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].
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?
The Yogi Bear Show wasn’t ready when it went on the air for the first time on this date in 1961.
The problem was simple. Hanna-Barbera didn’t have enough lead time to get the series together.
Kellogg’s and its ad agency, Leo Burnett, had worked out a deal with Hank Saperstein to have a half-hour syndicated slot filled with a new series starring Mr. Magoo, who had been appearing in short cartoons that UPA had been selling to individual stations. But then Saperstein called it off, not liking all the terms of the deal.
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera quickly filled the breach, announcing on October 12, 1960 that Yogi Bear would be getting his own show. It seems that 3 ½ months wasn’t enough time to get the cartoons together; the company was extremely stretched, with The Flintstones, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw and Loopy de Loop in production. So Yakky Doodle did not appear on the first show (at least in some cities). Fans were treated to an Augie Doggie re-run instead.
Among the stations that aired Yogi on January 30, 1961 were KING-TV, Seattle; KMTV, Omaha; KTVU, Oakland; WBTV, Charlotte; WMCT-TV, Memphis; WDSU-TV, New Orleans; WGR-TV, Buffalo; WSB-TV, Atlanta; WNCT, Greenville, N.C.; WCPO-TV, Cincinnati; KTUL-TV, Tulsa; KRON-TV, San Francisco; WPIX, New York; WPRO-TV, Providence; KELO, Sioux Falls; KOCO-TV, Oklahoma City; KTVT, Fort Worth; KMBC-TV, Kansas City and KFSD, San Diego.
Yogi first appeared on The Huckleberry Hound Show in 1958, but surpassed the blue dog in the Hanna-Barbera star system. The same week his show debuted, he appeared in the Sunday comic section of newspapers across the U.S. And the company’s first feature film, eventually named “Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear” for the star, made it to theatre screens in 1964. Huck was nowhere to be seen (the feature did include a snickering dog which I maintain was inspired by the bulldog in Tex Avery’s Bad Luck Blackie at MGM and later was turned into Muttley).
By 1961, Yogi was firmly entrenched as a denizen of Jellystone Park, with a permanent sidekick and an adversary. When he began in 1958, that wasn’t altogether the case; in fact, Ranger Smith was did not appear in the first season of the Huck show. Yogi was put into various plots, including spot gags as he tried to catch a trout (and failed), attempted to get across a freeway, dealt with an annoying duckling that later evolved into Yakky Doodle and matched wits with that fine dog that deserved stardom, Yowp.
Younger cartoon fans who have been raised on lord-knows-what are still exposed to the rhyming bear. Here is an article about the world’s largest Yogi. I take issue with one of the bullet points. I have never heard Yogi was “inspired by Smokey Bear.” His vocal qualities and costume bear (yuck, yuck, yuck) some similarities to Art Carney’s Ed Norton on The Honeymooners, but a similarly dressed character (silent) appears in Hanna and Barbera’s MGM short Down Beat Bear (1956).
And because someone will mention this if I don’t, the characters were re-worked several years ago in a streaming series.
You can read reviews of all the Yogi cartoons made between 1958 and 1962 on the blog, and more about his show in this post and this post.
Of the three cartoon series that made up The Quick Draw McGraw Show, Augie Doggie was the last, even though, in a way, it was first.
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, as you well know, directed the Tom and Jerry series at MGM. Tom’s nemesis, on occasion, was a bulldog named Spike. By the ‘50s, the series was getting stale. Barbera looked around for some new characters, so he paired Spike with a son named Tyke and hired Daws Butler to give the dad a Jimmy Durante voice and Durante’s “Dat’s my boy who said dat” relationship on radio with Garry Moore.
When Mr. H and Mr. B. opened their own studio, they borrowed freely from cartoons made at Metro and when Quick Draw was being developed, brought back the idea of a Durante-sounding father dog and his young son.
There was some tinkering on the part of Hanna, Barbera and writer Mike Maltese. Variety on January 8, 1959 announced the doggie pair were named Pete and Repete. The paper revealed a change on January 28 and said the series would be called “Arf and Arf.”
We’re unable to discover when the studio settled on “Augie Doggie” and “Doggie Daddy” but it was no later than April 1959 as we can see from this model sheet by Dick Bickenbach.
Maltese deserves credit for naming the characters. His niece Margaret told me Augie was the name of her mother’s brother. And writer Tony Benedict mentioned to me that Maltese would say things when the two were talking and the words ended up as Augie Doggie dialogue. Augie also owes a bit to Warner Bros.’ Sylvester Junior, invented by writer Warren Foster for the Bob McKimson unit, especially when Augie would pull off one of those “Oh, for the shame of it all!” routines.
Daws Butler didn’t repeat (or “repete”) his Durante voice for the new series. He recalled in an interview that it took a lot out of his throat and he didn’t want to do it, so Barbera held auditions for the part. Radio actor Doug Young told TV historian Stu Shostak that Daws ran into him in a bookstore one day and corralled him into make an audition tape for Hanna-Barbera. Young remembered he and Peter Leeds auditioned for Doggie Daddy.
All this may have resulted in a delay getting Augie and Dear Old Dad into production. The first cartoon in the series was apparently the 16th made for the Quick Draw show, Foxhound Hounded Fox. The cartoon is different than later ones in the series as it mainly focuses on Augie and a fox, instead of the familiar formula of Doggie Daddy being put upon and making observations to the TV audience about what was happening.
While a number of newspaper articles commented on the Quick Draw show or Quick Draw himself, one columnist focused on Augie and his long-suffering father. Here’s what’s the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Luke Feck wrote on June 17, 1960.
Dog Show
"Drink this, fun-loving Dad, of mine."
"Anything you say, my scientific son," a Durante-like voice gravels back.
That's the way next week adventures of Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddie gets off the ground Tuesday night on Channel 9’s “Quick Draw McGraw.”
As a cartoon-loving friend of mine once said. "This show isn’t for the kids alone. I wouldn't miss it on a bet."
"Why is that, fun-loving friend," I asked.
“I think it’s funny, sober pal of mine,” he replied.
"Why," I asked, trying my hardest not to sound overly sober.
“It works on two levels, levelheaded one,” he said.
“Oh,” I said, patting my flat-type hair, “are you calling me a flathead?”
"No, it really does work that way. There's the straight visual gimmick for the kids, but there is something deeper than that in it. This is a cartoon with a message for the youngster and the oldster alike.”
"And better than Yogi Bear," I said trying to put him in his place.
"Of course not," he said.
Now, I had to give him credit for proving that he was a pretty discerning fellow.
"BUT LOOK, besides the visual yuks, they have some pretty sophisticated humor and some mighty punny fun.” (I had to interject a “Good Grief” at that unsunny pun, which did nothing to brighten my day.)
"They have this young dog, Augie Doggie, and he seems to typify the younger generation—he’s might smart and sometimes he sure wonders what gives in the head with his dad, Doggie Daddie.”
"Is that questioning attitude typical of the younger generation?" I asked as naively as only a bachelor can.
"Those worryin' little sons of mine do nothing but wonder about their Dad's stupidity," he said.
"They have reason, family loving friend,” I said slipping into the Augie Doggie idiom.
"Imagine, a grown man like you making his children watch a cartoon series instead of the news. That sophistication deal is just a crutch to cover up your arrested development," I said.
That's what I said. But what I did, on a basis of what my friend had said, was to call WCPO. They promised me a screening of next week's show. I saw the cat and mouse affair, a pair named Snooper and Blooper, and a horse named "Quick Draw McGraw" and his partner Baba louie.
The cat and mouse—nothing like Jinks, Pixie and Dixie of the Huckleberry Hound show—didn’t really say anything that was meaty but there were plenty of sight gags for the kiddies.
The horse named Quick Draw did a fairly funny take off on the Zorro bit and was occasionally bright and once even witty.
Finally, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddie turned up with a bit of nonsense about lighter-than-air medicine that Augie made for his Daddie.
I must report that now I am an Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddie fan of theirs. So much a fan, in fact, that I converted the Boss into a fan of theirs too.
The boss, by the way, bears a close resemblance to Doggie Daddy in looks and mannerisms. He just doesn't bark, fortunately.
While Mr. Feck enjoyed Augie, and the Quick Draw show was nominated for an Emmy in its first season, there’s always a wet blanket that wants to impose their views on everyone else. This letter appeared in a newspaper in York, Pa., on October 6, 1961:
REVOLTED
Editor, The Gazette and Daily:
On October 3, I was shocked to witness with my children a most objectionable display of sadism on a “kiddies” cartoon program entitled Augie Doggie and Augie Daddy [sic]. This was at 5 p.m., the so-called children’s hour.
I immediately telephoned the station and voiced my complaint, with the thought that perhaps no one there really looked at the film before putting it on the air. Fully 75 percent of the duration of this cartoon for little ones’ entertainment was taken up by watching “Augie Doggie” run through the house and yard firing a shotgun at point blank range at both “Augie Daddy” and a burglar, neither of which was hurt, although their faces were blackened and clothing tattered from the shots.
Aren’t there enough children shooting themselves and others needlessly without having an incentive such as this put before their eyes?
What more can I and other conscientious parents do to stop this revolting situation? Copies of this letter are being sent to Mr. Minow, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Washington, D.C., and the Department of Television Programming, National Broadcasting Company, New York.
SYLVIA F. MOHLER
I don’t know what the woman expected NBC to do about it, as Augie was never on the network.
As a kid, about all I copied from The Quick Draw McGraw Show was Daws Butler’s pluralisation of sheep as “sheeps,” which drove my mother crazy and my dad had to tell her “He knows the real word. He heard it in a cartoon.” (On second thought, I might copied Quick Draw by yelling “Kabong!” and hitting my brother on the head with a Beany and Cecil toy guitar, but I can’t remember after 60 years).
Layout artist Bob Givens, who arrived at Hanna-Barbera with Maltese from Warners, said in a 2011 interview “the Augie Doggies, they were kind of fun to do.” Maltese seems to have enjoyed putting together the stories. Doggie Daddy would watch things fall apart but, generally, maintained a sense of humour. Doug Young’s performances made you believe Dear Old Dad was a caring father. The cartoons are still pleasant to watch after all these years.
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:
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.
There are many stories about the world being a lousy place. I could tell some. You could tell some. But this is a story about the world being a less lousy place because there are still kind and generous people out there.
This blog was started because of an affection for the stock music heard in the backgrounds of The Huckleberry Hound Show and The Quick Draw McGraw Show. To make a long story short, after a search that took several decades, I discovered the origin of the cues, acquired copies where I could and started documenting which ones were heard on specific cartoons, moving my efforts to this blog in 2009.
The easier way, of course, would be to have copies of the cue sheets that Screen Gems had to submit to ASCAP and BMI so royalties could be paid to the composers.
One of the greatest cartoon music scholars out there, if not the greatest, is Daniel Goldmark. He has written several books and, wonderfully, penned a thesis where the appendix contained a list of the music (except that composed in-house) heard in every single Warner Bros. cartoon (except the “Seely Six”) from 1930 to 1969, compiled from cue sheets. This is such an incredible resource. He was also the music coordinator on the Spümcø cartoons “Boo-Boo Runs Wild” and “A Day in the Life of Ranger Smith.” Music by Capitol Hi-Q! (the Smith cartoon opens with ZR-49 LIGHT UNDERSCORE by Geordie Hormel).
After years and years, I finally had the courage to ask Dr. Goldmark—we have corresponded about one his projects—if maybe he had any Hanna-Barbera cue sheets from the Capitol Hi-Q days.
He did. And, to my astonishment and extreme delight, he e-mailed me 135 pages of cue sheets for the first three seasons of the Huck show, before Hoyt Curtin took over. Not for all the cartoons, but a good percentage of the first two seasons.
At last, I could learn the identity of some of the music I have not been able to find.
Here are a few discoveries.
The sheets are for each half hour show. That means they list music for themes and bumpers in addition to the cartoons. The opening themes always run 24 seconds, meaning each cartoon had credits. The sheets also note the order in which the individual cartoons aired. They confirm what many people have said—there was a rotation each week, with Huck being the first cartoon one week, Yogi the next, and Pixie and Dixie the next.
The sheets for the first two years say “revised.” I don’t know why. I do notice some cues on the sheets are different than what you hear in the cartoons from the Huck DVD or any Huck cartoons that aired on American cable TV. I don’t have a copy any more, but a version of “The Runaway Bear” (E-29) was on-line that had a substitution for a Jack Shaindlin cue. Unfortunately, I don’t have a cue sheet for that cartoon.
Guyla Avery, according to the sheets, was part of the studio’s music department. Guyla was actually Bill Hanna’s secretary, and Iwao Takamoto told a story about how Bill would shout at her from inside his office until it was agreed to protect eardrums by installing an intercom. Hanna never quite figured out to operate it, so he continued to yell out at Guyla. She later married artist/designer Alex Toth.
Until June 3, 1960, the studio’s address on the sheets is 1416 N. LaBrea, which was the old Kling/Chaplin studios. The sheets for the third season, starting in September, reveal the company was now operating out of the window-less cinder-block building at 3501 Cahuenga (not to be confused with later new building down the street on Cahuenga we all associate with Hanna-Barbera).
Somewhat maddening is the fact the sheets only list names of music if they don’t contain an alpha-numeric. That means the sheets don’t actually tell us most of the names. For example, a sheet will read “6-ZR-50” and not tell us the name is “Light Underscore.” With that in mind, let me try to clear up the identities of some the music as revealed by the cue sheets.
● Not one, but two short pieces by Raoul Kraushaar were heard on the Huck show. They have an MR prefix: 7-MR-183 COMEDY MYSTERIOSO and 8-MR-377 COMEDY. They were on the Hi-Q reel L-58 published in 1959 and came from the Omar library, co-founded by Kraushaar in 1956 (he is the “R” in “Omar”). They both sound like they were recorded in the back of a room, with a clarinet, strings and muted trumpets. In some cases, they were edited together to sound like one cue. Hi-Q removed them from the library.
● The sad trombone music heard as the sneaky dog limps with a crutch in “Nuts over Mutts” is Jack Shaindlin’s LAF-72-3.
● “Oh Susanna” heard as Cousin Batty chats with Pixie and Dixie is Shaindlin’s LAF-88-7.
● George “Geordie” Hormel is responsible for ZR-21E SUSPENSE when the alien’s spaceship lands in Jellystone Park in “Space Bear.”
● In the same cartoon, the cue that the late Earl Kress said contained the name “Fireman” is LAF-1-2. He never could remember the complete name.
● The light symphonic music, memorably heard as the skunk is flying on a paper airplane in the Augie Doggie cartoon “Skunk You Very Much” is LAF-113-3. The cue sheet lists as the composer “Langworth” instead of Jack Shaindlin, and it doesn’t remind me of any of Shaindlin’s work.
● LAF-6-16 is a mystery. The cue sheets assign the code to two completely different pieces of music; Dr. Goldmark warns that cue sheets are not always accurate. One is the medium circus march that opens “Goldfish Fever.” But it’s also the code assigned to the brief piece in “Rah Rah Bear” where the players enter the field. That cue starts off the same but ends differently than Shaindlin’s “Boxing Greats No. 2.” On top of that, the medium circus march is reported as LAF-1-8 at the end of “Boxing Buddy.” The same cue is at the start of “Mark of the Mouse” but I don’t have a cue sheet for that. I don’t know what to think; I only have the sheets for the three cartoons mentioned above. For now, I will assign both codes to the march and leave the boxing cue without an LAF number.
● Mr. Jinks is sitting in a basket in “Party Peeper Jinks” while LAF-93-2 plays underneath. It starts with a flute and has quacking muted trumpets. ● A cue in the same cartoon between choruses of a birthday song to Jinks is LAF-93-15. It features woodwinds and strings.
● A fast circus-type chase cue called LA-74-4 is heard in a pile of cartoons, in some cases only the second half is used when the melody goes F-G-A-Bb-C and comes back down. Part of it is in the final scene of “Nottingham and Eggs.”
● Shaindlin provides the seagoing medley which opens “Pistol Packin’ Pirate.” It is LAF-65-7.
● The dramatic cue during the showdown between Sheriff Huckleberry (in the cartoon of the same name) and Dinky Dalton is L-31 SOMBER MOVEMENT by Spencer Moore.
● “Brave Little Brave,” with its specialty cues, doesn’t follow the Capitol Hi-Q numbering system. The music for about the first 4½ minutes is a Geordie Hormel piece labelled 11-ZR-K7C. The rest of the music is Q-743 by Spencer Moore. The closest cue I can find is L-744 MELODIC WESTERN UNDERSCORE. Same tempo, same orchestration, same double tom-tom beat, but the melody doesn’t quite match. My guess is the “Q” cues were in the original Capitol “Q” library, which was replaced by Hi-Q in 1956.
● “Show Biz Bear” features silent film serial style music played on an upright piano. These are Shaindlin cues entitled “Silent Movie Piano”; Shaindlin recorded a commercial album of these.
● Clarence Wheeler’s “Woodwind Capers” turns out to be a solo flute, four seconds long. It’s heard in “Hoodwinked Bear.” At least, that is all that was used.
● The version of “La Cucaracha” in several cartoons is an Omar library cue labelled OK-787 by Bill Loose and Jack Cookerly, who later played keyboards for Hoyt Curtin.
Whew! I think that’s it.
All this wonderful information is going to take some time to update the cues on the blog, as I’ll have to change some Quick Draw shows and other Huck cartoons for which I don’t have cue sheets.
People who like lists and lists of cartoons can stand by for just a moment.
You can see most of the music referred to was composed by Jack Shaindlin. We’ve posted about Shaindlin before, but a brief summary of his stock music career is he recorded with the March of Time orchestra for the Lang-Worth Mood Music library in the ‘40s, then formed a library music company in 1947 called Filmusic. The November-December 1952 edition of Film Music revealed:
The Hollywood office of Filmusic Co. of New York is making 1500 recorded selections available for TV and non-theatrical producers. The company, the largest independent music-on-film library in the country, is headed by Jack Shaindlin and features his sound tracks. Mr. Shaindlin has been musical director for the March of Time, Louis de Rochemont and the major studios in the east since 1937. His Filmusic sound track is used exclusively by NBC-TV.
The problem with trying to identify names of his cues (you won’t find my favourite Shaindlin cue, “Toboggan Run” in a copyright catalogue or in the BMI database) is simple. Shaindlin told Business and Home Screen magazine once that “the music was never published and hasn’t been ‘kicked around.’” Filmusic combined with Lang-Worth to become Langlois Filmusic in 1954 and Cinemusic in 1960. Shaindlin seems to have copyrighted only select cues for the sake of royalties, and certainly not the 1,500 mentioned above, including a good many of the ones heard in the Huck and Quick Draw shows.
Here are the Shaindlin cues that have been partially ID’d and a couple that have not been. These were sent to me years ago by Earl. I have held off posting them until I knew what they were, except for one cue he asked me not to post.
One cue I like has been half identified. It is two cues edited together. The first part of it is “Chump Chimp Title.” I have it on a Langlois collection, arranged a little differently but unmistakeably the same music. But my two-part Langlois cue includes “And Some Doings.” That part of the cue is different than what’s heard on the cartoons; that part you can hear at the end of “Baffled Bear,” as Yogi runs a gas station. Included is a vaudeville or circus dance cue that got a workout on the Quick Draw McGraw series; all Earl could remember was it contained “fireman” in the title. I cannot help but wonder if it comes from a different chimp short, The Rookie Fireman, shot in New York in 1936. As noted above, Shaindlin worked on the Shorty the Chimp series, but I can’t find the film on-line. LAF-25-3 is a fun cue, reminding me of little busy animals skipping through the woods. I’ve also attached “Six Day Bicycle Race,” heard several times in the Snooper and Blabber caper “Puss N’ Booty.” If I don’t have the real names, you’ll see quotation marks around fake ones. Don’t accept these as valid.
Two bonus cues are below, thanks to reader Evan Schad. With his help, I acquired a Synchro library 78 rpm disc containing the two Hecky Krasnow cues heard on several Augie Doggie cartoons.
LAF-1-2 "fireman"
LAF-6-16 "circus parade"
LAF-25-3 "dance of the forest squirrels"
LAF-74-2 LICKETY SPLIT
LAF-74-4 "race to the finish"
LAF - SIX DAY BICYCLE RACE
LAF - "the greatest show on earth"
LAF - CHUMP CHIMP TITLE "and other cue"
HAPPY COBBLER
SWINGING GHOSTS
L-71 SOMBER MOVEMENT
Again, I am extremely appreciative to Daniel Goldmark for his generosity and selflessness in providing this valuable documentation.
Since people love lists, here are the cartoons for which we have a list of the cues with production numbers and episode numbers in brackets. Alas, only one of the three Yowp cartoons is present.
E-1 Pie-Pirates (003)
E-2 High Fly Guy (008)
E-3 Tally Ho-Ho-Ho (007)
E-4 Pistol Packin’ Pirate (005)
E-5 Judo Jack (002)
E-6 Little Bird Mouse (007)
E-7 Yogi Bear’s Big Break (001)
E-8 Big Bad Bully (004)
E-9 Slumber Party Smarty (002)
E-10 Kit-Kat-Kit (003)
E-11 Big Brave Bear (006)
E-12 Scaredy Cat Dog (006)
E-13 Baffled Bear (009)
E-14 Cousin Tex (001/012)
E-15 Foxy Hound Dog (005)
E-16 Jinks’ Mice Device (004-021)
E-17 The Ghost with the Most (009)
E-18 The Buzzin’ Bear (013)
E-19 Jiggers It’s Jinks (008)
E-20 The Brave Little Brave (010)
E-21 The Stout Trout (012)
E-22 The Ace of Space (010)
E-27 Jinks the Butler (013)
E-31 Sheriff Huckleberry (005)
E-32 Sir Huckleberry Hound (004)
E-33 Lion-Hearted Huck (002-013)
E-34 Rustler-Hustler Huck (006)
E-35 Huckleberry Hound Meets Wee Willie (001/010)
E-37 Tricky Trapper (003)
E-38 Cock-a-Doodle Huck (008)
E-39 Two Corny Crows (009)
E-40 Freeway Patrol (007)
E-41 Dragon Slayer Huck (012)
E-47 Birdhouse Blues (021)
E-49 Prize-Fight Fright (021)
E-52 Brainy Bear (022)
E-53 Nice Mice (022)
E-54 Postman Huck (022)
E-55 Robin Hood Yogi (023)
E-56 King-Size Surprise (023)
E-60 Robin Hood Yogi (023)
E-61 Scooter Looter (025)
E-62 Mouse-Nappers (025)
E-63 Little Red Riding Huck (025)
E-64 Hide and Go Peek (026)
E-65 Boxing Buddy (026)
E-66 The Tough Little Termite (026)
E-70 Papa Yogi (030)
E-71 Ten Pin Alley (027)
E-74 Show Biz Bear (027)
E-76 King Size Poodle (030)
E-77 Nottingham and Eggs (032)
E-78 Rah Rah Bear (032)
E-79 Hi-Fido (027)
E-80 Stranger Ranger (031)
E-81 Somebody’s Lion (030)
E-82 Batty Bat (033)
E-84 Mighty Mite (031)
E-85 Bear For Punishment (033)
E-87 A Bully Dog (031)
E-89 Bird Brained Cat (032)
E-90 Huck the Giant Killer (033)
E-97 Hoodwinked Bear (037)
E-98 Piccadilly Dilly (037)
E-99 Goldfish Fever (037)
E-100 Snow White Bear (038)
E-101 Wiki Waki Huck (038)
E-102 Pushy Cat (038)
E-103 Space Bear (039)
E-104 Puss in Boats (039)
E-105 Huck’s Hack (039)
E-107 Booby Trapped Bear (041)
E-109 High Jinks (043)
E-110 Legion Bound Hound (041)
E-111 Price For Mice (041)
E-112 Gleesome Threesome (042)
E-113 Science Friction (042)
E-114 Plutocrat Cat (042)
E-115 A Bear Pair (043)
E-117 Spy Guy (044)
E-118 Nuts over Mutts (044)
E-120 Knight School (043)
E-122 Party Peeper Jinks (044)
Sheets are missing for Huckleberry Hound Shows K-011, 014 through 020, 024 in the first season, and K-028 through 030, 034 through 036 in the second, and K-040, K-045 to 52 in the third. .
Remember the gag in Tex Avery’s The Peachy Cobbler (1950) where the elves hammered nails into each other’s butts? The same thing happens in one of the mini-cartoons that ended The Quick Draw McGraw Show.
The story has the characters on the show building a brick jailhouse for Quick Draw. Here’s the hammering set up, with Blabber painting on top of a ladder.
Here’s Doggie Daddy’s expression.
And Snooper’s expression. The saucer eyes are held for several frames.
Blabber falls off the ladder. It’s tough to tell with this frame recorded onto VHS but Blab leaves behind a face.
The end gag is cute and pretty much expected in a Quick Draw cartoon. The jail is built. The characters are all trapped inside. “How we get out? There is no door,” says Baba Looey. “Oh, I forgot about that,” admits Quick Draw—but they’ll be out in time for the next Quick Draw McGraw show.
Does anyone think these are Don Williams’ eyes?
Someone should be in that jailhouse because it’s crime the Quick Draw McGraw Show isn’t on home video. The 16mm footage that was dubbed onto these old VHS tapes must be around if the original negatives aren’t, and could easily be included as bonuses on a disc set if the original half-hours can’t be located.
I’m not holding out hope we’ll ever see a home release including these neat little treasures, but it’s good to know collectors have preserved some of them and are letting them be seen on-line. Thanks to Steve Hanson for this one.
Who would have guessed Doggie Daddy was a connoisseur of art? Well, he is in some cartoons.
Background artists whiled away the time by putting inside gags or other bits of inspiration in the paintings that appeared in cartoons. Judging by layouts for Tex Avery’s shorts at MGM, the background artists didn’t have total freedom. Objects would be crossed out on the layout drawing to allow the action to read better.
There are a few examples of modern art on the walls of the D. Daddy residence (one fun thing about the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons is the homes didn’t look the same from cartoon to cartoon. Even the Flintstones’ home varied in design).
These two are from Foxhound Hounded Fox. Background by Bob Gentle, layouts by Bob Givens. What's that first painting supposed to be? Crazy, man, crazy!
It's a shame the whole painting was never in the frame. This is from Snagglepuss, with the orange antagonist version before he got pink and theatrical and was given his own show. Background by Bob Gentle, layouts by Walt Clinton.
Skunk You Very Much, backgrounds by Fernando Montealegre, layouts by Dick Bickenbach. To be honest, I don't recall where I got the credits. This may be my favourite of the works. Dig the ‘60s bucket chair.
Big Top Pop, backgrounds by Joe Montell, layouts by Bob Givens. Incidentally, Givens wasn't a snob about these TV cartoons. He remarked he liked working on the Augie Doggie cartoons. I watched a few of them again recently, and I still like them.
Unfortunately, most of the background art is pretty prosaic. There are some scenes where nothing is in the picture frame. Here are some others from the first season.
Gone to the Ducks, backgrounds by Dick Thomas, layouts by Dick Bickenbach. Note the photo of Doggie Daddy in the picture frame? Or is it Doggie Daddy's daddy?
In Mars Little Precious, Doggie Daddy has hung some artwork near the ceiling of the living room. Backgrounds by Fernando Montealegre, layouts by Dick Bickenbach. I like Monty's exteriors in this one. This is the cartoon where the sound cutter uses Hecky Krasnow's "Swinging Ghosts" several times.
A Doggie family portrait is hanging by the phone in Hum Sweet Hum. Augie's room gets a boring tree. I'm not sure what that is behind Doggie Daddy in the living room, but he has the latest in pole lamps. We had one of these in the '60s, too. I don't know who did the backgrounds here; it may have been Bob Gentle. Ed Benedict is the layout artist.
It appears the pole lamp made it into the next season of cartoons.
Here's one of Art Lozzi's backgrounds. It's from Yuk-Yuk Duck, with layouts by Paul Sommer. I think it's a cupcake on a stand with a centipede on top. Well, you can come up with your own explanation.
We’ve mentioned here on the Yowp blog that the Augie Doggie cartoons were the last of the ones to be put in production on The Quick Draw McGraw Show. The father-and-son stars were partly based on the Spike and Tyke cartoons made by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera at MGM, with a little Sylvester, Jr. tossed in (the “science geek” part of Augie would be reused in Elroy Jetson). But the production team at H-B Enterprises were stymied on names for the two.
They were originally Pete and Repete (Variety, Jan. 8, 1959), but I suspect that was changed because the names were used for a pair of cartoon bears at Glacier National Park. Next, they were Arf and Arf (Variety, Jan. 28, 1959), about an impractical naming (“Oh, Arf!” “Yes, Arf?” Yeah, that’ll work in dialogue) as possible. When they got the final names, I don’t know.
You may not know that Augie Doggie was named for a relative of Mike Maltese, who wrote all the Augie cartoons. Margaret Wong has mentioned on Facebook that that Augie was the name of her mother’s brother, and that Mike was an uncle as well. H-B writer Tony Benedict recalls:
There is a lot of Mike in those characters. He often would say things in casual conversation that later came out of Augie's mouth on the show.
We don't know what kind of art Mike and Florrie Maltese had hanging in their home. We hope it included some of the characters he wrote for at Warners and Hanna-Barbera.
My favourite Hanna-Barbera series first appeared on television screens 65 years ago today.
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.
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