Run and walk cycles in front of a repeating background was not something unusual in cartoons. The theatrical studios used them. It’s no surprise Hanna-Barbera would have them.
The number of drawings depended on the cycle. Some were four, some were six, some were eight. I’ve even seen three and five in some H-B cartoons.
Here’s a cycle of the Sheriff of Nottingham by Ed Love from the Huckleberry Hound cartoon Nottingham and Eggs (1959). It has four drawings and Huck returns to the same spot in the same position after 16 frames. We’ve slowed it down.
This is as close to the speed you see it on screen as we can get.
The background is by Joe Montell, whose stop at Hanna-Barbera wasn't long. He decided to work for Jay Ward, supervising at Gamma Productions in Mexico City. Walt Clinton drew the layouts from Warren Foster's story.
Ed's beaver-tooth mouth makes an appearance.
And, as you can see above, this is the cartoon featuring a naked Huck.
Ed told Harvey Deneroff that everything he did at Hanna-Barbera was freelance. His first cartoons on the Huckleberry Hound series showed up in 1959, and he seems to have an animated a bunch of commercials featuring the studio's characters, as well as the little cartoons between the cartoons on both Huck and Quick Draw McGraw.
In 1940, he was at Disney (making $4,900 a year) and lived two doors down the street in Van Nuys from cartoon producer Paul Fennell. He was let go after the Disney strike, ended up in the Tex Avery unit at MGM before being fired by Fred Quimby (who tried to rehire him, but Love had gone to work for Hugh Harman), and spent several years during a real glory period at Walter Lantz. When that studio closed down, he went to work as a manufacturer's agent, before animating commercials for most of the 1950s.
Pixie is playing table tennis with Jinks in a little cartoon before the next Pixie and Dixie cartoon. Dixie is just standing there. To save money by hiring Don Messick, Pixie's voice is coming out of Daws Butler.
"Get this one, smarty cat!" says Pixie and whaps the ball high into the air.
Back goes Jinks in a four-drawing cycle as he passes the same tree three times.
Jinksie runs backwards into a mailbox.
"What can I do, Jinks?" asks Huck. The mail slot opens to reveal the cat's head. "Like, uh, get me a stamp," is his response.
Yeah, not the greatest line but I don't know what he could say. Personally, I'd like to have seen him splash backward into a fountain and say "I guess, like, my game's all wet."
The Huckleberry Hound Show was incredibly popular upon its debut, not only in the U.S. where Kellogg’s placed it on nearly 200 stations, but in other countries as well.
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.
Thanks to the folks at the Leo Burnett ad agency, fans of Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear got to see them in the...
Well, we can’t say “in the flesh” because the flesh was buried under furry suits designed like the cartoon characters.
For a number of years, Huck, Yogi and others toured across North America, appearing at fairs with a special show.
One of the stops was Tampa, Florida. (Somehow, I expect, if anyone could come up with a rhyme for “Florida orange” it would be Yogi).
Columnists in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s loved the early syndicated Hanna-Barbera characters. Charles Robins of the Tribune was one. He didn’t cover the stage show, but got out his pad and pencil when the characters did a walk-through of the newspaper’s offices as they plugged the debut of Yogi’s show on local TV.
Rare Bear Wins Admiration of Tampa’s ‘Kidaults’
Yogi Proves He Is Better Than the Average Bear As He Captures the Fancy of Fans Young and Old
By CHARLES ROBINS
Tribune Entertainment Editor
Now that it's all over, I'm beginning to wonder if Tampa fell to Jose Gaspar or Yogi Bear last week.
That better-than-average bear, who normally resides in Jellystone National Park, visited the Cigar City for the Gasparilla festivities and turned out to be one of the big attractions of the parade.
Youngsters lining the parade route rushed out to shake his paw and the successful ones probably won't wash their hands for years.
Pretty girls gathered around him.
An enthusiastic crowd turned out at Lowry Park the following day to see the furry hero.
And, to top this moment of glory, WFLA-TV announced that Yogi Bear will be seen as star of his own program on that station beginning Wednesday, March 1.
OF COURSE, Yogi is really a cartoon character from the popular Huckleberry Hound series. Wearing the shaggy costume, and doing an excellent job impersonating Yogi's magnificent bear-i-tone voice was Bill Peck, a local performer.
But trying to tell a youngster that Yogi isn't real is about as difficult as trying to convince Virginia that there isn't a Santa Claus.
Fame, of course, is not new to this admirable bear or his popular companions, Huck Hound and Quick Draw McGraw, the slowest horse in the west.
Fred Wilson, a representative of the advertising agency which handles the Huckleberry Hound show, said Huck and his friends were greeted by 10,000 enthusiastic fans on their arrival in Hawaii last year. This crowd, Wilson contends, was larger than that which greeted such non-cartoon personalities as Eisenhower and Jack Benny.
* * *
IN TOLEDO last summer, some 45,000 youngsters turned out to see the troupe at the Toledo Zoo.
"Huckleberry Hound" was chosen as the theme of Ohio State University's homecoming in 1959.
And, also according to Wilson, Yellowstone National Park officials are considering setting aside an area to be known as Jellystone Park, a mythical national park inhabited by Yogi in his TV shows.
In fact, Wilson said, the crew of the U.S.S. Glacier named an uncharted ice island in the Antarctic Huckleberry Hound Island.
For anyone not familiar with the popular cartoon series, Huckleberry Hound is a dog with a drawl somewhat like that of Andy Griffith. The character created by the talent team of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, went on the air in 1958 and was an almost immediate success with the youngsters and quite a few adults.
* * *
QUICK DRAW McGRAW was added in 1959 and Yogi, last year, became the real star of the series. As the remarkable bear's fan mail mounted, Hanna and Barbera decided to give him his own show.
Daws Buster [sic] does the voice of all three characters.
The program, which is carried in some 200 television markets throughout the nation, is aimed at a "kidault" audience, Wilson said.
In fact, it became so popular with the adults that a TV editor in Seattle, Wash., organized the first adult Huck Hound fan club three years ago and more have since popped up throughout the country.
When the characters came up to The Tribune newsroom last week, the more aggressive Yogi immediately made himself at home. He pounded on a desk and screamed "copyboy" in a manner better than the average editor.
* * *
HE CARRIED on his arm a picnic basket, an item which is somewhat of a Yogi Bear trademark. (On the show, he is forever dreaming up new ways of stealing picnic baskets from visitors at Jellystone Park.)
As a Yogi Bear fan myself, I was too wise to this creature not to suspect he was up to something no good.
I suddenly got a horrible thought:
"Had Yogi stolen our city editor's lunch?"
Cautiously I peeked into the basket and immediately felt ashamed of myself.
Inside were several Valentines which had been given to Yogi by some of the young believers who turned out to see him at Lowry Park.
He's more popular than the average bear.
The 1961-62 TV season was the last with new Huck and Yogi cartoons. Hanna-Barbera worked out a new touring stage show. Campbell Titchener’s column in the Rockford Morning Star on Aug. 18, 1963 talked about it, and the reaction kids had when they saw Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear “in person.”
When historians get around to chalking up the important events of the mid-20th century, one of the items for the record must be the advent of the television cartoon show. Not the one where old movie shorts are thrown together for the kiddies, but the one where a talented, high-priced group of artists create a product for an all-age audience. A man who has been involved in much of this is Edwin Alberian, a personable, dark-haired easterner who spent much of Saturday at the Winnebago County Fair under an explorer's helmet with his current companion, Fred Flintstone. Alberian's job is traveling across the country, and farther, with cartoon characters and presenting shows at fairs, rodeos, and other places where kids gather. At our county fair Ed put on a pair of shows Saturday [17] and was on hand at the grandstand Saturday night, where he'll also be tonight.
Ed started out to be a doctor. He got as far as a master's degree in chemistry before deciding that there were enough physicians in his family. He had sung and acted in high school and college, and found himself auditioning for, and winning, roles in Broadway musicals. His flair for song, dance and mime got him an audition for the "Howdy Doody" TV show, and for ten years he was Clarabelle the Clown on the series. So it seemed natural, when the then new production company of Hanna-Barbara found a gold mine in the TV cartoon business, that Ed Alberian should join the gang.
For the past four years Ed has toured with several shows. One is the Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear Show, another the Quick Draw McGraw and Baba Looey Show, and now he's got the Fred Flintstone Show. Fred is currently the most popular of the cartoon characters, Ed says. What he does is to use prerecorded dialogue and his own comments during a show. The Hollywood actors who are the voices of the cartoon characters to this recording. Then, controlling the timing of the recordings, Ed "talks" to his audience and the cartoons, which are people wearing Huck, Yogi, Quick Draw or Fred costumes. Its [sic] a gimmick that has proven highly successful. Recently Ed and Fred flew New York to Honolulu and back for a one-day show. This July Ed and Quick Draw appeared at the Calgary Stampede in Canada and drew 40,000 people to the stadium.
Ed says the secret to success in this kind of venture is "keeping the kids in the act. Make the audience part of the entertainment." He says at first the children think they're just seeing someone dressed in a Fred Flintstone costume, but as the show progresses they become convinced they're actually seeing Fred. Ed explains that the people who wear the costumes, usually dancers, are highly trained for their parts in the show.
"Kids are always trying to help," Ed says. "They want to help Fred and Huck up and down off the stage, but the funniest thing is they keep bringing Yogi Bear food. Mainly bananas, for some reason." I asked if the food was declined with thanks. "Oh, no," Ed says. "Huck has an insatiable appetite. But that's how we know the kids think he's real."
After 14 years in the children's entertainment business, Ed is convinced he's found a home. "And when I take my two-year-old boy to the cartoon studios," he says, "he really goes wild."
Considering we now have the entire Huckleberry Hound Show restored on Blu-Ray, perhaps it’s time again to dig out the costumes, and get the blue Southerner and the pic-a-bic basket purloiner out on the promotional trail again.
Run and walk cycles in front of a repeating background was not something unusual in cartoons. The theatrical studios used them. It’s no surprise Hanna-Barbera would have them.
