged 184 at Van Nuys Bowl, 1856 at Tarzana and 187 at Kirkwoods in leagues this season. “I averaged best on the scales. For a penny a throw, I hit 235 every time.”
Coming back from a strike during practice at Monterey Park Lanes, he said, “I finally got the ball working, now I’m unemployed.”
‘Terrific Ball’

Coffee likes to talk about his game. “I throw such a terrific ball, the termites get nervous.”
Red is teamed with his songster Jerry Wallace and has played from here to Las Vegas to Buffalo, N.Y. “I take my bowling ball wherever I go. I went bowling with a girl in Detroit. She had a smile like the 7-10 split.”
Coffee, also an accomplished voice effects man for movie cartoons, can tell you about rough lane conditions he has been up against. “These alleys I played in Buffalo were so slick, Sonja Henie was settin’ pins. This pair I hit in Oshkosh were slow enough to make Step ‘N’ Fetch It look like Jesse Owens.”
Tossed 300
Red was born in Arkansas City, Kan., but grew up in Cushing, Okla., where he tossed a 300 game. “You got to watch out in Cushing. They have fast gutters there.”
Coffee, who invaded Southern France in a parachute during the war, likes pot game and tournament action. “I don’t win much. An ant with a double hernia carried away what I won in my last tournament.”
Coffee’s trademarks on a bowling lane are his tan baseball cap and hanging shirttail.

Coffey and his wife Karen formed a revue in the 1960s and took it on the road. You can read reviews from Variety from 1970 (left) and 1972 (right) and will notice that he pulled out his version of the duck voice. As best as I can tell, he only got screen credit at Hanna-Barbera for a Loopy de Loop cartoon he worked on.

Long-time readers here will know I’m not a fan of the duck character, but writers Mike Maltese and Tony Benedict did their best to tone down most of the things I don’t like about him. The duck voice talent is a different story, though I personally like Jimmy Weldon’s duck voice better than Coffey’s. All the voice talents in those early days at Hanna-Barbera deserve a bit of recognition today, and that includes 300-bowling comic Red Coffey.

Season Three For Huckleberry Hound

The Huckleberry Hound Show was in a bit of turmoil in the 1960-61 season, despite coming off a Emmy win earlier in the year. And you can blame Mr. Magoo.

Kellogg’s was looking for another half-hour cartoon show to sponsor in syndication; it already had the Huck show, Quick Draw McGraw and Woody Woodpecker running in the early evenings. The company’s ad agency, Leo Burnett, thought it had worked out a deal with Hank Saperstein for a Mr. Magoo series; Variety of August 3, 1960 intimated it had already been pitched to KGO-TV in San Francisco. But the deal collapsed. Saperstein’s UPA pulled out, complaining Burnett was interfering too much in the creative aspects of the show (Variety, Sept. 6, 1960).

Hanna-Barbera was ready. Kind of. It sold a half-hour Yogi Bear show to Kellogg’s, with the idea that a new “Wacko” wolf character would replace Yogi on the Huck series (Weekly Variety, Oct. 12, 1960). The problem was that complete Yogi Bear half-hours would have to be ready by late January. Hanna-Barbera couldn’t produce all the cartoons it needed in time. So, for a time, Yogi was doubling on the Huck show while “Wacko” (now “Hokey”) cartoons were being made to replace him. And some segments of the Yogi Bear Show were filled with Augie Doggie and Snooper and Blabber until enough Snagglepuss and Yakky Doodle cartoons were ready.

That brings us to the production schedule for the final seasons of the Huckleberry Hound Show from the files of Leo Burnett, the ad agency representing Kellogg’s, which paid for the half-hour cartoon show. A document dated August 3, 1961 reveals six Yogi cartoons were printed and broadcast on the Huck show, then aired as reruns on the Yogi show. It also states that “Do or Diet,” “Biggest Showoff on Earth” and “Genial Genie” (marked with an asterisk below) were intended for use on the Huck show but not used. Indeed, “Genial Genie” was the cartoon that appeared on the debut half-hour of the Yogi Bear Show on the week of January 30, 1961. Four cartoons made after that (marked with a dagger below) were apparently scheduled for the Huck show but prints were only made when the Yogi show began to air.

Hokey Wolf didn’t appear until the end of March or beginning of April on the Huck show; sources conflict. This means any internet sources that talk about Hokey wolf cartoons appearing at the start of Huck’s third season in September 1960 are full of it. Hokey hadn’t even been invented yet. The same if you read claims the Yogi Bear Show started in September. As you can see below, the Hokey cartoons were begun after all the Hucks, Pixie and Dixies and Yogis were in production.

Like the second season, the “K” episode numbers are misleading. In the second, third and fourth seasons of the Huck show, old cartoons were interspersed with new ones. In other words, all the new productions didn’t air first. The cartoons don’t appear to have aired in the “K” episodes as listed, though they were apparently copyrighted that way.

You’ll notice the names of several new animators brought in to handle the large production boost. My guess is some worked on a freelance basis (Don Williams, for example); it seems to me some of these people were either animating on the Magoo and Dick Tracy TV cartoons or the TV Popeyes around this time. I haven’t really examined it closely.

Artie Davis appears as an animator toward the end of the list after leaving Warner Bros. in a dispute over a promise to direct. I don’t have an accurate list of Hokey Wolf animators; versions of the cartoons available are without credits. I can recognise a few of the animators such as Don Williams, a really tame George Nicholas and Ken Muse, but have left off the names. Carlo Vinci was engaged elsewhere than the Huck show with the exception of one Yogi Bear cartoon.

E-143 has the distinction of being the last production which used the Capitol Hi-Q and Langlois Filmusic libraries (it opens with my favourite Jack Shaindlin cue, “Toboggan Run”). The last Huck on the list, “Cluck and Dagger,” all the Hokeys and the cartoons made for airing in the 1961-62 TV season had background cues supplied by Hoyt Curtin.

Some of the best Huck cartoons came out of this season. “Spud Dud,” “Science Friction” and “The Unmasked Avenger” with Huck as the Purple Pumpernickel are among my favourites. Yogi Bear’s “Oinks and Boinks” is a pretty funny send-up of the Three Little Pigs, reminiscent of Warren Foster’s Bugs Bunny/Three Pigs cartoon at Warners. And even Hokey Wolf has some good bits (Bea Benaderet supplies voices in one cartoon). Hokey and Ding-a-ling get arrested in ancient times in “Poached Yeggs” and are threatened with death. Ding turns to the camera and says “And they call this Merrie olde England.”


E-106 Oinks and Boinks (K-040) Yogi/Patterson
E-107 Booby Trapped Bear (K-041) Yogi/Marshall
E-108 Spud Dud (K-040) Huck/Nicholas
E-109 High Jinks (K-043) P&D/Lundy
E-110 Legion Bound Hound (K-041) Huck/Muse
E-111 Price For Mice (K-041) P&D/Muse

E-112 Gleesome Threesome (K-042) Yogi/Vinci
E-113 Science Friction (K-042) Huck/Love
E-114 Plutocrat Cat (K-042) P&D/Marshall
E-115 A Bear Pair (K-043) Yogi/Muse
E-116 Pied Piper Pipe (K-040) P&D/Patterson
E-117 Spy Guy (K-044) Yogi/Love
E-118 Nuts Over Mutts (K-044) Huck/Love
E-119 Woo For Two (K-045) P&D/Carr
E-120 Knight School (K-043) Huck/Marshall
E-121 Huck Hound’s Tale (K-045) Huck/Love
E-122 Party Peeper Jinks (K-044) P&D/Lundy
E-123 Do or Diet (K-045) Yogi/deMattia
E-124 The Unmasked Avenger (K-046) Huck/Williams
E-125 A Wise Quack (K-046) P&D/Carr
*E-126 Bears and Bees (K-046) Yogi/Lokey
E-127 Missile Bound Cat (K-048) P&D/Marshall
*E-128 Biggest Show-Off on Earth (K-047) Yogi/deMattia
E-129 Hillbilly Huck (K-048) Huck/Lokey
*E-130 Genial Genie (K-048) Yogi/Lundy
E-131 Kind To Meeces Week (K-047) P&D/Lokey
E-132 Fast Gun Huck (K-047) Huck/Case
†E-133 Cub Scout Boo Boo (K-049) Yogi/Carr
†E-134 Home Sweet Jellystone (K-050) Yogi/Case
E-135 Crew Cat (K-049) P&D/Case
E-136 Astro-Nut Huck (K-051) Huck/Marshall
†E-137 Love Bugged Bear (K-051) Yogi/Carr
E-138 Huck and Ladder (K-050) Huck/Lokey

E-139 Jinxed Jinks (K-050) P&D/Davis
E-140 Lawman Huck (K-048) Huck/Carr
E-141 Light-Headed Cat (K-051) P&D/Marshall
†E-142 Bareface Disguise (K-052) Yogi/Davis
E-143 Mouse For Rent (K-052) P&D/Carr
E-144 Cluck and Dagger (K-052) Huck/Davis


From what I can tell, the “K” designation on the Huck half-hours stopped when Yogi Bear got his own programme. It is now 1961. There were still four new Hucks and four new Pixie and Dixie cartoons that hadn’t aired to round out the remaining half-hours for the rest of the 1960-61 season, along with a bunch of brand-new Hokeys. Numbers in parentheses are the order in which they aired.

E-145 Tricks and Treats (W-1) Hokey/Patterson
E-146 Hokey Dokey (W-2) Hokey
E-147 Lamb-Basted Wolf (W-5) Hokey
E-148 Which Witch is Which (W-3) Hokey/Nicholas
E-149 Pick a Chick (W-4) Hokey
E-150 Robot Plot (W-7) Hokey
E-151 Boobs in the Woods (W-8) Hokey
E-152 Castle Hassle (W-6) Hokey
E-153 Booty on the Bounty (W-13) Hokey
E-154 Hokey in the Pokey (W-11) Hokey/Patterson
E-155 Who’s Zoo (W-9) Hokey
E-156 Dogged Sheep Dog (W-10) Hokey
E-157 Too Much to Bear (W-16) Hokey/Muse
E-158 Movies Are Bitter Than Ever (W-12) Hokey

E-159 Poached Yeggs (W-14) Hokey
‡E-160 Hokey cartoon for 1961-62 season.
E-161 Rushing Wolf Hound (W-15) Hokey/Patterson
E-162 The Glass Sneaker (W-18) Hokey
E-163 Indian Giver (W-19) Hokey
E-164 Chock Full Chuck Wagon (W-17) Hokey/Muse
E-165 Bring ‘Em Back a Live One (W-21) Hokey
E-166 A Star is Bored (W-23) Hokey/Love
‡E-167 Hokey cartoon for 1961-62 season.
E-168 West of the Pesos (W-24) Hokey
E-169 Jinks’ Jinx (P-49) P&D/Carle
E-170 Caveman Huck (H-49) Huck/Goepper
E-171 Fresh Heir (P-50) P&D/Harding
E-172 Huck of the Irish (H-50) Huck/Harding
E-173 Home Flea (P-51) P&D/Boersma
E-174 Jungle Bungle (H-51) Huck/Somerville
‡E-175 Pixie and Dixie cartoon for 1961-62 season.
‡E-176 Huckleberry Hound cartoon for 1961-62 season.
E-177 Phoney-O and Juliet (W-20) Hokey
E-178 Hokey’s Missing Millions (W-22) Hokey
E-179 Bombay Mouse (P-52) P&D/Boersma
‡E-180 Pixie and Dixie cartoon for 1961-62 season.
E-181 Ben Huck (H-52) Huck/Boersma