Snooper and Blabber — The Lion is Busy

Produced and Directed by Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna.
Credits: Animation – Carlo Vinci; Layout – Walter Clinton; Backgrounds – Art Lozzi; Story – Mike Maltese; Story Sketches – Dan Gordon; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Snooper, Blabber, Snagglepuss – Daws Butler; Hazel – Jean Vander Pyl; Zookeeper, Desk Clerk, Major – Don Messick.
First Aired: week of February 14, 1960.
Plot: Snooper and Blabber try to capture Snagglepuss but contend with a gun-toting English hunter at the same time.

The early Snagglepuss is a great character because Mike Maltese added a Warner Bros. streak to him. In addition to the catch phrases we all know—“Heavens to Murgatroyd,” “Exit, stage left”—Snag gets to be like Bugs Bunny and the pre-jealous/angry Daffy Duck. He invades people’s space and lips them off, knowing he’s in control and smarter than anyone else in the cartoon. So Snagglepuss would be liable to suddenly pop up out of nowhere when characters are talking about him and happily exclaim some non sequitur like “I like New York in June. How about you?” (far funnier than the late ‘30s-early ‘40s versions of pre-Bugs or Woody, who’d uncreatively shout an insult like “Here I am, fat boy!”).

Snagglepuss can do it because he’s the antagonist. Unfortunately, when he got his own show, someone must have felt the good guy couldn’t do stuff like that so Maltese modified his character. Maltese wrote more plays on words (“I’ve been foreclosed! Five-closed, even!”) and vaudeville-style two-handers with Major Minor (“Didn’t I capture you in the Upper Mbutu?” “Au contraire. It was the Lower Lumbago. And it still hurts.”). He’s still a funny character and it’s the Snagglepuss everyone remembers. But the original, orange, different one is funny, too.

(Incidentally, you won’t find the lines in the above paragraph in any Snagglepuss cartoon. I made them up. Well, I think I did. It shows you what 50 years of watching these will do to your brain).

On television, Richard Diamond had a secretary who was heard but never seen, aside from her legs. So Maltese borrowed the idea and gave Snooper a secretary who was heard but never seen (and never paid, apparently). This cartoon apparently marks the debut of Hazel, given a Southern belle lilt by Jean Vander Pyl. Since she’s new, the dialogue’s straight-forward, though Blab tells the audience in an aside “she’s good to her parakeet.” We hear about the unseen parakeet in later cartoons.

Hazel dispatches them to the zoo, with Blab pretending to be the siren (do detectives really have sirens in their cars?)

Snagglepuss has escaped. The zookeeper confines he “was our star attraction. That’s why we must have him back. Otherwise, he could go shinny up a tree for all I care.” The zookeeper offers to “throw in an old buffalo robe” in addition to the “five-thousand clam dollars.”

Blab keeps up with the ‘si-reen’ sound as he and Snoop are walking down the street. Snoop tells him to “knock it off”, which gives Blab an excuse to say “I’m sorry, Snoop.” It’s a weak catchphrase, but that’s all he’s got.

So they get in the car. Snooper now owns a 1960 Clinton which, unlike the 1959 Bickenbach with no doors, has part of a door in long shots. Now the fun starts. Snagglepuss pops up from the back seat (with a ‘spoink’ sound effect).

Snag: Oh, taxi driver. May I prevail upon you to take me to Africa? And hurry. I’m in a dither to get there.
Snoop: Sorry, sir, but this isn’t a taxi cab.
Snag: Heavens to Murgatroyd! (gets out) I could’ve sworn you was a cab. Not the car. You. (points to Blab). With those ears, you look like a cab with its doors open. I must be off. Exit, stage left.

Off goes Snagglepuss, despite being told to “Stop in the name of the Private Eye Summer School.” If you haven’t guessed by now looking at the flatter-headed Snooper that Carlo Vinci is at work, this scene should convince you. Snag has one of those angular runs only Carlo liked to use, a cycle of four drawings on twos. Look at how his mouth goes off his face during the dialogue; Carlo never worried about that too much. Notice the pastel colours in the backgrounds that Art Lozzi paints in this and other scenes.

Snagglepuss stops at the Adventurers’ Club, where he does a stretch-dive through the door. Unlike most of Vinci’s dives, which are horizontal off the screen, this one is going into the background. See how Carlo moves his butt up then Snag shoots inside.

Snooper has a clever line here, where he exclaims that Snagglepuss is “trapped in a Daniel’s den.”

Now comes a funny little scene at the front desk.

Clerk: What can I do for you, sir?
Snag: I’m a hunted lion in sore need of refuge.
Clerk: This is not a hotel, Mr. Lion.

Art puts some depth in the wood panelling on the desk.

The desk clerk faints. Snag disguises himself as one of the adventurers (the string on his monocle keeps vanishing; it wasn’t drawn on the repeated cell when mouth has a short ‘a’ sound), but Snooper can see through it, thanks to the lion’s tail. See the wide Vinci teeth. And look how big Snag’s head gets.

So it’s “Exit, upper stage right” and into an elevator. Up goes Snagglepuss. And walking to the elevator door is the Major. He’s got a big-headed, barrel-chested design here (reminiscent of Total TV’s later Commander McBragg) but pretty much the same voice Don Messick would give Major Minor in the later Snagglepuss series. Maltese already has their opening dialogue style worked out.

Major: By Gadfreys! It’s old Snagglepuss!
Snag: By ditto! It’s the Major.
Major: Didn’t I shoot you in the Zambezi?
Snag: I don’t know. But I’ve been eatin’ off the mantle ever since. By the way, how is Africa?
Major: Africa is Africa. The tse-tse flies are teetzey-ing. The Veldt is velting.
Snag: Ain’t it the truth.



The bulk of the conversation is done in head shots only, just like the scene with Snagglepuss and Snooper in the car. So instead of animating the mouth, Carlo’s got a different head position for different vowels and consonants.

The major decides to “pick up where we left off,” so he starts chasing Snagglepuss around the Adventurers’ Club, firing his rifle. “What in carnation? Stop in the limb of the law!” exclaims Snoop. The wily cat convinces the Major that Snooper is a poacher. “I’ll show him how we handle poachers in the Punjab,” declares the Major, who starts firing at Snooper. Our detective heroes unsuccessfully try to avoid being shot by disguising themselves as stuffed heads. I love the uninterested yak head above them. Maltese dredges up a variation on an old line he used in one of my favourite Bugs cartoons, Rabbit Hood: “Gosh. The only thing I ever poached, was an egg.”



However, the Major ceases firing. It’s tea time after all. And it’s time for Maltese to parody upper-crust British society.

Snag: Tea?
Major: Brisk.
Snag: Crrrim? [cream]
Major: Lemon.
Snag: Sug-ah?
Major: Plizze.
Snag: Jolly.
Major: Ripping.

That’s Snooper’s cue to push a rifle at Snagglepuss, despite the Major’s annoyance of having a traditional tea break interrupted. Snoop gets Blab to go warm up the car while he puts the cuffs on Snagglepuss. “Heavens to Murgatroyd!” again wails the lion, as he proposes Snooper and the Major divide him equally. The tricky Snag then puts one cuff on the Major and the other on Snooper and it’s “Exit, stage left!” Carlo has Snag do kind of a quick double bounce (with sproink sound effect) before taking off.

The final scene has Snagglepuss driving Snooper’s car (with his nose in the air, the same way Ken Muse drew him driving in the last scene of Quick Draw’s Lamb Chopped). Hazel’s calling Snoop. You just know we’re going to get a “lion” pun here.

Hazel: Hazel to Snoop. Hazel to Snoop. Come in, Snoop.
Snag: Snagglepuss to Hazel. Sorry, but Snooper’s having tea with the Major.
Hazel: Well! Who are you?
Snag: If I told you, you’d think I was lyin’. And you’d be right. Ta ta!

So Blab does his siren sound as they drive to Africa and the cartoon fades out. But don’t worry. The orange version of Snagglepuss, Snooper, Blabber, the Major, the Adventurers Club, the Zambezi and Africa all return the following season in Big Cat Caper. Unfortunately, Carlo Vinci doesn’t. Hicks Lokey is over from Disney to animate from Paul Sommers’ layouts in that one. Those were the only two appearances of Snag on Snooper and Blabber. For the record, before getting his own show, he also appeared on:

• Snagglepuss (Augie Doggie, another Vinci-Clinton effort)
• The Party Lion (Augie Doggie, Lew Marshall animation)
• Lamb Chopped (Quick Draw McGraw, animated by Ken Muse)
• The Lyin’ Lion (Quick Draw McGraw, George Nicholas animation)
• El Kabong Meets El Kazing (Quick Draw McGraw, looks like Nicholas again)

Considering Mike Maltese put him in seven cartoons in three different shows, it would seem natural he was destined for his own series. It’s too bad the orange Snagglepuss wasn’t in it, but Maltese gave us a funny one, though more lacklustre-ly animated.

The music is a little different here, in that the sound cutter elected not to pick a bunch of the short Phil Green pieces to use as bridges. He uses the most familiar Green tunes associated with Snooper and Blabber, except one. He doesn’t end the cartoon with ‘Custard Pie Capers’, we get a Jack Shaindlin cue instead. We also get three chase scenes augmented with Shaindlin’s ‘Six Day Bike Race’ and another has the word ‘Fireman’ in it (my thanks to Earl Kress for the IDs).

0:00 - Snooper and Blabber Main Title theme (Hoyt Curtin).
0:25 - ASININE (Shaindlin) – Snoop talks to Hazel.
1:18 - GR-74 POPCORN (Green) – S&B talk to zookeeper, Snagglepuss in car; takes off.
2:22 - SIX DAY BICYCLE RACE (Shaindlin) – Snag runs down street; slides up to desk.
3:06 - GR-80 FRED KARNO’S ARMY – Dialogue with desk clerk, Snoop sees through Snag’s disguise, Snag gets into elevator.
4:20 - GR-96 BY JIMINY! IT’S JUMBO (Green) – Elevator door opens, dialogue with Major, Snag shot.
4:54 - SIX DAY BICYCLE RACE (Shaindlin) – Snag runs, Major slides up to him.
5:07 - CB-87A COME AND GET ME (Emil Cadkin-Harry Bluestone) – Major and Snag “poacher” conversation.
5:18 - SIX DAY BICYCLE RACE (Shaindlin) – “Keep your gun on him, sir,” Snoop and Blab run past Snag.
5:46 - GR-93 DRESSED TO KILL (Green) – Major and Snag have tea, Snoop puts gun to Snag’s head, Snag puts cuffs on Major and Snoop.
6:35 - ‘FIREMAN’ (Shaindlin) – Snag talks to Hazel, Blab pretends to be siren.
7:09 - Snooper and Blabber end title theme (Curtin).

Happy 100th Bill

Bill Hanna was born 100 years ago today in a little town in New Mexico. His name will forever be coupled with Joe Barbera’s, as it was during his lifetime. It’s difficult finding any old interviews of Hanna solo. If anything, Barbera seems to have been the dominant talker of the pair when discussing their studio or cartoons with interviewers.

Hanna wrote an autobiography where he likes everything and everyone, coming across as a humble, small-town Boy Scout who had a pleasant life surrounded by pleasant, creative people and pleasant, creative cartoons. Whether that’s true, I don’t know—the cynic in me realises Hollywood invents tales about just about everyone, imbuing people with qualities they don’t possess—but I’d like to think it is.

There may be one or two of you not familiar with Hanna’s life, so one of the best capsules may be found in his obituary. The AP wire had several different versions by Gary Gentile for papers of March 23, 2001, the day after Hanna’s death. Below is a combination story. The first photo you see is from 1988. The second is from 2000 and taken at the Los Angeles Museum of Television and Radio when Bill and Joe received a lifetime achievement award. Both accompanied various AP obits.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — His animated characters danced with Gene Kelly, won Oscars and Emmys, and uttered some of television’s most memorable lines, including the jubilant chant of everybody’s favorite caveman: “Yabba dabba doo!”
William Hanna, who with partner Joseph Barbara created such beloved cartoon characters as Fred Flintstone, Yogi Bear and Tom and Jerry, died Thursday at age 90.
Most of the duo’s frisky and cagey characters still delight audiences today, including Quick Draw McGraw and his sidekick Baba Louie [sic]; Snagglepuss, a lisping, chickenhearted lion; Top Cat, Magilla Gorilla and Scooby Doo.
Hanna died at his North Hollywood home with Violet, his wife of 65 years, at his side, said Sarah Carragher, director of publicity at Warner Bros., which now owns the Hanna-Barbera Studios.
The cause of death was not known, but Hanna had been in declining health for the last few years, Carragher said.
Hanna and Barbera collaborated for more than a half-century, first teaming up when both were working at MGM in the late 1930s. They created the highly successful Tom and Jerry cartoons, the antics of cat and mouse that won seven Academy Awards, more than any other series with the same characters.
“There are literally thousands of people working in the television animation business today who had the honor of training under Mr. Hanna,” said Jean MacCurdy, president of Warner Bros. Animation. “I was privileged enough to have been one of them. We will miss him terribly.”
Their cartoon classics have been turned into live-action feature films, including 1994’s “The Flintstones,” starring John Goodman, and “Scooby-Doo,” due out next year from Warner Bros.
Many of their shows can still be seen on the Boomerang cable network, created by the Cartoon Network this year as a showcase for the Hanna-Barbera library.
“We are greatly saddened by the death of one of the most influential animators of our time,” said Betty Cohen, Cartoon Network president.
“Bill was a cartoon scientist and a genius at timing. The cartoons of Hanna-Barbera have influenced and entertained generations of kids and adults and will serve as a legacy to his talent.”
Hanna was born in Melrose, N.M., on July 14, 1910. He left college to work as a construction engineer, but lost his job in the Depression. He found work with Leon Schlesinger, head of Pacific Art and Title, a cartoon production company.
In 1930, Hanna signed with Harmon-Ising Studios, the company that created the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon series, where he worked as a member of the story department, as a lyricist and a composer.
One month after being hired at MGM, he formed his partnership with Barbera.
The two first teamed cat and mouse in the short “Puss Gets the Boot.” When it was a hit with audiences and got an Academy Award nomination, MGM let the pair keep experimenting with the cat and mouse theme. The full-fledged Tom and Jerry characters — almost always telling the story entirely in action, not dialogue — were the eventual result; Jerry was borrowed for the mostly live-action musical “Anchors Aweigh,” dancing with Gene Kelly in a scene that became a screen classic.
Starting in the ‘50s, they created a witty series of television animated comedies, highlighted by “The Flintstones,” “The Jetsons,” “Yogi Bear” and “Huckleberry Hound.”
The team’s move into television wasn’t planned; they were forced to go into business for themselves after MGM folded their animation department.
With television’s sharply lower budgets, their new animated stars put more stress on verbal wit rather than the highly detailed, and highly expensive, action of the theatrical cartoon.
Like “The Simpsons” three decades later, “The Flintstones” found success in prime-time TV by not limiting its reach to children. It ranked in the top 20 shows during the 1960-61 season and Fred Flintstone’s “yabba dabba doo” soon entered the language.
Hanna and Barbera freely admitted it was a parody of “The Honeymooners,” with Fred Flintstone as Jackie Gleason and Barney Rubble as Art Carney. Likewise, Yogi Bear was modeled on Phil Silvers’ character of Sgt. Bilko in “The Phil Silvers Show.” [sic]
“You can read a lot into it,” Hanna once said. “You can compare Fred and Barney Rubble with Gleason and Carney.”
The Jetsons, which debuted in 1962, were the futuristic mirror image of the Flintstones. “Somebody said, ‘What’s next?’ and we went from the rock era into the future,” Barbera said at a celebration when the show turned 25 in 1987. “It wasn’t that brilliant, really, but we used a lot of gimmicks and gadgets and it worked.”
Hanna-Barbera received eight Emmys, including the Governors Award of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences presented in 1988.
Their strengths melded perfectly, critic Leonard Martin wrote in his book “Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons.” In a medium where the best works combined unforgettable characters and funny situations, Hanna brought cuteness, warmth and a keen sense of timing to the cartoons.
“This writing-directing team may hold a record for producing consistently superior cartoons using the same characters year after year — without a break or change in routine,” Maltin wrote.
Barbera brought the comic gags and skilled drawing.
“I was never a good artist,” Hanna said, but Barbera “has the ability to capture mood and expression in a quick sketch better than anyone I’ve ever known.”
Hanna is survived by his wife, a son and daughter, and seven grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements were pending.

As I mentioned, there are only few occasions I’ve seen Hanna’s name not mentioned with Barbera’s. If you’ve read their books, you’ll know the two had completely separate lives away from the studio. Here’s an odd one from the Owosso Argus-Press of November 7, 1961. The story is about Dr. and Mrs. G.W. Bennett of Elsie, Michigan. Dr. Bennett was in California to attend a meeting of the American Society of Anasthesiologists. The couple were invited to a party at a restaurant at Laguna Beach.

“... an art colony of painters, hand potters and workers in copper and brass.
It was here that the Bennetts met Bill Hanna, artist for TV’s Flintstones. He drew pictures of the four main characters, which he autographed. They are now prize possessions of the Bennett’s grandson, Bobby Hardaker, a Flintstones fan.

Now, I know Hanna was responsible for timing of cartoons and handing out scenes to animators in the MGM days, but I’ve never really known him to draw. Regardless, he left behind a legacy in the world of drawings. Someone known to many readers here put it in appropriate words in a feature story about Hanna in the New York Times of December 30, 2001:

“I’m sure when Bill and Joe came out with their TV shows, people were, like, ‘Oh, you've destroyed animation, and it’s never going to be the same again, and you’ve wrecked it, and the old shorts were classic and now they’re horrible,’” says Craig McCracken, creator of the punk but cute ''Powerpuff Girls'' for Hanna-Barbera. “Now that stuff is considered classic. I like it a lot better. The most important thing is the character. No matter how many drawings you stick into a scene, if that character is not appealing or interesting or funny, no one is going to laugh at it. The designs pop off the screen a lot more than old Tom and Jerry’s. There’s something really graphic and iconic about Hanna-Barbera’s television work. You just can’t take your eyes off it.”

And Steve Box of Wallace and Gromit succinctly and eloquently put it this way when asked by the BBC to comment on Hanna’s productions:

“They seemed to have been made just for me and I never felt patronised by them.”

Bill Hanna helped gather together creative people who provided enjoyment and happy memories for several generations. What better thing to leave behind?

Pixie and Dixie — Boxing Buddy

Produced by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Ken Muse; Layout – Dick Bickenbach; Backgrounds – Art Lozzi; Dialogue and Story Sketches – Charlie Shows, Dan Gordon; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Pixie, Ka-Pow – Don Messick; Dixie, Mr. Jinks, TV announcer – Daws Butler.
Music: Bill Loose/John Seely, Spencer Moore, Jack Shaindlin. Production: Huckleberry Hound Show K-026, Episode E-65.
First Aired: Week of March 23, 1959.
Plot: Pixie and Dixie bring home a boxing kangaroo, which clobbers Jinks.

In a daring stroke of bold originality, the brain-trust at Hanna-Barbera came up with a cartoon about a cat that mistakes a kangaroo for a giant mouse.

What, you say? It wasn’t original? It was blatantly purloined from the 1948 cartoon Hop, Look and Listen that Bob McKimson turned into a tiresome, one-note series?

Well, you’re sort of right. Mercifully, we’re spared an appearance by Jinks, Jr. putting a paper bag over his head and dolefully exclaiming “Oh, the shame of it all!” In fact, Charlie Shows and Joe Barbera took the idea and used it the best way you could—they made fun of it, calling it “a corny old gag.” And, unlike Sylvester, Jinks is finally convinced the “giant mouse” really is a kangaroo.

Unfortunately, Warren Foster and Tedd Pierce at Warners pretty well used up all the giant mouse-kangaroo gags so there aren’t an awful lot left for this cartoon. Worse still, the kangaroo-pummels-the-cat gags work better in full animation than they do in the limited TV kind.

The cartoon starts with Pixie and Dixie walking down a ranch house-lined suburban street. They spot a truck and read the sign on the side that we can read for ourselves. Despite being in a modern suburb, the road is so already so worn and bumpy, a crate containing Ka-Pow, World’s Greatest Boxing Kangaroo, bounces around and off the back of the truck. You’d think a driver would avoid a crate on the road, but that would be inconvenient to the plot of the cartoon. A car hits the crate, which flies against a brick wall and breaks open. Out jumps Ka-Pow, not affected at all by the impact.



Could someone explain to me why boxers in movies and TV shows, not just of the kangaroo variety, rub their thumb against their nose? Ka-Pow does it here. Don Messick gives him a weird, back-of-the-throat tongue vibrato similar to Gloop and Gleep on The Herculoids (1967).

There’s a weird cut when Pixie and Dixie begin to talk to the kangaroo. Below left, you can see him throwing punches. In the very next frame, he’s facing the other way and standing still. Spencer Moore’s music isn’t cut so I suppose Bick set up the shots this way in layout due to a lack of time.



In this scene, Daws Butler tries something unique. He has Dixie attempting an Australian accent to communicate with the kangaroo. It’s the lamest Australian accent you’ll hear. Of course, I’m sure Daws could probably come up with a good one; in this case, he has to do a American Southerner doing an Australian accent. And I suppose it would sound as lame as Dixie sounds. Dixie answers the unintelligible kangaroo by turning to Pixie and saying “He no speak English, señor” in a little lower pitch than Baba Looey would use later that year.

The mice decide to take Ka-Pow home. Jinks peers at the three of them as they stroll past the tree he’s behind. We get a typical Shows play on words.

Dixie: We’ll treat you like a brother.
Jinks (to himself): “A brother”? (chuckle) Oh, brother! I’m like, uh, disturb-bd by what I see, see?

And then comes the swipe at the tiresome Hippety Hopper (there had been ten “giant mouse” shorts at Warners by this point; it just seems like there had been more):

Pixie: Take your foot off our little friend’s tail, Jinks.
Jinks: Little? (chuckle) Look, uh, this may surprise you guys, but it’s my job to keep meeces off the premis-sis-sis-sis. And that goes double for huge mices, like this overgrowd mice with the mittens.
Pixie: But he’s not a mice.
Jinks: Oh, come now. Us cats knows a mice when we sees one. That’s our business. Why chant you try that ol’ worn out gag and, uh, tell me it’s a kangaroo.

So, now we’ve reached the 3:26 mark of the cartoon and nothing much has really happened. This happens in some of the cartoons Shows worked on and you’ll notice it even more when Maltese and Foster replaced him. In the most lacklustre ones, Shows’ characters have mildly-amusing dialogue that takes almost half the cartoon to set up the plot. Maltese and Foster get into things right away and their words are an awful lot funnier or sillier. Shows tends to go for clever verbal twists and turns (think of the Ruff and Reddy title ‘A Whale of a Tale of a Tail of a Whale’) and the humour comes from Daws Butler’s pronunciations.

At last, we get a couple of violence gags as Jinks goes to punch Ka-Pow. Some of them happen off camera to save animation. Others just take too long to set up, like how Ka-Pow’s feet push Jinks against a tree twice, or Jinks carrying on a running dialogue as he gets himself in shape through cycle animation (no wonder Ken Muse could churn out footage).




A bashed Jinks slowly trudges past the meece and the kangaroo, deciding to retire. “A cat which can’t kapow a mice is washed up. A disgrace.”

We hear Ka-Pow’s handler arrive on the scene and drags him away for his television appearance. Jinks is confused about a mouse being on TV. Finally, in the last scene, the announcer on the tube calls Ka-Pow a kangaroo and only then Jinks accepts the fact he’s not a mouse. Jinks gets brave watching the TV. “Boy, I wish that phoney baloney was here right now. Boy, would I give him a ka-p...” Jinks is interrupted by a punch from the kangaroo on the screen. “Why don’t I just keep quiet?” Jinks asks himself as he falls down and Ka-Pow grins at us from the set. Yeah, the character-out-of-a-TV bit is old, but the timing is very good, making the ending the best part.



This is the last Pixie and Dixie that Shows worked on.

A couple of people have remarked the final gag was pretty much lifted from the final gag of the Tom and Jerry cartoon Pecos Pest (1955). Here’s a frame from that short. By the way, Hanna and Barbera also borrowed the moustache that Uncle Pecos has and plastered it on Professor Gizmo in the Ruff and Reddy series (1957) and several incidental characters on the Huck show. Hey, and they have a colour TV!





As Roberto mentions in the comments, Homer Brightman wrote Nuts About Mutts (1958), with a reach-out-of-the-TV end gag. It seems Mike Lah could only afford a black-and-white set. Lah, Ed Benedict, Carlo Vinci, Dick Bickenbach (animating) and Fernando Montealegre all worked on this and all ended up at H-B Enterprises when it started. Along with the TV gag, it appears. A shame Irv Spence didn’t join them; I’d love to have seen Spence animate Jinks.

There isn’t a single chase scene in this cartoon, so the sound-cutter therefore had no use for Jack Shaindlin’s chase melody ‘Toboggan Run.’ Its omission in a meece cartoon seems rare. A good part of the soundtrack is made up of ‘Grotesque No. 2’ by Jack Shaindlin. At the end, we get a march used in a few other cartoons, like the opening of Mark of the Mouse, but I don’t have its title, just its alpha-numeric from the cue sheet.

0:00 - PIXIE AND DIXIE (Hanna, Barbera, Curtin, Shows) – Opening titles.
0:26 - TC-432 HOLLY DAY (Bill Loose-John Seely) – Ka-Pow’s crate comes off truck and bashes against brick wall.
1:11 - L-1154 ANIMATION COMEDY (Spencer Moore) – Meece talk to kangaroo, take him home.
2:08 - LAF-10-7 GROTESQUE No 2 (Shaindlin) – Ka-Pow and meece go past Jinks, kangaroo punches Jinks twice.
3:45 - LAF-10-7 GROTESQUE No 2 (Shaindlin) – “That, um, mouse sure pack a whallop...”, Jinks “toughens up.”
4:44 - LAF-7-12 FUN ON ICE (Shaindlin) – Jinks bashed, barrel scene, Ka-Pow’s handler arrives.
6:19 - L-1139 ANIMATION COMEDY (Moore) – Handler takes Ka-Pow away, Jinks talks to camera.
6:33 - LAF-1-8 or LAF-6-16 medium circus march (Shaindlin) – Pixie, Dixie and Jinks watch TV.
7:10 - PIXIE AND DIXIE (Hanna, Barbera, Curtin, Shows) – End titles.

The Loopy De Loop Cartoon You Will Never See

The internet can be a blessing and a curse. It’s full of wonderful information on obscure things that’s easily accessible. And some of that information is completely inaccurate.

We’ve talked before about how some on-line Pedias and Databases are flat out wrong in entries to do with cartoons. And so they are with Loopy De Loop.

I’ve never really liked Loopy. He epitomises the blandness that starting worming its way into Hanna-Barbera cartoons. There’s not a lot that’s distinctive about the animation. The stories have a few clever lines but, basically, tread old ground (that was done better by Huck or Yogi). Hoyt Curtin’s music is just sort of there, with stock beds assigned to stock situations. And, probably more annoying, is each cartoon found it necessary to go into detail about how Loopy is a “good wolf” and “not like the other wolves” and blah-blah-blah. If you have to explain a character every time he comes on the screen, it’s not a strong character.

However, people have differing tastes from each other. There are people out there who can’t do without reality TV. There are people who wax nostalgic for disco music. And there are people who like Loopy De Loop.

Your friendly Yowp gets e-mail about things related somewhat to what you see on this blog. I get questions about horror movie stock music and about Dell Comic books. And I got a question from someone who collects Loopy De Loop cartoons.

He has a complete collection of all the Loopys but one and wanted to know where to find it. The cartoon is called Habit Troubles and is listed in Wikipedia and the Big Cartoon Database as having been released on November 19, 1964. There’s no other specific information anywhere about it.

And it turns out there’s a reason for that.

I always like going back to contemporary sources for information, and checked the release schedule of shorts in Boxoffice magazine (now, unfortunately, off-line). Here’s what various editions in 1964 and 1965 reveal:

Rls. No.	Cartoon Name	Released
5701	Trouble Bruin	Sep. 1964
5702	Bear Knuckles	Oct. 1964
5703	Rabbit Habit	Nov. 1964
5704	Horse Shoo	Jan. 1965
5705	Pork Chop Phooey	March 1965
5706	Crow’s Fete	April 1965
5707	Big Mouse Take	June 1965
*6701	Wolf Hounded	July 1965

* Columbia began re-releasing cartoons in consecutive order

There’s no listing for Habit Troubles.

Next was a check of the copyright catalogue at faqs.org and cocatalog.loc.gov. Nope, no cartoon with that name was ever copyrighted.

So it seems the reason no one has a copy of Habit Troubles is because it never existed.

Where did the misinformation come from? Who knows. But this certainly isn’t an isolated instance. Bob Jaques, on his fine Popeye Animators blog, recently bemoaned the same thing about Paramount “credits” that were either concocted through well-meaning assumption, guesswork or perhaps through revelation by staring at an empty beer bottle. Even worse, the “facts” are presumed to be correct by others and spread.

This is a good time for me to express my appreciation of the many animation historians out there who pride themselves on doing meticulous research to ensure their revelations are factual. Their time-consuming, unimpeachable work is of benefit to anyone who wants to know more about cartoons.

Augie Doggie — Hum Sweet Hum

Produced by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Animation – Lew Marshall; Layouts – Ed Benedict; Backgrounds – Bob Gentle (?); Story – Mike Maltese; Story Sketches – Dan Gordon; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson (no credits).
Voice cast: Doggie Daddy – Doug Young; Augie, Chops, TV host – Daws Butler; Humboldt – Don Messick.
First Aired: 1960.
Plot: Augie and Doggie Daddy try to protect Humboldt the Humming Hummingbird from a cat before his TV debut.

There aren’t too many cartoons where everyone’s a winner, but this one is pretty close. Sure, the bad guy cat doesn’t get his desired avian meal but he’s happy at the end. Augie and his trained bird get to make their TV debut, just like they wanted. Daddy’s smart enough to see through the cat’s schemes. So it’s a satisfying cartoon. And how often do you get Daws Butler and Don Messick humming in harmony?

The cartoon starts with Daddy on the phone to the TV station. Note a picture of a member of the Doggie clan in the background. In the next room, Augie is getting ready for the big TV show by conducting Humboldt the Hummingbird, who is humming ‘Swanee River.’


 
This draws the attention of a passing almond-eyed cat named Chops. “Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to absorb a little musical knowledge,” he confides to us. “I think I’ll absorb a little musical lunch.” So that quickly sets up the cartoon.

While Augie is teaching Humboldt to be more “piana-missimo” and talking to Daddy about the big show, the cat grabs the bird and doesn’t get out of the Doggie residence, evidently because of its huge size as he runs past the same window ten and a half times. Maltese gives us a silly sight gag. Daddy spots the cat disguised as a lamp, complete with light bulbs in the ears. He presses the cat’s nose and the lights turn on. He pulls off one of the cat’s whiskers, resulting in a yell of pain and Humboldt flies out of the cat’s mouth. About all the cat can come up with as an explanation is “How are you fixed for lamps?” With that, the cat is booted off the property. “If it’s one thing I can’t stand,” Daddy remarks, “it’s a lamp that yells ‘youch’.”




Daddy: If it’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a lamp that yells “Youch!”
Chops (in the doorway): Sir, you are a cat hater.

Now the cat disguises himself as “the musical director from the TV station,” with one of Daws’ nutty Germanic accents. The “professor” hates to work on an empty stomach, he explains, so he decides to make the rehearsal with Humboldt “a little lunch-issimo.” The baton he’s waving at the bird imaginatively conceals a fork.


 
Next thing you know, Daddy hears “a hum for help”. A dash to the kitchen reveals Humboldt is humming from a pot on the stove. The cat’s explanation isn’t something you’d hear in too many kids’ cartoons:

Chops: He is rehearsing the fire scene from Faust and I’m putting him in the proper mood.

Chops gets punted out the door again, crying “The network president shall hear of this!”

“Merry Christmas! Noël! Skol! And stuff like that there!” Yes, the cat comes down the chimney disguised as Santa and he has a waffle iron for Humboldt. Suspicious Daddy checks the calendar—much like Elmer Fudd in The Wabbit Who Came to Supper (1942), written by Maltese—and observes it reads “July.” Another hum for help from inside the waffle iron brings Daddy zipping into the scene with a firecracker.

Chops: Ho, ho, ho. And a happy New Year to you.
Daddy: Ho, ho, ho. And a happy Fourth of July to you.
(Firecracker explodes)



Chops gets punted out the door yet again, crying “The Christmas Club will hear of this!”

Humboldt is “a little bit waffled.”

The cat now sticks a pair of pinchers on a long rod through the back window to get at Humboldt’s cage. Daddy outsmarts him by substituting his head for the bird in the bottomless cage, humming ‘Swanee River.’ Apparently that fools the cat because he grabs Daddy by the nose and pulls him through the cage.

Chops: Oh, oh! (chuckles) Wrong bird. Sorry, chum, but humming dogs give me indigestion.

The cat rushes into the house and finally manages to swallow Humboldt by taking the short cut. And to prove it to Daddy, the cat opens his mouth and we get a static shot for nine seconds as we hear an echoey bird humming from inside.


 
However, the show must go on, as Daddy puts Chops in the cage (which has redeveloped a bottom) and carts him off to the TV station. The final scene opens with a variety show host, sounding suspiciously Ed Sullivan-esque, introducing “a really great shew.” We see Augie in tails conducting Humboldt, who is humming inside the smiling cat. The bird pops out of Chops’ ear and the two of them join together to hum ‘Swanee River’ in harmony, followed by Good Evening, Friends!, the little four-note tune Bugs Bunny plays at the end of the Maltese-written Long-Haired Hare (1949).


 
Over the applause, Daddy remarks “One thing I gotta admit—dat cat has an ear for music.”

Don Messick said in an interview the Humboldt character was one of his favourites. The bird is likeable and Chops makes a good adversary, but the two of them unfortunately turned out to be one-shot characters.

There’s also an animation error in the short. As Augie and Daddy turn their heads to watch the “Director” walk by, Daddy loses his nose for two frames. The heads are on seperate cells from the bodies (which don’t move), so it looks like it’s not a camera error.


 
The sound cutter has the sense to not have stock music in the background when the humming is going on. He also doesn’t let any of the music drag on for too long. There’s a good selection of Jack Shaindlin’s circus-show biz type music which have titles but I don’t know what they are, though one has the word ‘Fireman’ in the title. Another piece with an origin that has eluded me is the woodwind one that, after a short introduction, starts at C, jumps an octave, drops to F sharp, then has four notes in the next bar.

0:00 - Augie Doggie main title theme (Hoyt Curtin).
0:05 - GR-155 PARKS AND GARDENS (Phil Green) – Daddy on phone to TV station, Augie suggests “andante”.
0:22 - Swanee River (Trad.) – Bird hums, Chops pops up in window.
0:32 - GR-155 PARKS AND GARDENS (Green) – Chops at window, Augie suggests “piana-missimo.”
0:57 - Swanee River (Trad.) – Bird hums.
1:01 - GR-81 FRED KARNO'S ARMY BRIDGE No 1 (Green) – ‘Agent’ Dad talks with Augie, cat grabs Humboldt.
1:12 - GR-334 LIGHT AGITATED BRIDGE (Green) – Chops runs away.
1:26 - C-C+-F# comedy open (?) – Chops in lamp, kicked out of house.
2:05 - Swanee River (Trad.) – Bird hums, “Director” arrives.
2:13 - THE HAPPY COBBLER (Hecky Krasnow) – “Director” enters, “proceed, please.”
2:47 - Swanee River (Trad.) – Bird hums, fork comes out of baton.
2:49 - ‘FIREMAN’ (Shaindlin) – Hum for help; kitchen scene, “Director” kicked out of house.
3:26 - GR-248 STREETS OF THE CITY (Green) – “Santa” enters, Daddy looks at calendar.
4:12 - vaudeville rising scale music (Shaindlin) – “Santa” blown up; kicked out of house.
4:27 - CB-83A Mr. TIPPY TOES (Harry Bluestone-Emil Cadkin) – ‘Waffled’ Humbolt, Daddy pulled through cage.
5:03 - GR-255 PUPPETRY COMEDY (Green) – Chops and Daddy at window.
5:17 - SIX DAY BIKE RACE (Shaindlin) – Chops runs down hall; swallows bird.
5:33 - GR-346 FIRST BUDS (Green) – “Where’s Humboldt, Augie?”
5:39 - Swanee River (Trad.) – Humboldt hums.
5:47 - CB-83A Mr. TIPPY TOES (Bluestone-Cadkin) – TV station calls.
6:02 - GR-258 THE TIN DRAGOONS (Green) – TV host intros Augie and Humboldt.
6:18 - Swanee River (Trad.) – Humboldt and Chops hum.
6:43 - vaudeville rising scale music (Shaindlin) – Doggie talks to camera.
6:49 – Augie Doggie end title theme (Curtin).