Meet George Jetson, Fake

If you wanted Hanna-Barbera records around 1962, there were two places that made them. There was Colpix, short for Columbia Pictures, the parent company of Screen Gems that distributed the Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

And then there was Golden Records based in New York.

Golden put out records starring the Hanna-Barbera characters, starting with Ruff and Reddy. The company would call together a small combo and hire local actors to play the parts made famous by Daws Butler and Don Messick. As radio actors, Gil Mack and Frank Milano were very good; Mack did a variety of voices and appeared in dramatic roles while Milano could do vocal effects as well as voices. As imitators of Daws Butler and Don Messick, they were painful. When someone has to explain “I’m Mr. Jinks” to his kid listeners, that’s not a good sign.

So it was when Hanna-Barbera enlisted Golden Records to press an LP starring the Jetsons. Not the real Jetsons, of course, but whoever might be passable in New York City.

The album credits Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera with the material, along with Fay Winter, with music by Jim Timmens. One wonders how much Hanna and/or Barbera had to do with this. When you’re the producer, you can always stick your name on something to get royalties.

The LP is basically a musical. The songs evoke the Jetsons characters and are mainly separate and apart from actual dialogue or music on the series (with the possible exception of a bit of “Eep Opp Ork”). There’s only one person out there who is an expert on the Golden discs, and that’s Greg Ehrbar. After discovering the LP on-line and starting on this post, I figured I’d check his fine book, “Hanna Barbera, The Recorded History” because I knew he’d have some information about it.

He does.

Greg identified Herb Duncan as George and Elroy. Duncan’s Elroy isn’t even close. As George, he does a good imitation of Jerry Hausner. Rose Marie Jun is Jane. She is an excellent singer (in the cartoon series, Penny Singleton was Jane, but Jane’s singing voice was B.J. Baker). Whoever is doing Astro is playing it if Mel Blanc were Astro, and the narrator, who is quite good, seems to be have been given the instruction “Play this like Paul Frees would voice it.”

The voice of Judy Jetson isn’t identified in the book, but I recognise the voice. It’s Ann Thomas, who was one of the women who played Hortense opposite Arnold Stang’s Gerard on The Henry Morgan Show on radio after Bette Garde quit in a fit of non-billing.

One can speculate whether the song lyric by Judy and Elroy that they “might as well live in a cave” is a subtle in-joke. And while there has been all kind of chatter about the Jetsons “predicting” things (which the writers grabbed out of science magazines of the day), a 21st century concept of “homework tapes” didn’t pan out.

You can listen to each side below.





“What about some REAL Jetsons?” you ask.

Okay. Here are some short cues by Hoyt Curtin from the Earl Kress collection. I don’t remember if any have been posted before, as there is Jetsons music here and there on the blog. We posted some last Christmas.

V-102


V-103


V-104


V-108


V-11


V-110


V-300


V-301