Earlier this year, we posted some pictures of a Quick Draw McGraw board game sold by Milton Bradley in 1960.
The rules were helpfully included.
Reader Stephen Spurling has discovered that someone has digitised this game and you can play it on line.
Maybe I'm a little slow, but I'm still a little confused by the game (it's also early in the morning and I'm heading to work). I also think it'd be more fun to play in person, instead of on the internet (you have no control over the spinner; you just click on something) but it's better than nothing.
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera apparently weren’t altogether content with having Daws Butler or Don Messick do all the female voices in falsetto on the first season of the Huckleberry Hound Show. They put up the cash to hire women for two different cartoons.
Judging by the production numbers, the first was June Foray in Bear on a Picnic (Production E-28) and the other was radio actress Margie Liszt in Robin Hood Yogi (Production E-55).
Hanna-Barbera expanded their schedule in 1959 when the Quick Draw McGraw Show was sold into syndication. Barbera was quoted in the papers as saying he wanted new voices for his shows, but it was difficult finding actors who weren’t overexposed.
Among H-B Enterprises’ hirings that year were two women. The first was Jean Vander Pyl, whose first cartoon was the Snooper and Blabber creepy tale Big Diaper Caper, Production J-8, and the other was Julie Bennett, who played Sagebrush Sal opposite Quick Draw McGraw in Masking For Trouble, Production J-10.
I don’t need to tell you Bennett is best known at Hanna-Barbera for the role of Cindy Bear. Bill and Joe had worked with her before they started their own studio. Keith Scott’s researches found she plays the female roles in the Tom and Jerry cartoon Busy Buddies, released by MGM in 1956. The Hollywood Reporter on Nov. 22, 1955 mentioned Hanna and Barbera had hired her and Daws Butler to voice Mr. and Mrs. Q in Tom’s Photo Finish. She was in four Metro cartoons before the cartoon division was closed in 1957. (One columnist on the East Coast in Feb. 1955 called her Tom and Jerry work a “waste of a pretty puss”).
Keith has also discovered Julie lent a voice to one of the cartoons on the Boing-Boing Show on CBS. “Nero Fiddles” included Bill Scott, John T. Smith and the voice of Charlie the Tuna, Herschel Bernardi.
Very little seems to have been written about her cartoon work, but it’s included in an NBC Feature news release dated December 4, 1964 which promoted two network shows.
THAT SCREAM YOU HEARD ON 'TONIGHT' CAME FROM JULIE BENNETT
Redhaired Julie Bennett has played everything on television from Charlie the Tuna's girlfriend to a talking box of detergent, neither of which allowed the viewing audience to catch a glimpse of her spectacular redhaired good looks. On NBC-TV's "The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo" she has played the voice behind Maid Marian (when Magoo played Robin Hood) the voice of Snow White, Sagebrush Sal and the sultry voice of Pepe LePew's girlfriend. It took the "Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" to summon Julie back on camera with her own face showing. She was a guest on the Thursday, Dec. 3 show (NBC color-cast, 11:15 p.m.-1 a.m. EST) and proved conclusively that when it comes to selling, Julie is a topnotch saleswoman of her own attractive personality.
Actually, Julie Bennett's television career harks back to the days when, as a teenager, she appeared on numerous live TV productions done by Albert McCleery, Fred Coe and the other "greats" of early TV. (Her first "Philco Playhouse" starring role was done when she was 15.) Fiercely ambitious as a youngster, and extremely busy in television, radio and in various short-lived Broadway plays, Julie went to the West Coast for a brief vacation and made the discovery that "there is more to life than just working." She never returned to the radio serial drama on which she had a running role. ("The fellow who played my husband could have killed me, because they had to write him out once they killed me off.")
Julie continued to work in television, now in the filmed variety, appearing on such programs as "Dragnet," the Donna Reed and Bob Cummings shows, and various other series. She played everything from neurotic wives to femmes fatales. At one point, her voice was dubbed in for James Stewart’s "four-year-old grandson" in "The FBI Story." The use of her voice alone opened a new career to the versatile actress and she entered the field of commercial television. This led her to such jobs as providing the voice of Cindy Bear in the "Yogi Bear" films and to essaying the aforementioned talking detergent box.
As she told Johnny Carson on "Tonight," the speaking voices of many sultry appearing brunettes in cosmetic commercials are often high, squeaky and afflicted with Brooklyn accents. So while the films show an alluring girl, her equally alluring voice is courtesy of the redhaired Julie.
Mister Magoo’s "Snow White" chalked up a first on "Tonight" when she responded to a request to demonstrate the kind of scream with which she won roles in "Dragnet." She raised Carson, Ed McMahon, guest Bill Cosby and half of television-watching America a foot off their chairs with her blood-curdling rendition. Remarkable girl, that Julie.
Julie did some other work for UPA, notably in a supporting role in Gay Purr-ee. By then, she managed to create a place in the world of cartoon voice acting, appearing in a number of Warner Bros. shorts in the early 1960s, mainly for Bob McKimson. You can find lists of her cartoons on other sites, though we note Mark Evanier once mentioned that she voiced three cartoons in a session for Jay Ward when June Foray had a conflict and was working with Stan Freberg.
She was still appearing on camera, too. In August 1960, Miss Bennett had completed several 4-Way Cold Tablet spots and was about to record TV commercials for Burlington Mills. It sounds as if that was more satisfying than being Cindy Bear, judging by this story in Sidney Fields’ “Only Human” column in the New York Daily News of July 25, 1964. For the record, she did appear in one Pepe LePew cartoon, Louvre Come Back to Me (1962) as a female cat.
Gal Behind the Voice
For some time now Julie Bennett's wail has been: "I started out straight, but I'm winding up as a cartoon."
Julie is most often unseen but frequently heard on TV in a variety of voices. Among them Cindy Bear, Yogi's girl friend; Minnie on Mr. Magoo; Sagebrush Sal for Quick Draw McGraw; and the skunk with the French accent on Bugs Bunny.
"When they do see my face it's behind a commercial," Julie says with a pained pout. "Oh, well, I do enjoy the dough very much."
And she adds without any false modesty, that between voices and commercials she manages to make from $50,000 to $100,000 a year. "It's closer to $100,000," she says. Part of the take comes from her dramatic efforts as the voices in movies, too. Her latest is the full-length film, "Hey There, It's Yogi Bear," which descends on us next Wednesday.
She's been everything from hens to women in movies. When Judy Garland played a cat in "Gay Paree," Julie was her mistress. She was the voice of Brigitte Bardot in "La Parisienne," and of Jimmy Stewart's grandson in "The FBI Story." No Movie Residuals
"They had an adorable kid playing the part," Julie explains, "but when the picture was finished no one understood a word he said. So I did over everything he said."
What's the difference between doing a voice for TV and for the movies?
"No residuals from a movie. I do about 100 commercials a year and some can go on for two or three years paying lush residuals."
Julie is a bachelor girl and always has been one, but still hopeful, now that she concedes she's no longer a starry-eyed ingenue exclusively determined to be the big actress.
"Men are sometimes scared off by a career girl," she says. ''Success doesn't always work for you." Radio Dialectician
Julie records Hollywood as her birthplace, claims she mastered 26 different dialects before she was out of her teens, got her first job when she was 12 in radio and hasn't stopped driving since. In her radio days she was a regular fixture on the weekly "Sherlock Holmes" show with a standard British accent, and on another radio opus played Mongolian twins.
"It was a crazy script," she recalls. "I talked to myself for six pages. It got simpler when one of the twins killed the other. For what? For a man. What else?"
About the only thing she seems to have missed is what she says she wants most—to be seen as an actress. Not that she didn't try.
She was in a play called "Balloon," which got punctured before it reached Broadway, and at one time worked on most of TV's comedy and dramatic shows. Wrong Studio, Right Script
"I'm being sidetracked from what I want to do," says Julie. "It's the story of my life. I stumbled into the wrong studio one day and was handed a script to read with a dozen other girls. I was picked. It was a cigaret commercial. My first one."
At her fees, her inner conflict can't be too painful.
She keeps an apartment in Hollywood, just settled in a second one in New York three weeks ago, already has done three commercials and may soon be working in a new cartoon series as the voice of a penguin.
"Who knows what a penguin sounds like?" Julie asks. "But I'll find out."
While here she is also studying singing because the figures in her business a girl can never know too much. She's still studying dancing, too.
"The more you know the more jobs you get," Tulle says. "And who knows? Maybe one day I'll get the right one."
Bennett had a Walt Disney connection as well. She appeared on the Feb. 1, 1956 episode of Disneyland entitled “A Day in the Life of Donald Duck.” One role she turned down that year was on NBC’s Playwrights ‘56 when she was asked to play a stripper.
It would seem she never found that right role. She disappeared from acting and created a new career as a personal manager under the name of Marianne Daniels. She was 88 when she died during the Covid epidemic in 2020.
Tubi has confirmed a list of 100 different series from Warner Bros. Animation and Cartoon Network that are joining the free service. The ones in bold join on March 1st. The rest presumably will rollout afterwards.
The Quick Draw McGraw Show is not in bold, so it's anyone's guess when it may appear. It's also your guess whether they will be old TV prints of the cartoons, or if they'll be newly restored, or if they'll be the full half-hours with the interactive bits between Quick Draw and the stars of the other parts of show.
I have no direct knowledge but the appearance may be dependent on Warner's efforts to remaster the cartoons. I thin'.
The list, by the way, also includes Top Cat and The Yogi Bear Show but nothing else before 1961. Still, the announcement will give viewers more cartoons than they can possibly watch.
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.
TV critics managed to find ways to watch The Quick Draw McGraw Show even when they didn’t have to.
Larry Thompson of the Miami Herald outlined his subterfuge in his column of December 6, 1960. At least one of his kids didn’t appear to be too happy about it.
Psychology in Action
THIS WOMAN was company for dinner, and we sat around in the front room making small talk until I looked at my watch.
I called to my wife: "Don't forget, this is Quick Draw McGraw night. We'd better start dinner soon or the children won't have time to see it."
"And what," asked the lady, "is Quick Draw McGraw?"
"That," I explained, "is a cartoon character on TV. He's on every Tuesday night. So are Doggie Daddy, and Snooper, the cat detective. Our kids love the program."
"It is very considerate of you to try to arrange the dinner schedule so they can see it," the lady said.
"Oh, yes," I said. "I believe in letting the children see the programs they enjoy, as long as they are uplifting, amusing, or wholesome. A parent can't be too careful about the TV programs his children watch."
We were called to dinner, and, as usual, the children dawdled over the food.
* * *
“IF YOU DON'T HURRY," I said, "you'll miss Quick Draw McGraw. Remember, the champion gets to turn on the TV.”
"Aw, you're always the champion on Quick Draw night," said Carl.
I turned to the company.
"That is part of my child psychology," I explained. "I try to cultivate the competitive spirit — in a sportsmanlike, mannerly way, of course — by pretending that I'm in the contest with them. That way they feel that I am sharing their interests."
"Very commendable," said the lady.
“I’m the champ!" I shouted, as I swallowed the last bit of my milk. "I'll go turn on TV. Nobody else can come until they've finished."
I give the lady a knowing glance and she nodded approval at my applied psychology. It was only a few minutes before the children joined me in front of the TV:
* * *
LATER, after the children were in bed, our company commented on my excellent behavior as a father.
"Mrs. Thompson," she said, "you are most fortunate to have a husband who takes such an interest in his children. I have never seen a better example of child psychology in action."
"You mean about Quick Draw McGraw?" asked my wife, and the lady nodded.
"He does that every Tuesday night," my good wife said. "Only child psychology has nothing to do with it. He likes Quick Draw McGraw. He acts the same way when Huckleberry Hound is on."
* * *
AND I REALLY do feel sorry for grown-ups who don't have children to give them an excuse to look at those funny cartoon programs.
Thompson never really explained the “contest” or “champion” part. Maybe someone had to finish their dinner first.
Perhaps the story was in conjunction with a visit to Miami by costumed Hanna-Barbera characters. The Herald published the photo shoot below on Dec. 11.
Quick Draw was featured on the front page of the TV section of the Vallejo Times-Herald of December 31, 1960. Looking at the gopher, I wonder if this publicity art was drawn by Gene Hazelton. The story on the next page is short but explains Quick Draw’s appeal.
Quick Draw Held Funniest Cowboy
This TV fast gun is a horse.
Television watchers have grown to love this western hero with the four legs. His name is Quick Draw McGraw, at 6:30 p. m., Thursday, Channel 2. There's affection, too, for his fearless but slightly dumb sidekick named Bobba Looey. Mr. Looey is a Mexican burro.
Quick Draw and his pal are the animated cartoon creations of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, whose success on TV was already assured when they introduced such stars as Ruff and Ready [sic], Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear.
The creators feel an important reason for their success is the good taste in their productions. Parents and PTA groups have yowled long and loud over the sadism, violence and sex innuendos permeating most of the ancient theatrical cartoons rerun on TV the past several years.
HURT PRIDE
When "Quick Draw McGraw" shoots a bad man, usually just his pride is hurt, or the seat of his pants is singed. It's doubtful either that you'll ever find him casting lecherous glances at some Betty Boop saloon hostess.
In spite of such distillation, Hanna and Barbera have injected enough western satire into "McGraw" to make him palatable to adults, who make up 60 per cent of their audience.
This season the boys got away from their exclusive diet of talking animals to take on “The Flintstones," a talented bunch of cave dwellers of the Stone Age. But that's another story.
Indeed. The Flintstones’ success all but killed feature stories on the Emmy-nomimated Quick Draw. Prime time is prime time, after all.
Still, the Kelloggs affiliate in St. Louis took out a two-page ad in the Post-Dispatch for a Quick Draw contest.
The Oregonian’s Harold Hughes fit in Quick Draw in part of his column of December 26, 1960. After talking about how former Portlander Bill Selleck set up a really low-budget commercial animation studio (25 frames a minute for $900 a minute), Hughes has some thoughts on Hanna-Barbera. Story missing conjunctions, other words.
BEST WAY to watch old Huckleberry Hound is to stretch out on the floor with the kids. The wind-up Yogi Bear strip is a riot. Maybe Forest Service should recruit army of wind-up Smokey Bears, put them to work fighting forest fires.
BILL HANNA AND JOE BARBERA are the heads behind Huck Hound, The Flintstones, Ruff 'N' Ready [sic], Quick Draw McGraw and the like. They plan series next year built around Yogi Bear, and there is report of full length movie on Yogi.
HANNA AND BARBERA were unemployed three years ago, like Selleck, came up with a cheaper way of producing cartoons by cutting the number of frames per minute, thus reducing the vast amount of drawing that Disney does. But both Bill and Joe worked 20 years doing cartoons for MGM, gave birth to cat-and-mouse team known as Tom and Jerry.
JOE ATTENDED banking school, took up doodling, became "cartooner." Bill studied engineering and journalism in college, worked as a structural engineer before joining Leon Schlessinger's [sic] cartoon company. Both are doggie daddies, trapped in the suburbs.
Since we’re looking at December 1960, there was merchandise just in time for Christmas, with Knickerbocker plush dolls of Quick Draw, Baba Looey, Snooper, Blabber (and, of course, Huck and Yogi).
But the one I kind of like is the Quick Draw McGraw Private Eye game, with 4 player tokens on plastic stands, 48 cards, a spinner and a 15¾ by 18½ inch folding board. One store was selling it for $1.98. Quite a while ago, I posted pictures of various H-B games. I decided to check eBay to see if one of these private eye games was for sale. I found several.
Hanna-Barbera may have ended production of new Huckleberry Hound cartoons in 1962, but he was still deemed a big enough star that box ads were taken out in newspapers that year for his half-hour show.
Here are a few. These chatty ones are for a TV station in Indianapolis.
This is one for a station in Amarillo. I think. The ad doesn't mention a station or channel.
Flint, Michigan to the left; Roanoke, Virginia to the right.
Cincinnati.
It is only appropriate that Huck is seen and heard in North Carolina, where his accent should be familiar to viewers.
Portland, left; Tulsa, right.
Sioux Falls, above; Atlanta, below. They had trouble spelling Huck's name in South Dakota.
This is for Miami, Nov. 29, 1962. Whose brilliant programming idea was it to run Huck opposite The Jetsons? Maybe it was "Bobb."
There are other ads, but this is good enough for now.
If Huck wasn’t on your TV set, you could get your blue hound fix at home by watching him on a Give-a-Show projector by Kenner. It wasn’t a home movie like, say, a Super-8 of Woody Woodpecker. It was a strip of slides. That had to suffice for us kids in the ‘60s. There was no sound so we could practice our impressions of Daws Butler doing Yogi. Look at the price!
Jon B. Knutson in Olympia had a wonderful blog with links to Give-a-Shows he had put together with Capitol Hi-Q music in the background. We had linked to it here in 2010, but it seems to have died the following year. Too bad. There’s so much on the internet that has disappeared. We are still here, however.
The Yowp blog is supposedly on hiatus, but we do have some new posts that will appear periodically (closer to monthly instead of weekly), we hope, through to Christmas, which has been our traditional H-B music post.
The last of Hanna-Barbera’s voice actors from the 1950s has passed away.
Elliot Field was 97. He died last Monday, the 23rd.
Elliot was the afternoon drive jock at KFWB in Los Angeles when Joe Barbera hired him to play the voice of Blabber Mouse opposite Daws Butler in the Snooper and Blabber segments of The Quick Draw McGraw Show. This was back in a wonderful era in radio when disc jockeys invented characters and did their voices on the air. What became the Blabber voice was apparently one of them.
The Snooper cartoons where you can hear him are Puss N’ Booty, Switch Witch (he also plays the witch, another radio voice), Desperate Diamond Dimwits and Real Gone Ghosts (he is also one of the ghosts). He was also the narrator in the Quick Draw cartoon Scary Prairie, the first cartoon put into production on the series.
Elliot explained to me that soon after being hired, he had to be hospitalised for an illness. At that point, Daws took over both Blab’s role. That wasn’t the end of his time with Hanna-Barbera. Flintstones fans will know him as Alvin Brickrock, the Alfred Hitchcock-esque neighbour. He was also a newscaster on the Superstone episode and provided several voices in Flintstone and the Lion.
Elliot was involved in a strike at KFWB in 1961 and, soon after, took a management job at a radio station in Detroit. He came back west in the late ‘60s and settled in Palm Springs. He served on the city council and was acting mayor at one point.
Being a disc jockey in the 1970s (and briefly again in 1988 before going back into news), I enjoyed Elliot’s stories of life on radio. There was plenty of creativity on the air and in promotions back in those days before consultants, computerised playlists and liner cards.
Below is an interview with him about his career. Unfortunately, he starts talking about his Hanna-Barbera career at the end when it's cut off. There doesn't seem to be a Part 2.
My thanks to Jeff Falewicz, who maintains some web sites and is one of those veterans who truly loves radio, for passing along the sad news. My sympathies go to Elliot’s family.
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].
Are we ever, EVER, going to see The Quick Draw McGraw Show on any kind of home video format?
I get asked that a lot.
Let’s hear from someone who should have an answer.
First, the background.
A wonderful man named Earl Kress had been hired to help get Hanna-Barbera’s early half-hours out on DVD. In 2005, the first season of The Huckleberry Hound Show was released. Earl had searched through the studio’s records, finding things he said they didn’t know they had. He found cue sheets, episode guides, footage lists for opening credits, even footage itself; all kinds of great things.
Unfortunately, Huck didn’t sell as well as was hoped. But Quick Draw was put on the list for release.
Then the project went nowhere.
At the time, Earl told readers of the Golden Age Cartoon forum that the half-hour shows were not intact that he could find (in colour, anyway), some of the bridges could not be found, and some of the footage was not in the best condition.
But the main problem was music rights.
When the Hanna-Barbera studio opened in 1957, the most inexpensive way to include background music in a film was to license a stock music library. Hanna-Barbera signed television deals for two very popular ones—the Langlois Filmusic library, “composed” by Jack Shaindlin, and the Capitol Hi-Q library, created in 1956 from the works of numerous composers, but updated by Capitol record every year. Ruff and Reddy cartoons used these libraries. So did three of the four seasons of The Huckleberry Hound Show and two of the three seasons of The Quick Draw McGraw Show. (Afterwards, Hoyt Curtin was hired by Hanna-Barbera to compose cartoon cues that belonged to the studio).
When the Huckleberry Hound DVD was released in 2005, Capitol still had rights to the stock music and a deal was struck to clear it for home video use. That soon changed. The music, as Earl explained, had reverted to the composers or their heirs, and trying to get it approved for DVD was thwarted by demands from two estates. He rather forlornly expressed the feeling the odds were against Quick Draw cartoons—at least the ones with the Shaindlin and Capitol music—ever being released on home video.
We’re getting close to 20 years later. There’s still no Quick Draw home video, excepting a small number of cartoons with Curtin’s cues on compilation discs.
Enter George Feltenstein.
Among animation fans, George is best-known for his years with the Warner Home Archive, overseeing releases of various Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes. Hanna-Barbera now falls under his company’s eye. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read a promotional puff piece about some H-B series or specials I think are really lame and yelled “What about Quick Draw!?!”
George has answered that question in an interview with music expert-turned-author Greg Ehrbar.
“What we face with music clearance on television programming is pretty horrific. Thankfully, most Hanna-Barbera productions don’t have music clearance issues, thanks to the late, great Hoyt Curtin. His work-for-hire compositions that were so unforgettable, those are not a problem. It’s when something else was introduced from outside the bubble, that’s where things get complicated.
“Of course, the early years when they didn’t have work-for-hire compositions in the very, very early shows; for example, that’s why there’s no Ruff and Reddy DVD.
“Well, we would like to change that, and we’re now finding ways to make some of those things happen. You take everything a step at a time. I don’t give up easily. [...]
“I still will pursue the projects I would like to see. All four seasons of Huckleberry Hound. I would like to see Quick Draw McGraw. I’d like to see New Adventures of Alice in Wonderland. But, in the meantime, we have such a gold mine of treasures that are clear, that are ready for release, or that can be made ready for release, and that’s the direction we’re taking right now.”
So George’s attitude is “never say ‘never’.” But it’s more of a hope than anything else. There’s no indication from him anything has actually been done about Quick Draw (or Huck), or whether he has to convince management to agree to demands of the stock music rights holders (which was done for the Warner Bros.’ “Seely Six” cartoons from 1958) as the decision certainly wouldn’t be his alone. But those two fine series ARE on his wish list and he’s pledging to work to get them out. Just not now. For now, we can expect to see Blu-rays of cartoons from the ‘80s. Well, I guess someone likes them.
In the meantime, you’ll have to continue to enjoy Quick Draw McGraw bootlegs, as slightly murky and defaced with TV bugs as they are.
Incidentally, this should be a good year for early Hanna-Barbera fans when it comes to books. Greg has written Hanna-Barbera: The Recorded History. Greg certainly is the right person to write this, as he knows more about H-B Records, Colpix and the Golden Records that featured Hanna-Barbera characters than anyone I can think of. And there’s a bit on music used in the actual cartoons.
And Kevin Sandler and Tyler Williams have written Hanna and Barbera: Conversations, which should be out in May. I intend to talk to Kevin and post the interview here as we get closer to the publication date. When it comes to the early days of the studio, there are fewer and fewer people around to converse with. I had the great pleasure of chatting with layout man Jerry Eisenberg and writer Tony Benedict some time ago, as well as retired KFWB disc jockey Elliot Field, who provided voices for the studio in 1959 before moving to Detroit. I’m looking forward to both books.
Oh, and a fruitful conclusion to George Feltenstein’s idea to let us all see Quick Draw McGraw in his pristine glory.
By the way, George, if you’re reading and would like send me scans of Quick Draw cue sheets, I’ll happily accept them.
P.S.: People also ask me about the status of this blog. I honestly don’t have time to write a lot now. I’m on to other things in real life. However, I have put together a number of posts and there’ll be something once a month for the next number of months, the same as last year, but the blog is pretty much retired.
The Quick Draw McGraw Show was bought and paid for by Kellogg’s, so the cereal maker made sure it had its imprint in the opening and closing animation.
As the Randy Horne Singers cheerfully bleated out “(That’s) Quick Draw McGraw,” the star drove a stagecoach through the plateaus of the American Southwest.
The camera cuts to a close-up of Quick Draw cracking his whip. Rather cleverly, the whip returns to spell the sponsor’s name with the letter-style familiar from cereal boxes.
But hold on thar! Quick Draw’s rope trick is only temporary. The letters fall and drop around his snout.
Quick Draw cracks the whip again. The force causes his head to swirl around, giving him multiple eyes and some funny expressions which viewers don’t see because of the pace of the animation.
The letters on the whip resume their correct form.
Some years later, Hanna-Barbera put out both the Huck and Quick Draw series into syndication, but without Kellogg’s participation; stations could sell the spot-break time that had been used to sell Sugar Pops or Corn Flakes. This also meant changes in the openings and closings to remove all references to Kellogg’s.
This annoyed me as a kid. “They’ve cut out Baba Looey on the stagecoach,” I grumbled loudly at the TV set.
I was also irritated about the changed opening to the Huck show. “Where’s the rooster?” I wanted to know. Years later, when Huck came out on DVD, the rooster footage returned and I satisfied myself it wasn’t something my childhood imagination had dreamed.
Animation director Robert Alvarez has these layout drawings in his collection. I presume they’re the work of Dick Bickenbach as his personal collection of H-B artwork ended up being auctioned on line. (Mr. Alvarez clears up the origin of these drawings in the comments. While Bick's artwork was auctioned, that is not the source).
I couldn’t tell you who animated these opening and closing sequences. I’m pretty sure the backgrounds are by Joe Montell, who worked for Tex Avery at MGM and later for John Sutherland Productions and Jay Ward in Mexico.
Now, thanks to the collection of the late Earl Kress, a little appropriate music. Here is the Kellogg’s “Good Morning” jingle on a xylophone. I’ve snipped out Hoyt Curtin’s slate and instructions. The xylophone player is named Chuck. There are three versions at different tempos. These were made at Western Recording on August 26, 1960. At the same session, by the way, Curtin recorded the vocals for the “Happy Anniversary” episode of The Flintstones.
GOOD MORNING XYLOPHONE
GOOD MORNING XYLOPHONE FAST
GOOD MORNING XYLOPHONE FASTER
And, because you want it, here is Hoyt Curtin scatting how he wants the Kellogg’s jingle to sound.
GOOD MORNING by HOYT CURTIN
Ah, but that’s not all!
Also buried in Earl’s audio collection are the opening/closing Kellogg’s billboards for Top Cat. Weekly Variety reported on March 1, 1961 the series had been sold to the cereal company and Bristol-Myers (makers of Ban deodorant and Bufferin) on an alternate-weekly sponsorship basis.
TOP CAT OPENING BILLBOARD
TOP CAT CLOSING BILLBOARD
This is the point in the post where I make my usual lament that Quick Draw isn’t on DVD (except for several episodes from the last season where music rights aren’t an issue) and that the Top Cat DVD has the same closing credits on all 30 episodes. (Kin Platt did not write the whole series, on-line "research" notwithstanding). We know from Variety’s review of Oct. 4, 1961 that Harvey S. Bullock wrote the debut “The $1,000,000 Derby” and Mike Maltese told interviewers he also supplied at least one story).
Kellogg’s deserves some credit for the success of the Hanna-Barbera studio. In 1958, H-B Enterprises was only turning out Ruff ‘n’ Reddy for NBC. Joe Barbera or Screen Gems’ John Mitchell or both managed to convince Leo Burnett, Kellogg’s agency, to replace one of its syndicated half-hour live-action strips with The Huckleberry Hound Show. Huck’s incredible success resulted in the birth of Quick Draw and the expansion of what became a cartoon empire.
