The Huck show got write-ups in England. This one is from the Dec. 14, 1962 issue of the Leicester Illustrated Chronicle
Boo-Boo And All That
HAVE you re-christened your cat Jinks? Do you feel your home is haunted by two "meeces" called Pixie and Dixie?
Does your wife call you "Boo-boo?"
And have your children adopted speech horribly like that of rural America?
If any of these things have happened, I'd diagnose a familiar T.V. ailment, and I'm not sure about treatment. You might try taking up Yoga, or rubbing with bear's grease!
As you hardly need telling, the Huckleberry Hound cartoons have a powerfully hypnotic effect. And you'll just have to hope that your children will grow out of talking Yogi bear talk.
Although I deplore their influence on youngsters, I must sneakingly admit that these cartoons can be very funny indeed. In spite of the bear-cat-hound-and mouse talk, the humour is often adult, and I would have thought, a bit beyond many children.
Violent
Some mothers may be appalled by infelicities like slamming of a door which Huck's face—which he then peels off and replaces! [From Little Red Riding Huck]. But this kind of “sick” is familiar in the “Tom and Jerry” (cat and mouse) cartoons with which the creators of Huck were formerly associated. We see Tom the cat fur-less as the result of explosions, he takes the shape of objects against which he is violently hurled, he goes green after drinking some noxious liquid, and since he is a grey cat is it possible to draw for him beautiful black eyes which develop to the accompaniment of comets, lightning flashes and the twittering of birds!
THE simpler drawing of the Huckleberry Hound cartoons and the fact that we see them in black and white removes some of the horror when the characters suffer assault and battery.
The character voices are high in comic potential, but how to muzzle the little darlings who enjoy demonstrating their gift of mimicry is a bear-size problem.
Perhaps the only way to exorcise the "clinks" that is afflicting your household is to insist that A.T.V. screens these cartoons at half past eleven at night. A letter to your M.P. might do the trick.
Even then, your children might creep, "meece"-like, out of bed for a keyhole view of the programme!
Some Canadians could view Huck from American channels, but on January 7, 1959, he began appearing Wednesday afternoons at 5:30 on the CBC stations in Toronto and Ottawa, as well as Sudbury, Timmins, Wingham, London, Kingston and Peterborough, and at 7 p.m. Thursday on CKLW Windsor.
A Vancouver Sun story of Dec. 1, 1958 revealed the show was being re-voiced for the CBC French network.
There were other countries, too. The Lancaster Sunday News of Jan. 11, 1959 noted the show was being produced for Spanish-speaking countries with dubbed-in dialects. Perhaps along the internet, you've caught Jinksie or Iggy and Ziggy speaking in Italian or some other tongue.
We haven't checked, but one character shouldn't need anyone else's voice than Don Messick's original. After all, what's German for "yowp?"
Meanwhile, Huck continued to be a fad in the U.S.A. during his first season. The Lakeland Ledger’s College column of April 5, 1959 noted:
Thursday, the men of Phi Sigma Kappa and their dates will watch television for an hour at their weekly “Huckleberry Hound Party.”
The frat house was only able to view the show from 6 to 6:30 p.m. on WFLA-TV Tampa. We can only guess what they did in the second half hour.
Rather than being subject to barbaric American cartoons full of violence, genteel British tots could be taken by their nannies to more refined entertainment like watching Punch and Judy clobber each other. Don't worry, kids, the Beatles are just around the corner.
ReplyDeletePunch and Judy? In 1962? They were probably watching Bob Monkhouse on the telly.
ReplyDeleteThey were still around. UPA made a Punch and Judy cartoon not too many years earlier. And they had a definite influence on subsequent puppet shows: the early Muppets were very slapstick.
DeleteI remember reading someone that some Europeans can be overly critical of American media. Also I remember when Tom and Jerry was credited by Fred Quimby because most of them do not care for Hanna Barbera stuff with the execption of Top Cat and early Scooby Doo.
ReplyDeleteIt's possible, but I've reprinted several articles from England (as opposed to continental Europe) where the writer is complimentary toward the Huck series. This is from newspapers of the time, not fan musings almost 70 years after the fact.
Delete“A gift of mimicry is a bear sized problem”? As someone who did impressions of both Pixie & Dixie and other voices just by watching cartoons by that company. The fact that the person who wrote this article is concerned with Yogi’s speech because they think that children would copy it but also is concerned with “violence” even though it’s slapstick bothers me, Like, what’s with them? The children are not here to mimic Yogi, they’re here to watch funny cartoons with Huckleberry Hound & friends. It doesn’t help that the person who did the article back then called the gags of what made the cartoons great “violence” even though it’s what made the cartoons funny and memorable. (I’ll take “A Wise Quack”, even the worst Yakky Doodle which in my opinion is “Duck The Music” over “Goober and The Ghost Chasers”, thank you very much) — Corbin
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