This is news that fans have been waiting for.
Many of you know that about 20 years ago, the first season of The Huckleberry Hound Show came out on DVD. Sales weren’t as good as expected, and that partially weighed into a decision not to release the remaining three seasons. There were also issues finding elements of the half-hour series but, more importantly, there were money problems trying to get the rights to use the Jack Shaindlin and Bill Loose cues as they had returned to the composers’ heirs.
This, evidently, has been worked out. The Huck show, in its entirety, will be available on Blu-ray next month.
The Warner Archive news release contains the following:
To faithfully present these episodes as originally aired, you’ll be able to enjoy each show containing original bumpers and bridges, as well as rarely seen vintage commercials featuring the characters from the series.
This means all the Huck, Pixie and Dixie, Yogi and Hokey Wolf cartoons that appeared on the show (Yogi, of course, was spun off and some of his cartoons appeared exclusively on his show).
You can read more in this release.
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.
Why would Hanna-Barbera leave some cartoons unseen?
I’m afraid I don’t have the answer to that one. All I know is it happened.
The last production number for a cartoon in the Yogi Bear Show was R-83. But ten years ago, I posted panels for a storyboard for R-88, a Yogi cartoon titled “Beast Feast.” It never appeared on the air and possibly could have been abandoned during production.
At the time, I wondered if there were also productions R-84, R-85, R-86 and R-87 that were not finished or did not air. It turns out the answer is “yes.”
Animation director Robert Alvarez has an incredible collection of discarded artwork from various studios. For a number of years, he has been posting and re-posting it on Facebook. The other day, he re-posted a nine-panel sheet for a Snagglepuss cartoon which I did not recognise. I checked the production number up top and it is R-86, so this is from another cartoon that either wasn’t finished, or was not broadcast.
The drawings (and lettering) look to be the work of story director Alex Lovy. Mike Maltese likely wrote the story, and it appears reminiscent of The Wabbit who Came to Supper (Warner Bros., 1942) in which Elmer Fudd gets a telegram telling him he'll lose his inheritance if he harms Bugs Bunny. That story was written by one M. Maltese.
Whether Robert has the whole board, I haven’t asked, lest I impose on him. Some time ago, he posted these two sheets. The production number is faded on the first one, but I suspect these are both from R-86. You can click on them to enlarge them.
I thank Robt. for allowing me to purloin these. Pur-lion, even.
P.S. As you know, I’m resting the Tralfaz blog. This blog is supposed to be on permanent hiatus as well, but I have cobbled together new monthly posts you’ll see through the start of December.
Yogi Bear tries a magic trick in one of those cartoons-between-the-cartoons on the Huckleberry Hound Show.
Alakazam, Alagazoom
Come out, little bear, wherever you ere, are.
“Hiya, Yogi,” says Boo Boo, after popping out of the hat. He then jumps off stage. “Hello, there, Boo Boo,” Yogi responds, waving at him.
But that’s not the end of it. Yogi’s magic has conjured up another Boo Boo. And another. And another (in recycled animation).
“I goofed somewheres,” he says to the TV viewing audience. But he writes it off when the director cuts to a closer shot. “But you’ve gotta admit, it’s a pretty slick trick.” Iris out.
Yeah, it’s not hilarious, but it’s a pleasant enough interlude. Kids probably liked the idea of multiple Boo Boos just popping up (with assistance from the Hanna-Barbera sound effects library).
Then it’s on to a commercial for Kellogg’s, the Best to You Each Morning....
“MeTV is running old Hanna-Barbera cartoons. What do you think, Yowp?” I have been asked by blog readers. I’m not really sure why anyone is all that interested; like anything else I’ve written about cartoons, you can take my opinion or it leave it.
I’m happy the old cartoons are getting some exposure, and may attract new viewers. It’s no secret there are some series that leave me cold (sorry, Magilla) but there’s nothing wrong with watching the original Huck Hound and Yogi Bear shows, especially in higher definition versions than anyone has seen before. To think that 60-plus years ago, our antenna was pulling in these same cartoons on a black-and-white Philco on channels that were, in some cases, about 120 miles away. (I confess I have not owned a set in almost 30 years so I am not watching MeTV or any TV. Sorry, Philco).
Long-time readers here know my favourite of all the H-B series is The Quick Draw McGraw Show, which MeTV is not airing. I have no inside knowledge about the situation. Perhaps Jerry Beck has some insight. To speculate, it could be a case, like the late Earl Kress told me when he tried to assemble a DVD set of the show years ago, some elements are missing or are in poor shape. And the first two seasons use the Langlois Filmusic library, which could not be cleared for home video use. I suspect Warners would like to recoup some restoration costs through BluRay sales. (The cartoons also feature the Capitol Hi-Q library, but most of the cues are by Phil Green which, the way Earl put it, could be cleared through EMI. Other ones by Bill Loose were a problem).
Like Yogi in hibernation, this poor old blog is supposed to be slumbering peacefully, but Strummer Petersen sent me some of the in-between cartoons that are airing on the Yogi show on MeTV, and I felt obliged to post some frames from one of them.
Long before “universes” based on who owns a cartoon, Quick Draw, Yogi and Huck interacted with other characters who appeared on their programme in little vignettes between the cartoons. This makes perfect sense, unlike mushing Jonny Quest and the Snorks in some kind of warped cross-breeding that you’d find in Tex Avery’s Farm of Tomorrow.
In one of the in-between shorts, Yogi is a waiter in a Brown Derby-like restaurant (at least, judging by the Hanna-Barbera star pictures on the wall). His customer is Yakky Doodle (played by Jimmy Weldon).
“What is the speciality of the house?” enquires the duck.
“Roast duck. What else?” replies Yogi. We get a stretch take out of Yakky, who flies away in horror.
I love Yogi’s quick expression as he realises punking Yakky has been a success. Take that, you annoying duck!
“I can understand his sensitivity,” Yogi confides in us. I feel the same way about bear claws.” He does his Yogi laugh as he swings his head from side to side.
But Yogi, ducks can be eaten. No one eats bear claws. Oh, well.
Ed Love is the animator of this little piece.
MeTV viewers, I hope you enjoy the old cartoons on television once again. Maybe El Kabong will swing onto the small screen in high-def some day.
Update: Reader Matt Hunter tells me a bear claw is like a Danish pastry. I've never heard of it. But now the gag makes sense.
One way of getting into a Yogi Bear cartoon was a pan over a long background while Don Messick, as narrator, sets up the plot.
One of those cartoons was Bear For Punishment, which first aired on the Huckleberry Hound Show on the week of November 30, 1959. The studio added background painters that year, as it added the Quick Draw McGraw Show to its workload. Fernando Montealegre, Bob Gentle and Art Lozzi were joined by Dick Thomas and Joe Montell. Thomas had originally been Bob Clampett’s background man at Warners and eventually left the studio in the mid-1950s to work for Disney. Montell’s first job was with Tex Avery at MGM and, when the unit was disbanded, he ended up (with Warren Foster, who wrote this cartoon) at John Sutherland Productions.
Montell is responsible for the backgrounds in this cartoon. After a shot of cars (on a cel being moved to the left) over a woodsy, repeating background, he came up with this for the second scene.
Bill Hanna then cuts to another background drawing, which is panned to the right. There has been no animation yet. That begins when the shot stops on Yogi and Boo Boo, and they begin snoring. The heads are the only things that are animated.
The next cut is to a long, repeating background. Notice how the bare pine and right-leaning whatever-it-is tree on the left of the painting are the same as on the right.
This background gets a good workout as cel overlays with cabins (as well as the animation) are placed on top. Here’s an example, just after Hanna cuts away from Yogi and Boo Boo. The cave is placed over top of the tree slanting to the left and the fir next to it. There are two overlays, one of the left half of the cave entrance and the other of the right, allowing the two bears to leave the cave. Below, you can pretty much see where the right overlay is placed.
Montell’s style is pretty easy to spot. He loved dots. See the dots he has next to branches or on top of stems? And dots he uses for rocks? That’s Montell. You can see the same thing in some of his cartoons for Avery and at Sutherland.
The animator of this cartoon is Gerard Baldwin in his first go-around at Hanna-Barbera. He started his animation career at UPA in the 1950s, and moved to Sutherland where he has an animation screen credit on that studio’s magnum opus, Rhapsody of Steel (1959). He has an odd way of drawing the bear, with two roundish parts to his muzzle in certain views, a little loop for a mouth, and sometimes with a stretched neck with his nose up. We’ve shown some examples in this post about the cartoon.
Here’s a bit of Baldwin dialogue animation. When Boo Boo (in one of many close-ups in this cartoon) asks “Why don’t we eat nuts and berries like other bears?”, Yogi responds with “Nuts and berries? Yechhh.” The drawings below are on twos.
My wild guess is the studio would not have used this many drawings in later years. It would go from profile, two in-betweens, front view, then the mouth-only animated to say “Nuts and berries? Yechhh.”
Both Baldwin and Montell left the studio for Jay Ward Productions before the season was finished. Montell ended up in Mexico supervising the work of Gamma Productions. Baldwin returned to H-B some years later and garnered some Emmys. He (and a number of others) never got screen credit on the end titles of the Huck show in the 1959-60 season but Montell did.
The blog profiled Montell some time ago and you can read that post here.
This is news that fans have been waiting for.
