Pixie and Dixie — Jiggers .. It’s Jinks!

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Lew Marshall; Layout – Ed Benedict; Backgrounds – Bob Gentle; Dialogue and Story Sketches – Charlie Shows and Dan Gordon; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Cast: Pixie – Don Messick; Dixie, Jinks, Boss – Daws Butler, Bullet (no voice).
Production E-19, Huckleberry Hound Show K-008.
First aired: week of November 17, 1958.
Plot: The mice help Jinks get back his security guard job after he is replaced by a speedier cat named Bullet.

We’ve talked about distinctive walk cycles before, with Yogi Bear’s bongo walk provided by Carlo Vinci probably the best known. Carlo seems to have loved odd walks and runs; he used an angular run in at least two Augie Doggie cartoons, Watchdog Augie and Snagglepuss.

This time, a watchcat has the unusual walk cycle and, if the credits are to be believed, it’s not Carlo who is responsible but Lew Marshall. Mr. Jinks plays a night guard and slowly shuffles along in twelve drawings on twos. It’s a great little cycle, and it was never used again. But then again, Jinks was never like he was in this cartoon again.

Indeed, this entry is quite different than most of the early Pixie and Dixies. Jinks is not only slow but has a great rumpled design from Ed Benedict. Even his hat is slovenly. He has a job. He and the meece are, more or less, friends. And it doesn’t take place in a house. It’s in a cheese factory.

The slow-for-one-cartoon Jinks seems to be a case of Hanna and Barbera dragging out a concept from their MGM days and adapting it. In Old Rockin’ Chair Tom (1948), the mammy character replaces “slowing down” Tom as the house cat with a faster one. Jerry helps Tom get his mouse-chasing job back. The plot borrowing may also account for the rare appearance of a human in this cartoon.

Bob Gentle must have loved nighttime blues and blue-greens. He swathed the Huck cartoon Skeeter Trouble with them and he’s done it here in the first pan shot of the outside of the factory. We get an inside pan as the narrator that Charlie Shows loved to use sets up the premise.


The mice are living in (and eating) a piece of cheese and “slow-motion Jinks” gives them a friendly wave. “But this set-up is too good to last,” says Dixie. The narrator chuckles “You are so right, Dixie.” There’s a shot of a door buzzer and then of a baggy-eyed cat and a baggy-eyed boss. Jinks lopes his way to the entrance. The boss announces to Jinks he’s fired: “I want a speedy mouse catcher around here.” So Jinks cycle-shuffles out the front entrance (though Jinks now has a sad expression instead of the happy one the first time). But the boss has a warning for Bullet, Jinks’ replacement. “If I see one mice around here, you’re through.”



“I wonder why they call him bullet,” Pixie ponders. He finds out quickly. We get lots of streaking brush lines here as the cat turns, zips out of the scene, then zooms past the meece, collecting them in the process. The shot of the mice and bullet is on ones. Here are consecutive frames.



We get the whizzing brush strokes in reverse a few frames later and then cut to Bullet at the entrance, drop kicking Pixie and Dixie. There’s a shot of the sad Jinks watching the off-screen trajectory overhead and then a thump. “You keep those mice out, and you’re in,” says the Boss to the saluting cat. Pixie and Dixie then decide to help get Jinks his job back.

The first plan involves Jinks pretending to be a mailman—he even says “Mail Man” slowly as if they’re two separate word—then shuffling toward (this time, in a different cycle, using ten drawings on twos) the factory with a parcel. Bullet simply presses an electric beam, which zaps the parcel and the disguise off Jinks. He runs away from the factory screaming while the mice, with their feet sticking out the parcel, make a run for it inside. Bullet collects them in a bit of re-used animation and drop kicks the parcel.



Next comes the old teeter-board routine. Jinks jumps on one end and the mice go over the stone wall. But Bullet is ready with a teeter-board and a garbage can on the other side. The mice land in the garbage can, then Bullet jumps on the board which springs the garbage can onto the teeter-board onto the other side. The force lifts Jinks into the air and into the can. The expressions are really clear, even though the animation is limited. Jinks looks like he’s turned into one of those ghosts in Pac-Man. “Any more bright ideas, bright eyes?” the angry Dixie says to Jinks as we get about a four-second hold on the scene.




Jinks looks more like a fox than a cat as he throws a bowling ball, with the meece inside, toward the entrance. The ball rolls into a cannon which Bullet has psychically placed in its path. He fires the cannon and then we get a Tex Avery gag used in cartoons like Wages to Riches (1949), Ventriloquist Cat (1950). The ball goes right through Jinks and leaves a hole. “Well, what do you know? I’m air conditioned,” Jinks observes.



A slingshot is the next mode of transport but as Dixie heads toward an open second-floor window, Bullet arrives with a baseball glove to catch him and his own slingshot. “Quick trip, wasn’t it?” says the mouse before he is shot back. So is the gag—it takes about 25 seconds of screen time. Jinks’ next brainstorm is that Bullet can’t catch two mice at the same time. So as Pixie and Dixie get ready and set to sprint into the factory. Before Jinks can say “go,” a flyswatter comes out of nowhere and crushes the mice. There’s now a medium shot of Bullet with a fly swatter and Jinks. “Chuck-le, chuck-le,” says the goofy-expressioned cat, instead of laughing. “What do you know? Two wit’ one blow.”

The crafty mice now come up with their own plan. They paint a rocket with a nose, eyes and a mousie grey colour (and attach ears). “Put plenty of glue on it, Pixie,” says Dixie. In case the viewer is slower than Jinks at the start of the cartoon and don’t catch on, the tube reads ‘GLUE.’ Jinks now goes into a circus ringmaster routine, though it’s odd considering all the circus-sounding music that was used in H-B cartoons, the decision was made to use one of Spencer Moore’s repetitious frolicking oboe pieces, which continues until it’s faded out at the end of the short and doesn’t really help build the climax scene too well. “Ladies and gentlemen,” cries Jinks. “Announcing the world’s fastest mouse!” That gets Bullet’s attention. The “mouse” whooshes past Bullet, and the speedy cat takes off in a blur. But the plan works. Jinks and the meece relate to us what’s happening off camera; Bullet catches the “mouse. “You mean the mouse got him,” corrects Dixie (yes, it is Dixie, even though Daws Butler’s voice is coming out of both mice). Bullet can’t let go, thanks to the glue and is flying in the air. Conveniently to the plot, the boss happens to show up. “Stop, or...” he yells at Bullet, putting his hand up for emphasis. But he can’t finish the sentence because Bullet knocks him down. The boss turns and hollers to him that he’s fired.

So Jinks has his job back. But instead of thanking the meece, he drop-kicks them out of the scene. “You don’t want me to lose my job, do ya?” says the incredulous, though still rumpled, cat. “From now on, just call me ‘Lightning.’” That cat goes to run away but we get a prat-fall instead. “Aw, what’s the use?” he says in close-up as the camera fades.



Very few pieces of music were used in this short. I’ve always like this particular Hoyt Curtin arrangement of the opening theme; it wasn’t used often. The rest of the music is from the Capitol Hi-Q library. Jack Shaindlin’s music is not to be found here, though some of his cues used in many other cartoons might have been better picks.

0:00 - Pixie and Dixie triangle/tuba main title theme (Curtin).
0:27 - ZR-51 LIGHT MOVEMENT (Geordie Hormel) – Jink meets boss and Bullet.
1:34 - TC-303 ZANY COMEDY (Bill Loose-John Seely) – Jinks fired, mice vow to get Jinks his job.
2:50 - TC-202 ECCENTRIC COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Mailman and teeter-board gags.
4:10 - TC-201 PIXIE COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Bowling ball, slingshot and fly swatter gags.
5:37 - L-1154 ANIMATION COMEDY (Spencer Moore) – Mice paint rocket to look like mouse, Bullet glued to mouse, Jinks gets reinstated, Mice kicked out.
7:10 - Pixie and Dixie end title theme (Curtin).

Huckleberry Hound Show Model Sheets

These were snagged from somewhere off the internet. I’m sure the experts reading this blog can add a bit of insight.

First is a Yogi Bear model sheet from March 1960 signed by Dick Bickenbach.


The next two sheets are undated and unsigned. They came from the George Nicholas collection. I guess the Jinks and meece sheet is for size comparisons; I’m not an expert on these by any means.



And, finally, is my favourite part of the whole collection. This would be from 1959 or 1960 before Yogi got his own show, because Yakky Doodle still has his original name of ‘Biddy Buddy.’ It still has some marginal characters that never really got too far—the two crows who battled Huck in two cartoons; the boxing kangaroo who belted Jinks in, I think, only Boxing Buddy and, naturally, the star of this blog—me. It’s too bad the quality isn’t better so you can see what’s surrounding the Joe and Bill caricatures a little better.


Was this used for publicity posters? It strikes me as a bit much for stationery.

Augie Doggie — Nag-Nag-Nag

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Dick Lundy; Layout – Ed Benedict; Backgrounds – Bob Gentle; Story – Mike Maltese; Story Sketches – Dan Gordon; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Cast: Augie, Cyclone – Daws Butler; Doggie Daddy – Doug Young.
Production: Quick Draw McGraw M-003, Production No J-23.
First aired: week of October 12, 1959 (rerun, week of April 11, 1960).
Plot: Augie tries to sneak a horse into the house past Daddy.

There are several basic premises which pop up time and time again in Augie Doggie cartoons. One of them is the “Can I keep him, huh, can I, can I?” plot, where Augie makes a new friend or has a new pet and excitedly asks the reluctant Daddy if it can stay with them. This is one of them.

Several things really brighten this cartoon. Mike Maltese pulls some cute lines out of his crazy, fertile brain, Doug Young is always fun as Daddy, and—in this particular cartoon—we get some great Ed Benedict designs and little touches by Dick Lundy, both of whom spent time at Lantz, Disney and MGM.

Here we have the interior of the Daddy family living room (what is their last name, anyway?). That’s where our scene opens as the worried Daddy pacing, wondering where Augie is. But we hear the door open and the scene cuts to Augie at the door holding a rope that is hanging out the door. What’s at the end of the rope? Augie struggles as he pulls and explains it’s “just an itty-bitty, stray, homeless pony that follered me all the way home, he did,” There’s a lot of head-shaking on twos going on in this scene. The first two frames below are when Daddy sees the off-camera door open and the two below that are of when the “pony” is pulled in. The second shake is accompanied by the sound effect of a door knocking to emphasize Daddy’s surprise. It’s a clever idea. Instead of re-using animation, Lundy comes up with two different shakes. You can see how he does them, two drawings for each shake.





“Can I keep him” etc. follows from Augie’s mouth, along with the usual kissing up. He calls him “animal lover dad” and “dear soft headed, uh, hearted dad.” When Augie corrects himself to say “hearted”, we get a dialogue head shake for emphasis. Lundy’s trying to toss in a bit of personality within the confines of limited animation. You sure wouldn’t see something like this in a Breezly and Sneezly cartoon. And notice the rectangular shadows to keep the background from being monotonous. I’ve seen this in other cartoons of 1959-60; I don’t know if Ed Benedict would have done this in layout or Bob Gentle decided on the colour separation.



Mike Maltese seemed to love dialogue word-play (witness the Bugs-Daffy-Elmer hunting trio of cartoons at Warners). “Can I?” “No!” “Can I” “No” “I no can?” Then we get a bad pun. The horse is named Cyclone. Daddy tells Cyclone to “blow.” Cyclone literally kisses up to Daddy, giving him one on the snout, and then breaks into a goofy grin. Daddy yells at him to get out. Maltese then audaciously hands this line to Augie: “But, Dad, baby, it’s cold outside.” How many references to pop songs do you hear as a throw-away gag in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon (other than a pun on a song title)?

“Poor old Cyclone can catch a cold,” Augie laments. The hammy horse nods in affirmation and tosses in some sneezes and coughs for good measure.



Daddy pulls down the window blind and tells Augie to have his milk and go to bed. Augie sadly drags himself into the kitchen, but then brightens when he sees Cyclone at the back door, panting and whimpering like a dog. Yes, I know that Augie is the dog in this cartoon, but let’s set that aside. Ed Benedict comes through with a flat-‘50s style kitchen.

“Who are you talking to?” the off-camera Daddy demands. Augie explains he’s talking to his glass of milk. “What won’t these kids do next?” Daddy says smilingly to the audience. But then we get yet a different two-frame head shake on twos as Daddy hears a muffled noise. The shot cuts to the fridge door, inhaling and exhaling. It blows open and there’s Cyclone. We get another goofy grin. Eating a banana is a nice touch. Daddy yells at him to get out, and he does so by running mid-air off-camera in a little cycle of drawings.

Daddy settles in his living room chair to read a book. There’s a sneeze. Augie admits it wasn’t him. “Well, who did snoze?” asks Daddy. There’s another sneeze and the two look up to see Cyclone hiding in a light fixture. The next sneeze rips the light off the ceiling and the horse land on top of Daddy, who kicks him out.

The next attempt has Augie with a fishing rod out of the upper storey window. He’s attached a string around the horse’s middle to try to raise him into the home. The string slips around a bit but Augie finally starts pulling up Cyclone, who doesn’t look too happy. A slide whistle accompanies a cell of the horse going up and down. Daddy shows up and asks “Now, how come you’re fishing this time of the night?” “Oh, I don’t know, dad,” Augie replies. “It’s just a hobby I guess.” Daddy grabs the “hobby” and his eyes grow, wondering what’s on the end of the line. He reels in the horse, who lands on top of him. “I have only one word to say,” the prone dog remarks. “Out!” And the horse runs off stage, presumably out the window, as we hear a whistle and a loud crash.



Daddy’s sleeping on his chair as the next scene opens. Augie and Cyclone are on the front sidewalk. Augie’s put roller skates on the horse to shove him into his room. But the noise from the passing horse wakes Daddy. “So, ho! It’s roller skatin’ you want, eh?” Daddy pushes the forlorn-looking horse from behind. “It’s roller skatin’ you’ll get.” You can hear the exertion in Doug Young’s voice. There’s even a little two-drawing vibrating animation cycle on the horse. Daddy shoves Cyclone out the back door, and the horse rolls down the street. Daddy now channels Jimmy Durante’s language-butchering as he bids “Aw rez-vore.” Not so fast, Daddy. The horse is stopped by a wire fence, which springs him back to the place whence he came. Well, almost. The force breaks down the back door, Daddy ends up on top of him but instead of rolling out the front, the horse has somehow changed direction, and rolls down the stairs as Daddy shouts the obligatory “Whoa!” They go past the same door and pictures in the background five times first. The crash is, naturally, off-camera, though Augie’s peering at it down the stairs. “Okay, Cyclone, I know when I’m licked,” says Daddy as we get a head-shake from Augie now. “Can I keep him, can I, can I?” excitedly asks the jumping Augie. We know the answer.



Maltese uses his standard Doggie Daddy wind-up question to the camera, which starts “After all, how many...” This time it concludes with “fathers have a live, horse-hair sofa?” And then Daddy does his usual laugh as the cartoon fades out (no iris this time).

Maltese re-worked the idea of Augie trying to keep a pet horse a year later in Horse-Feathers. The horse in that cartoon has pretty much the same design but is coloured blue and named Rosco.

As for the music, the sound cutter seems content to let most themes play on until the next scene. The “rising scale” music starts by going up nine notes, then in the next bar, doing it again a little higher. There’s a bunch of Jack Shaindlin pieces where for which I don’t have titles (one has ‘Fireman’ as part of the title); he seems to have written these for newsreels in the 1940s.

0:00 - Augie Doggie main title theme (Hoyt Curtin)
0:24 - GR-65 BUSH BABY (Phil Green) – Augie brings in Cyclone, Daddy kicks him out, Achoo!
2:07 - CB-89A ROMANTIC JAUNT (Harry Bluestone-Emil Cadkin) – Daddy pulls down window blind, Cyclone in kitchen, sneezing heard in living room.
3:48 - vaudeville rising scale music (Shaindlin) – Cyclone falls from light onto Daddy.
4:13 - CB-87A COME AND GET ME (Bluestone-Cadkin) – Cyclone on a fishing line, Augie puts roller skates on horse.
6:00 - fast show biz music (Shaindlin) – Cyclone rolls past Daddy, back into house and into cellar.
6:47 - ‘FIREMAN’ (Shaindlin) – Daddy says Cyclone can stay, horse-hair sofa.
7:09 - Augie Doggie end title theme (Curtin)

The Daws Bone’s Connected to the...

Daws Butler and Don Messick were the backbone of the body of voice artists in the first Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Actually, the first year that H-B Enterprises was in operation, they were the whole body, handling all the characters in Ruff and Reddy, though Lucille Bliss has revealed she was up for the role of Ruff and got screwed out of it.

When The Huckleberry Hound Show debuted in 1958, Daws and Don provided just about all the voices. Comedian Red Coffey was brought in to do his duck voice in a few. June Foray makes on appearance in a Yogi Bear cartoon. Ginny Tyler, who worked for Disney on children’s records, provides an annoyed housewife camper’s voice in a couple of other Yogis (at least it sounds like her). And a French accent is being faked in the Pixie and Dixie cartoon ‘The Mark of the Mouse’ by someone whose identity has escaped experts like Mark Evanier and Earl Kress.

The reasons for such a small stable would seem obvious. Theatricals didn’t employ more than a few actors in a short. And Daws and Don were terrific. Joe Barbera put it this way: “...it was like a gold mine with those two guys. Between them, they could do almost every voice you could think of.” Who needs anyone else, right?

Well, apparently there was another reason. One that Barbera outlined in a story to the United Press International wire service; this ran in a newspaper dated July 13, 1959.

Want To Crash Hollywood?
Use Your Head—And Voice
By DOUGLAS DILTZ
HOLLYWOOD (UPI)—A tip to those who want to crash Hollywood: The art of voice characterization offers a much better chance in the movie capital these days than the body beautiful.
Some of the most prosperous and highly-rated actors have hit the jackpot through their vocal impersonations. Most of these specialists, with the notable exception of Jim Backus (“Mr. Magoo,” etc.) live in a delightful world of almost complete anonymity, yet earn salaries that dwarf those of many glamorized personalities.
Artists like Daws Butler, Don Messick, June Foray and Patty Chapman [sic] can name their terms—the demand for their services is so acute.
According to Joseph Barbera, of the TV cartoon-producing company of Hanna and Barbera, there is a dearth of voice actors in Hollywood. The reason for the demand stems from a new surge in television cartoon production, not only in TV cartoon shows, but also for cartoon commercials.
For such TV cartoon shows as “Ruff and Ready” [sic] and “Huckleberry Hound,” there are more than 110 speaking characters. The voice specialist sounds off as many as 10 to 15 different characters for these cartoons.
Hanna and Barbera says it is always on the lookout for potential stars who have a repertoire of voices completely unlike anyone else’s. And, it won’t make any difference if you’re not pretty.

A dearth of voice actors? Like the hundreds, many of whom were amazingly versatile, who populated network radio only a few years before this news story was written? Call me Yowp the Sceptic, but it seems unlikely there was a “dearth of voice actors” in 1959. I say it ain’t so, Joe. Especially since Hanna-Barbera soon hired top radio character actors Alan Reed, Bill Thompson, Bea Benaderet, Janet Waldo and Penny Singleton. Oh, and some fellow named Blanc. Can’t remember the first name.

One thing is clear—the studio added artists as it added cartoons and voice artists were no exception, dearth or not. When The Quick Draw McGraw Show aired in 1959, several new actors came on board. Some lasted longer than others.

• Peter Leeds, best known for narration and foil duties with Stan Freberg, narrated ‘Scat, Scout, Scat’ and vanished for good.
• Los Angeles children’s TV star Vance Colvig appeared on ‘Bad Guys Disguise’ and disappeared until the following year when Barbera needed someone to say “Ain’t that cute” about a duck. Neither displayed much vocal flexiblity, surprising given Colvig’s pedigree.
• Elliot Field, a disc jockey who had arrived in Los Angeles from a radio station in Texas, was the original voice of Blabber Mouse before Butler took the role after four cartoons. He later came back to do guest voices on ‘The Flintstones’ before his radio career took him to Detroit.

Barbera lucked out with several other actors.

• Hal Smith, pre-Otis Campbell (the town drunk on Andy Griffith), lent his voice to a bunch of incidental characters for both the Quick Draw and Huckleberry Hound shows, then stayed with Hanna-Barbera through the ‘60s. Warners used him as Elmer Fudd after Arthur Q. Bryan died and he seems willing to accept work on the lamest of cartoons (like Filmation’s ‘Rod Rocket’ and Ken Snyder’s ‘Funny Company’ educationals).
• Julie Bennett, who also worked briefly for Warner Bros. and Jay Ward, made a couple of appearances as Sagebrush Sal on Quick Draw before claiming the role of Cindy Bear a year later.
• Jean Vander Pyl, the radio voice of Margaret Anderson on ‘Father Knows Best’, got most of the female roles, with some accents that would become familiar to viewers of Hanna-Barbera through the ‘60s.

But the only new regular voice actor on the Quick Draw show was a radio announcer and actor named Doug Young, who managed an amazing feat—he mimicked Jimmy Durante, keeping Durante’s humour but not overpowering you with the impression. You could watch Doggie Daddy and think of him as Doggie Daddy, not someone doing Durante. He added relaxed warmth to the voice and the role.

The surprising thing that you may not realise is when you watch the earliest cartoons on The Quick Draw McGraw Show, Don Messick is nowhere to be found. Why? That’s a mystery. Certainly no one at Hanna-Barbera could have been dissatisfied with him. It could be Don was busy with—CRINGE ALERT—the egregious ‘Bucky and Pepito’. Or maybe Barbara wanted to go with a bit of a different sound; certainly he did with the background music on the Quick Draw series. Whatever the reason, things seems to have changed about mid-season as Don’s familiar narration and incidental voices returned to add to his body of work as he and Daws Butler played off each other to delight cartoon lovers.

Good thing, too. After all, a body does need a backbone.

Yowp note: If you’ve never heard of Pattee Chapman in the wire story she, among other things, worked with Stan Freberg on the radio show ‘That’s Rich.’ Isn’t there always a Freberg connection?