“The biggest show in town” debuted 64 years ago today.
To the right are the TV listings in the Monday, Sept. 29, 1958 edition of the Kittanning (Pa.) Leader-Times. You can see Pittsburgh’s WTAE-TV, which had signed on only two weeks earlier, was one of the first stations to broadcast The Huckleberry Hound Show. WLW-I in Indianapolis was another. So was WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was picked up in Battle Creek, manufacturing home of Huck’s sponsor, Kellogg.
The cereal company bought the same time slot five nights a week, as it was also sponsoring The Woody Woodpecker Show, Superman and others aimed at kids. Who decided which shows would air on what nights is one of those mysteries lost in time, but an unofficial look at TV listings across the U.S. seems to indicate Thursday was a preference.
The Chicago Tribune’s Larry Wolters was probably the first critic to rave about Huck on the basis of a preview (oh, to know more about that footage!), accurately predicting “Huck and his pals will prove a smash hit in television not only among children but adults as well.” You can read his full review in this old post. Two days later, the Napa Valley Register spoke of “good reports” about the show. And, if you’ve been around this blog long enough, you will have seen all kinds of newspaper clippings that teens and adults tuned in Huck, how he was a hit on college campuses, at least one bar told patrons to stop making noise while the show was on, how an Antarctic island was named for him, and so on. The show came away with an Emmy in 1960, and an animated Huck and Yogi appeared at the ceremony the following year in the first cartoon ever to be part of an Emmy broadcast.
Alas for gentle Huck, whose personality owes as much to Tex Avery’s Southern Wolf cartoons at MGM as anything, he was eclipsed by the more boisterous Yogi Bear. As you can see, one paper used a picture of Yogi in its ad for Huck’s debut in 1958. Another didn’t name any Huck cartoon, instead telling the viewers the initial show would feature Yogi Bear’s Big Break. In fact, Break was the first cartoon aired in the half-hour; Huck was saved until the last segment.
Newspaper ads featuring the characters are always fun. Here are a couple from, I think, 1961. Screen Gems’ promotional department put people in Huck and Yogi costumes in 1959 and sent them all over the U.S. Eventually, a stage show emceed by Eddie Alberian was developed for county fairs and other outdoor events. The second ad is from a time when Hanna-Barbera took up three of Kellogg’s five half-hours purchased as a strip on local stations. (The artwork omits the one other character that appeared in the Yogi cartoon—Yowp).
The Huck DVD purports to have episodes as originally broadcast. That’s not the case. The announcer who provided voice overs for Kellogg’s commercials in 1958 was Art Gilmore. You can hear him over the closing animation in the reconstructed first episode, but a different announcer in the opening, the one hired for the following season.
However, animation with Gilmore providing the opening has been discovered by collector Steven Hanson. While the documentation I have from the studio states that only one opening was animated, that’s clearly not the case as the original backgrounds (and sound effects) were different.
You can play the opening theme song (with no announcer) as you look at some comparisons from seasons one and two:
Gilmore’s voiceover pushes only one cereal: “Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, the ‘get going’ cereal, presents....” And the Randy Van Horne singers take it from there. There’s no “the best to you each morning” yet. That came a year later.
Ten years ago, in this post, we put up a version of Huck’s theme song as played, cha-cha style, by the Scarlet Combo, released in October 1961. It’s a band out of Louisville, fronted by a guy named Jimmy Wayne. Kenny Brookshire’s daughter says that’s her dad on sax and clarinet. Cashbox magazine rated it a “B”.
And finally something I would have liked as a kid—A Huck in a Box. (I had a Cecil in a Box). Huck is the familiar red colour that Knickerbocker liked using; Huck was only broadcast in black and white when this appeared in stores in 1959.
This post is dedicated to Huck fan Greg Chenoweth, our first reader, who dropped away when he moved from Everett, Washington.
Thursday, 29 September 2022
Wednesday, 28 September 2022
Gallopin' All the Way Starting Tonight
This ad appeared in the Los Angeles Times 63 years ago today, marking the debut of The Quick Draw McGraw Show, replacing Wild Bill Hickok in the Kellogg Monday through Friday line-up.
It seems Monday was a popular night for Quick Draw on the West Coast. Here are some other stations that aired the fastest-shootin’-est cowboy, er, cowhorse, er, horseboy on birthday night, September 28:
KJEO 47, Fresno (at 6 p.m.)
KRCA 3, Sacramento (at 6 p.m.)
KGW 8, Portland (at 6 p.m.)
KSD-TV 5, St. Louis (at 4:30 p.m.)
KAKE 10, Wichita (at 6 p.m.)
WTTG 5, Washington, D.C. (at 7 p.m.)
WVET-TV 10, Rochester (at 6 p.m.)
WNAC-TV 7, Boston (at 6:30 and 7:30 p.m.)
WRGB 6, Schenectady (at 6 p.m.)
The ad shows the first Quick Draw cartoon was “Lamb Chopped” (Production J-11), featuring the orange, bad-guy Snagglepuss. The other cartoons were “Baby Rattled” (J-14) with Snooper and Blabber, and “Million Dollar Robbery” (J-31) with Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy.
78 cartoons were created for Quick Draw’s first season—all of them written by Mike Maltese. In Lamb Chopped, Maltese borrows from Pepe LePew, Robin Hood Daffy and Rabbit Fire, while Daws Butler grabs a voice from Bert Lahr, including a stretched, vibrating “n.” (Maltese pulls off an outrageous pun. When Pepe Le Mountain Goat is amorously chasing after Quick Draw dressed as a sheep, he cries “Wait, baby girl. Two can live as sheeply as one”).
Syndicated columnists Hal Humphrey wrote a column three days before the series debuted, talking about the $56,000 it cost each episode to be made. Cecil Smith of the Times wrote about the day it debuted. The Newspaper Enterprise Association's Erskine Johnson and Don Page of the Times praised the series in November. It wasn’t “violent” like those old movie cartoons. Humphrey talked about the series “good taste.”
16mm prints of the half-show show were not struck for all stations. Some were bicycled from station to station and if you read TV listings for the third season (most cartoons were reruns), you can see that different shows appeared in different cities on the same day.
This isn’t intended as a full birthday post; instead you can read an old post on the show here.
Friday, 23 September 2022
What the Jetsons Means Today
The Jetsons turns 60 today, a 20th Century show set in the 21st Century that we now watch in the 21st Century.
In 1962, there was still general optimism for the future, that technology would make life simpler and more docile. Today, does anyone look forward to the future? Isn’t mass media filled with future scenes of dystopia, darkness and hopelessness, a feeling that we’re spiralling out of control because humanity has screwed up everything?
The future, at one time, was a huge sales pitch. Exhibitions and world fairs were full of “tomorrow,” generally consisting of improvements in 1950s gadgets that, naturally, you could buy from big American corporations. When corporate America lost its edge in the world market, there was suddenly a lot less talk about the future.
The Jetsons, for viewers today, is a trip back, not a trip forward. A trip to a time of positivity, that our lives would improve. Flying cars to save us time. Food-a-rack-a-cycles to save effort making meals. Three day work-weeks to reduce stress.
Any disasters on The Jetsons were not a prediction of an inevitably hopeless future ahead for humanity. They were gags. Like the Supersonic Dress-o-matic that takes George Jetson out of his pyjamas and into women’s clothes.
I generally like the series (I’m referring to the original 24 episodes, not the Orbitty Show of the ‘80s). The background art and other settings are great; especially buildings that look like the Space Needle. The writers went through science and technology magazines to get ideas of futuristic gadgets and some are things we use today. Hoyt Curtin and keyboardist Jack Cookerly came up some neat electronic music. Perhaps disappointing are some of tired old sitcom cliches the writers used (including “Honey, the boss is coming home for dinner” and the “suspicion of infidelity” bit), and the fairly lacklustre animation. There was no exaggeration; characters stood and talked and talked, with animators employing their individual style of head and mouth movement.
Here are backgrounds from the first episode that aired. They’re by Art Lozzi. The colour is excellent; some ABC affiliates actually aired the series in colour.
This throwaway background gag reminds of something you might see on The Simpsons 25 years later.
The gag above is from one of my favourite episodes— the debut of Uniblab. Computers took up whole rooms in the early ‘60s, so Uniblab has a huge head. For those who don’t know, the “uni” comes from the Univac, a Remington Rand division which made computers for corporations and the military that operated on punch cards or thick tape. The “blab” part came from the spying computer blabbing information and gossip to boss Spacely. I didn’t need to know about corporate suck-ups at age six; I knew George Jetson was getting screwed around and waited for the plot to play itself out with Univac being the victim of karma.
People like quoting from cartoons, and Barry Blitzer’s script gives viewers a chance. “Spacely’s a stupe,” exclaims Uniblab, which George repeats for the computer’s microphone, as the two play Five Card Satellite.
“Jupiter Gin! Planet Poker!” slurs the brain after getting drunk of Henry’s spiked oil.
I haven’t tried adding up all his scenes, but Carlo Vinci seems to have been responsible for much of the animation in this episode. He had unique mouth and leg shapes and angles. By this time, he was teamed with Disney veteran Hugh Fraser on the half-hour series.
One scene in the cartoon bothers me, and it shows you the limits of limited animation. Uniblab shoots hot coffee over the “board of directors” (presumably from Spacely Sprockets’ parent corporation). They just stand there. There’s no reaction to the liquid, let alone it being hot liquid. It’s completely unrealistic. The studio couldn’t even spend the time making a four-drawing yelling cycle.
Because it is The Jetsons, here is an obligatory shot of a flying car. I hope the exhaust doesn’t kill the ozone layer. Maybe it’s water vapour.
There really isn’t more I can say about the series that what’s been posted on the blog. Each cartoon has been reviewed. We wrote a bunch of posts when the series turned 50. Find one with music HERE. There's a post where Joe Barbera talks about the Space Needle and another about futuristic inventions.
In 1962, there was still general optimism for the future, that technology would make life simpler and more docile. Today, does anyone look forward to the future? Isn’t mass media filled with future scenes of dystopia, darkness and hopelessness, a feeling that we’re spiralling out of control because humanity has screwed up everything?
The future, at one time, was a huge sales pitch. Exhibitions and world fairs were full of “tomorrow,” generally consisting of improvements in 1950s gadgets that, naturally, you could buy from big American corporations. When corporate America lost its edge in the world market, there was suddenly a lot less talk about the future.
The Jetsons, for viewers today, is a trip back, not a trip forward. A trip to a time of positivity, that our lives would improve. Flying cars to save us time. Food-a-rack-a-cycles to save effort making meals. Three day work-weeks to reduce stress.
Any disasters on The Jetsons were not a prediction of an inevitably hopeless future ahead for humanity. They were gags. Like the Supersonic Dress-o-matic that takes George Jetson out of his pyjamas and into women’s clothes.
I generally like the series (I’m referring to the original 24 episodes, not the Orbitty Show of the ‘80s). The background art and other settings are great; especially buildings that look like the Space Needle. The writers went through science and technology magazines to get ideas of futuristic gadgets and some are things we use today. Hoyt Curtin and keyboardist Jack Cookerly came up some neat electronic music. Perhaps disappointing are some of tired old sitcom cliches the writers used (including “Honey, the boss is coming home for dinner” and the “suspicion of infidelity” bit), and the fairly lacklustre animation. There was no exaggeration; characters stood and talked and talked, with animators employing their individual style of head and mouth movement.
Here are backgrounds from the first episode that aired. They’re by Art Lozzi. The colour is excellent; some ABC affiliates actually aired the series in colour.
This throwaway background gag reminds of something you might see on The Simpsons 25 years later.
The gag above is from one of my favourite episodes— the debut of Uniblab. Computers took up whole rooms in the early ‘60s, so Uniblab has a huge head. For those who don’t know, the “uni” comes from the Univac, a Remington Rand division which made computers for corporations and the military that operated on punch cards or thick tape. The “blab” part came from the spying computer blabbing information and gossip to boss Spacely. I didn’t need to know about corporate suck-ups at age six; I knew George Jetson was getting screwed around and waited for the plot to play itself out with Univac being the victim of karma.
People like quoting from cartoons, and Barry Blitzer’s script gives viewers a chance. “Spacely’s a stupe,” exclaims Uniblab, which George repeats for the computer’s microphone, as the two play Five Card Satellite.
“Jupiter Gin! Planet Poker!” slurs the brain after getting drunk of Henry’s spiked oil.
I haven’t tried adding up all his scenes, but Carlo Vinci seems to have been responsible for much of the animation in this episode. He had unique mouth and leg shapes and angles. By this time, he was teamed with Disney veteran Hugh Fraser on the half-hour series.
One scene in the cartoon bothers me, and it shows you the limits of limited animation. Uniblab shoots hot coffee over the “board of directors” (presumably from Spacely Sprockets’ parent corporation). They just stand there. There’s no reaction to the liquid, let alone it being hot liquid. It’s completely unrealistic. The studio couldn’t even spend the time making a four-drawing yelling cycle.
Because it is The Jetsons, here is an obligatory shot of a flying car. I hope the exhaust doesn’t kill the ozone layer. Maybe it’s water vapour.
There really isn’t more I can say about the series that what’s been posted on the blog. Each cartoon has been reviewed. We wrote a bunch of posts when the series turned 50. Find one with music HERE. There's a post where Joe Barbera talks about the Space Needle and another about futuristic inventions.
Thursday, 22 September 2022
Promoting George and Jane
The Jetsons started life, according to Bill Hanna at a lunch at the Brown Derby, as a stand-by series just in case TV viewers didn’t warm to Arnold Stang playing a cat.
The lunch was with UPI’s Vernon Scott, likely in November 1961, who reported in early December that “Waiting in the wings should Top Cat become a fallen feline are The Jetsons, The Gruesomes and a medley show starring Cops and Roberts, Bill and Coo Coo, and Casey Jones. Hanna said ‘The Jetsons are the opposite of the Flintstones. They live several centuries in the future and suffer the same nutty family problems as Fred and Wilma Flintstone’.”
At the start, it wasn’t clear when the show was going to air. The Oakland Tribune of February 19, 1962 had it pencilled in on Fridays at 7:30 p.m. opposite Rawhide (CBS) and International Showtime (NBC). Daily Variety, on March 19, revealed: “Rest of the Sunday schedule is fairly well locked in. The Hanna-Barbera cartoon ‘The Jetsons,’ described as the ‘flip side’ of ‘The Flintstones’ and updated to the year 2,000, leads off at 7 p.m.” (A syndicated blurb in the San Antonio Express of April 1 said the series was set “a thousand years hence”). Broadcasting magazine on April 23 put it where it ended up—on Sundays at 7:30 opposite Dennis the Menace (CBS) and Walt Disney (ABC). It estimated production costs at $60,000 an episode, $10,000 less than Dennis.
Sponsors seem to have been found pretty quickly after that. Variety announced on May 2 the show “has been sold to Colgate-Palmolive and Whitehall Laboratories, both through Ted Bates [an ad agency], and Minnesota Mining and Mfg., through McManus, John and Adams [another agency].”
Now that a time slot had been set, it was time to start publicising the show. There was actually something specific to publicise; The Hollywood Reporter’s “TV Writing Deals” column of April 12, 1962 said Larry Markes had been hired to write two episodes. He received the story credit for the debut show with Rosey the robot and the sixth one where George leads a pack of cub scouts on the moon.
Newspapers would get news releases from networks, sponsors, producers, that could be printed verbatim as stories. Here’s one from May. Evidently the publicity department didn’t know George’s employer was “Spacely Sprockets.” I like the way Top Cat is played down, having failed in prime time. You’ll note nothing about the cast as Morey Amsterdam and Pat Carroll were still George and Jane when this release was written.
‘Jetsons’ Offer Animated Look Into Comedy Future Next Fall
"The Jetsons," a new, half-hour situation comedy series featuring an amiable family of animated characters who live the good life about a century or so in the future, will make its debut on the ABC Television Network next fall as a prime time evening feature.
The program will be telecast Sundays, 7:30 - 8 p.m.
Hanna-Barbera Productions, producers of ABC-TV’s top-rate “The Flintstones,” and regarded as one of the most original production organizations in television, created the new all-family series.
"The Jetsons,” which has been in development for one year, is a light-hearted bit of futuristic fun. It deals with George and Jane Jetson, their cute, teenaged daughter Judy, her kid brother Elroy and the family dog, Astro. In their wonderously wacky world, the surroundings and gadgets have all changed — naturally for the better. But the problems we know and cope with are, to be sure, still around.
George works for Space Rockets Inc. [sic] The Jetsons live in the Skypads Apartments, which rise and fall on huge hydraulic lifts to stay clear of the weather. Jane Jetson dials the family's meals on a food console, solves the servant problem with robot maids. Son Elroy is packed off to school in a convenient pneumatic tube and Judy has her space-age singing idol, one Jet Screamer.
For 20 years at M-G-M, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera produced the "Tom and Jerry" cartoons which won 7 Academy Awards. In 1957, they set up their own studios to produce animated cartoons for television with Screen Gems. Their "Huckleberry Hound," now seen on over 150 stations through the nation, was the first half-hour series in TV to consist entirely of original cartoons.
In the fall of 1960, the H-B team embarked on the first animated series on TV network prime time, "The Flintstones," which returns in the fall with all the woes and fun of the Stone Age for its third season on ABC-TV. Last season, "Top Cat" was a prime-time animated series from Hanna-Barbera Productions.
Another release states: “It is understood that ABC has held open a network slot for ‘The Jetsons’ for a number of months, since the idea for the series was simple pencil sketch on a single sheet of paper. Sponsor interest remained strong during all the months in which Hanna-Barbera were busy putting together a presentation to show them.”
Next came the beloved network custom—The Junket, where entertainment reporters from all over the U.S. were given an all-expenses-paid trip to meet the stars of the coming fall season. Since it’s a little hard to meet cartoon characters, Hanna-Barbera brought out master salesman Joe Barbera and p.r. whiz Arnie Carr to promote, promote and promote The Jetsons. One reporter was from the Birmingham News.
Jetson cartoon this fall will make Glenn look stone age
BY TURNER JORDAN
News radio-TV editor
HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 21—From the first visits to the studios it appears TV is after the family in its entirety as viewers . . . The shows will be aimed at catching the adult audience and the kids as well . . . And if you think you've seen the fantastic, there’s more and more to come . . . We learned this while at the Harna-Barbera studios.
Their new project for this fall is the Jetsons, an animated cartoon in color . . . Col. Glenn’s exploits will look like old stuff as compared to the Jetsons . . . and Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna believe in it enough to think it can buck Walt Disney’s wonderful World of Color . . . Both will be on in Birmingham at the same time after Sept. 21 . . . There are George and Jane Jetson, a son Elroy and the dog, Astro.
When Arnie Carr, publicist, and Joe Barbera told about some of the exploits of this new some of the exploits of this new ABC cartoon series, TV editors were in stitches . . . TV reporters are here from Boston, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Ohio, San Mateo. Calif., and Nashville, Tenn., as well as Birmingham . . . But I thought while we were all laughing of how absurd space flights were several years ago until Alan Shephard, Gus Grissom and John Glenn came along.
IN FACT the only fear Joe Barbera has about the Jetsons is that it may be contemporary before the series runs its course . . . The Jetsons have skypool apartments you can run up and down, to let you out of the smog, as Carr and Barbera pointed out . . . And they do have smog out here as well as we do in Birmingham . . . Penny Singleton, remembered most for her role as Blondie’s wife, is thee wife in this one and her voice should be a riot.
There’s even a record coming out on the Jetsons, and Howard Morris, one of Steve Allen’s old funny men, (or was it Sid Caesar’s?) is the voice of Screamie Jet . . . It’s strictly for the bee-bops . . . And the dance for that era will be the solar swivel, so look out twist . . . The things the Jetsons have are “out of this world” and that is literally and figuratively speaking . . . One of them is a seeing eye vacuum cleaner which has two electronic eyes that seek out dirt and dust and even when the Jetsons aren't looking it sweeps the dust under the rug. And there's a shower that works like a car wash . . . You step on a slide-walk that moves you along, washes you off and puts on the powder and finishes the job at the end of the line. . . . There are many more innovations for the Jetsons, and it will be interesting to watch this show . . . Pretesting has brought out that it’s going to be one of the shows of the fall.
HANNA-BARBERA should be all right, if they can do better than Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw . . . Of course, I’ve said from time to time cartoons don’t appeal to me except when the grandchildren are around, but I’ll be on the lookout for the Jetsons.
George Jetson has a three-hour, three-day week (that’s bad huh?) and he still complains about a hard day at the office . . . And life is so wonderful in this Jetson age Grandfather doesn’t retire until he’s 110 and still there’s a lot of life left in the old boy . . . There are already by-products of the Jetsons, such as soap, towers, dolls, books and toys . . . And that’s a big item . . . In the year which ended June 1 gross sales from by-products of cartoon characters grossed $39 millions wholesale and Hanna-Barbera and Screen Gems had a take from that of 5 per cent.
Hanna-Barbera are learning about TV cartoons . . . They have moved from a small studio to a bigger one and now are getting away from animal cartoons . : . The Jetsons are the first series I learned about on this trip hut there's more in store. . . . Hope you stick with us on the trip and let us tell you more about this TV town. . . .
Had lunch . . . sitting at a nearby table was Morris [sic] Gosfield, the Doberman of Sgt. Bilko. and the voice of Top Cat [sic] . . . one of which Hanna-Barbera are not too proud . . . It flopped.
Mike Carroll’s column in the Hollywood Reporter on March 21, 1962 had an unusual little item about the show. He said Nanette Fabray had been signed to play a Martian maiden. If she had, the idea was scrapped. The series wasn’t like The Flintstones, which had already succumbed to the age-old ratings gimmick of celebrity guest stars. Additional voices were supplied by cartoon actors and commercial voice over people like Herschel Bernardi and Shep Menken.
By the way, there was a radio show with George O’Hanlon as George who had a wife named Jane and an overbearing boss who kept threatening to fire him. It was Me and Janie, a replacement show for Alan Young on NBC in 1949. You can hear an episode below.
The lunch was with UPI’s Vernon Scott, likely in November 1961, who reported in early December that “Waiting in the wings should Top Cat become a fallen feline are The Jetsons, The Gruesomes and a medley show starring Cops and Roberts, Bill and Coo Coo, and Casey Jones. Hanna said ‘The Jetsons are the opposite of the Flintstones. They live several centuries in the future and suffer the same nutty family problems as Fred and Wilma Flintstone’.”
At the start, it wasn’t clear when the show was going to air. The Oakland Tribune of February 19, 1962 had it pencilled in on Fridays at 7:30 p.m. opposite Rawhide (CBS) and International Showtime (NBC). Daily Variety, on March 19, revealed: “Rest of the Sunday schedule is fairly well locked in. The Hanna-Barbera cartoon ‘The Jetsons,’ described as the ‘flip side’ of ‘The Flintstones’ and updated to the year 2,000, leads off at 7 p.m.” (A syndicated blurb in the San Antonio Express of April 1 said the series was set “a thousand years hence”). Broadcasting magazine on April 23 put it where it ended up—on Sundays at 7:30 opposite Dennis the Menace (CBS) and Walt Disney (ABC). It estimated production costs at $60,000 an episode, $10,000 less than Dennis.
Sponsors seem to have been found pretty quickly after that. Variety announced on May 2 the show “has been sold to Colgate-Palmolive and Whitehall Laboratories, both through Ted Bates [an ad agency], and Minnesota Mining and Mfg., through McManus, John and Adams [another agency].”
Now that a time slot had been set, it was time to start publicising the show. There was actually something specific to publicise; The Hollywood Reporter’s “TV Writing Deals” column of April 12, 1962 said Larry Markes had been hired to write two episodes. He received the story credit for the debut show with Rosey the robot and the sixth one where George leads a pack of cub scouts on the moon.
Newspapers would get news releases from networks, sponsors, producers, that could be printed verbatim as stories. Here’s one from May. Evidently the publicity department didn’t know George’s employer was “Spacely Sprockets.” I like the way Top Cat is played down, having failed in prime time. You’ll note nothing about the cast as Morey Amsterdam and Pat Carroll were still George and Jane when this release was written.
‘Jetsons’ Offer Animated Look Into Comedy Future Next Fall
"The Jetsons," a new, half-hour situation comedy series featuring an amiable family of animated characters who live the good life about a century or so in the future, will make its debut on the ABC Television Network next fall as a prime time evening feature.
The program will be telecast Sundays, 7:30 - 8 p.m.
Hanna-Barbera Productions, producers of ABC-TV’s top-rate “The Flintstones,” and regarded as one of the most original production organizations in television, created the new all-family series.
"The Jetsons,” which has been in development for one year, is a light-hearted bit of futuristic fun. It deals with George and Jane Jetson, their cute, teenaged daughter Judy, her kid brother Elroy and the family dog, Astro. In their wonderously wacky world, the surroundings and gadgets have all changed — naturally for the better. But the problems we know and cope with are, to be sure, still around.
George works for Space Rockets Inc. [sic] The Jetsons live in the Skypads Apartments, which rise and fall on huge hydraulic lifts to stay clear of the weather. Jane Jetson dials the family's meals on a food console, solves the servant problem with robot maids. Son Elroy is packed off to school in a convenient pneumatic tube and Judy has her space-age singing idol, one Jet Screamer.
For 20 years at M-G-M, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera produced the "Tom and Jerry" cartoons which won 7 Academy Awards. In 1957, they set up their own studios to produce animated cartoons for television with Screen Gems. Their "Huckleberry Hound," now seen on over 150 stations through the nation, was the first half-hour series in TV to consist entirely of original cartoons.
In the fall of 1960, the H-B team embarked on the first animated series on TV network prime time, "The Flintstones," which returns in the fall with all the woes and fun of the Stone Age for its third season on ABC-TV. Last season, "Top Cat" was a prime-time animated series from Hanna-Barbera Productions.
Another release states: “It is understood that ABC has held open a network slot for ‘The Jetsons’ for a number of months, since the idea for the series was simple pencil sketch on a single sheet of paper. Sponsor interest remained strong during all the months in which Hanna-Barbera were busy putting together a presentation to show them.”
Next came the beloved network custom—The Junket, where entertainment reporters from all over the U.S. were given an all-expenses-paid trip to meet the stars of the coming fall season. Since it’s a little hard to meet cartoon characters, Hanna-Barbera brought out master salesman Joe Barbera and p.r. whiz Arnie Carr to promote, promote and promote The Jetsons. One reporter was from the Birmingham News.
Jetson cartoon this fall will make Glenn look stone age
BY TURNER JORDAN
News radio-TV editor
HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 21—From the first visits to the studios it appears TV is after the family in its entirety as viewers . . . The shows will be aimed at catching the adult audience and the kids as well . . . And if you think you've seen the fantastic, there’s more and more to come . . . We learned this while at the Harna-Barbera studios.
Their new project for this fall is the Jetsons, an animated cartoon in color . . . Col. Glenn’s exploits will look like old stuff as compared to the Jetsons . . . and Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna believe in it enough to think it can buck Walt Disney’s wonderful World of Color . . . Both will be on in Birmingham at the same time after Sept. 21 . . . There are George and Jane Jetson, a son Elroy and the dog, Astro.
When Arnie Carr, publicist, and Joe Barbera told about some of the exploits of this new some of the exploits of this new ABC cartoon series, TV editors were in stitches . . . TV reporters are here from Boston, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Ohio, San Mateo. Calif., and Nashville, Tenn., as well as Birmingham . . . But I thought while we were all laughing of how absurd space flights were several years ago until Alan Shephard, Gus Grissom and John Glenn came along.
IN FACT the only fear Joe Barbera has about the Jetsons is that it may be contemporary before the series runs its course . . . The Jetsons have skypool apartments you can run up and down, to let you out of the smog, as Carr and Barbera pointed out . . . And they do have smog out here as well as we do in Birmingham . . . Penny Singleton, remembered most for her role as Blondie’s wife, is thee wife in this one and her voice should be a riot.
There’s even a record coming out on the Jetsons, and Howard Morris, one of Steve Allen’s old funny men, (or was it Sid Caesar’s?) is the voice of Screamie Jet . . . It’s strictly for the bee-bops . . . And the dance for that era will be the solar swivel, so look out twist . . . The things the Jetsons have are “out of this world” and that is literally and figuratively speaking . . . One of them is a seeing eye vacuum cleaner which has two electronic eyes that seek out dirt and dust and even when the Jetsons aren't looking it sweeps the dust under the rug. And there's a shower that works like a car wash . . . You step on a slide-walk that moves you along, washes you off and puts on the powder and finishes the job at the end of the line. . . . There are many more innovations for the Jetsons, and it will be interesting to watch this show . . . Pretesting has brought out that it’s going to be one of the shows of the fall.
HANNA-BARBERA should be all right, if they can do better than Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw . . . Of course, I’ve said from time to time cartoons don’t appeal to me except when the grandchildren are around, but I’ll be on the lookout for the Jetsons.
George Jetson has a three-hour, three-day week (that’s bad huh?) and he still complains about a hard day at the office . . . And life is so wonderful in this Jetson age Grandfather doesn’t retire until he’s 110 and still there’s a lot of life left in the old boy . . . There are already by-products of the Jetsons, such as soap, towers, dolls, books and toys . . . And that’s a big item . . . In the year which ended June 1 gross sales from by-products of cartoon characters grossed $39 millions wholesale and Hanna-Barbera and Screen Gems had a take from that of 5 per cent.
Hanna-Barbera are learning about TV cartoons . . . They have moved from a small studio to a bigger one and now are getting away from animal cartoons . : . The Jetsons are the first series I learned about on this trip hut there's more in store. . . . Hope you stick with us on the trip and let us tell you more about this TV town. . . .
Had lunch . . . sitting at a nearby table was Morris [sic] Gosfield, the Doberman of Sgt. Bilko. and the voice of Top Cat [sic] . . . one of which Hanna-Barbera are not too proud . . . It flopped.
Mike Carroll’s column in the Hollywood Reporter on March 21, 1962 had an unusual little item about the show. He said Nanette Fabray had been signed to play a Martian maiden. If she had, the idea was scrapped. The series wasn’t like The Flintstones, which had already succumbed to the age-old ratings gimmick of celebrity guest stars. Additional voices were supplied by cartoon actors and commercial voice over people like Herschel Bernardi and Shep Menken.
By the way, there was a radio show with George O’Hanlon as George who had a wife named Jane and an overbearing boss who kept threatening to fire him. It was Me and Janie, a replacement show for Alan Young on NBC in 1949. You can hear an episode below.
Saturday, 17 September 2022
He's Ready to Animate Ruff and Reddy
This year (as of July 7th) marks the 65th birthday of H-B Enterprises. The studio only had one main accomplishment in 1957—it convinced Columbia Pictures’ Screen Gems division to put up the money for a TV cartoon series, which the studio then convinced NBC to broadcast on Saturday mornings.
Weekend programming back then was not a huge priority for networks, so NBC had no qualms about tossing Ruff and Reddy onto the schedule after the start of the season. It debuted in December. The second and third seasons began in subsequent Falls.
The first two 13-part adventures to open the series’ third season on Saturday morning, October 17, 19591 2 were copyrighted in September the previous year (Series ‘L’, Dizzy Deputies; Series ‘M’, Spooky Meeting at Spooky Rock). Presumably, they had already been finished and were sitting in cans at 1416 La Brea Avenue awaiting shipment to NBC.
The final two 13-parters were copyrighted on September 15, 1959 (Series ‘N’, Sky High Guys; Series ‘O’, Misguided Missile). By that time, Hanna-Barbera had hired additional artists to handle the load of the new Quick Draw McGraw Show and the theatrical Loopy De Loop cartoons. Also, writer Charlie Shows left in November 1958 to work for Larry Harmon, who was ready to make a series of Bozo the Clown cartoons for syndication.
The first of the 1959-made episodes was “Sky High Guys” (debuting February 12, 19603) began with our heroes accidentally taking off in a balloon at a county fair and ending up on a desert island trying to stop two crooks (Captain Greedy and Salt Water Daffy) from stealing a treasure chest from Skipper Kipper and his parrot Squawky Talky.
13 cartoons is a little much for one animator to handle, and I’ve been able to identify two of them. Carlo Vinci starts off the series. You can spot him again in “Tiff on a Skiff.” Captain Greedy has a bar of upper teeth. Reddy doesn’t zip out of the scene in a diving exit; he uses a curved back exit that Carlo drew for other characters like Huckleberry Hound and Fred Flintstone. And he also has a particular angle he draws a straight leg with the foot up almost at a 90-degree angle. You can see this in other cartoons.
Two episodes later, in “Squawky No Talky,” there’s a different animator. Add up the signs. The bit lip on the letter “f” and individual upper teeth. He animated Fred Flintstone the same way.
The almost double isosceles triangle closed eyes.
The up-and-down dip walk with no legs. He animated Ranger Smith this way in “Bewitched Bear.” I’ve slowed down the walk in the animated .gif below. And it’s missing a number of frames because of ghosting on the internet dub of the cartoon, but you get the idea. It’s animated on ones.
The animation is by Don Patterson, who joined the Hanna-Barbera staff from Walter Lantz in April 1959. Patterson was unemployed and looking for work according to the U.S. Census taken April 29, 1950. He arrived at Lantz later in the year, animated for a bit, was made a director in 1952 and stopped directing in 1954. He was moved back into full-time animating. His Woody Woodpecker animation includes some great exaggerated takes. I get the impression that as the ‘50s progressed, studios decided wildness was passé and cartoons got tamer and tamer.
Here’s a Patterson take from “Squawky No Talky.” It’s not all that outrageous, even compared with his work at Lantz, but it’s not what you’d expect in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. You think George Jetson was ever animated this way?
It appears H-B Enterprises loved airbrushed action. Here’s some (with multiples) in a later scene.
For Patterson, as well as some of the other earliest Hanna-Barbera artists, dialogue wasn’t just a mouth or lower part of a jaw moving with everything else rigid. In the scene below, Patterson uses three head positions. The middle drawing is used whenever certain vowels are spoken. The other two positions have the mouth open and close. Bill Hanna’s timing is such that the head moves on ones, two and threes; the in-betweens aren’t the same number, which would make the animation look mechanical.
Because Charlie Shows was gone from Hanna-Barbera in November 1958, I don’t suspect he worked on this episode. If I had to guess, I think Mike Maltese may have had a hand in this. At one point (in “Tail of a Sail in a Whale”), Daffy says “I’m doin’ the diggin’, and don’t forget it,” reminiscent of Quick Draw McGraw’s “thinnin’” line to Baba Looey. And pardon my sloppy research here as I don’t recall if it’s on this adventure, but there are a couple of times where the narrator talks to the characters, which just seems like a Maltese thing.
I’m not sure about all 13 parts of this storyline, but it looks like Bob Gentle provided at least some of the backgrounds. Today’s trivia: though they graduated 3 ½ years apart, Patterson and Gentle attended Hollywood High School at the same time for a brief period (photos below are from the same page of the 1927 annual).
A final note about “Squawky No Talky,” I’d love to do a breakdown of the music, but I don’t recognise any of the music in it. It’s obviously from the same two libraries that were used in Hanna-Barbera’s other cartoons at the time, but these particular cues were exclusive to Ruff and Reddy. I don’t have a complete collection of the Capitol Hi-Q “D” series and I’m pretty sure some music that sounds like Spencer Moore’s in this cartoon comes from one of the missing discs. The second last cue, when Daffy is threatening Squawky, sounds like a Loose-Seely dramatic melody while final cue, when Daffy is being attacked by the parrot, is another of Jack Shaindlin’s sports marches. There is some familiar Moore, Loose-Seely and Phil Green music in other parts of the adventure. The last season of Ruff and Reddy seems to use a lot more music than the first one, which were content with two or three different pieces (saving time and money in editing).
Patterson was still working at Hanna-Barbera decades later, credited as an animation director on The Flintstone Kids (1988), a good 55 years after assistant animating at the Charles Mintz studio (a look at the end credits reveals a wealth of veterans, including Patterson’s younger brother Ray, and Art Davis who went back to the ‘20s at Fleischers).
Donald William Patterson was born in Chicago on December 26, 1909. After Mintz, he stopped at Disney and MGM before Walter Lantz gave him a job. He died in Santa Barbera, California on December 12, 1998. (He is pictured to the right with Lantz in front of the storyboard for Operation Sawdust).
Weekend programming back then was not a huge priority for networks, so NBC had no qualms about tossing Ruff and Reddy onto the schedule after the start of the season. It debuted in December. The second and third seasons began in subsequent Falls.
The first two 13-part adventures to open the series’ third season on Saturday morning, October 17, 19591 2 were copyrighted in September the previous year (Series ‘L’, Dizzy Deputies; Series ‘M’, Spooky Meeting at Spooky Rock). Presumably, they had already been finished and were sitting in cans at 1416 La Brea Avenue awaiting shipment to NBC.
The final two 13-parters were copyrighted on September 15, 1959 (Series ‘N’, Sky High Guys; Series ‘O’, Misguided Missile). By that time, Hanna-Barbera had hired additional artists to handle the load of the new Quick Draw McGraw Show and the theatrical Loopy De Loop cartoons. Also, writer Charlie Shows left in November 1958 to work for Larry Harmon, who was ready to make a series of Bozo the Clown cartoons for syndication.
The first of the 1959-made episodes was “Sky High Guys” (debuting February 12, 19603) began with our heroes accidentally taking off in a balloon at a county fair and ending up on a desert island trying to stop two crooks (Captain Greedy and Salt Water Daffy) from stealing a treasure chest from Skipper Kipper and his parrot Squawky Talky.
13 cartoons is a little much for one animator to handle, and I’ve been able to identify two of them. Carlo Vinci starts off the series. You can spot him again in “Tiff on a Skiff.” Captain Greedy has a bar of upper teeth. Reddy doesn’t zip out of the scene in a diving exit; he uses a curved back exit that Carlo drew for other characters like Huckleberry Hound and Fred Flintstone. And he also has a particular angle he draws a straight leg with the foot up almost at a 90-degree angle. You can see this in other cartoons.
Two episodes later, in “Squawky No Talky,” there’s a different animator. Add up the signs. The bit lip on the letter “f” and individual upper teeth. He animated Fred Flintstone the same way.
The almost double isosceles triangle closed eyes.
The up-and-down dip walk with no legs. He animated Ranger Smith this way in “Bewitched Bear.” I’ve slowed down the walk in the animated .gif below. And it’s missing a number of frames because of ghosting on the internet dub of the cartoon, but you get the idea. It’s animated on ones.
The animation is by Don Patterson, who joined the Hanna-Barbera staff from Walter Lantz in April 1959. Patterson was unemployed and looking for work according to the U.S. Census taken April 29, 1950. He arrived at Lantz later in the year, animated for a bit, was made a director in 1952 and stopped directing in 1954. He was moved back into full-time animating. His Woody Woodpecker animation includes some great exaggerated takes. I get the impression that as the ‘50s progressed, studios decided wildness was passé and cartoons got tamer and tamer.
Here’s a Patterson take from “Squawky No Talky.” It’s not all that outrageous, even compared with his work at Lantz, but it’s not what you’d expect in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. You think George Jetson was ever animated this way?
It appears H-B Enterprises loved airbrushed action. Here’s some (with multiples) in a later scene.
For Patterson, as well as some of the other earliest Hanna-Barbera artists, dialogue wasn’t just a mouth or lower part of a jaw moving with everything else rigid. In the scene below, Patterson uses three head positions. The middle drawing is used whenever certain vowels are spoken. The other two positions have the mouth open and close. Bill Hanna’s timing is such that the head moves on ones, two and threes; the in-betweens aren’t the same number, which would make the animation look mechanical.
Because Charlie Shows was gone from Hanna-Barbera in November 1958, I don’t suspect he worked on this episode. If I had to guess, I think Mike Maltese may have had a hand in this. At one point (in “Tail of a Sail in a Whale”), Daffy says “I’m doin’ the diggin’, and don’t forget it,” reminiscent of Quick Draw McGraw’s “thinnin’” line to Baba Looey. And pardon my sloppy research here as I don’t recall if it’s on this adventure, but there are a couple of times where the narrator talks to the characters, which just seems like a Maltese thing.
I’m not sure about all 13 parts of this storyline, but it looks like Bob Gentle provided at least some of the backgrounds. Today’s trivia: though they graduated 3 ½ years apart, Patterson and Gentle attended Hollywood High School at the same time for a brief period (photos below are from the same page of the 1927 annual).
A final note about “Squawky No Talky,” I’d love to do a breakdown of the music, but I don’t recognise any of the music in it. It’s obviously from the same two libraries that were used in Hanna-Barbera’s other cartoons at the time, but these particular cues were exclusive to Ruff and Reddy. I don’t have a complete collection of the Capitol Hi-Q “D” series and I’m pretty sure some music that sounds like Spencer Moore’s in this cartoon comes from one of the missing discs. The second last cue, when Daffy is threatening Squawky, sounds like a Loose-Seely dramatic melody while final cue, when Daffy is being attacked by the parrot, is another of Jack Shaindlin’s sports marches. There is some familiar Moore, Loose-Seely and Phil Green music in other parts of the adventure. The last season of Ruff and Reddy seems to use a lot more music than the first one, which were content with two or three different pieces (saving time and money in editing).
Patterson was still working at Hanna-Barbera decades later, credited as an animation director on The Flintstone Kids (1988), a good 55 years after assistant animating at the Charles Mintz studio (a look at the end credits reveals a wealth of veterans, including Patterson’s younger brother Ray, and Art Davis who went back to the ‘20s at Fleischers).
Donald William Patterson was born in Chicago on December 26, 1909. After Mintz, he stopped at Disney and MGM before Walter Lantz gave him a job. He died in Santa Barbera, California on December 12, 1998. (He is pictured to the right with Lantz in front of the storyboard for Operation Sawdust).
1 Fort-Worth Star-Telegram, Oct. 17, 1959, pg. 18. See also Feb. 6, 1960, pg. 6↩
2 KMJ, Fresno, broadcast the show at 5:15 p.m. on Fridays. KERO, Bakersfield, also an NBC station, aired it on Saturdays at 9 a.m.↩
3 El Paso Times, Feb. 13, 1960, pg. 8. See also Feb. 6, 1960, pg. 6↩