President Huck

How long have animated cartoon characters been “running” for the U.S. presidency?

Well, Popeye and Bluto did. So did Betty Boop (as the crowd chanted her name to the “We Want Cantor” musical vamp). Olive Oyl dreamed she was president.

But that was only on the screen. There were no real-life campaign appearances or newspaper articles with promises or anything suggesting an actual (but phoney) run for the office.

Whether Huckleberry Hound changed all that, I don’t know, but the Hanna-Barbera publicity machine got into high gear in 1960. Broadcasting magazine revealed in its August 8, 1960 issue the idea was the brainchild of “Honest” Ed Justin at Screen Gems and, before anyone knew it, “Huck For President” ads were airing during the Republican National Convention. You can read more about it in this post.

The Palm Beach Post of August 28, 1960 reported on the size of the campaign to date. There is no byline.

“if I’m elected. . .”
He may be just the answer for thousands of confused voters. Huckleberry Hound, TV's Emmy winning cartoon hero, is running for President, and the mythical canine's bandwagon is rolling right along.
A comic book, Huckleberry Hound for President, is now out. A record company has waxed an L.P. album about Huck's campaign. Some five million campaign buttons have been made, along with banners, balloons, picket signs and TV slides.
In Mason City, Iowa the grandstand at the State Fair was plastered with Huck's picture.
Last week, Toledo, Ohio and Evansville, Indiana had "Huck" rallies, and next month Spokane, Washington plans a three-day shindig.
The biggest turnout so far was in Honolulu. Recently Huck, Yogi Bear and Quick Draw McGraw (portrayed by actors in costumes) arrived in Honolulu for a "nominating convention." The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported, "10,000 people at the airport for Huckleberry Hound . . . more than President Eisenhower had at the airport also more than greeted the Shah of Iran or the crown Prince and Princess of Japan." One of Huck's "campaign managers" has this to say: "This may be the worst organized political campaign in history. Our candidate can't tell the White House from a dog house. His campaign manager, Yogi Bear, is a mythical inhabitant of a mythical park. There's no platform, and an awful lot of our supporters are below voting age.
"But, unlike the other candidates, Huck can't lose.”
This may the dog-gonedest campaign year yet.

The Post wasn’t the only newspaper that got a campaign press kit. The TV Editor of the Tampa Times led her column of August 27, 1960 with Huck (Hanna-Barbera got a bonus, as her second story was on the pending arrival on ABC-TV of The Flintstones.

The first, and perhaps only "Huckleberry Hound for president" button in the area, arrived at my desk last week, along with details announcing the lovable pooch's campaign Is now in full swing.
Apparently Huck doesn't have the big money interests behind him, because the button is only about the size of a nickel and doesn't look worth that much. To be frank—it looks like something you might get out of a cracker jack box.
A Bare Item!
But it is a rare item in these parts—thereby giving it some questionable value. Would someone REALLY like to have it? If anyone cares to be the only area resident with a genuine "Huckleberry Hound for president" button—write, and I will present it to the person who offers the most interesting reason why they would support Huckleberry for president. Just write me—that's Tish Gray, in care of The Times.
Checked to see if Huck has any plans to campaign or flood Tampa Bay with his election insignia but at present, the local outlet, WFLA-TV (8), says no. However any interest shown, might get them to change their minds, and then all of us could have Huckleberry Hound for president buttons.

The Huck campaign never got to Election Night. Perhaps Ed Justin’s team felt they had milked the idea until it ran dry. Broadcasting magazine told the story in its October 17, 1960 edition.

‘Huck for President’
A decision has been made in smoke-filled rooms that will change the complexion of the presidential race. Huckleberry Hound will withdraw his hat from the ring and throw his weight to the other candidates.
It has been an open secret in the trade but closely guarded from the public. In fact, there’s another Huck-for-President rally scheduled by Rich’s department store and WSB-TV in Atlanta next week. Only last week the tv hound addressed more than 5,000 at a Freedomland rally in New York after stumping other cities across the country. His campaign assistant, Quick Draw McGraw, led a rally at St. Louis’ Busch Stadium.
The presidential bandwagon got rolling last summer (BROADCASTING, Aug. 8) and inspired local promotions in many of 180 markets where Huckleberry Hound is on the air for Kellogg’s (through Leo Burnett Co.). Screen Gems spearheaded the drive. Stations and department stores carrying Huckleberry Hound merchandise rallied around with their own tub-thumping.
Now more than a third of the stations have received a series of recorded announcements containing the political secret that will swing the child vote in two other directions. Actually it is a public-service campaign to pressure parents and other fans of age to register and vote.
The first in the series of transcriptions is a standard “Vote for Huck” appeal. The second, planned for use during local registration season, urges fans to register for the vote. In the last, containing the political bombshell, the candidate announces he is quitting the race (“a joke’s a joke’), but he asks all voters to report to polls election day. This is for release shortly prior to Nov. 8. All run behind the standard Huck-for-President slide.
The Freedomland appearance was the last of the season for the paid act packaged by Screen Gems. The gate Oct. 8 was 11,000, up 2,500 (on a World Series day) from the Saturday before, with the help of promotion by WPIX (TV) New York, where Huckleberry Hound appears, and Macys department store. Performer Eddie Alberian, who plays the hound part on the amusement park-fair circuit, will take to the road with the cartoon company again next spring promoting also Quick Draw McGraw (he’s on the same Kellogg lineup) and The Flintstones, which just debuted on ABC-TV. All are Hanna-Barbera Cartoons productions.
There are 25 more department store promotions between now and December using local talent, tieing in with stations at football games and local special events, but the race for the White House has been conceded by one of the politicians’ best friends.

One last news release was sent out by Honest Ed’s P.R. people. Here’s how Joe Bryant of the Fort Lauderdale News put it in his Showtime column of November 4:

Huckleberry Hound Releases Voters
Huckleberry Hound, who for months has waged a dogged campaign for the Presidency, today withdrew from the race and released all of his voters.
"I'm downright dee-lighted with the wonderful support the public has given me, and although I have consistently-placed first at all poles, I feel it is the best interests of the country that I withdraw," Huck said.
“For one thing,” the flop-eared politician continued, "I have an unofficial ruling from the attorney general that even if elected by the populace, I would not be allowed to serve.
"I am told that my opponents will seek a strict interpretation of the Constitutional provision that a president must be at least 35 years of age. And while, in a literal interpretation, my competitive age as a dog would enable me to qualify, I don't hardly know a dog around who can meet the strict interpretation of that ruling.
"At feast, I don’t know any four-legged dogs who can," he added thoughtfully.
“Any-how," the ex-candidate mused, “I’d probably be out of place in Washington. I don't give a hoot for golf or fishing. Baying at the moon is my favorite sport and I’m afraid I’d be outclassed at this on Capitol Hill.”

What was Huck doing on election night? We know what he was doing in the Los Angeles area. Election Night is on a Tuesday. So was The Huckleberry Hound Show. Columnist Art Ryon of the Los Angeles Times was a big Huck fan, and he noted for posterity in his column of Friday, November 11:

In the frenzy of Tuesday night’s election returns, KTTV dropped everything to present, as scheduled, Huckleberry Hound.
This was a comforting gesture.
It shows that the Huckleberry Hound-for-President is still very much alive. And, while the recent campaign bogged down—mostly because of the arrogance of the Eastern and Midwest cliques in the Party—we are looking forward to ’64.
The nation needs Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear!

Unfortunately for Huck, the 1960 election campaign marked the peak of his career. Hanna-Barbera was already planning a feature-length movie, but it was to star Yogi Bear, not Huck. When H-B got into the syndicated newspaper comic business, the one-panel comics starred Yogi Bear, not Huck. The strips featured the Flintstones, not Huck. And when the ’64 that Art Ryon awaited finally arrived, the presidential ticket featured Yogi Bear, not Huck.

As time rolled on, the gentle Southern hound didn’t have an Ark Lark or Space Race or Yahooeys. No one said “Yo, Huck!” (which was probably a good thing). Oh, Huck was still around but, by the end of the 1960s, another Hanna-Barbera dog surpassed him in popularity (and ubiquity).

Regardless, you still have to like ol’ Huck. He’s pleasant and easy-going, even when he’s dealing with poundings or other adversity. Sometimes he wins, sometimes he loses. Maybe he wouldn’t have been a good president, but he’s a pretty good TV cartoon character.

If you want to read the Huck presidential comic, CLICK HERE. If you want to hear the Huck presidential campaign L.P., CLICK HERE. We warn you these are not the original cartoon voices. You will not hear Daws Butler or Don Messick. You will hear New York actors instead, including Mason Adams as Bert on the first track.

The Many Bears of Yogi

If I say “Yogi Bear” to you, you’ll likely think of pic-a-nic baskets and “The ranger won’t like it, Yogi.” But that isn’t how Yogi started out.

Warren Foster came to Hanna-Barbera in 1959 to take over writing The Huckleberry Hound Show in its second season. Because all the players are dead, we don’t how it specifically happened, but there seems to have been a conscious decision to calcify the Foster stories into the bear-vs-ranger template.

Yet it was different in the first season. By various accounts, Joe Barbera himself came up with the storylines, fleshed out by writer Charlie Shows, with Barbera’s old Van Beuren studio buddy Dan Gordon sketching out the story (though Shows could draw). Their versions of Yogi were a little different. Frankly, I find them appealing. TV audiences must have too, as the following year, Yogi found his way into the closing animation on the Huck show, and a costumed Yogi joined a costumed Huck on personal appearances. And there were Yogi clubs in addition to Huck clubs.

What kinds of Yogi did they come up with?

1. The Helpful Bear. In a number of cartoons, Yogi altruistically aided less fortunate creatures. He saved a little fox from a hunter and clever dog Yowp in Foxy Hound-Dog and a duckling from the same pair in Duck in Luck.



He reluctantly gave a home to the same duck in Slumber Party Smarty and tried to teach a little eaglet to fly in High Fly Guy. .



Yogi assisted larger animals in distress, like the escaped circus elephant in Hide and Go Peek.



He rescued children as well, such as Li’l Tom-Tom in The Brave Little Brave and a toddling boy in Daffy Daddy.



Boo Boo is absent in all of these, which makes for a cleaner plot.

2. The Hungry Bear. This is one aspect Foster carried over. The very first Yogi cartoon put into production deals with the subject as he tries to get past a guarding dog in Pie-Pirates and a bull to taste some honey in Big Bad Bully. Closer to his behaviour with Ranger Smith, he feigns illness to get food from the home of a Professor Gizmo (of Ruff and Reddy) lookalike in Tally Ho Ho Ho.



3. The Spot Gag Bear. In a couple of cute cartoons, Yogi loses against an adversary in spot gag cartoons. One involves a wily fish in The Stout Trout and the other is against semi-humanised cars in Baffled Bear. Both have humorous narration by Don Messick, but no Boo Boo. I really wish more of these kinds of cartoons had been made.



4. The Disobedient Bear. Foster’s Yogi found convenient ways to get around Ranger Smith’s rules. Various generic rangers appeared in the first season as Yogi did what he felt like and suffered the consequences. He stole a motorised scooter in Scooter Looter and a helicopter in The Buzzin’ Bear. In both, generic rangers try to stop Yogi before he causes much more damage. He tries to get past a ranger and escape from Jellystone in Yogi Bear’s Big Break, where he learned things weren’t great on the outside.



At least one cartoon goes in the direction Foster would head. In Robin Hood Yogi, our hero endeavours to steal “goodies,” including a picnic basket. This cartoon has two rangers, one of whom Yogi cons into pretending to be Friar Tuck.



There were other Yogi cartoons in that first season, but this gives you an idea of the variety of plots. I think this made him a stronger character, but the studio disagreed, and Yogi went on to become one of the A-listers at Hanna-Barbera, even eclipsing poor old, Tex Avery-inspired, Huckleberry Hound.

Farewell to Elliot Field

The last of Hanna-Barbera’s voice actors from the 1950s has passed away.

Elliot Field was 97. He died last Monday, the 23rd.

Elliot was the afternoon drive jock at KFWB in Los Angeles when Joe Barbera hired him to play the voice of Blabber Mouse opposite Daws Butler in the Snooper and Blabber segments of The Quick Draw McGraw Show. This was back in a wonderful era in radio when disc jockeys invented characters and did their voices on the air. What became the Blabber voice was apparently one of them.

The Snooper cartoons where you can hear him are Puss N’ Booty, Switch Witch (he also plays the witch, another radio voice), Desperate Diamond Dimwits and Real Gone Ghosts (he is also one of the ghosts). He was also the narrator in the Quick Draw cartoon Scary Prairie, the first cartoon put into production on the series.

Elliot explained to me that soon after being hired, he had to be hospitalised for an illness. At that point, Daws took over both Blab’s role. That wasn’t the end of his time with Hanna-Barbera. Flintstones fans will know him as Alvin Brickrock, the Alfred Hitchcock-esque neighbour. He was also a newscaster on the Superstone episode and provided several voices in Flintstone and the Lion.

Elliot was involved in a strike at KFWB in 1961 and, soon after, took a management job at a radio station in Detroit. He came back west in the late ‘60s and settled in Palm Springs. He served on the city council and was acting mayor at one point.

You can read his obituary here.

Being a disc jockey in the 1970s (and briefly again in 1988), I enjoyed Elliot’s stories of life on radio. There was plenty of creativity on the air and in promotions back in those days before consultants, computerised playlists and liner cards.

Below is an interview with him about his career. Unfortunately, he starts talking about his Hanna-Barbera career at the end when it's cut off. There doesn't seem to be a Part 2.

My thanks to Jeff Falewicz, who maintains some web sites and is one of those veterans who truly loves radio, for passing along the sad news. My sympathies go to Elliot’s family.

Quick Draw McGraw at 65

My favourite Hanna-Barbera series first appeared on television screens 65 years ago today.

The Quick Draw McGraw Show was Hanna-Barbera’s attempt to gently lampoon the types of shows popular on television at the time—detective series, the family sitcom, and the ubiquitous Western.

The name “Quick Draw McGraw” pre-dates the series. It was the name of a character (who doesn’t appear) in the Ruff and Reddy episode “Slight Fright on a Moonlight Night,” which aired March 15, 1958. As the dialogue on the series was written by Charlie Shows, it may be safe to assume that he came up with the name.



Mike Maltese arrived at Hanna-Barbera from Warner Bros. in November 1958. The Quick Draw series was already in development—model sheets were made by Dick Bickenbach, dated Nov. 25—and Maltese ended up writing all 78 episodes of the first season of the series. In one interview he said he was doing two and later three stories a week for the studio.

Kellogg’s agreed to sponsor the show, and it was originally sold on a barter basis to stations across the U.S., the same as The Huckleberry Hound Show (stations got the show for nothing, but had to run the half-hour intact, including the commercials for Kellogg’s). KTTV in Los Angeles, WNAC-TV in Boston, KSD-TV in St. Louis and WTTG Washington, D.C. were among the stations which put Quick Draw on the air on September 28, 1959. Sponsor magazine that month said 150 stations had signed to air Quick Draw (compared to 175 for Huck).

Both Huck and Quick Draw were nominated for Emmys that season, with Huck winning.

The show’s theme song, “That’s Quick Draw McGraw,” was copyrighted on August 24, 1959, with the lyrics credited to Joe Barbera and the music to Hoyt Curtin and Bill Hanna.

There were two slight differences between the two shows. In the press, Joe Barbera said he was looking for new voice actors for the studio; Huck had pretty much exclusively employed Daws Butler and Don Messick in the 1958-59 season. He found some. Hal Smith, Jean Vander Pyl and Julie Bennett show up on a regular basis on Quick Draw’s first season. Barbera cast two new regular voices as well. KFWB disc jockey Elliot Field was hired to play Blabber Mouse opposite Daws Butler’s Snooper, and Daws recommended truck driver and ex-radio actor Doug Young to be Doggie Daddy.

Elliot explained to me his Blabber career (he did incidental voices as well) ended not long after he was hired as he got sick. A decision was made to have Butler do both voices, though Field came back for a Flintstones episode before moving to Detroit. Young imitated Jimmy Durante. Daws had done the same imitation for Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera at MGM but felt his voice wasn’t up to it and suggested Young, who gave winning performances. Mark Evanier mentioned that Peter Leeds, who was in Stan Freberg’s voice stock company, had auditioned as well, and you can hear him narrating the Quick Draw cartoon “Scat, Scout, Scat.” And Vance Colvig, Jr. shows up in the Quick Draw cartoon Bad Guys Disguise more than a year before he returned to the studio to play Chopper.

The Augie Doggie/Doggie Daddy relationship was based more on Garry Moore and Jimmy Durante's interactions from their variety show on radio for Camel cigarettes than any TV sitcom (which tended to include long-suffering wives and bubbly-but-angst-ridden teenage daughters). “Dat’s my boy who said dat!” Durante would bark to the audience about Moore. Baba Looey sounded like Desi Arnaz’s Ricky Ricardo on I Love Lucy, except Baba substituted ‘thinnin’ for ‘splainin’ (Arnaz actually talked that way. Before Lucy, he was known for singing "Babalú," hence the character's name). Snooper was a take-off on Ed Gardner’s Archie from Duffy’s Tavern, though Daws insisted there was some of actor Tom D’Andrea in the voice. Quick Draw was just another Western dullard, like Red Skelton’s Clem Cadiddlehopper. [Note: Joe Bevilacqua has written saying Daws created Quick Draw's voice by adding a western twang to Charlie Butterworth. As Joe was a long-time friend of Daws, I don't doubt that's correct.]

The other difference is one you may not have noticed. Hanna-Barbera had been utilizing the brand-new Capitol Hi-Q production library for both Ruff ‘n’ Reddy and The Huckleberry Hound Show. Hi-Q was also heard on Quick Draw, but there appears to have been a deliberate attempt to use different music than what was heard on the other two series. Many of the cues were composed by Englishman Phil Green, and were originally pressed on 78s in the EMI Photoplay library. Like the other two shows, the Langlois Filmusic library, which credited Jack Shaindlin as the composer, was also used.



While Quick Draw was on drawing boards in November 1958, and production of the Quick Draw and Snooper and Blabber cartoons was underway in December, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy needed a bit of time in development. Variety reported on January 8, 1959 that Screen Gems had approved production of the father-and-son series Pete and Repete. By January 28th, the characters were now, according to Variety, Arf and Arf. The March 23rd edition of Television Age mentions the segment was named for Augie Doggie; Augie was named for an in-law of Mike Maltese. Production numbers suggest the Augie cartoons were started well after the other two segments of the Quick Draw show.

Maltese came up with memorable side characters for the show as well. A pink mountain lion named Snagglepuss shows up to heckle in all three segments; in the Quick Draw cartoons, he’s animated by George Nicholas. Quick Draw was assisted in his sheriff-ing by Snuffles, who loved dog biscuits so much he’d float into the air in ecstasy after eating one, and do the bidding of whoever had them, hero or villain. And Maltese told columnist John Crosby he was inspired by the silent Doug Fairbanks’ movie The Mark of Zorro (1920) to invent Quick Draw’s alter ego of El Kabong.

Two cartoons Maltese wrote for Augie and dear old dad featured one of Bill and Joe’s favourite characters—the duck that would become Yakky Doodle, voiced by Red Coffey.

Why do I like Quick Draw? The characters make comments to the viewer, there are lots of wisecracks and puns, Quick Draw is incompetent but enthusiastic about righting wrongs, which makes him likeable.

Now if only the series was available on home video.

{Late note: Jeff Falewicz has written to say that Elliot Field passed away last Monday at the age of 97. He was the last of the studio's pre-Flintstones voice actors].

Jonny Quest is 60

Kids like to laugh. Kids like a bit of adventure, too. That’s why Jonny Quest turned out to be such a success.

You’d think that a TV show that lasted one season was a failure. Maybe in live action it is. But Hanna-Barbera took three cancelled cartoon series—Top Cat, The Jetsons and Jonny Quest—and made them into hits. They were put into front of kids' eyes over and over in reruns and all were eventually re-booted (an all-new Quest series appeared in 1986).

Jonny Quest was filled with humans (and a comic-relief dog) involved in adventure and suspense. Kids ate up this kind of stuff in comic books and the Sunday colour comic pages. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera knew what their staff could do. Their studio had artists who had worked on Sleeping Beauty at Disney so they were familiar with animating humans in some form.

Today marks 60 years since The Adventures of Jonny Quest debuted on ABC-TV. Yes, I was among the viewers even though I had no interest in high adventure shows. But this was a cartoon, so I watched.

Was it Walt Disney who said the key to success in animation is story, story and story? Quest—for my eight-year-old eyes and ears, anyway—had great stories. You wanted to see what happened next. And Jonny had maturity. Television was filled with kids who were "precocious" jerks or goody-goodies. Jonny was capable of thinking and standing on his own in tight situations.

Oh, did I mention the eyeball walking on spider legs?

Way back in the early days of the blog, we reprinted this fine feature story from the Levittown Times a few weeks before the series debuted. Here is a little shorter one from the Anaheim Bulletin, Sept. 12, 1964. As it is unbylined and appeared in various newspapers, I presume it is an ABC press release.

‘Jonny Quest’ To Fill High Adventure Void
Joe Barbera, the ebullient half of the creative animation team of Hanna-Barbera, believes their new half-hour series ABC-TV’s “Jonny Quest” will fill a recent void in entertainment.
“We haven’t had anything where kids can identify with high adventure,” he pointed out. “Jonny Quest is escapism, the stuff of which dreams are made. It’s Tom Swift, the Rover Boys and Jack Armstrong all rolled into one.”
The series is the most unusual and ambitious undertaking at the ink factory that has produced the likes of “The Flintstones,” “Yogi Bear” and “Huckleberry Hound.” It employs 350 artists and costs a third again as much as the firm’s other shows.
The principal difference is in technique. Barbera refers to “Quest” as staged illustration rather than a cartoon style.
“It’s a brand new style for TV,” he added. “Every master shot is a work of art.”
Barbera said the program takes its principals, 11-year-old Jonny, son of an American scientist and international trouble-shooter and his young Hindu companion, Hadji, on an imaginative adventures in a different world-wide locale every week. “There is lots of action,” he said, “and we use the Douglas Fairbanks approach, where in the villains are disposed of in a flamboyant virtually comedy style.
Extensive research safeguards accurate representation of the ethnic and topographic qualities of the areas depicted, Barbara said. This gives a soft-sell educational aspect to the series.
“That is a happy by-product,” he went on. “Our primary target is entertainment.”
Watching and listening to Barbera effuse about the program is an experience in itself.
A swarthy, handsome ex-New Yorker who began his career as an accountant with a bent for drawing, he moves swiftly about his large, tastefully appointed office grabbing for multi-pictured storyboards, character studies or research material to punctuate each point.
Barbera plays all the parts. And he can recite the plots of every one of the 26 episodes without stumbling once.
His partner, quiet, analytical Bill Hanna, a one-time structural engineer from New Mexico, lets the fiery Barbera make the spiels. Both are casual dressers. They don’t believe in reams of inter-office memos. Thus, the atmosphere about their new three-story, $1 ¼-million studio bespeaks quiet efficiency under the burden of a staggering workload.
With the addition of “Jonny Quest,” Hanna-Barbera have 13 TV properties being viewed by 300-million people in 42 countries, plus a feature length film, their first, entitled “Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear.”

Hanna-Barbera’s eventual layout chief, Iwao Takamoto, explained the genesis of Jonny Quest in his autobiography. Doug Wildey had been hired to find a way to animate the old kids’ radio serial Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. Then Joe Barbera changed his mind. Why not go for something with a little more action, like Milt Caniff’s Sunday newspaper comic Terry and the Pirates?

To quote from Iwao:

“Jonny Quest” was an example of how sophisticated planned animation had become, particularly in the hands of an incredibly clever layout man like Bill Perez. Bill and another artist named Tony Sgroi were exceptional at figuring out how to reuse drawings without making it look like they were being repeated, by “fielding” them, or presenting them in camera range, in different ways. Between the two of them, they used every bit of the trickery that went into planned animation in the first place and came up with a few new tricks of their own. This way they were able to keep their episodes within the budget, which was already high for an animated television show. Some of the other artists, particularly the ones from the comic-book field, who were not accustomed to the techniques of planned animation, tended to run rampant with the budgets, and the costs of these episodes skyrocketed.
Many people have asked why such a great show lasted only one season, and the reason is very simple: it just cost too damned much to continue to do it at the same level of quality. Money proved to be the thing that accomplished what “Dr. Zin” and all of the show’s other villains could not do, which was stop Jonny Quest. When Bill Hanna estimated the price tag for a second season, the network simply said no thanks. Perhaps that is just as well, because that one season of “Jonny Quest,” I feel is a highlight of the studio’s history.

There was another factor Iwao omits. The Flintstones was being crushed under a boulder of higher ratings by The Munsters over at CBS. ABC reacted by moving the Modern Stone Age Family into the Quest time slot to get the numbers needed to ensure renewal for another season (and enable Hanna-Barbera to sell more Flintstones merchandise). Quest moved opposite The Munsters. Cancellation followed. After a bit of a break, Jonny Quest’s old episodes surfaced on Saturday morning re-runs in the 1967-68 season, finding an eager audience.

Bill Hanna once said the prime time run of Quest pushed the studio in a direction which put Space Ghost, The Herculoids and The Fantastic 4 on Saturday mornings. The series certainly should be considered, the Fleischer Superman shorts notwithstanding, the father of action-adventure cartoon shows in North America.

We can't let a post on Jonny Quest go by without referring to the theme song, and composer Hoyt Curtin's desire to make it so complicated for trombonists, there was no way they could play it. The mood library he (and others) created for the series is a true masterpiece. Here are two versions of the opening theme.





Curtin composed another "theme" for Jonny Quest, one that sounds right out of the James Bond movie Dr. No. It can be heard on the H-B Records album Jonny Quest in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. You can hear it by clicking below.


I had thought Greg Ehrbar, who knows more about H-B Records than anyone alive, profiled this album, but I can not find it [Late note: See Greg's comment]. But Greg has done Hanna-Barbera fans a great service and tracked down Jonny himself. He interviewed Tim Matheson about playing the boy adventurer and you can listen it here.

He Was Hadji

Whenever Hanna-Barbera had kid characters in the 1950s, adults who had come from radio did the voices.

Things changed when Jonny Quest came along in 1964.

Someone made the decision to go with boy actors to play boy roles instead of hiring Dick Beals or Nancy Wible or other adults who approximated child voices.

There was a real danger in this (no, we don’t mean Toby Danger). Boys age. And when a boy has aged enough and his voice changes, he’s aged himself out of a role. This didn’t happen on Quest simply because it lasted only one season.

Tim Matthieson was hired for the main role and for the role of his friend and companion, Hadji, the studio cast actor Danny Bravo.

Bravo played Michael Littlebear, a young orphaned native boy, in 20th Century Fox’s For the Love of Mike, released in 1960. The screen credit read “Introducing Danny Bravo as Michael” as if he were a brand-new actor. But that wasn’t the case at all. Some pieces in print about the time the film appeared in theatres or in production as The Golden Touch gave his real name—Danny Zaldivar.

TV viewers might have seen him as a Mexican boy in a 1959 episode of G.E. Theatre called “Beyond the Mountains” (the syndicated TV Key service said his performance made the show worthwhile) or on Alcoa Theatre the following year in “The Storm.” He even did comedy in a parody called “They Went Thataway” on New Comedy Showcase on CBS in the summer of 1960.

The Windsor Star’s entertainment editor had this to say about him in The Love of Mike:

If Danny Bravo ever decides to try to realize his original ambition to become a matador, there’s a great chance the world many yet see another Manuelito in future years—this time from Los Angeles, California. Despite the fact that he has graced this sphere for only 12 years, Danny has all the determination and drive necessary to bring him to the top of any profession he chooses.

Doug Wildey, the creator of the series, talked to Comics Scene magazine about the series. He didn’t explain how Bravo came to be cast, but did reveal to writer Will Murray how and why he invented Hadji:

It was while creating the early cast that Wildey ran into his first creative disagreement on Jonny Quest. Someone at Hanna-Barbera suggested adding a bulldog to the cast for toy licensing purposes. Thus was born the irrepressible Bandit.
“I fought against Bandit quite a while,” Wildey recalls. “He was a cartoon dog. It was a little bit too unrealistic for the characters. As soon as they put in Bandit, I immediately created Hadji. I felt very strongly that we needed someone besides a dog. It’s simply not natural for a kid to talk to grown-ups on the same level.”
The final addition to the cast, Hadji was a Hindu boy with undefined mystical power. Although he first appeared in the second episode, the story of how he saved Dr. Quest’s life and joined the team wasn’t told until episode #7, "Calcutta Adventure.” He was mysteriously absent from other segments. Actually, these were pre-Hadji episodes shown out of production sequence.
Hadji was loosely based on '40s film actor Sabu. "Later on," Wildey recalls, “when we were auditioning for voices on the series, Sabu's son, Paul Sabu, showed up to audition.”

What did Bravo have to say about Jonny Quest? Nothing I’ve been able to find. During the show’s original run, Joe Barbera did all the talking to newspapers; you can find some of those columns reproduced on this blog. No one seemed interested in talking with the actors, less so as the show’s ratings dropped and the series was sacrificed to keep the merchandise-heavy The Flintstones on the air by switching their time slots. I’ve found one unbylined blurb in the Buffalo Evening News, March 28, 1964. I presume this was a PR handout from Screen Gems.

Danny Bravo, the “voice” of Hadji, the Hindu boy who uses his knowledge of the mysteries of the east to great advantage in Screen Gems’ new animated adventure series, Jonny Quest (Ch. 7, Fridays, 7:30 PM), began his career as an actor at the ripe old age of nine. He is in demand in many TV series because of his Latin heritage and his knowledge of foreign accents.

Danny appeared in a few more supporting roles in various TV shows in the 1960s. An unusual “credit” shows up in the Torrence, California paper, The Daily Breeze, of April 30, 1965 in a story about an awards ceremony at a high school in Lawndale. One of the presenters was “Danny Bravo, star of the television series ‘Mamie McPheeters’.”

Star of what?? Did the show actually exist? Maybe it had a dog named Bandit. (Late note: See Top Cat James' clarification about the series in the comments section).

Bravo returned to Hanna-Barbera in The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1968-69 TV season) and vanished from view.

I can’t confirm unsourced information on the internet, so I don’t know where Bravo went after that or what he’s doing today. What I can confirm is we’ll have a post on Jonny Quest’s 60th “birthday.”

Remember, there’s a link to Jonny Quest posts in the right-side column.

Not a Groupie For Loopy

Hanna-Barbera debuted two cartoon series in 1959. One is my favourite—the Quick Draw McGraw Show.

The other is Loopy de Loop.

I’m afraid I’m not a fan of Loopy. He’s a French-Canadian wolf who’s not one of those Disney-type bad wolves. He’s a good wolf. And . . . well, that’s it. Hanna-Barbera managed to stretch this one-dimensional idea into 48 cartoons from 1959 to 1965. He starred in a theatrical cartoon series with a TV animation budget.

The reason I’ve broken my Loopy silence, all the more remarkable because this blog is more or less inactive, is I somehow stumbled onto the first Loopy cartoon. It opened so full of promise. I really like the background at the start.


The artwork is from Fernando Montealegre. I like this because he’s incorporated flatness with some perspective. This, by the way, would have been the first cartoon from Hanna-Barbera Productions seen in colour, as the TV series were aired (in 1959) in black-and-white.

Poor Mike Maltese. In 1959, he wrote 78 cartoons for television (the entire Quick Draw series, one Huckleberry Hound and one Yogi Bear), and then had to write this one, Wolf Hounded. He cobbled together a story with some familiar situations. The sexually-aroused grandma in Red Hot Riding Hood. The jerkish pigs from The Turn Tale Wolf (thanks to Jonathan Wilson for the correction). The “helpless” girl who can beat up someone in self-defence from The Dover Boys. Oh, and Loopy’s aspiration to be a lady-charmer comes from any number of Pepé LePew cartoons (also written by le guesse who?). I’m not saying these are the sources, but they have plot similarities with this cartoon.

Another Monty background.



Something the cartoon has in its favour is the casting of June Foray. It seems odd that Joe Barbera didn’t get Jean Vander Pyl, whom he started employing in 1959. I can’t help but wonder if she voiced Betty in the Flagstones reel about the time she did this. June Foray is a national treasure.

Columbia Pictures had been distributing cartoons made by UPA. Someone at Columbia must have realised this was a silly idea. After all, Columbia had a piece of Hanna-Barbera. Why not have them make theatrical cartoons instead? That’s what happened, although Columbia evidently had a deal permitting them to re-issue UPA shorts it had already put in theatres.

Here’s a full-page ad taken out in several trades.



The most hilarious thing in the ad isn’t the sell-job on Loopy, but the utterly inept drawings in the box for the old Screen Gems Columbia Favorites with the duck and hunter from Wacky Quacky, and the Indian and moose from Topsy Turkey. (Maybe even funnier is advertising “Another Travelark.” Yeah, theatre owners, we haven’t figured out what it is, but get the film anyway).

Maybe you’re one of those people who likes Loopy de Loop. Someone at Motion Picture Magazine guffawed over him. Here’s a review from the December 16, 1959 issue.

WOLF HOUNDED. Columbia Loopy de Loop Cartoon. 7m. This introduces a new cartoon character, a French wolf, who gets his fairy tales all mixed up and meets his match in Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother, who much to his distraction, falls for him and causes him to flee. EXCELLENT.

This is the same publication which gave an “excellent” rating to the insufferable UPA short Picnics Are Fun (reviewed somewhere on the Tralfaz blog). Meanwhile, it only gave a “good” to Drag-Along Droopy, my favourite of all the Droopy cartoons, and dismissed Friz Freleng’s High Diving Hare and the Maltese-written Real Gone Woody as “fair.” But it also gave an “excellent” to Avery’s Billy Boy and Three Little Pups as well as Gene Deitch’s stylish The Juggler of Our Lady. These strike me as accurate ratings but, of course, taste in cartoons is subjective.

One other thing the Loopy cartoons did was eliminate the Capital Hi-Q and Langlois Filmusic background music at Hanna-Barbera. Hoyt Curtin was brought in to write a library of cues for Loopy. I love the stock music, but in-house compositions became the policy at H-B and resulted in excellent scores for The Jetsons, Jonny Quest and other series.

And now, you’re in for a treat (?)

Here’s a version of the Loopy theme song with lyrics. No doubt the intended kiddie audience would have said “Loopy who?” so to increase saleability, the 78 is “Yogi Bear Introduces Loopy De Loop.” Everyone knew who Yogi was.

Kids would have been unhappy to find Yogi was an imposter. As this is a Golden Record, Daws Butler is nowhere to be heard. I originally thought it was Gil Mack, a fine New York radio actor, but it seems to me it’s Frank Milano, who provided some voices in Total TeleVision cartoons and who recorded an LP as Yogi, his final album before his death, actually. I will allow you to determine how he performs as “Yogi The Bear.”

Daws Butler: Living the Characters

Daws Butler once told interviewer Larry King that he did not do “voices.” He did “characters.”

If anyone was the glue that held the Hanna-Barbera cartoons together in the early years, it was Daws Butler. He voiced almost all the starring characters before The Flintstones came along in 1960. Even then he auditioned for Fred Flintstone and, the following year, was briefly picked as the voice of Top Cat.

Whatever he picked up about acting with one’s voice, starting on the stage in Chicago in the mid-‘30s, he passed on to anyone who asked for his help. His cartoon career began after the war; he gave credit to MGM director Tex Avery for picking him (though it is understood he narrated a cartoon for Columbia/Screen Gems before that).

Through the 1950s, when he wasn’t performing in theatrical cartoons, he and Stan Freberg were almost a pair, working on the puppet show A Time For Beany, a bunch of records for Capitol and two radio shows. He deserved a writing credit on Freberg’s 1957 variety show but never got one. Then there were numerous animated commercials on TV that Daws also wrote and lent some voices that would be familiar to Hanna-Barbera and Jay Ward fans not too much later.

Daws talked about the Hanna-Barbera characters in a number of interviews over the years. Here’s one from the Evansville Press of Oct. 30, 1966. By then, others had taken over the lead roles as H-B moved into Saturday morning programming.

Virtually Living the Part Is Key to Success Says ‘Voice’ of 10 Weekly TV Cartoon Shows
By BILL LYON
Tri-State Editor
MADISONVILLE, Ky.—You’ve heard Yogi Bear boast of being “better than the average bear.” [sic]
And Mr. Jinks vowing “I hate meeces to pieces.”
And Snagglepuss with his “Exit, stage right.”
Now meet the man behind those voices and expressions, as well as those of a dozen other TV cartoon characters. His name is Daws Butler. He’s a short, barrel-chested man with shaggy eyebrows and a face as elastically expressive as his amazing voice.
Chances are you’ve never heard of Mr. Butler before.
But you, and especially your children, hear him five hours a week on television. He does the voices for 10 different half-hour cartoon shows—Quick-Draw McGraw, Dixie, Hokey Wolf, Blabber-Mouse, Super Snooper, Baba-Looey, Snuffles, Huckleberry Hound, Augie Doggie, Fibber Fox and a few others in addition to the three mentioned previously.
Butler also handles the voices for Cap’n Crunch and Mr. Wiggle in the cereal and Jello commercials.
He was in Madisonville the last week with his wife visiting his sister-in-law and her husband, Dr. and Mrs. Selby Coffman.
Butler estimates that since broke in the cartoon field in 1951 with Walter Lantz strips he has provided the voices for over 600 cartoons.
The secret to all those different voice characterizations?
“Virtually living the character," Butler said. ”If I had to act them out physically, I could. When I do Yogi Bear I almost walk like he does. Mr. Jinks the cat talks very slowly. So when I do him my whole body relaxes and goes limp.”
Yogi Bear is probably the most famous of Butler’s voices—he’s been translated into 19 languages in 32 countries, and for a time was the only American show seen on TV in Cuba. But Butler’s personal favorite seems to be Mr. Jinks, the cat who spends his time in a frustrating chase after those two mice, Pixie and Dixie.
“He’s the most elastic character. I talk around his lines and have made him exceptionally verbose . . . while occasionally butchering the English language," Butler said.
Contrary to popular belief, voices of cartoon characters are not dubbed in after the animated strips have been made.
“Most people think that the way it’s done, but it would be too confining. Most of the personality a cartoon character has comes from his voice and his attitude of expression,” Butler pointed out.
“So we read the script and the sound track is made first. The writers and animators watch us read, and pick up some additional ideas for illustrations and lines from our facial expressions. That’s why early radio was such great training because you were acting out the lines to put more feeling in them," Butler continued.
Butler’s next project will be the voices of the scarecrow, tin woodman and the wizzard [sic] in an MGM adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz." It will be released in January. Mel Blanc will do the voice of the cowardly lion.
"The big advantage to doing voices is that, unlike an actor, you don't get stereotyped. I can play a prince in shows like Aesop and Son or Fractured Fables then to Yogi Bear or Quick-Draw McGraw," Butler pointed out.
Daws and his wife live in Beverly Hills. They have four sons—David, Don, Paul and Charles.
“They’ve grown up now, but they’ll be having kids who can watch cartoons on TV, and maybe listen to their grandfather," Butler smiled.

Now, for your listening pleasure, here’s Daws in one of his early West Coast projects. Belda Records were 78s that came with a comic book to read along with the dialogue on the record. The comics were drawn by Tubby Millar, a writer of Warner Bros. cartoons in the ‘30s You can see one page of the artwork to the right. And we have the sound from “Chirpy Cricket,” copyrighted on April 20, 1947. The story is by Frank Bonham.


Here’s an interesting bit from Chuck Cecil’s The Swingin’ Years, a big band show that aired, among a number of places, on Armed Forces Radio. Listen to the minute-long drop-in at 17:05. You’ll recognise the voice. I don’t know the context behind the routine.



And from the late Earl Kress comes this 1986 walk around Daws' studio behind his home.

Huck Shines in the Sunshine State

Not too long after The Huckleberry Hound Show debuted on the week of September 29, 1958, newspaper columnists began praising the series.

An early thumbs-up for Huck and his gang came from the entertainment section of the Tampa Times, where cartoons aired on WFLA-TV on Thursdays in the early evening. The entertainment page on October 18, 1958 included this anonymous review of all the Kellogg’s sponsored shows that aired over the course of the week, but focused on Huck.

Huckleberry Hound Delightful Cartoon
Designed to delight the youngsters, the 6 to 6:30 P.M. spot, Mondays through Fridays on channel 8, will undoubtedly find lots of grownups looking in. The varied program brings everything from a beguiling little cartoon of a hound . . . to the great gift of the imagination Superman.
Most of the shows are time-tested favorites of the young-in-heart TV watcher, but the cartoon doggie, Huckleberry Hound, is new and the most enchanting cartoon character to come along since Mickey Mouse.
Huckleberry Hound, complete with a 10-gallon hat and a side arm worn about his fat little middle, is the delightful creation of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, who produced and directed the Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Satire in the sketches may go over the heads of the tots in front of the TV . . . but the grownups will love it. And the youngsters will find enough enjoyment in the characters which include Yogi Bear, his patient little friend, Boo Boo Bear; a cantankerous cat, Mr. Jinx and two mice, Dixie and Pixie.
Huck and his friends are appearing every Thursday in the 6 to 6:30 series.
Monday's segment of the show takes viewers to Sherwood Forest, where Robin Hood defends the honor of ladies' fair and strives to keep England free.
On Tuesdays Woody Woodpecker is the star performer. Superman and Wild Bill Hickok share in Wednesday slot, and come Fridays . . . It's Roy Rogers.

Even before this, on the other side of Florida, the Miami News cheered “Wonderful cartoons” next to its highlight listing of the Huck show in its Oct. 9, 1958 edition. The series aired in that city on Thursdays, originally at 7 p.m., on WCKT-TV.

By the end of his show’s first season, Huckleberry Hound was a full-blown fad. This assessment was published in the News on August 13, 1959.

OFFICIAL HONORS
Adults Like Huck Hound
By KRISTINE DUNN
TV Editor of the Miami News
The college kids of the nation are officially adopting Huckleberry Hound.
Huckleberry Hound, on Channel 7 at 8 tonight, is that Southern-drawling pooch originally designed to amuse the kids.
He's the pen-and-ink child of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, the creaters [sic] of Tom and Jerry. Tom the cat and Jerry the mouse have entertained movie-goers during intermissions for the past 20 years. They also brought MGM seven Academy Awards.
But Huck's philosophy—and his friend, Yogi Bear—caught the fancy and affection of adults.
Right here at The Miami News, in fact, a few of our reporters and editors tote about a lofty disdain for television in general. But four words—"It’s Huckleberry Hound time"—will send them sprinting for the tube.
The college kids are proclaiming their esteem.
The University of Washington held a "Huck Hound Day" on campus and 11,000 students joined his fan club. Southern Methodist and Texas Christian Universities have dedicated days to Huck this October.
At UCLA, Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity initiated him and hung his portrait over the fireplace.
Homecoming Theme
In the Big Ten, Huckleberry Hound is the theme of Ohio State's homecoming celebration.
All the admiration isn't Ivy-League, either.
Bars have been named for him; poker games adjourned for him; airplanes decorated with his picture and speed limits broken for him.
Why?
"Huck is put upon, embarrassed, taken advantage of and thrust into horrendous situations," said one professor. "But he never seems to mind.”
Perhaps his ability not to mind is the key to his infectious popularity.
Hanna and Barbera also turn out the Ruff and Reddy cartoons seen Saturdays at 10:30 a.m. on Channel 7.
The duo used to produce 50 minutes of Tom and Jerry cartoons per year for MGM. Last television season, they did more than 900 minutes of cartoons.
Their 200 employes use more than a full tank-car of ink a year. It takes 90 separate drawings for one laugh movement, and 10,000 individual drawings for a half-hour cartoon sequence.

There was a Florida connection with the Huck show in late 1960. In a third season Yogi Bear segment (just before he got his own show) entitled “Gleesome Threesome,” where Ranger Smith’s vacation in Miami Beach takes a wrong turn when Yogi and Boo Boo check in to his hotel.

TV stations in Tampa and Miami weren’t the only ones in Florida to air the Huck show in 1958. Both WDBO-TV, Channel 6 in Orlando, broadcast the cartoons at 5:30 on Thursdays. WCTV, serving Tallahassee and environs on Channel 6, put on Huck at 5:30 on Wednesdays.

Toward the end of the first season, when the Huck show was in reruns, a Florida department store chain was a little disingenuous in a Miami News ad exhorting fans to “meet huckleberry hound and his friends.” You might think this was an early example of H-B PR maven Ed Justin getting someone to dress up in a Huck costume for a meet and greet. It was too early for that, though. Instead, what fans met were plush dolls, likely the ones made by the Knickerbocker company which coloured Huck red instead of blue (or black-and-white as seen on TV).

As fads are apt to do, Huck’s came to a slow end. Yes, he “ran” for President of the U.S. in 1960, the same year his show became the first cartoon series AND first syndicated series to be awarded an Emmy. But when plans were announced for a Hanna-Barbera cartoon feature, it was to star Yogi Bear. Huck was nowhere to be found. When McNaught decided to syndicate a funny animal comic in the papers, it starred Yogi Bear, not Huck. And when the 1964 U.S. election rolled around, the H-B presidential opponents were Yogi Bear and Magilla Gorilla.

Huck was still on TV, in reruns and in new series where all kinds of characters were lumped together. He still had drawing power to be handed a starring role in the 1988 TV feature—The Good, the Bad, and Huckleberry Hound (with Daws Butler still around to voice the lead character). But Huck didn’t have an “ark lark”—Yogi did. Huck didn’t have Yahooeys competing in a “Laff-a-Lympics”—Yogi did. He didn’t have an “All-Star Christmas Caper”—well, you get the idea. At least he wasn’t saddled with a teenaged version called “Yo, Huck!” (though he was in the supporting cast of the Yogi mall-rat, er, bear, cartoon).

Ruff and Reddy notwithstanding, The Huckleberry Hound Show was Hanna-Barbera’s breakthrough series, giving the studio lots of positive ink. It was in no small measure due to the star of the show.

Dear Old Dad

Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy had several forefathers that were combined into a pleasant cartoon series.

Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera partly borrowed from themselves, as they had a father-son dog team in a number of Spike and Tyke cartoons they produced for MGM in the mid-‘50s. But they were borrowing even then, as the real origin comes from the Jimmy Durante-Garry Moore radio show. Old vaudevillian Durante always referred to young comedian Moore as “Junior” and proudly exclaimed “Dat’s my boy who said dat!” Younger fans may not know both Spike and Doggie Daddy took on Durante’s voice and delivery, the former from Daws Butler and the latter from former radio actor-turned-trucker Doug Young. (Butler said he recommended Young because he was worried about the effect doing the raspy voice would have on him).

Augie had a bit of Sylvester, Jr. in him, lamenting “dear old dad’s” behaviour. The Augie series was written by Mike Maltese, who didn’t write for Sylvester, Jr., but was at Warner Bros. when the cartoons were made. (It's been pointed out Maltese wrote Goldimouse and the Three Cats, released a year and several months after he left Warners. The slurping kitten was developed a decade earlier in the Bob McKimson unit by Warren Foster).

And the other influence is Maltese himself. Joe Barbera noted in 1959 that Maltese named all the characters. After “Arf and Arf” was rejected, Maltese named Augie for an in-law. And in most of the cartoons, Maltese used the basic formula he put into Wile E. Coyote at Warners—Doggie Daddy’s best efforts and intentions end in unexpected failure. Daddy also comments to the audience an awful lot. Baba Looey does it, too, and so do Blabbermouse and Fibber Fox, also Maltese creations. The idea certainly helps keep the audience engaged with what’s on the screen.

The Hanna-Barbera cartoons relied on dialogue a lot more once Maltese arrived in late 1958 (Foster joined him several months later from John Sutherland Productions) but there are occasionally some good takes. My favourite is by Dick Lundy in Million-Dollar Robbery (1959). Here’s one from the great George Nicholas, who gave Fred Flintstone some fine expressions. This is from Peck O' Trouble (1960), when Augie's presence startles tax cal-cu-culatin' dad. Whether Hanna timed it this way, or Nicholas used some judgment on his own, or both, I don’t know, but the first drawing is held for roughly 24 frames. The others are shot on twos or threes.



You’ll have to forgive the Italian TV bug on the frames, but these are the nicest ones I can find for the cartoon. It’s evident the Augie cartoons were restored at one time, compared to the washed-out versions with the Boomerang bug that may still be on-line somewhere.

Nicholas’ work is easy to spot here. At times, the characters have the beady eyes and big floppy tongues you see in his animation at H-B. There’s a bit of animation where Doggie Daddy stops running, but his long ears keep going and then fall to the side of his head, as in full animation.

There’s even a favourite Tex Avery bit in this cartoon, where Augie races outside onto a knoll away from the house to make a noise so he doesn’t disturb his dad inside. It’s the same kind of gag Avery used in The Legend of Rock-a-bye Point for Walter Lantz. That cartoon gave Maltese a story credit but it’s likely Tex came up with the gag, since he used it at MGM.

Hanna and/or Barbera once said the Augie Doggie series was a spoof of ‘50s sitcoms, but I can’t think of any (that lasted, anyway) involving a single father, other than Bachelor Father with John Forsythe. In drama, there was The Rifleman, and later, I guess you could put Flipper in that classification, but the star wasn’t human.

There’s a moment in another cartoon, High and Flighty, where Doggie Daddy gets emotional, thinking he’s lost his son forever. Despite the hammy music in the background, the scene is treated straight and shows the bond between the two.

The Augie series could get a little out there at times. Outer space was still a big thing in the late ‘50s, so dear old dad deals with a Martian baby in his home, and Augie and Daddy take a trip to Mars to hunt a rabbit with Bugs Bunny-like wiles (and Augie, for good measure, puts his hand to his head and says “Oh, for the shame of it!” like a certain Warner Bros.’ junior cat). The characters remained popular, and appeared in various later Hanna-Barbera “gang” series, with John Stephenson taking over Daddy’s voice after Young moved to Oregon in 1966.

Bob Givens laid out at least five Augie cartoons after he arrived from Warner Bros. in late 1958. He said the Augies and other early Hanna-Barbera cartoons “were kind of fun to do.” And they’re generally still fun to watch. And, after all, who’s going to disagree with the guy who designed the first real Bugs Bunny for Tex Avery?