Farewell to Doggie Daddy

There are fewer and fewer people left who were associated with the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons before the Flintstones came along in 1960.

We’ve lost another one. Doug Young has passed away at the age of 98, according to cartoon producer Mark Evanier. You can click here to read his obituary in the Seattle Times.

Doug was a native of Helena, Arkansas. His mother re-married and he and his family were living in San Antonio in 1930. It’s unclear when he arrived in California, but he was a radio announcer/actor before and after getting out of the service (he enlisted two days before Pearl Harbor; his draft card says he was unemployed). During the war, he was stationed at Fort Knox, where he got married. Mr. Young was good at voice impersonations; he was fired from one station for doing an impression of the station manager. The 1950 census reveals he was the assistant manager of a laundry. As the 1950s rolled on, he found himself, like so many others, with less radio work because television was taking over. To pay the bills, he drove a truck while making the rounds looking for on-air employment. Another of the many people knocking on doors was Daws Butler. Doug explained to interviewer Stu Shostak that he ran into Daws in a book store one day.

He said “What are you doing?” I told him. He says “Forget it.” Come to my place. We’re going to make a tape, take you out to H-B and that’s it ... he went out and we did an audition and Joe Barbera liked it.

The studio was launching the Quick Draw McGraw show in 1959 and Barbera told the press he was looking for new voices. He hired several. Hal Smith and Jean Vander Pyl were called in to do incidental characters. Elliot Field got the job voicing Blabber, but bowed out after only a handful of cartoons because he ended up in hospital. And someone was needed to do a Jimmy Durante voice for Doggie Daddy. Barbera wasn’t just borrowing from the Durante-Moore radio show, he was borrowing from himself, as he had Daws Butler pull off a Durante impression as Spike in the Spike and Tyke cartoons at MGM.

Young recalled that he and Peter Leeds were auditioned for Doggie Daddy. Leeds had worked with Daws on various projects for Stan Freberg. Daws had apparently recommended Mr. Young for the role because he didn’t want to take it on the role due to the strain it would put on his voice. Doug said he tried to get Durante’s warmth and openness into the Doggie Daddy character, and I think anyone who has seen the cartoons will believe he succeeded. It’s one thing to belt out a line like “Everybody wants ta get inta de act!” but it’s quite another to use the same voice over 6½ minutes and create a character like Young had to do.

I won’t go into a full list of series Doug Young worked on; you can find it on line. His work was always first-rate. Suffice it to say he ran into personal problems in the mid-‘60s and felt the solution was to leave Hollywood. He moved to Oregon and thence to Washington State where he remarried in 1969, and was involved with a group that re-created old radio shows and brought old radio stars up to meet with fans.

From what I understand, he was still living in his home (at least he was until recently).

It may not be much, but my condolences to his family on their loss. I’m sure others here agree.

Daws, Don, Doug and Dummies

Animator Mike Kazaleh has given up a rare piece of personal property for Jerry Beck to post over at Cartoon Brew. It’s a promotional record featuring H-B regular voice artists Daws Butler, Don Messick and Doug Young, along with the First Lady of Cartoon Voice Actors, June Foray.

Even the label’s cool. The caricatures were done by T. Hee, noted for his work at UPA and, before that, Disney, but who also spent time in the mid ‘30s at Warner Bros.

I can do no better than to link to the disc on Jerry’s site. Click here.

Well, yes, I can. Let me link to the background behind this. The disc is a sequel to another disc for ad-agency-ears-only called ‘All That Jazz—Blooper’s Soap.’ It’s a satire of how interfering clients, agencies and the people afraid losing their business can completely screw up even the simplest commercial. Anyone who was worked in commercial copywriting or production probably must have experienced that kind of thing at least once.

The script to the original disc can be found by clicking here.

Thanks Mike and Jerry for a chance to hear these fine cartoon voices in a recording likely few people reading have heard before.

A Little More About Doug Young

You recall we were wishing a happy birthday to Doug Young, the voice of Doggie Daddy, on the blog earlier this week and mentioned a rare interview Doug gave on Shokus Internet Radio a couple of years ago. Incidentally, check out Shokus’ weekly list of programmes. If you’re of a certain age, there should be something to delight you.

I missed the interview at the time and you won’t find it on their site but reader Greg Ehrbar has come to the rescue by passing on what Doug had to say to Stu Shostak and his guests, Mark Evanier and Earl Kress.

It’s a shame the interview was so short and didn’t talk about his childhood or go in depth about into his radio career. But he did discuss how he got in—and out—of cartoons.

Anyway, let’s pass on some snips from the interview. About the Golden Days of Radio:

I really got in kinda late. I was one of those guys who was in the Army.

It’s too bad Doug himself switched the subject at that point. But, as mentioned earlier, since he appeared on the syndicated and transcribed The Anderson Family around 1947, “Army” must mean World War Two, which would make it unlikely he was born in 1931. In fact, if you click here you can see Doug’s Army enlistment file which has him born considerably before 1931.

Doug lauds Daws Butler as “my hero” (isn’t he everybody’s?) and explains how Daws got him into Hanna-Barbera.

Daws was with me when we used to make the rounds looking for radio work, radio dramas. I was driving a truck, you know, and ran into him at a book store. I had a little delay. He said “What are you doing?” I told him. He says “Forget it.” Come to my place. We’re going to make a tape, take you out to H-B and that’s it ... he went out and we did an audition and Joe Barbera liked it.

Actually, myself and a guy named Peter Leeds who used to be on the Bob Hope Show a lot, and quite a good actor, and I just happened to luck out, and they seemed to like my punctuation [sic] better than his. In fact, it was early in the morning, about 8 o’clock we had to go out to the studio and audition for this. ...

They liked the way I did the Durante thing [Barbera told him they needed someone that sounded like Jimmy Durante]. I tried to keep a lot of warmth in it because he was one of my favourite comedians of that era. And he just exuded that kind of openness and warmth and everything so I tried to get that into the voice.

Mark Evanier has explained to me the two were auditioning for Doggie Daddy.

Leeds, for the uninitiated, also has a Daws Butler connection as the two of them appeared on Stan Freberg’s CBS radio show and Capitol comedy albums. Leeds’ career at Hanna-Barbara consisted of an opening narration on Quick Draw McGraw’s Scat, Scout, Scat as a narrator and that was it. It seems odd he’d do just one cartoon; Mark informs me Leeds cut other audio tracks for H-B that were not used. Cartoon voice historian Keith Scott mentions Leeds did at least one theatrical Magoo cartoon, Safety Spin (1953). Keith also related a story about Leeds at a commercial audition that I don’t know I’m at liberty to pass on (it’s not dirty or derogatory, but it was in a private e-mail).

Doug outlines a typical recording session for one cartoon:

It was just like doing a radio show, you sit around and go through the script, assign the parts Joe would, and then we’d go to the mike and do it, and they would animate from the voice track, of course ... It took probably a couple of hours before we got it all ironed out. ... [They would use the first take] 80 or 90% of the time.

As mentioned in the birthday post, Doug seems to have provided incidental characters in the Hanna-Barbera cartoons until 1966 and then just disappears. He explains that he had personal problems, including with his marriage.

I just had to get away from it. I intended to come up here [the Pacific Northwest] just for a little bit, but I decided to change my whole lifestyle, so I stayed with some good real friends in Salem, Oregon and I changed my whole situation around. And I loved the Northwest so I’m still here, remarried and happy as can be.

There’s a little more on the interview, but that sums up most of what Doug had to say about his work at Hanna-Barbera. The other thing that’s striking is his comment about the one thing that’s changed since he voiced cartoons is the money. He says he got something like $100 an episode while the cast of The Simpsons are millionaires. But he’s not rueful, wistful or resentful about it. He tells how he admires them.

In the end, Doug Young comes across as a friendly, warm guy. So it seems there’s not only a lot of Jimmy Durante in Doggie Daddy, there’s a lot of Doug Young, too.

Happy Birthday, Dear Old Dad

How can anyone not love Jimmy Durante? Listen to his old radio shows. He’s enthusiastic, a little hammy and laughs at himself. He created catchphrases people never got tired of. How many? “I got a million of ‘em!” he might say. Kicking the English language around came naturally; it didn’t need to be scripted. And just about anyone can do an impression of him. No one knew that better than a couple of cartoons studios.

Terrytoons had a Durante sound-alike in Sourpuss. Wally Maher mimicked him as the title character in Tex Avery’s Jerky Turkey (1945) at MGM (thanks to Keith for the likely ID). And when Hanna and Barbera’s Spike the dog got a voice change in the 1950s, he started speaking in a Durante style provided by Daws Butler.

A few years later when Joe and Bill opened their own studio, they borrowed ideas from themselves, modifying the Durante-sounding dad with a young pup into the Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy segment of the Quick Draw McGraw Show in 1959. And picked to play Dear Old Dad was radio actor-announcer Doug Young.

And with that elongated introduction, we wish Doug a belated happy birthday.


On-line sources say he was born February 10, 1931 and therefore turned 79 on Wednesday, but you have to pardon my scepticism. Doug was the fill-in announcer and provided character voices on a low-budget comedy show called The Anderson Family. Radio listings show KECA in Los Angeles was airing it in October 1946. That would make Doug 15 years old. On top of that, the U.S. Army Enlistment records show an actor named Douglas H. Young joining the U.S Army in 1941 and who was born in 1919. That sounds a little closer to me. If February 10th is correct, Doug would be 91.

You can listen for yourself and see if you think a 15-year-old is the announcer. Click here for show No. 8 in the series. Doug also plays an out-for-himself lawyer at the 20:10 mark. (Yowp warning: any humour on this show is purely accidental, despite the presence of Walter Tetley. Just listen to Doug and skip the rest).

One thing you’ll notice about Doug is he doesn’t have the big “radio voice” that was almost mandatory for announcers in the ‘40s. He’s pretty natural with a relaxed sound. And that’s the same sort of characteristic he brought to Hanna-Barbera when he was handed the Doggie Daddy role. Daddy has a lot of Durante’s cadence, inflections and catch-phrases, but Doug gives him a warm, friendly sound (the real Durante was a little hammier on the radio) that leaves you with the impression Daddy really does care about Augie, no matter how exacerbating his son is at times.

Old time radio histories can be sketchy, but it appears Doug spent his radio career (Andersons aside) doing incidental work. He’s not listed at all in John Dunning’s Encyclopedia or Buxton and Owen’s The Big Broadcast. Cartoon writer-producer Mark Evanier reveals Young met Daws Butler while voicing radio commercials, and when the time came to cast Doggie Daddy, Daws recommended Doug. Daws had been asked by Joe Barbera to reprise his Spike voice, but he was worried about the effect on his throat, especially after doubling or tripling in the same cartoon. So, when the 1959 TV season started, the three main cartoon voices at Hanna-Barbera were Daws Butler, Don Messick and Doug Young.

Doug’s next main role was Ding-a-ling, the dedicated sidekick of Hokey Wolf in the revampedHuckleberry Hound Show starting in March 1961. He played the first-named Goofy Guard in the ‘Yippee, Yappee and Yahooey’ portion of The Peter Potamus Show (1964). But mainly, he served as a utility player on a number of series, including providing his own voice in the first episode of Jonny Quest (1964). He dusted off a Jimmy Cagney impression for Bigelow Mouse in several Augie Doggie and Snagglepuss cartoons and even transplanted his Durante voice into the Loopy De Loop cartoon Horse Shoo (1965) and as Police Chief Rockschnozzle (joking, as Durante does, about his large nose) in the Dripper’ episode of The Flintstones.

I wish I could give you some biographical information about Doug, but there isn’t really much out there. The one newspaper reference I could find quoting him is already on this blog—Doug was fired from a radio job for doing an impression of the humourless station manager. He’s not a star, at least you don’t think of him when you think of the top cartoon voices of all time, so he wasn’t asked to do many interviews. He did appear on Stu Shostak’s very interesting internet radio station a couple of years ago and talked about his career. (Yowp update: read about the interview here.

What is clear is that Doug’s career at Hanna-Barbera was prolific but relatively short. It appears his last series was the syndicated Laurel and Hardy. Doug did incidental voices and got to work with Paul Frees. Doug went through the same experience with Paul at recording sessions that June Foray talks about in Keith Scott’s book “The Moose That Roared.” In another book, Tim Lawson’s “The Magic Behind The Voices: A Who’s Who of Cartoon Voice Actors”, Doug describes Frees as:

what we in the business call ‘The Mickey Rooney Syndrome.’ In other words, the guy was always on, but very funny. Finally, the director would have to say, “Paul, come on, shape up. We've got work to do.” He had to get really mean, because Paul just didn't want to stop.

By the time H-B’s Wacky Races hit the air in 1968, Doug was gone. He moved to Seattle where he did freelance work and appeared in radio dramas produced by well-known Pacific Northwest broadcaster Jim French (who was ubiquitous on one automated radio station a number of years ago). We understand, Doug is still enjoying life in the Puget Sound area.

So, as Augie might say every Febru-rarary 10th: “Many happy returns on this, your natal day.” A million of ‘em.

The Biggest Show in Town is Still...

Oh, sure, Avatar is the biggest movie of all time, and that hand-drawn stuff is only for boomers who need walkers to get to the liver pills in the medicine cabinet and Gen Xers desperately injecting botox to vainly pass for someone under 25, right?

I don’t think so.

And neither do the good people of Riverdale, New York, judging by an ad in last Thursday’s local paper, The Press. Here’s the relevant portion:

...the next meeting of the Alana Llama Film Club for Kids will take place on Sunday, Jan. 31, at 10:30 a.m. The Y will present a compilation of cartoons from the 1960s, including episodes of The Jetsons, The Flintstones, Porky Pig, Top Cat, Quick Draw McGraw and others. There will also be free popcorn and a small gift for all children in attendance. Tickets cost $7 per person and they can be purchased at the door on the day of the event.

What a great idea: getting kids together to watch cartoons.

Sounds like they’re showing one of those ‘Saturday Morning’ DVDs that was put out last year. Regardless, it shows that after all these years, young people want to see funny cartoons, no matter how they’re drawn or how old they are. And I’ll bet my liver pills they’ll laugh as much at George Jetson kicking Uniblab out of the Skypad apartment with the cool interiors as I did when I was their age. At least they’ll see it in colour.

One would think that they would be showing Archie cartoons in Riverdale, but the local environs are obviously filled with smart children with good taste. Thus they’re denied asking themselves “Why are they so cheap that they keep reusing the same ugly animation of Hot Dog dancing every week?”

And it isn’t dewey-eyed nostalgia talking when I categorically yowp for the record that these were funny cartoons, even though everyone knows the animation itself on The Flintstones could never compare to what the same artists had created only a few years earlier at Disney and MGM. Witness yet another syndicated column, this one dated June 6, 1960. Whether this is the same Barney Glazer who was a movie screenwriter, I don’t know.

Glazed Bits:
Do You Know TV Stars?
By BARNEY GLAZER
So you think you can name all the major television shows.
Try naming the program that includes the following characters.
The hero, a lanky horse, disguised himself as a steer. With Snuffles, the bloodhound, in tow and Baba Looey, a Mexican burro, at their side, they tracked the Phantom Rustler.
The steer, who wasn't a steer, you see, “mooed” when he ran smack into a hot clue, but the rustler nabbed him and thinking he was a real steer, which he wasn't, he branded him (ouch!).
There was Augie Doggie who had a cold in the nose. Since he couldn’t smell, Augie Doggie made friends with a little skunk which is why this episode was titled “Skunk You Very Much.”
Snooper and Blabber, an intrepid cat and mouse private eye team, were assigned to track down a pair of ghosts named Harum and Scarum. The job didn't come off well when Snooper and Blabber finally admitted to each other they were scared of ghosts.
If you haven’t guessed by this time what the heck we’re talking about, we'll let all you uninformed gentry in on our little secret. It’s a television show, quite popular with our younger generation, and it’s called “Quick Draw McGraw,” who is a lanky horse and perhaps the most remarkable Western hero of our times.
Not only is Quick Draw McGraw the fastest draw among man or beast but in the guise
of “El Kabong,” which he assumes on numerous occasions, he is also the masked righter (Wheel) of oppression.
The name “El Kabong” is derived from the guitar he uses to smite villains over the head with the resulting reverberating sound of “kabong!”
Starring voice of this junior-grade show is Daws Butler who is kept as busy as a mongoose at a cobra rally doing voices for this program, for “Huckleberry Hound,” and hundreds of radio and animated tv commercials.
Associate voices are those of Don Messick and Doug Young. Heard in many of the supporting voice characterizations, Messick remembers how he reversed the old parental advice when he was a kid by being the child who was heard and not seen.
In this show, Messick has performed everything from a lion to a mosquito or a Martian to a kangaroo, but among his favorites he lists a humming bird named “Humboldt,” a heroic French flea named “Toot Sweet,” and a garrulous little gopher who remains anonymous.
Doug Young unveiled his talent by impersonating a station manager. The next day, while applying for his unemployment check, Doug commented: “That guy had no sense of humor.”
“Quick Draw McGraw” and his cronies have been riding roughshod over tv ratings since last Fall. The creative talents of Producers William Hanna and Joseph Barbera began with the famous Tom and Jerry movie cartoons, continued with tv’s Ruff and Reddy, then traipsed to “Huckleberry Hound” and now “Quick Draw McGraw.”
It’s an open secret that millions of unashamed adults, as well as their bewildering offspring, seat themselves in front of their tv sets come “Quick Draw McGraw” time.
The delightful program is an irresistible web and there is nothing quite so wonderful as being caught in it.

And, if they don’t know it already, kids in Riverdale, New York are going to find out for themselves, 50 years later.

Happy Birthday, I Theen’

My favourite H-B show debuted on North American TV on this day (the internet notwithstanding, I can find no contemporary record it aired any earlier).

So, a happy 50th birthday to the The Quick Draw McGraw show and Quick Draw McGraw, Baba Looey, Snooper, Blabber Mouse, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy.

And a thanks to everyone who had a part in creating it. Especially Doug Young, the voice of Doggie Daddy, who is enjoying life apparently down the I-5 from me in Seattle (he’s the tall one in the poor quality picture above, with Don Messick and Daws Butler).