The High Fallutin-est

My favourite Hanna-Barbera cartoon series turns 60 years old this September 28th. Quick Draw McGraw debuted on that date in 1959 on KTTV Los Angeles and other stations (though it aired on other days of the week elsewhere, depending on what time Kellogg’s could purchase).

“There’s a western craze, so we created a western cartoon in Quick Draw,” Joe Barbera told the Los Angeles Times at the time. There was more to Quick Draw than that, though. Writer Mike Maltese loved Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler epics from the silent era, so he added that to the mix and Quick Draw became El Kabong. Maltese found the concept of an amoral dog who went into ecstasy over dog biscuits funny, so he came up with Snuffles. And along the way he invented an orange mountain lion with a touch of Bert Lahr. So it was that the original Snagglepuss appeared on a few occasions on the Quick Draw show before eventually getting a make-over and his own segment with Yogi Bear.

The series aired a year after Huckleberry Hound’s debut. By this time, critics had become huge Hanna-Barbera fans, praising the Huck show for its gentle satire that was adult-friendly (and the fact they weren’t old theatrical cartoons). Some were a little bit TV snobbish, so they appreciated the fact that someone was taking shots at the industry’s clichés (such as detective series and somewhat-incompetent father sitcoms).

Here’s a little summary from the Des Moines Register of November 22, 1959.

TV's '98th Western"
Kids the Other 97
(Exclusive Dispatch to The Iowa TV Magazine)
NEW YORK, N. Y.—Hanna and Barbera, the team that created "Huckleberry Hound" and "Ruff and Reddy," now have a third series on the home screens. It's titled "Quick Draw McGraw" and is a takeoff on westerns, whodunits and situation comedies. The humor appeals to adults. "Quick Draw" is the ninety-eighth western on television. Unlike its predecessors, it's guaranteed to be like all the others, except that it's not self-conscious.
To the despair of his sensible sidekick, Baba Looey, a Mexican burro with a Cuban accent. Quick Draw almost never gets his man.
Second part of the half-hour series features "Snooper and Blabber," a cat and a mouse who wear trench coats and gum soled shoes and run a detective agency.
Hero of the third part, a situation comedy, is Augie Doggie, a dear, cuddly little fellow who is always buttering up Doggie Daddy, an old vaudeville performer with a low boiling point.
Augie brings home such cute playmates as an old beat-up pony or a little Martian boy, and Daddy is so nice about it that Augie calls him "the Daddy of the year."
"Quick Draw" is now being seen on 150 stations. It's not network, and it's not syndication. It's what the sponsor calls "spot-work," and it involves a larger lineup of stations than most network shows.
(In the area served by the Iowa TV Magazine, "Quick Draw McGraw" is seen on eight stations. On Monday it is shown by WOC-TV and WOI-TV. Tuesdays: KMTV, KROC-TV, KVTV and WMT-TV. Wednesdays: KMMT and WGEM-TV. Times vary and are listed in the individual station logs elsewhere In the magazine.)

The Quick Draw McGraw Show came to Canada on January 4, 1960. CBC stations broadcast it at 5:30 p.m. on Mondays. Bob Blackburn of the Ottawa Citizen editorialised about the series on January 12th. He’s one of those guys who kind of approves of it, but wants “adult whimsy.” That sort of thing was tried on the Boing Boing Show on CBS that he lauds. The only problem is kids don’t want “adult whimsy.” They want to laugh.

Cartoons In The TV Age
TV has given the animated cartoon a new look, but it isn't new enough.
I give you as a sample, Quick Draw McGraw (CBOT, Mon. 5.30), who is a cousin of Huckleberry Hound (CBOT, Wed. 5.30).
McGraw just hit the air last week, and already, evidently, has staked a claim on local viewing habits.
McGraw is a horse, and his claim to fame, as I caught it on last night's show, is that he can draw a gun faster than anyone else in the west. Just give a pencil and paper and watch him go. Well, this is a gag that could wear thin after a while, but I'm sure they won't lean on it too long.
Thing is, the show is a hearty spoof of westerns, and it's a spoof that amuses even small kids, and I think this is a very healthy move. I was delighted that (a) the spoofing was going on, and (b) the kids were amused by it.

Better yet, this is not just a simple spoof of one type of show. It's a follow-up to Huckleberry Hound, which is still going, and it spoofs 'em all westerns, adventure, private eye, and the rest. It encourages the kids to develop a good sound derision for all the junk they see on TV.
The fact that Quick Draw McGraw is a simultaneous sequel to Huckleberry Hound indicates that this expensive technique is feasible for TV. Before these series, the animated stuff we had on TV was nothing but the aged movie-house fare that would no longer even serve to divert the youngsters at a holiday Saturday morning cartoon show. They used the hopelessly outdated Felix The Cat things, and only on a Disney-controlled show would you see more recent efforts.
There's a temptation here is reminisce about the movies a few years back, when people who are now grandparents would judge the merits of a movie-house bill considering whether it included a "Silly Symphony" or a "Mickey Mouse" (almost any cartoon was a "Mickey Mouse") before settling on the evening's schedule.
A New And Mobile Peanuts?
More interesting, I think, to note that there's a new era developing in the animated cartoon field, and the above-mentioned programs are the pioneers.
At first look, they're not too encouraging. They're picking up where the movies put childish things behind them and launched adult whimsy of the Gerald McBoing-boing, Mr. Magoo, and that there apartment-house janitor type. They start just below the Tom And Jerry level. The technique is the most modern . . . they produce cheaply but without eyestrain ... but the content regresses a little.
That's okay. They've learned to make the least animation look like the most. Instead of inventing story lines, they satirize the standard TV series, which beg for it. They don't create characters, but father imitations. Augie Doggie's pop sounds like Durante. McGraw's buddy is a natural for Desi Arnaz. Blabber Mouse (I think ... I'm getting all these mixed up) is George Gobel. Yogi Bear is . . . well, listen spot 'em for yourself.
All these are money-saving shortcuts that make original cartoons for TV possible, and they serve very well for the juvenile market that's aimed at right now.
But now that it's been proven feasible to present this type of art on TV, it shouldn't be too long until they start tailoring cartoons for adults (ideed [sic], Quick Draw McGraw and friends come out with some pretty sophisticated lines). Cartoons are the comic strips of TV, and any day now I hope that a Shulz [sic] or a Feiffer or a Kelly is going to emerge in this field, as they did in the comic-strip field and help us see the humor in our daily antics. The way has been paved.

My one regret about Quick Draw is the series never got a DVD release. A few cartoons from the show ended up on Hanna-Barbera compilation discs. The late Earl Kress was working on the project and found not only were some of the connecting materials on the half hours either missing or in poor shape, the music rights had reverted to the composers or their estates and clearance for some of the cues would have been cost-prohibitive. He also mentioned the Huckleberry Hound Show DVD didn’t sell as well as Warner Bros. hoped and that discouraged the company. I’m not holding out any hope we will see a release (though there are enough cartoons without music rights issues to fill a DVD with individual cartoons) but unexpected things can sometimes happen in the corporate headquarters of Show Biz Land.