As we get closer to the release of Quick Draw McGraw on Blu-ray, it is appropriate that we pay tribute to someone whose name you do not see to the right.
Joe Barbera was quoted by Douglas Diltz of UPI in June 1959 that there was a dearth of voice actors in Hollywood, and Hanna-Barbera was on the lookout for people who had a unique repertoire of voices. With Quick Draw on the horizon, the studio was scouting the field. In more ways than one.
Among the people hired for the show was KFWB announcer Elliot Field.
He was part of an era when disc jockeys replaced network-style dramas and comedies, and injected their own humour with voices and sketches in between records. Elliot had been doing it on radio in Texas before he arrived in Los Angeles.
Elliot was one of two new actors hired for the Quick Draw show. The other was radio actor Doug Young, who was recommended by Daws Butler to play Doggie Daddy. Young’s career lasted for a number of years at Hanna-Barbera until he moved from California. Elliot’s didn’t. He had been picked for the role of Blabber Mouse, but after four episodes, he was replaced by Daws Butler. Elliot told me it was because he got sick.
Within a few years, his career at KFWB went sour because of a strike, and he ended up accepting a job in Detroit.
The Detroit Free Press profiled him in its Jan. 31, 1965 edition. It even mentions his work at Hanna-Barbera.
A Man of Many Voices---That’s Elliot Field
BY BETTELOU PETERSON
Free Press Radio-TV Writer
Beware of meeting Elliot Field. You may wind up in his gallery of characters.
Field is proprietor of "The Elliot Field Gazette," newly introduced on WJR Monday through Friday at 2:10 p.m. The show combines music, talk, poetry and interviews in a magazine-like format.
Assisting him is announcer Charley Park and Jimmy Clark on piano and organ. An occasional guest will be heard, but the other voices, and there may be as many as 50 of them, will all be Elliot Field.
• • •
YOU ALREADY may have heard some of the various Field voices. He has worked for Stan Freberg's commercial producing company, did a "Flinstones" [sic] feature movie as Alvin Brickrock (Alfred Hitchcock) and was Blabber-mouse and Grumbleweed in early "Quick Draw McGraw" cartoons.
Elliot comes to WJR from Los Angeles where he was known as a rock 'n' roll disc jockey.
"I'm happy that I'm getting away from that with the 'Gazette,' " said Field. "This is a more mature approach to programming than I've ever been allowed to do before."
"You can really suffer from type-casting," said Field. "I did a President Kennedy voice for Freberg. A year later, he called and asked if I could do an Eisenhower. I was typed as an imitator of presidents."
(Eisenhower, said Field, is difficult to do. No distinguishing voice characteristics.)
• • •
ELLIOT FIELD'S experience has been more with the spoken word than music and disc jockeying. He started in radio at 15 in Boston, his home town, doing a CBS network show, "Youth on Parade."
At the University of Florida, he continued working radio while running up an impressive list of academic honors.
His professional radio career has taken him to Miami, Miami Beach, Boston, Houston and seven years in Los Angeles before coming to Detroit. All the time, he has worked at his second love, acting, on stage and on TV and radio.
As he traveled from city to city, Field was adding voices to his gallery. Probably his favorite is Tex, a gravelly bass who joined him in Texas. So delighted were Houstonians with Tex he received 81 votes for mayor in 1957.
"I discovered something about Tex," said Field. "I tried him once minus the accent and discovered he was character actor Eugene Palette."
• • •
WHILE IN Hollywood, Field met most of the actors whose voices speak for cartoon characters. He recalls especially making the Flintstones film.
Mel Blanc, perhaps the most famous voice in Hollywood, plays Barney Rubble in the Flintstones. Blanc was severely injured in an auto accident during the making of the movie. Rather than recast, his hospital room was turned into a recording studio and the cast gathered around Blanc's bed to do their scenes.
"I'm convinced this helped Mel get well," said Field. "He had something to take his mind from himself."
In a way, Field knows the problem. Crippled by polio when he was 3, he has had to overcome shyness about his limp. But he discovered that he gets too interested in whatever role he’s doing to worry about it.
Field, 34, and wife Norma have three youngsters. The baby, Julia Ann, was born Nov. 27 in Detroit. With David, 4, and Steven, 2, the family lives in a rambling house in Southfield.
Among Elliot’s incidental voices were the narrator who opened Quick Draw’s first cartoon, Scary Prairie, Aloysius the rich cat in the first Snooper and Blabber cartoon, Puss ‘n’ Booty, and the witch who takes the detectives to court in their second cartoon, Switch Witch. It’s a shame he wasn’t able to stay as he was versatile.
The Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw and Yogi Bear shows all had gang credits at the close. Among the other people heard on the Quick Draw show in the first season were Peter Leeds, Vance Colvig, Jr., Jean Vander Pyl, Red Coffey/Coffee, Hal Smith and Julie Bennett. With the exception of Leeds, another one of Freberg’s regulars, all were given screen credit later on for other roles, and their work at Hanna-Barbera was known. Elliot toiled in anonymity, at least at first, but it’s good we can give him recognition today.
Elliot passed away in the Palm Springs area, where he had lived for many years, on Sept. 23, 2025. He was 97.
One episode of the Quick Draw McGraw show starts with our hero welcoming us to his ranch. “The show will start before you can count to three,” Quick Draw tells us. Off camera, you can hear “Four!” then...
“Now, hoooold on thar!” shouts our hero. Cut to Augie Doggie apologizing, “But I hollered fore!” Doggie Daddy’s mouth moves like he’s laughing but no sound comes out.
For some reason, the stars of the other cartoons are playing golf on Quick Draw's ranch.
“Hand me my number nine mashie giblet, Blab. I’m going to knock both golf balls for a hole in one.”
Snooper wonders where his golf balls have gone. Quick Draw leans into the frame. “Does this answer your question?” I like how Quick Draw turns to look at the TV audience, though he wouldn’t be able to see them.
Quick Draw is convinced to take a swing. He fails badly. Unfortunately, the best in-betweens of the golf swing can’t be seen on the video because of overlapping frames. There’s a swirl cycle of three drawings.
Cut to a close-up. “Anyway, folks,” confides Quick Draw, “Get ready for a fooooour-star cartoon show!” He shakes his muzzle on “four.” (Or is it “fore”)?
Ed Love does a fine job animating this little cartoon-before-the-cartoons. Daws Butler speaks for Quick Draw, Baba Looey, Snooper, Blabber and Augie Doggie, while Doug Young has a line as Doggie Daddy.
Thanks to Steve Hanson for posting this 16mm print.
“The boys are givin’ me a hand with the mail this week,” says Quick Draw McGraw in one of short cartoons before the end credits of his show.
The gags aren’t terrific, but pleasant.
Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy are wrapping parcels. Somehow, Doggie Daddy wraps Augie in a package.
Snooper and Blabber are sending an airmail letter to Cactus Sam by rocket. But the rocket expectedly returns. “You forgot to put a stamp on the letter,” observes Blab.
The final gag is a Western cliché. Quick Draw gets a special delivery letter from Chief Little Runt, who appeared in Scat, Scout, Scat (Production J-5, 1959). The letter is in smoke signals. It reads: “Our next cartoon show is a special delivery of laughs.”
Cut to Baba. “And don’ts you forgets it, folks,” he reminds us.
It’s a month from today the Quick Draw Blu-ray will be available for purchase, and we hope the mini-cartoons like this (this one from a 16mm film in Steve Hanson’s collection) will be a part of it.
It's actually happening.
After years, and years, and years of waiting, the Warner Archive Collection is finally able to get the Quick Draw McGraw series on a home video format.
The company's Facebook page notes:
Each episode delivers the original triple-segment broadcast experience: the satirical Western antics of Quick Draw McGraw and his faithful sidekick Baby Looey [sic], the heart-warming domestic comedy of Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy, and the sharp-witted noir parodies of Snooper and Blabber.
Setting aside the typos and some of the rhetoric (I've never thought of Snooper as a "noir" parody; the artwork doesn't have that kind of atmosphere), this is amazing news.
You've read about the almost 20-year-long difficulties of getting these cartoons available. Elements were not in the best of shape. Clearing the Jack Shaindlin music and some of the other cues. And initial skittishness because the Huckleberry Hound DVDs didn't sell as well as expected.
At least this is what I was told by Earl Kress (and I believe he explained this on the GAC Forums back then) when he was doing some work to try to get the series out then. It's sad that he's not alive to see this happen.
The release says "all 45 episodes." Whether it's safe to assume the little cartoons between the cartoons will be included (or the Kellogg's commercials), I can't tell you. I would hope Greg Ehrbar would have George Feltenstein of the Warner Archive on his podcast to talk about this. And I do hope the original credits are there so we can learn who did what on each of the cartoons.
It doesn't appear there are any commentaries. However, there is a special featurette called "The Good, the Bad and the El-Kabong." It was on the Saturday Morning Cartoons 1960s Vol. 1 set.
Quick Draw is my favourite of all the Hanna-Barbera shows, and I hope Warners has done justice to these cartoons for the many fans who have been waiting for this.
Specs:
1080p HD MASTERS FROM 4K SCANS OF THE ORIGINAL CAMERA NEGATIVES!
MSRP $39.98
6 BD-50
Running Time: Approx. 1050 minutes
COLOR
Subtitles: ENGLISH SDH
Aspect Ratio: 16x9 1.33:1 with side mattes
Audio: DTS-HD MA 2.0 MONO
Oh, the release date. Silly me. It is September 29th.
The Yowp blog has some great readers.
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.
Thanks to Stephen for passing this along.
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.
As we get closer to the release of Quick Draw McGraw on Blu-ray, it is appropriate that we pay tribute to someone whose name you do not see to the right.
YOU ALREADY may have heard some of the various Field voices. He has worked for Stan Freberg's commercial producing company, did a "Flinstones" [sic] feature movie as Alvin Brickrock (Alfred Hitchcock) and was Blabber-mouse and Grumbleweed in early "Quick Draw McGraw" cartoons. 
Among Elliot’s incidental voices were the narrator who opened Quick Draw’s first cartoon, Scary Prairie, Aloysius the rich cat in the first Snooper and Blabber cartoon, Puss ‘n’ Booty, and the witch who takes the detectives to court in their second cartoon, Switch Witch. It’s a shame he wasn’t able to stay as he was versatile.
