Hanna-Ween

When I was kid, you could dress up as Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear or Quick Draw McGraw and go out on Hallowe’en in hopes of getting free candy in a door-to-door windfall. Actually, mooching food would be expected of Yogi Bear, wouldn’t it?

While All Hallow’s Eve didn’t form the basis of stories in the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons, they did include antagonists or adversaries you’d find on suburban streets in the 1960s on an average October 31st. Here’s a random sampling of ten cartoons that come to mind.

Ghosts
Mike Maltese came up with Harum and Scarum, two goofy ghosts, whom he planted in a pair of cartoons. The first one was with Snooper and Blabber in “Real Gone Ghosts” (1959), the second in “Be My Ghost” with Snagglepuss (1961). They were silly and, the best thing, rolled up like window shades before disappearing. Harum was played by Daws Butler. Scarum was originally voiced by Elliot Field; Don Messick took over for the second cartoon.



Quasi Ghosts
Fibber Fox pretends to be a ghost by covering himself with flour in “The Most Ghost.” The only thing that’s scary is Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera’s obsession with an annoying duck character. I like Fibber, but this is a weak cartoon.



Pixie and Dixie, then Mr. Jinks, pretend to be ghosts in “The Ghost With the Most” (1958). There’s a great Mike Lah shock take on Jinksie but there are several egregious errors. Whoever worked the camera on this one wasn’t keeping track of the exposure sheets as Jinks’ mouth appears in front of his hand and then disappears for a brief time.



Witches
Where else would a witch go to relax than Jellystone Park? Yogi steals her broom to filch pic-a-nic baskets in “Bewitched Bear” (1960). Ranger Smith is great in this one. He’s still in his “I’m bored just doing my job” stage of his character, which is better than the petulant, annoyed ranger he quickly became. I’m pretty sure Bob Gentle is responsible for an excellent opening shot of the witch’s house. Jean Vander Pyl is the witch.



A whole pile of old Warner Bros. cartoon ideas are mashed together by ex-Warners writer Mike Maltese in “Switch Witch” (1959). There’s a bit of “The Trial of Mr. Wolf,” where the Big Bad Wolf defends himself in court against the Three Little Pigs, and “Bewitched Bunny,” where Witch Hazel wants to eat Hansel and Gretel. Monty’s backgrounds are really great in this. Elliot Field voices the witch and Blab in this early Snooper and Blabber cartoon.



Yakky Doodle and Chopper meet up with a witch who needs one small talking duck for her birthday stew in “Witch Duck-Ter” (1961). The cartoon ends with the two of them giving the touched witch a birthday cake. Jean Vander Pyl is called into service again as the witch.



Monstahs
Maltese or Joe Barbera or someone else at Hanna-Barbera must have loved the Addams Family panel cartoons in the New Yorker as characters reminiscent of what were eventually named Gomez and Morticia Addams were plunked in several Snooper and Blabber cartoons, the first being “The Big Diaper Caper” (1959). Maltese also put them in a Snagglepuss cartoon and they were even featured in a Dell comic book. The characters aren’t as dark as Addams’ wonderful creations and the tameness turns them into one-note characters. Jean Vander Pyl uses her Tallulah Bankhead voice for Mrs. Scientist and once said it was her first role at Hanna-Barbera.



Huckleberry Hound battled a crazed monster wiener schnitzel in “Science Friction” (1961). Need I say anything more about this cartoon?



In “Piccadilly Dilly” (1960), Huck is sent to arrest the crazed title character, who is really Dr. Jikkle after drinking a potion. Joe Montell has a very nice setting at the start of the cartoon and writer Warren Foster makes fun of English accents. Huck is with Scotland Back-yard but still sounds straight out of Raleigh, North Carolina.



There are other cartoons where characters are put in horror or nightmare situations, but these ten are what comes to mind right away. They’re a mixed bag when it comes to humour, but if you’re looking for Hanna-Barbera cartoons to watch on Hallowe’en, these are as good as any.

An Interview With Huck, Quick Draw, Yogi and Baba Looey

Today is the 60th birthday of one of Hanna-Barbera’s most underrated cartoon characters.

Me.

Yes, it was on this date 60 years ago that the first Yowp cartoon, “Foxy Hound-Dog,” appeared on TV screens. At least in some cities, like Battle Creek, Michigan (via WOOD-TV).

How can the world dislike a dog that says nothing but the word “yowp”?

Yeah, it is kind of limiting, story-wise, isn’t it? There were two Yowp cartoons in the first season of the Huckleberry Hound Show in 1958-59 and then another in the second. By that time, Warren Foster had been hired to write for Yogi Bear and decided what would work best would be to give Yogi a regular ranger adversary in Jellystone Park. There was, sniff, no need for Yowp any longer. Consigned to cartoon retirement, I was, along with Iggy and Ziggy, Li’l Tom Tom, Cousin Tex and a few others who enjoyed a brief period of marketing by H-B Enterprises until new characters came along.

Yours truly was written up in only one wire service story that I have reprinted on this blog and, even then, the writer called my name “yelp” (and Dangerfield thought he got no respect). However the article below, in the November 16, 1960 edition of the Tampa Times, included Yowp publicity art taken from one of Bick Bickenbach’s model sheets. The unidentified rabbit next to the unidentified Yowp is from the first season Yogi cartoon “The Brave Little Brave.”

This article takes some of the usual publicity information at the time (“planned animation,” fired by MGM, seven Oscars, Flintstones gadgets) and turns it into a cute dialogue involving the major Hanna-Barbera characters. You’ll notice no mention of Ruff and Reddy, but Hanna sings some of the Yogi Bear Show theme song lyrics more than two months before they were first heard on TV. And the story plays up how studios and sponsors instantly snapped up their cartoons, a far cry from the underdog tale of woe involving snow, mixed-up reels, months of waiting and such that Joe and Bill poured out in interviews several decades later.

Interestingly, the story states there was no Flintstones “pilot film.” I honestly find it difficult to believe the short reel that everyone calls a “pilot film” (without any proof it was used as such) with its markings visible on screen was ever shown to a potential network or agency. (I also dispute that Daws Butler is the voice of Barney on it; it sounds nothing like Daws and it’s questionable whether the voice is done by a professional actor).

Anyway, enjoy this story with art and photos that accompanied it. Reader Lance Smith has identified the Ed Benedict-looking Stone Agers as incidental characters from “The Monster From the Tar Pits.”

THE WHIMSICAL WORLD OF HANNA-BARBERA
By BILL MIDDLETON

Huckleberry Hound blinked.
“So what if I wasn’t elected president! I put up a dog-dandy fight, you can bet! I just might’uve made it, ‘cept for one thing.
“Me.”
The droopy-eyed hillbilly dog, star of his cartoon series, “Huckleberry Hound,” gave a sigh. “There’s always somethin’ to be thankful for. Like Bill and Joe. Their real names are William and Joseph, but we’re sort of hound-dog informal ‘round here.
“They call me Huck, an’ I don’t mind a bit.”
Huck was referring to his creators, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, who have practically revolutionized the cartoon world in recent years. Three years ago the two men were fired from their jobs. At that time, they looked upon their situation with a dim view, but today they are thankful that it happened, because it lead to their present amazing success.
Today, Hanna-Barbera Productions is one of the largest cartoon companies in the world. $5,000,000 is invested in their cartoon shows, which include “Huckleberry Hound,” “Quick Draw McGraw” and their latest, ABC-TV’s “The Flintstones.”
How did they do it?
“Shucks,” said Huck, looking around the new offices, “they did it like I do things—ter-nac-ity! But you take those two fellows.
“I mean, don’t go and really take ‘em, ‘cause then they couldn’t cartoon me, and where’d I be? In the hound soup! And that’s where they were—in the soup.”

Huck was speaking of the dismal day in 1957 when Hanna and Barbera, and the entire cartooning staff, were suddenly let go by MGM. Bill and Joe had been with MGM studios for twenty years, during which time they drew the “Tom and Jerry” cartoons and won seven Academy Awards.
But because of an economic cutback, the studio decided to liquidate its cartoon department, and that was that.
Dark-haired Joe Barbera sat at his desk and smiled.
“We’re both in our ‘40s, and out of work. We went around to all the other studios, trying to sell the idea of cartoons produced only for TV. They said sorry, no thanks.”
“They said it couldn’t be done,” chortled Huck. “Well, here I am—livin’, animated proof that it could be done!”
“We had a new process,” explained Joe, “that we called ‘planned animation,’ Cartoon[s] used to look too much like life. That’s what killed them.
“Where the old process used as many as 17,000 cartoon drawings for a seven-minute cartoon, the new technique uses only about 1,000 to 2,000 drawings for the same length production.”
Barbera explained that if the TV viewer will notice, when a cartoon character such as Huckleberry walks across the screen, his entire body doesn’t necessarily move. Maybe just his legs, with the rest of the body motionless. But the final effect is still one of full movement.
“Then finally,” said Joe, “Screen Gems bought our idea. In fact, they took one look at our presentation and said they’d make a deal. Just like that. It was all settled in fifteen minutes.”
Huck first appeared in 1958, and in1959 an obtuse horse came along to star in “Quick Draw McGraw.”

Quick Draw is not the brightest of cowboys, and seldom gets his man. However, he stopped trying to get his gun out of his holster, and looked down at his side-kick, Baba Looey.
Baba Looey who is a Mexican burro with a Cuban accent, shrugged.
“A horse like you, Queeksdraw, I theenk.”
Quick Draw nodded. “That sounds okay to me. Kind of looks good on me, this obtuse.”
“Olay!” said Baba.
It was mentioned to Barbera that his office and studios didn’t seem to have the tension and hard-core pace that would seemingly be expected in such a large operation.
“Oh,” he said, “the pressure is here. But we have no time clock, no memos. If a cartoonist feels he can work better at home, he works at home. We even have whole families working for us. A great many of our people work at home. Doesn’t matter, so long as the work gets done.”
At this point his partner, Bill Hanna, walked in with some sketches on their way to the layout department.
“Bill,” said Joe, “worked this up for a 45-second opening. Now a musician comes in and we get the full musical arrangement. Bill does all the original music.” Bill grinned, and sang a couple of lines. “Yogi Bear is smarter than the average bear. Yogi Bear is always in the ranger’s hair.”
A voice demanded: “Did I hear my name in the-mention of things?”
This was Yogi, the bear with the devil-may-care innocence and sloppy pride. Yogi reminds many TV viewers of a certain sewer-cleaner friend of a certain stout bus-driver hero of a certain situation comedy of recent vintage.
“Hey, hey!” said Yogi. “If that guy can sing, I’m a big boo boo of a bear!”
“Watch yourself!” said Bill.
“Olay!” said Baba.
“Me,” said Quick Draw, “I’m obtuse.”
And what of “The Flintstones”?
“Well,” said Joe, “we hope it’s cartooning that adults, as well as children, will enjoy. It’s suburbia in the stone age. Freddie Flintstone reads the newspaper, the Daily Slate, that has the latest dinosaur race results.
“And the garbage disposal unit is a ravenous old bird in the sink closet.”

Hanna and Barbera explained that it takes over seven months to produce a half-hour of animation such as “The Flintstones.” The reason is simple—every inch of animation is done by hand.
Each half-hour segment consists of over 12,000 individual drawings and requires the labor of 150 skilled artists, layout men, editors, inkers and printers.
The story behind the sale of “The Flintstones” involved a transaction that was contrary to the standard procedures of the industry.
“I did the presenting of the idea,” said Joe. “This was kind of unusual because producers never go out and sell shows. But I did, I flew to New York, carrying my storyboards. No film, just storyboards telling the story of one of the episodes.”
In New York, Joe placed the storyboards all around the conference room, and proceeded to race around, enacting the roles of each character in the series. In no time, the Madison Avenue executives were laughing, and the series was sold immediately.
“Speaking of New York,” said Huck, “did you say you were from Florida?”
I said yes.
“Well,” he said “if you’ll pardon the expression—I’ll be doggoned!”
“Why, do you have friends in Florida?”
“I hope so! I like to have friends everywhere. I get ‘thusiastic about friends. Even the Flintstones. They got rocks in their heads and all that, but let’s face it. They’re cartooned.
“I’m cartooned. All of us right here—cartooned!”

What about Hanna and Barbera?
Huckle chuckled.
“You kiddin’? They’re not for real. Gawrsh, no. Ever watch the way they move their legs? One—two—three. Three little old motions, jus’ like us.
“Don’t let ‘em fool you. They’re just tryin’ to star in a cartoon series, but they’ll never make it. No talent.
“Like I said, us cartooned guys got to stick together. Just not anybody is cartooned!”
There was a silence. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera slinked off into a corner and started chewing on their drawing boards.
I went out into the hall.
But behind me, there echoed sounds.
Huck: “I’ll make it yet. Jus’ wait ‘till 1964!”
Quick Draw: “I dunno about this obtuse stuff. I don’t feel good.
Yogi Bear: “Hey, hey, hey! Sometimes I think you guys better get back in your ink bottles!”
An argument started. Just as I was closing the door, a small burro face appeared around the corner.
“Olay?” said Baba Looey.
“Olay!”
I theenk.

Flintstones Weekend Comics, October 1970

Mice and multiple heads. That’s what we get in the Flintstones Sunday comics 48 years ago this month.
Better still, we finally get a comic that focuses on Baby Puss. You remember her being that cat that doesn’t stay out for the night in the closing animation of the series, but rarely appears in the cartoons themselves. (There was some Baby Puss merchandise during the run of the series).

The red-shaded comics come from the collection of Richard Holliss, as usual. Click on them to make them bigger.


October 4, 1970. We learn Baby Puss is female. Don’t you like the curly mouse tail in the opening panel?


October 11, 1970. Readers who didn’t see the top row in their paper (I suspect a majority didn’t use it so they could fit three comics on one page) didn’t miss much. It has nothing to do with the rest of the comic. Fred’s not only a letch, he doesn’t like ‘60s style protesters.


October 18, 1970. More mice. I like the one sticking out his tongue at a quizzical Pebbles.


October 25, 1970.

No Rubbles this month and the comics-only Pops character has been given the month off as well.

Solar Swivelling Into Prime Time

Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had a problem in 1962. The problem was 1961.

Their studio had a prime-time success with The Flintstones. Animation suddenly became the latest TV copycat fad. Networks bought cartoon comedies for prime time in 1961—and they all fizzled. The fad quickly died. The networks wanted to try something else.

What were Bill and Joe to do? If they wanted to rack up another sale for a lucrative network prime time period, they needed something sure-fire, a guaranteed hit. What they did was invert a guaranteed hit—The Flintstones. Putting suburbia in the past worked. Why not put it in the future?

Thus, The Jetsons was born.

Hanna and Barbera sold the show the same way as they sold the modern Stone Age family—with gadgets. Here’s an example from the New York Daily News of September 5, 1962 (the show first aired on the 23rd). There’s a reference to the Jet Screamer episode without mentioning Jet Screamer.

'Solar Swivel' Sends 'Em In ABC-TV's 'The Jetsons'
By KAY GARDELLA

After doing the Twist over the holiday weekend with my teen-age nieces and antagonizing an army of revengeful muscles I never knew I had, I can safely predict that will not be around when "solar swivel" keeps our next generation of teen-agers in orbit. It's also a foregone conclusion that when the day arrives every American home is equipped with wall-to-wall TV, somebody else will be writing this column—not I.
There are days, especially during the summer months, when even 21 inches of TV are more that this keeper of the home screen can stand up under. Wall-to-wall TV and the "solar swivel," which will be done on an anti-gravity dance floor, are a glimpse into the futuristic life of "The Jetsons," an average American family living 100 years from today.
Despite the time span, George Jetson, his wife, Jane, teen-age daughter Judy and their 9-year-old son, Elroy, will be visiting us regularly on ABC-TV this fall. They'll be around in the form of an animated cartoon series this-year's one and only new-comer produced by the Hanna-Barbera Studios in Hollywood. According to Joe Barbera, one of the partners in the production outfit: "This has been the toughest selling season for animation. We're lucky to be rolling with 'The Jetsons.' People just weren't interested in buying them."
Good Record
Barbera was speaking generally, as a look at the record will attest. In the five years since Hanna-Barbera Productions was formed, these leading cartoon creators have been responsible for the majority of cartoon shows on TV. Among them: "Rough and Reddy," [sic] "Huckleberry Hound," "Quick Draw McGraw," "Yogi Bear," "Top Cat" and "The Flintstones," TV's popular Stone Age family.
The producer concedes a science-fiction series will keep his artists' and writers' imaginations working overtime today. It's not like the old radio days when a writer could put Buck Rogers in a space ship and keep him flying from planet to planet for several successful and profit able years.
"No siree," says Barbera. "As fast as we think up an idea which by all calculations should not become a scientific reality for another hundred years, we learn of some new scientific development just like it. Keeping one step ahead of the lab boys is rough."
Listening to the producer, one could envision the headache writer Jules Verne would have if he were alive today. A book like "Around the World in 80 Days," for instance, would probably undergo five title changes before it got off the presses.
Three-Hour Day
The 21st Century family you'll soon be meeting live in the Sky Pads Apartments. George Jetson, who works an average three-hour day, is employed by Spacely Sprockets Co., a completely automatic factory. As described by Barbera, it will be plush living, all right, but the family problems will be the same. The problems all know about.
But some of those "easy living" devices are enough to make "The Flintstones" turn green with envy. There's the Foodarackacycle. It stores, processes, prepares and serves the food to the Jetson household. Food cards are fed into the machine and the designated meals is served up instantly.
Sneaky Machine
As a woman, we found the most interesting gadget described by Barbera to be a seeing-eye vacuum cleaner. It's a machine with two electronic eyes which seeks out dust, dirt and debris and consumes it. It even has a sense of humor. When the mistress of the household isn't watching it lifts up the rug and sweeps the dirt under it.
Ben Casey and Dr. Kildaire [sic] better be on guard, too. There is a prober pill used in diagnosis. It has minute antennae that send back messages to the doctor as it makes its rounds inside the patient.

If you peel back the layers, there isn’t an awful lot that’s original to The Jetsons. Elvis-like teen idols and dance crazes had been made fun of before. The family lives in a building that looks like Seattle’s Space Needle. Push-button living had been touted in “home of the future” industrial films. Development of flying cars had been tracked in science and mechanical magazines. The thing about The Jetsons was it put all of these futurism ideas together in one place and made them funny.

The one thing it didn’t duplicate was the prime-time success of The Flintstones. The show was banished in 1963 to Network Cartoon Rerun Land—Saturday mornings, where it found a loyal audience. “Say,” Joe and Bill must have thought, “if kids will watch old cartoons on Saturday mornings, what if we make NEW ones for Saturday mornings?” But that’s another story.

The City of Snooper

Anyone who has ever seen a Hanna-Barbera cartoon should have noticed that characters walk, run or drive past the same things (a house, a grove of trees, an electrical socket, etc.) in the background over and over and over again.

Artists would paint long backgrounds that would be moved incrementally when shot behind the animation on camera so it looked like the characters were moving (left to right or right to left). The background was designed in such a way that the two ends of it would be painted with the same object. When the end of the background was reached, the cameraman would move it back to the other end so it looked continuous. Sometimes the two ends didn’t quite match up but it wasn’t very noticeable on the screen, if at all.

Here’s an example by (according to the credits) Fernando Montealegre from the Snooper and Blabber cartoon “Desperate Diamond Dimwits” (1959). Notice the identical pink building at both ends.


Hanna-Barbera rarely used the same backgrounds in different cartoons, but this is one of a pair of streetscapes seen in several Snooper and Blabber cartoons. Besides “Desperate Diamond Dimwits,” you’ll see it in “The Flea and Me, “Not So Dummy,” and “Fee-Fi-Fo Fumble.”

Not a lot was written about poor old Snooper and Blabber, since they were merely one component of the Quick Draw McGraw Show. TV columnists, though, were enthusiastic about the arrival of Quick Draw in 1959; by then, they had watched the Huckleberry Hound Show and enjoyed its gentle send-ups. Quick Draw was the ultimate send up. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had decided to spoof the major types of programmes on TV at the time.

Here’s Kristine Dunn’s column in the Miami Herald of August 24, 1959.

Now Hear This, Huckleberry Fans

Good news—wonderful news, in fact for those who stampede to the TV every Thursday night at 7 p.m. to chortle at Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear.
The insurgent "adult cartoon" is about to make another attack on the era of the adult western.
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, who dreamed up Tom and Jerry for the movie screen and Huckleberry and Yogi for TV, are busy sketching a new trilogy.
Quick-Draw McGraw la the name of it.
Quick-Draw is a big, dumb dog. He couldn't outdraw the slowest hand-cuffed coward alive. Satirical? You bet!
The 10-minute Quick-Draw segment ridicules Westerns, in case you didn't guess.
Snooper and Blabber star in the second segment. Snooper and Blabber are a cat and a mouse. Private detection is their business.
The third segment hits the family situation. It's a dog's life. Quick-Draw and his friends, like Huckleberry, will appear on Channel 7. They'll take the place of Woody Woodpecker at 7 p.m. Tuesday nights.
Just what date Quick-Draw will launch his attack on the heroes of the Wild and Woolly West has yet to be announced.

A dog?!? Someone wasn’t doin’ some thinnin’ around there.

We should point out that Snooper and Blabber did star in their own show. In a way. In 1966, Screen Gems offered the 135 Quick Draw McGraw Show cartoons in full colour to any station that wanted to buy them, with or without the old connecting material (stripped of any reference to Kellogg’s). WNEW-TV in New York was one of the stations that picked them up, and starting in mid-September, launched a show on Thursdays at 5 p.m. and named it Snooper and Blabber. What other cartoons the station included in the half-hour, I don’t know.

A hunt of a few newspapers has revealed Snoop and Blab were also columnists. They were the pen names of someone at student papers at two high schools in the U.S., one in Sumner, Iowa, the other in Mapletown, Pennsylvania. The pair also got a few spotlights on disc. Hanna-Barbera Records came out with the LP “Monster Shindig” in 1965. Here’s their “theme.”



The two also “sang” on a Golden Record in 1961 backed by Jimmy Carroll’s Orchestra. It is evident Daws Butler was not employed to voice either character (he couldn’t contractually). Blab sounds more like a lame impression of Lou Costello. I admit I would have liked to have heard Snooper and Blabber do Gilbert and Sullivan as written by Mike Maltese.

Daws once said that his Snooper voice owed a lot to actor Tom D’Andrea and you can hear the similarities. But writer Maltese must have had Archie of the radio show “Duffy’s Tavern” in mind when crafting the dialogue. And Snoop mangles words just as well as Ed Gardner’s Archie ever did; in “Desperate Diamond Dimwits,” he calls the disguised jewel thief a “FACK-sim-mile” of a watchdog. (When our heroes discover there’s a crook in the pooch outfit, Snooper says “There’s skul-doggery afoot.”)

Radio disc jockey Elliot Field voices Blab in “Desperate Diamond Dimwits” and three other cartoons. Daws then took over the role; Elliot told me he needed to be hospitalised for an operation and didn’t get the part back when he came out. Elliot had done various characters on his show during his radio career and could have been a versatile player for the studio.

There appears to be fewer than ten backgrounds in this cartoon, the streetscape opened the cartoon and seems to have been used in more of a third of it. The final scene includes a pan shot but, to my eye, the background looks like it was by Bob Gentle. It’s unfortunate that these cartoons are not restored on home video; the versions uploaded on the internet are low resolution captures from a cable TV video feed and the picture gets very pixilated during a quick pan. It’d be nice to see a pristine version without all the digital fuzz.

Huck and the Critics

Critics not only liked Huck because of what was on it, but what was not on it. Nanny groups hated westerns and all those guns (they even complained about white-hatted Roy Rogers), and Popeye cartoons with all those fists. And don’t get them started on the Three Stooges! The Huckleberry Hound Show had little of that, and Hanna-Barbera soon won praise because of it (ten years later, the studio was under attack by these same kinds of groups for “violent Saturday morning cartoons”).

Here’s a syndicated column from June 21, 1960 when the Huck show was into its second season and after it won an Emmy. Besides the good words for the early Hanna-Barbera series about half-way through, the point is raised early that the people all aghast about “violence” grew up on radio shows disapproved by some of an older generation. The columnist rightly notes that a little bit of Popeye pounding on Bluto to the strains of John Philip Sousa isn’t going to turn kids into violent psychopaths.

Parents Should Guide Children's TV
By HARVEY PACK
Educators, psychiatrists and do-gooders have been shouting louder than usual for the past year about bow the younger generation is being breast fed by TV rather than books. The optimists among us, however, are aware that the learned gentlemen assembling all these frightening statistics received their own primary education over the radio perils of Buck Rogers, Tom Mix, Flash Gordon, Omar the Mystic and well-informed criticism from another generation of analysts.
The simple truth is that TV, properly used by a parent, can offer child some delightful entertainment. If the set's prime function, however, is to get the youngster out of the way, the parents never should have had children in the first place. A preschool child would never be sent out on a busy city street alone, and there is no reason why they should be expected to function in the channel-jungle without guidance.
Thanks to an easy-going, heavy-set young man named Bob Keeshan, the young mother's first experience with television is generally quite encouraging. Mr. Keeshan. along with his friends Mr. Green Jeans, and Mr. Moose, conducts the "Captain Kangaroo" show via CBS six mornings a week. At one time the network gave up on "Captain Kangaroo," but a storm of protest, plus the fact that the show was outdrawing Garry Moore's expensive morning variety show, bought Keeshan a new lease on life. Today the Captain is SRO with sponsors and mother knows she has at least 45 minutes every morning when the little one is in good hands.
Bob Keeshan is not a great educator or a child psychologist, but he understands his audience. He appreciates their short attention span and never keeps any. game, song or cartoon running too long, At no time does the Captain talk down to his tittle viewers or does he patronize them. He stimulates their imagination without frighten ing them, and good taste guides his every move. He closes each show by reminding the kids that it's another be-good-to-mother day," and nobody is "gooder" to mom than Captain Kangaroo.
Once the Captain closes up his weekday Treasure House, the television industry chooses to ignore children until around five o'clock. This is a sad mistake, because mother needs more than 45 minutes to finish her chores. In some cases poor, innocent, unsuspecting little ones in the 2-5 age group are left to the mercy of reruns of "The People's Choice," "My Gun" and "The Millionare."
In some communities sandwiched in between the reruns, a channel shows "Ding Dong School" or "The Romper Room." Both of these are a form of nursery school and the former, conducted by Dr. Frances Horvich, is easily the better one. New York City's educational TV service has a kindergarten called "Fun At One," which is so amazingly good that it virtually defies description. This particular show is not presently available for syndication around the country, but any P-T-A anxious to further the cause of children's programing should contact WPIX, New York, for information, and, if possible, exert pressure to obtain tapes of "Fun At One" for your local station.
From 5 to 7:30 in the evening and on Saturday mornings TV caters to kids. Some of the successful shows are little more than old movies shorts which were condemned as harmful to children a generation ago. Among these are "Our Gang," "The Three Stooges," and "Popeye." Actually they are as harmful as they ever were, but kids adore this type of comic violence and, provided they're not permitted to watch it as a steady diet, it's a good bet they'll survive.

But TV has developed its own cartoon empire and can point to the product with pride. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, who created "Tom and Jerry," have come up with three of the most delightful and entertaining cartoon shows imaginable. They are such superb shows that the parents can laugh hysterically at the antics of the characters while the little ones are spellbound by the adventure.
Many a big city office is deserted early so pop can run home and enjoy "Ruff and Reddy," "Huckleberry Hound," and "Quick Draw McGraw" with his kids. In fact, very little prime evening adult programing matches the Hanna-Barbera shows as entertainment. (Fortunately for all of Hanna-Barbera have agreed to do an adult cartoon show in prime evening time for ABC next season.)
Perhaps "Huckleberry Hound" and his associates are the answer to many of TV's critics. Because they are fun the parents are able to share them with the kids, and the shows are mature and intelligent, thus easing parental con sciences. If pop will learn to turn off the set after "Huck" and spend the balance of the evening being an old-fashioned father, TV will have served a very useful purpose.
Much of the TV fare offered for children is mediocre, but who can say anything better for the evening programs? The fact that mediocrity dominates the scene does not necessarily mean that TV should be forbidden to children and all sets sold to the junk man. Captain Kangaroo," "Ding Dong School" and the Hanna-Barbera snows more than justify TV as an entertainment medium for children. If a parent is selective, there are often special snows and documentaries which may seem a bit advanced for a child, but with a parent to guide him it can be a stimulating and provocative experience: for example, Leonard Bernstein's Young People's concerts.
This has been primarily a comment on TV for children in the 2-7 age group. A youngster in the third grade or higher may want to stay up late and watch many of the so-called adult westerns and detective shows. Of course, this is a problem parents must handle themselves, but with the exception of a superb program like "Leave It to Beaver," or an occasional "Walt Disney Presents," there’s little to recommend.
Try to remember that in moderation TV can help both you and your children. If, however, you're looking for a full time all-purpose electronic baby-sitter, any child of yours if going to have a rough time in this world, with or without television.

Yogi Bear Weekend Comics, October 1970

Huckleberry Hound and the rest of his gang made references on screen that they were in a cartoon show, at least during the portions between the main cartoons. It would appear at least one character in the Yogi Bear newspaper comics knew he was in a comic.

It happened 48 years ago this month. We’ll post all the comics for the month below, but we’ll start with one from 50 years ago this month. The colour comics come from Richard Holliss’ collection. It seems the newspaper in England that he read eventually cheaped out and the only colour it used was red.

The comic below from October 20, 1968 is in full colour. The silhouettes in the column on the left side, third row are very nice. I thought national parks were in the middle of nowhere. How much would it cost to get a cab there?



Now to 1970. Boo Boo takes the month off but we get two appearances by the park “general.” I like the designs of the aliens in the October 25th comic as well as the opening panel with the huge stone in the middle. Because this version of October 25th comic is in four rows, it’s missing one small panel where the general says “The park buffoon has gone completely loon.” Yogi’s rhyming disease is infectious. Ranger Smith is “Bill” again in the October 18th comic.


October 4, 1970.



October 11, 1970.


October 18, 1970.



October 25, 1970. Sorry for the out-of-register colour.

Click on any of the comics to enlarge them.

Aloha Huck

Here’s today’s early Hanna-Barbera quiz—in which state was Huckleberry Hound the most popular? Perhaps it’s impossible to answer that question, but you probably couldn’t go wrong if you guessed Hawaii. It was the scene of a huge mob of fans not long as it became the 50th state.

The Huckleberry Hound Show made its first appearance in Hawaii’s territorial days on Thursday, October 2, 1958 on KULA-TV. The show, as we all know, appealed to adults as well as kids, and by 1959, the Isle Huckleberry Hound club numbering about 100 would gather in M’s Cheerio Room (a cocktail bar) every week to tune in the show. Someone at Hanna-Barbera took notice. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported on January 24, 1960 that Howard Pecquet, the club president, accepted a painting and ceramic statues of the show’s characters from someone representing Hanna-Barbera.

Pandemonium struck later that year. Screen Gems had a promotional department led by Ed Justin that not only came up with the idea of having people dress up as Huck, Yogi Bear, etc. for plugging purposes, he decided to launch a mock Huck-for-President campaign. One of the campaign stops—Honolulu. A bunch of tie-ins were worked out for Huck and his coterie—with Bill Hanna tagging along—to make a few days of appearances at the GEM store. An ad in the Star-Bulletin told kids that 800 free Huck T-Shirts would be given away at the Honolulu Airport a half-hour before a meet-and-greet with the newly-arrived gang.

800.

Guess how many people showed up?

The Star-Advertiser’s reporter made a guess after getting caught in the crowd. Here’s the paper’s story of July 23, 1960.

10,000 at Airport See Huckleberry Hound, Pals
By ALTON SLAGLE
Honest, Huck, I was there. It's just that you didn't see me in the mob.
Some folks say there were 10,000 people at Honolulu Airport when your Pan American "Huckle-jet" landed yesterday afternoon. It would seem so, for the traffic was backed up bumper to bumper about two miles from the airport parking lot just before you landed. Parking attendants said they handled about 1,000 cars while you were there and that doesn't count the hundreds parked outside the lot.
Huck, that's more people than President Eisenhower had at the airport to greet him last month. Airport police told me you also attracted more people than the Shah of Iran, the President of Indonesia, the Kings and Queens of Thailand and Nepal and the Crown Prince and Princess of Japan. Or even Jack Benny.
Did you see all the kids holding "Huck for President" signs? And the "Huckelberry [sic] Hound for President" badges on the coats of greeters like Lieutenant Governor James Kealoha and Mayor Neal S. Blaisdell?

Was that really Yogi Bear and Quick Draw McGraw following you down the plane's ramp? I laughed when the wind nearly blew McGraw's big head off. It looked almost like it was made of paper mache and cloth. I thought about all those rumors that local people had gone aboard the plane and donned costumes. But I knew better.
While you were busy with that big troupe of little hula and knife dancers, I chatted with one of your creators, William Hanna. He told me he had dreamed you up about three years ago and first put you in television cartoons last year. "I had no conception it would ever be this big," he said. "I'm delighted, of course. Now they have Huck watches and tee-shirts and . . . everything."
Say, Huck, how come Joseph Barbera, Hanna's partner didn't make the trip? Did those two really once draw the "Tom and Jerry" cartoons? And are you really going to Alaska next?
NOT MUCH SENSE
You know, Huck, some of those kids who met you did not use much sense. They crawled all over everything. And some of them even ran way out across those busy runways. Airport manager Gilbert Livingston said he had to send a radio car to clear them so planes could land.
But I hope you enjoyed the reception, Huck. It's just about the biggest in airport history. And I'll be looking forward to your three days of personal appearances at GEM.
By the way, Huck, I'm sorry traffic was so heavy that you and the Mayor and the Lieutenant Governor could not leave the airport for so long. Honest, Huck the terminal building had wall-to-wall children.

Actually, it was advertised that Joe Barbera was going to be there. Either the reporter didn’t spot him, or maybe Joe was busy checking out the hula dancers.

Justin told Broadcasting magazine that a throng of 25,000 swarmed on GEM to meet Huck and the department store was forced to lock its doors.

Huck got a chance to appear on the big screen during his trip. GEM sponsored a screening of Huckleberry Hound cartoons—in colour—at the Waialae Drive-In Theatre three days after the arrival, with the costumed Huck making another public appearance.

There’s a post-script to Huck’s appearance. A reference was made to it in the Star-Bulletin of March 26, 1961:

More than 3,000 screaming fans gave Elvis Presley a tumultuous welcome yesterday as the guitar-strumming singer stepped off a Pan American Airways plane at Honolulu Airport at 12:15 p.m. But the welcome did not equal in size or chaos the hullabaloo caused by the arrival here last year of Huckleberry Hound.

Huck never broadcast a concert by satellite from Hawaii, but one of his cartoons in the second season was set there. “Wiki Waki Huck” would have aired on channel 4 in Honolulu on February 18, 1960. We wonder if the Cheerio Room was overflowing that night.

A Chuckle For Huckle

How fortunate were some Canadian fans of Huckleberry Hound! Not only could they watch the Huckleberry Hound Show on a local station, if they lived close enough to the U.S. border, they could see it on an American channel as well. Thus it was in early 1959, kids in Vancouver and Victoria could see Huck, Jinks, Yogi (and Yowp) via the CBC on Wednesdays, AND they could tune in to a station in Seattle the next afternoon and watch the cartoons all over again. In Toronto, viewers could watch Huck on those same Wednesdays via the Mother Corp (the show also aired on the Peterborough station that day) and Thursdays from Buffalo.

(Vancouver kids were especially lucky, for they could also eventually watch Huck on the Bellingham station. That, combined with the Quick Draw McGraw Show broadcast from Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle and the Yogi Bear Show from Seattle, made for a Hanna-Barbera overdose).

One might think in the Land which Begat the National Film Board and its eclectic mix of animation, a place where the arts community seems chock-full of people with very English last names as first names, the simple adventures of the limited-movement Huck cartoons would be pooh-poohed. Ah, but you’d be wrong.

Huck and his coterie were praised by no less a figure as novelist Mordecai Richler, who must be considered one of Canada’s esteemed writers of the 20th century. He wrote about them in the August 26, 1961 edition of Maclean’s, a national magazine which occasionally commented on things outside of Toronto. His monikering of television’s blue hound as “Huckle” is more annoying than wistful to me, but I’m not exactly in Mordecai Richler’s league when it comes to prose.

His reference to Joel Aldred may be a little confusing. Aldred was a commercial announcer based in Toronto. I don’t recall him on Kellogg’s commercials but I do remember hearing his smooth voice for many years on national ads for Household Finance Corporation and Rothman’s cigarettes. Funny the stuff that sticks in your head after five decades.

THE CASE FOR Huckleberry Hound as Mordecai Richler sees it
Television, the largest of borrowers, has cribbed from, and diminished in the process, the theatre, the novel, and the cinema. Only in making the inevitable trip to the comic strip has it actually enlarged and improved on another medium. Naturally, I speak here of Huckleberry Hound. Huckle, the incomparable. He is, to my mind, one of the most full rounded, outspoken, and lovable characters on television. Huckle, it’s true, is only an animated character, but there is more flesh and blood in him than there is to, say, Ed Sullivan.

I also think that Huckleberry is a first-rate salesman. He couldn’t, for instance, make the switch from Mercury to Kodak as easily as Ed Sullivan. He believes in Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. I think he may feel even more deeply about it that Joel Aldred ever did, and that’s going some. Speaking viewer-wise I can dig Perry Mason with identifying with Kleenex, but as long as Huckle sticks with Kellogg’s there will be no competing brands in our house.
Huckleberry and his sophisticated community of friends, including those crazy, mixed-up meeces, Trixie and Dixie [sic]; Mr. Jinks, the beat cat; and Yogi Bear, of Jellystone Park, are true inventions. They make the comic-strip characters of my own day—Goofy, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse—seem paper-thin. As James Joyce extended the uses of the novel, so the creators of Huckleberry & Co. have added a new dimension of the animated cartoon.
The first of the “intelligent” strips was, I think, Barnaby, in the now defunct PM. There is also Pogo and Mr. Magoo. But, in my opinion, all these forebears of Huckleberry were (or still are) self-consciously bright. Huckleberry is an effortless rebel and intellectual. Even Yogi Bear is sometimes alarmingly up-to-date in his asides. He recently remarked to the guard at Jellystone Park that, if so much money was being spent on nuclear weapons, soon obsolete, why not more and better food for the bears at Jellystone? Altogether subversive, this, I doubt, if it could get by on our own GM Presents.
In fact, in passing, one is including to think that Huckleberry ‘s sponsor, unlike some I could name, is completely enlightened.
And Huckle himself, as I said earlier, is incomparable. I know, because every Wednesday afternoon at five-thirty I gather with my children round the TV set, they with their Huckleberry cutouts, Kellogg’s box tops, and Yogi Bear punching bags, me with my gin and tonic, to watch. Intrepid, witty, and humble, Huckleberry is superb, whether satirizing the unrehearsed TV interview (he reads shamelessly from the teleprompter), the Western myth, Ed Sullivan, or the lion hunt.
Perry Mason will never lose a case, dammit, and nobody this side of Forest Hill will ever outgun Lorne Greene, but Huckleberry is entirely human. Like you and me, he has his frailties. And television being what it is, this is something to celebrate.

Bear-iversary

Huckleberry Hound may have been the star of The Huckleberry Hound Show but it didn’t take too long before he was no longer the star at the Hanna-Barbera studio.

In the early ‘60s when Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera decided to make a feature film, it starred Yogi Bear, not Huck. When they decided to put comics in the Sunday papers, Yogi Bear, not Huck, got the ink. The fact there are no Huckleberry Hound campgrounds, cartoons were never made called “Huck’s Ark Lark” and “Huck’s Space Race,” and Huck never appeared as a lame CGI character in a (insert your own adjective) 2010 movie shows you how Yogi took over the Hanna-Barbera animal cartoon kingdom. He was brasher than the low key Huck, and the ones who make the most noise always get noticed.

Yogi Bear started life in his own cartoons that appeared on The Huckleberry Hound Show. The series appeared on this day 60 years ago (a Thursday) in some cities (including New York, Washington, Fort Worth, Seattle, Columbus, Cheyenne and Windsor, Ontario), though it actually debuted three days earlier elsewhere, depending on what airtime was available for purchase. In 1960 when Kellogg’s wanted to syndicate another half-hour it worked out a deal to sponsor a show starring Mr. Magoo, but pulled out because of demands by UPA’s owner. It quickly inked a contract in October with Hanna-Barbera to air a half-hour starring Yogi and some new characters in January 1961, with Hokey Wolf taking over his spot on the Huck show once some cartoons were ready. Yogi therefore appeared with Huck to start the 1960-61 season and finished it on his own series.

Yogi’s first season cartoons were a little different than what came later. The bear was rarely after pic-a-nic baskets, didn’t always live in Jellystone Park, Boo Boo wasn’t with him all the time and Ranger Smith didn’t exist. Some of the stories were in a spot gag format. It was only in Huck’s second season that Warren Foster arrived to write the cartoons and chained Yogi to a locale and format. Here are some of Yogi’s more enjoyable adventures when he was on the Huck show.

Pie-Pirates (October 13, 1958).
This is a sentimental favourite because it was the first Yogi cartoon made (though it was the third that aired). Mike Lah laid out and animated the short, and he saved money by cutting back on in-betweens like a number of the cartoons did at the start of production. Lah’s animation at Hanna-Barbera was always distinctive. Yogi misreads a “Beware of Dog” sign, and though he and Boo Boo vanquish the bulldog, they still don’t get their huckleberry pie. Dialogue by Charlie Shows.

Be My Guest Pest (January 12, 1959).
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera borrow from themselves again. They’ve taken the design and voice of Professor Gizmo from their Ruff and Reddy cartoons (which were still being aired) and made him a hen-pecked hunter. He appeared in two shorts, but this one is the best because it features Don Messick as the hunter’s screaming, bullying wife who is hauled away by the cops who think she’s nuts. Unicorn in the Garden ending, anyone? Boo Boo is unnecessary and, therefore, absent. Dialogue by Charlie Shows.



The Stout Trout (December 15, 1958).
This may be the best of the spot-gag cartoons, where a narrator (Don Messick) describes Yogi attempting some kind of task. Here, the bear is up against Wily Willie, the trout, who silently heckles him as he attempts to catch him. Joe Barbera’s love for butt-injury jokes shows up several times in this one (the bear eventually has band-aids on his rear). The blackboard-adding gag is, perhaps, expected, but likeable. Yogi ends the cartoon by riding an outboard motor down a road, chased by a cop past the same trees and house over and over. Mike Lah animates some of the gags. No Boo Boo here. Dialogue by Charlie Shows.

Duck in Luck (January 26, 1959).
What’s funnier than a dog that can only say the word “Yowp”? Okay, a lot of things, but I’ve been amused by it for 55 or so years. Two cartoons were made in 1958 featuring Yowp and I give this one an edge solely because of the shell game sequence. This cartoon also features the self-pitying duck that appeared in a bunch of Hanna and Barbera’s MGM shorts and eventually was turned into Yakky Doodle. Again, this is another non-Boo Boo, non-Ranger cartoon. Dialogue by Charlie Shows.

Robin Hood Yogi (March 2, 1959).
Yogi wants to rob food from the rich and give to the poor—namely, him and Boo Boo. Since that bears (chuckle, chuckle) a resemblance to Robin Hood, Yogi puts a feather in his hat and decides to play Robin. There’s a running gag about Boo Boo/Little John, Yogi gets attacked by a woman’s frying pan twice, and he cons Ranger Joe into being Friar Tuck. Art Lozzi paints a wonderful Jellystone forest in this short, where Yogi doesn’t really win but loses a good part of the time. Dialogue by Charlie Shows.

Show Biz Bear (October 12, 1959).
“Looks like a sycamore to me.” A cartoon plot that was eventually trotted out again and again and again at Hanna-Barbera—the star substitutes for an actor in a film shoot and gets beaten up for his trouble. (Director: “You know there’s no business like show business.” Yogi: “I know. And I think I’m gettin’ the business.”). A non-Smith ranger shows up and ends up taking over Yogi’s part and, judging by the sound effects, injuries. Don Patterson is the animator. Story by Warren Foster.

Lullabye-Bye Bear (September 21, 1959).
George Nicholas has some terrific expressions in this cartoon; his work in his first few Hanna-Barbera cartoons was very funny. Yogi looks downright insane at times. The early version of Ranger Smith was good, too. He was more ho-hum and had a tired resignation about him than the later finger-wagging, annoyed version. I’ll take the former, though the latter makes for easier story conflict. Story by Warren Foster.

Hoodwinked Bear (November 21, 1959).
Put Yogi Bear in a fairy tale and you have a great cartoon. Yeah, Hanna-Barbera eventually beat this idea into the ground, but it’s still funny here. This may be my favourite of the three Yogi fairy tales. Boo Boo is Red Riding Hood, Yogi is the granny, the wolf is Phil Silvers. It all starts with Yogi deciding to hit up tourists for food, and guess who’s carrying a basket? The wolf comments on the story (to Boo Boo as Red: “You memorised your lines right, anyhow. Very badly read, but well memorised.”). More fine poses by George Nicholas. No Ranger Smith again in this one. Story by Warren Foster.

Oinks and Boinks (September 26, 1960).
This fairy tale travesty was the Yogi cartoon that opened the third season of the Huck show. It’s reminiscent of “The Windblown Hare,” a 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon where the Three Pigs trick our hero into taking over their homes, knowing they’ll be blown down. The wolf once again has Daws Butler’s Phil Silvers voice and was apparently the inspiration to create Hokey Wolf. The wolf gets frustrated because he’s following “the book” but no one else is. The pigs get chased away at the end. Ranger Smith is absent as he is unnecessary. Don Patterson comes up with some quirky poses. Story by Warren Foster.

A Bear Pair (late 1960).
A political/diplomatic satire where Boo Boo wins a trip to France, he and Yogi are mistaken for ambassadors but are finally kicked out the country when Yogi causes an international incident by wanting ketchup on his fillet mignonnies (that’s how he pronounces it). There’d be a bit more social satire when Yogi got his own show. The cartoon ends with the anger-management-challenged Ranger Smith chasing Yogi past the same tree 23 times. Story by Warren Foster.

Earlier in this post, we mentioned that Yogi and Boo Boo, along with Huck, Pixie and Dixie, Mr. Jinks debuted in Canada on this date 60 years ago. What did Canadians think of the show at the time? One Canadian author weighed in, and we’ll see what he had to say in a future post.