Saturday, 13 June 2026

Scaredycat Lah

Hanna-Barbera needed some outside help to get the Huckleberry Hound Show on the air. Three animators were on staff, but Hanna brought in Mike Lah (their wives were sisters) on a freelance basis to pick up some scenes and a couple of full cartoons. Lah was employed at Quartet Films at the time; he was the “other” director at MGM when Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera were told the studio was closing, and had worked in various units after his arrival from Disney.

We’ve pointed out a number of early Huck show cartoons where the animation switches for maybe 90 seconds to Lah’s drawings. He’s never credited in those cartoons.

The other day, I was re-watching Scaredycat Dog (Production E-12), and spotted what sure looks like (to me) Lah’s animation; Lew Marshall gets the animation credit on it.

When Jinks tip-toes from behind a house, he has jagged teeth. Lah drew Spike that way in cartoons for Tex Avery at MGM.



Jinks going “boo” looks like Lah, too.



There’s a good deal of pose-to-pose movement by Marshall in this cartoon. In this scene, Lah draws two in-betweens before the dog zooms into the sky. The first lasts three frames, the next is on two frames.



A favourite Lah animation-saver is by holding a character on a cel and moving the mouth in a variety of shapes. You can see it in Pie-Pirates, the first Yogi cartoon; Lah animated it solo.

>

The cartoon ends with the twin-brother, cat-hating dog chasing Mr. Jinks in an endless, four-drawing cycle that takes 24 frames to go past the same point of the background. Here's what it looks like. This is Lew Marshall's work.



Lah’s uncredited animation can be found in other Pixie-Dixie-Jinks cartoons: Pistol Packin' Pirate, Judo Jack, Little Bird Mouse, Cousin Tex, Jinks' Mice Device, The Ace of Space and Jinks Junior.