Augie Doggie — Mars Little Precious

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Ken Muse; Layout – Dick Bickenbach; Backgrounds – Fernando Montealegre, Story – Mike Maltese; Story Sketches – Dan Gordon; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Doggie Daddy – Doug Young; Augie Doggie, Alien Baby, Irish Cop – Daws Butler; Boinka Boinka – Don Messick.
Music: Harry Bluestone/Emil Cadkin; Phil Green; Spencer Moore; Jack Shaindlin, Hecky Krasnow, unknown.
First aired: week of February 8, 1960 (rerun week of August 8, 1960).
Episode: Quick Draw McGraw Show M-020, Production J-63.
Plot: Daddy chases after a Martian baby that Augie is supposed to be sitting.

Hanna-Barbera’s short cartoons got less entertaining into the 1960s for several reasons. One of them was the writers simply rehashed the same old gags over and over. How many times do you see the “sceptical cop” character show up about half-way into an H-B cartoon? The answer is too many. And generally, he’s Irish and ends his scene with his scepticism turned into a mental self-diagnosis, then commenting on the situation to either the audience or to “Sarge” at the stationhouse on a phone.

Said cop surfaces in this cartoon, and it isn’t even the first time a disbelieving officer of the law shows up in an Augie Doggie cartoon; ‘High and Flighty’ comes to mind (which also involved Mars). In this one, we get the station-phone ending after the cop sees the baby Martian. He calls to ask about the “policeman’s triple retirement plan.” Of course, he doesn’t retire. He just returns in another guise, series after series.

As for this cartoon, it features the adult-kid version of Augie, the one who’s a scientist, or invents stuff, or communicates with other planets. I prefer the Augie who’s more kid-like. Perhaps it doesn’t matter as Augie disappears for much of the cartoon and Doggie Daddy takes over, commenting throughout to the viewers (at one point, he says “Ain’t dat just like kids, folks?” as he looks at the camera in three-quarters view).

It seems like every Augie Doggie cartoon opens with Daddy reading the paper, but that’s actually not the case. It happened only six times in the first season (of 26 cartoons), including once in a bathtub. It happens in this one. Daddy’s talking to himself. “After a hard day, dere’s nothin’ like da newspaper...” Hey! What hard day? What exactly does Doggie Daddy do for a living? (Cashing child support cheques from Doggie Mommy has been suggested by cartoon cynics). No matter. The scene cuts to Augie gibbering on a radio the size of a desk. Must be before transistors. “Are you speakin’ Upper Slovenian or Lower Slovenian?” asks Daddy. Remember, this cartoon was made when Slovenia was never heard of; it was still part of Yugoslavia. No, Augie’s speaking Martian. “Dese kids with dere electric-tronics. What an imagination!” Daddy laughs.



But it turns out he really is talking Martian and he really has agreed to sit for Boinka Boinka’s kid. An interesting little bit of animation is when Augie runs past Daddy to go to the door. Daddy’s ears and newspaper flap (with paper rustling sound). It’s a little thing that Maltese didn’t need to add into the story, but it’s nice seeing a throwaway bit that Hanna-Barbera wouldn’t have bothered with a few years later.

Daddy’s still sceptical about the Martian stuff, even when Augie wheels in a baby carriage (shaped like a saucer) containing a green kid with eyes that aren’t filled in (like Barney Rubble’s were in the early days of The Flintstones). Daddy’s stock “After all,” observation to the audience at the end of a lot of cartoons gets inserted now. “How many fathers have a boy who’s an interplanetary baby sitter?”



Augie falls asleep reading ‘Snow White’ to the child, who decides to wander around this sets up most of the rest of the second half of the cartoon.

● The child climbs the wall and ceiling. Daddy follows then realises he can’t walk on the ceiling. Crash.
● The child lifts off like a helicopter and heads out the window, landing by the neighbour’s sleeping dog. The dog stares, blinks at the camera, then bores into the ground and covers the hole on top of him.



● The saucer-carriage lifts off and flies out the open door. Daddy chases after it and runs right into the mailbox. But why doesn’t the carriage hit the mailbox, too? It doesn’t swerve to avoid it.
● Daddy chases after the saucer-carriage down the street and runs into the Irish cop we mentioned at the outset. “Shall we have another waltz, or shall we sit this one out?” Officer O’Stereotype facetiously asks.



There’s talk galore while all this is going on, a lot of it seemingly to give Doug Young a chance to show off his Jimmy Durante impression. Maltese could just as easily left out Daddy’s chat to himself (“Come back here, you Martian mosquito” is one of Maltese’s more imaginative lines. “Wabbit season! Duck season!” it’s not).

So the carriage returns to the house, Boinka Boinka’s saucer lands and the unseen Martian comes to collect his child. Like a radio sitcom where a character has the kind of an explanatory line one never uses in a real conversation, Augie remarks “You say somebody on Jupiter needs a baby sitter?” Why not have the Martian say it? Anyway, the final scene had Augie trying to tune in Jupiter on his radio. “Maybe there’s nobody home, Augie boy,” Daddy offers, before lifting up the severed electrical cords from the radio for the audience to see. Sneaky, that Doggie Daddy.

The sound cutter apparently had loads of spare time to hunt for music. There are lots of short scenes so he’s used lots of short Phil Green cues. Spencer Moore’s oboe work-part music gets used for a couple of effects. One unidentified cue is when Augie is on the radio for the first time. It may be ‘Woodwind Capers’ by Clarence Wheeler, but that’s speculation. And the baby has his own little walking theme, with someone toodle-loo-ing on an ocarina. Hecky Krasnow wrote it.

0:00 - Augie Doggie Main Title theme (Curtin, Hanna, Barbera)
0:25 - CB-90 HAPPY HOME (Cadkin-Bluestone) – Dad reads paper, talks to Augie.
0:54 - C-C-F# woodwind underscore (?) – “Neither, Dad,” Augie on radio to Mars.
1:16 - PG-160G LIGHT MOVEMENT (Green) – Augie calls to dad, sound of saucer
1:36 - GR-333 BUSTLING BRIDGE (Green) – “Dese kids and dere imaginations,” saucer comes down, Augie rushes by dad.
1:58 - L-1158 ANIMATION COMEDY (Moore) – Saucer touches down.
2:01 - GR-154 PICNIC OR GARDEN SCENE (Green) – Augie talks to Boinka, wheels saucer baby carriage into home.
2:41 - THE GR-455 ARTFUL DODGER SHORT BRIDGE No 2 (Green) – Baby pops out of carriage, chatters.
2:45 - GR-65 BUSH BABY (Green) – Reaction shot, Augie reads Snow White to baby, sleeps,
3:21 - SWINGING GHOSTS (Krasnow) – Baby walks past daddy in chair, Daddy rushes out of scene
3:30 - CB-87A COME AND GET ME (Cadkin-Bluestone) – Daddy retrieves baby, “Ain’t that like kids, folks?”
3:52 - SWINGING GHOSTS (Krasnow) - Baby walks past daddy in chair, Daddy follows him up ceiling, crashes.
4:17 - GR-454 THE ARTFUL DODGER SHORT BRIDGE No 1 (Green) – Daddy puts baby in carriage. Daddy in chair.
4:34 - LFU-117-1 MAD RUSH No 1 (Shaindlin) – Baby flies past Daddy, out window, dog buries himself in ground.
5:06 - GR-457 DR QUACK SHORT BRIDGE No 1 (Green) – Daddy with baby in carriage, carriage takes off.
5:19 - ‘FIREMAN’ (Shaindlin) – Daddy walking, chases saucer, runs into mailbox, runs into cop, baby pulls up to cop.
6:08 - GR-78 CUSTARD PIE CAPERS SHORT BRIDGE No 1 (Green) – Baby talks to officer, Daddy runs away.
6:18 - GR-98 BY JIMINY! IT’S JUMBO BRIDGE No 2 (Green) – Cop on phone.
6:28 - PG-161G LIGHT COMEDY MOVEMENT (Green) – Baby saucer carriage returns to Doggie home and lands.
6:34 - L-1158 ANIMATION COMEDY (Moore) Saucer drops to earth.
6:36 - GR-85 THE BRAVEST WOODEN SOLDIER SHORT BRIDGE No 1 (Green) – Augie wakes up, walks to door.
6:47 - THE HAPPY COBBLER (Krasnow) – Augie at door, radio busted.
7:09 - Augie Doggie End Title theme (Curtin).

Kids, Special Interests and Cartoons

It strikes me as a simpleton mind-set when someone insists if you show a cartoon character with a gun, then kids will grow up shooting people. The people that say such things are, of course, those who saw cartoon characters with guns when they were kids. Maybe they even had their parents buy a toy one (as seen on TV) when they were a child. And they grew up just fine in spite of it. Well, except for their ridiculous grasp of deductive logic.

That’s the basic message contained in this story in the Hutchinson News of Saturday, July 2, 1960. It’s unbylined, but a chap named E. Lawson May was the paper’s TV Editor.

The early Hanna-Barbera cartoons only come in for a mention at the end of the article. But because the writer is full of common sense (and declares Huck and Quick Draw as being more than suitable for children’s eyes and minds), it’s worth printing 52 years later.

Capt. Kangaroo Helps Care for Youngsters
Educators, psychiatrists and do-gooders have been shouting louder than usual for the past year about how the younger generation is being breast fed by TV rather than books.
The optimists among us, however, are aware that the learned gentlemen assembling all these frightening statistics received their own primary education over the radio perils of Buck Rogers, Tom Mix, Flash Gordon, Omar the Mystic and well-informed criticism from another generation of analysts.
The simple truth is that TV, properly used by a parent, can offer child some delightful entertainment.
If the set’s prime function, however, is to get the youngster out of the way, the parents never should have had children in the first place. A preschool child would never be sent out on a busy city street alone, and there’s no reason why they should be expected to function in the channel-jungle without guidance.
Thanks to an easy-going, heavy-set young man named Bob Keeshan, the young mother’s first experience with television is generally quite encouraging. Keeshan, along with his friends Mr. Green Jeans, and Mr. Moose, conducts the “Captain Kangaroo” show via CBS six mornings a week.
At one time the network gave up on “Captain Kangaroo,” but a storm of protest, plus the fact that the show was outdrawing Garry Moore’s expensive morning variety show, bought Keeshan a new lease on life. Today the Captain is SRO with sponsors and mother knows she has at least 45 minutes every morning when the little one is in good hands.
“Be Good To Mother”
Bob Keeshan is not a great educator or a child psychologist, but he understands his audience. He appreciates their short attention span and never keeps any game, song or cartoon running too long. At no time does the Captain talk down to his little viewers or does he patronize them. He stimulates their imagination without frightening them, and good taste guides his every move. He closes each show by reminding the kids that “it’s another be-good-to-mother day,” and nobody is “gooder” to mom than captain Kangaroo.
Once the Captain closes up his weekday Treasure House, the television industry chooses to ignore children until around five o’clock. This is a sad mistake, because mother needs more than 45 minutes to finish her chores.
No Steady Diet
From 5 to 7:30 in the evening and on Saturday morning TV caters to kids. Some of the successful shows are little more than old movie shorts which were condemned as harmful to children a generation ago. Among these are “Our Gang,” “The Three Stooges” and
“Popeye.” Actually they are as harmful as they ever were, but kids adore this type of comic violence and, provided they’re not permitted to watch it as a steady diet, it’s a good bet they’ll survive.
But TV has developed its own cartoon empire and can point to the product with pride. Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, who created “Tom and Jerry,” have come up with three of the most delightful and entertaining cartoon shows imaginable. They are such superb shows that the parents can laugh hysterically al the antics of the characters while the little ones are spellbound by the adventure.
Many a big city office is deserted early so pop can run home and enjoy “Ruff and Reddy,” “Huckleberry Hound,” and “Quick Draw McGraw” with his kids.
Perhaps “Huckleberry Hound” and his associates are the answer to many of TV’s critics. Because they are fun the parents are able to share them with the kids, and the shows are mature and intelligent, thus easing parental consciences.

Unfortunately, do-gooders today would complain about Quick Draw. He’s got a gun and shoots himself. Think of the kids imitating, blabbety, blah, blah. As it was, do-gooders manipulating studies and data managed to do a pretty good job of emasculating cartoons on Saturday mornings by about 1970. They guilt-tripped (if not pressured) networks and sponsors into filling the screens with cartoons with unsubtle (and therefore unentertaining) messages of doing good which, as we all know, ended racism, pollution, and violence forever because kids imitate everything they see on cartoons.

Oh. Right.

Yogi Bear — Wound-Up Bear

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera
Credits: Animation – Don Patterson; Layout – Tony Rivera; Backgrounds – Joe Montell; Story – Warren Foster; Story Director - Alex Lovy; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Yogi, Bill, Cabin Woman 2 (Vera), Souvenier Shop Guy, Lodge Man 1 – Daws Butler; Boo Boo, Ranger Smith, Wife, Cabin Woman 1, Lodge Man 2 – Don Messick.
Music: Jack Shaindlin; Bill Loose/John Seely; Spencer Moore; Raoul Kraushaar?.
First Aired: week of December 28, 1959 (rerun, July 4, 1960)
Plot: Yogi disguises Boo Boo, them himself, as wind-up toys to get goodies.

I don’t really want to bash Tony Rivera, but has Ranger Smith ever looked uglier than he does in cartoon? Check this drawing from a walk cycle.



And at the start of the cartoon, Mr. Ranger looks like a neckless triangle. In fairness, the rest of the character designs aren’t bad at all. Tony even created some cute toy bears in the window of a souvenir store which spark the plot of the story. Tony’s career started at Disney in 1934 and after the strike there in 1941, he bounced to and fro on his own volition (everywhere except Warners, it appears), spent time in commercial work in the ‘50s and then landed at Hanna-Barbera. His son has a web site and you can check out some of Tony’s sketches HERE.

Tony was ending his career at Hanna-Barbera when Scott Shaw! was there. Scott passes on this remembrance:

"Tony Rivera was a very talented cartoonist/layout man and a very kind man...and he could draw FUNNY...even on scenes that didn't have a scintilla of humor in the script or storyboard. Tony went out of his way to teach me many trickier points of layout when we worked together in Hanna-Barbera's layout department during the late 1970s and early 1980s. But being the gentleman that he was, Tony never acted like an instructor; he's pretend that he was asking me a layout question while showing me the best way to do, say, a bicycle pan. I owe him a lot, for both his knowledge and his friendship."

Back to our cartoon...

Ranger Smith’s character is still new. He was developed by Warren Foster after Barbera and Charlie Shows used generic rangers in Yogi’s first season on the Huck show. Smith started out as a grumpy, weary-of-Jellystone guy before he was turned into a friendly adversary. He’s grumpy in this cartoon and pretty enjoyable. Foster comes up with a great line for him in the middle of the cartoon. Fed up with endless phone calls about thieving toy bears, he slams down the phones and says (as Rivera moves in for a closer shot) “Mabel and her charge accounts. We could have had that chicken ranch by now.”

Don Patterson’s the animator here and he’s much like Ed Love; he’s trying to get a bit more animation into his scenes. At the start of the cartoon, he’s animating dialogue of Yogi Bear in a medium close shot. The lower body doesn’t move, but Patterson changes the angle of the head horizontally and vertically during the talking. Eye pupils change position. We even get Yogi (on twos) wagging his head like a bell tolling when he says the word “pic-a-nic baskets.” It would have been easier just to animate the mouth and having maybe two head positions (like Lew Marshall) but Patterson goes for a few extra drawings to try to wring something out of limited animation. You can tell his stuff by looking at his closed eyes; they’re almost like triangle cut in half.

The cartoon features the basic Ranger-vs-Yogi plot. The Ranger nails up a sign that prohibits the feeding of bears (that appears in almost nine seconds of a static shot). Yogi is hungry. He tries to con the Ranger into telling him the “new red tape” doesn’t apply to him. The Ranger responds with a threat to send him to the St. Louis Zoo. Yogi shrugs off that “it’s back to the nuts and berries” when he sees the wind-up toy bears and gets an idea.



“Whatever it is, the ranger won’t like it, Yogi,” opines Boo Boo, as he watches Yogi pound a large turn-key into a toilet plunger suction cup. The idea is to attach it to Boo Boo so he can act like a toy bear and “having a lot of yummy fun” at the picnic grounds. Boo Boo figures he’s not going to like it either. So Yogi turns Boo Boo into a common thief, as the little bear puts on a mechanical walk (two drawings on twos, with smears to show motion). He’s a success at the beginning, ripping off a cake from a bored couple. “Beats me how they get a toy to do that,” drones Bill to his wife (the preponderance of incidental characters named ‘Bill’ in cartoons produced by Bill Hanna can hardly be a coincidence).



Not only is Yogi pimping Boo Boo to get food, he’s also a pig. And a noisy one. We cut to a scene where he’s licking his fingers. Très gauche. “Very good, Boob. Next time, you get a piece,” promises Yogi. Yeah, he slobbered down the whole cake. But that’s not good enough. He’s thinking bigger. So he shoves the mechanical Boo Boo towards a tourist cabin, where the reluctant accomplice opens an oven and grabs Vera’s apple pie (Vera Ohman was a background artist at Hanna-Barbera and married to Howard Hanson, the production supervisor). Mercifully, Boo Boo didn’t burn himself opening the oven. Yogi silently chortles about the blatant theft, which he calls “a little fun, son.” Ah, for the later, creative days when Yogi warned children against such behaviour, while piloting a spruce goose or an arc or a yo or some such thing. Oh. No one watched those cartoons, did they?

The cartoon has reached the scene where Ranger Smith laments about Mabel, and off he goes to investigate. “Last year, the flying saucer, the year before, the serpent in the lake and, now, toy bears,” he says to himself sceptically before he stops at the gift shop to investigate. He has the store operator give him a demonstration of the wind-up toy. The store owner’s as Jellystone-weary as the ranger is.

Smith: Is that all these things do?
Shop Owner: You’re expecting maybe a floor show?
Smith: You wouldn’t have one that steals picnic baskets, would you?
Shop Owner: No, but I’m workin’ on one that washes cars and whistles “Yankee Doodle” at the same time.

Notice the thin 5 O’Clock shadow on the ranger and the shop owner. Rivera seems to have liked that on his characters. And Smith has a really bad overbite, which is one of Patterson’s traits.

In later cartoons, Ranger Smith would instantly suspect Yogi as the culprit. Perhaps he’s reasonably newly-invented by Foster, he hasn’t caught on to the nefarious bear’s ways. Better make that lying nefarious bear. The ranger tells Yogi he has a problem. “Tempo of the times. International tensions. Et-cetera, et-cetera,” suggests Yogi. The ranger shakes his head while Yogi’s angularly moves his from side to side. No, it’s a toy bear, Smith sadly declares. Yogi blows his chance at honest. “I never did trust those toy bears,” says Yogi, ironically holding his hands in prayer and looking skyward, as if to ask his Creator (and we don’t mean Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera) to bless his B.S. So we now have a sacrilegious, lying, nefarious bear. Foster gets out his old “you’re one of the good ones” lines and we see the hiding Boo Boo gulp as the ranger promises to take apart the thief “spring by spring.”



Boo Boo quits to open the next scene. Yogi, instead of being understanding, basically called his best friend a wuss. “Never send a little bear to do the work of a big bear,” says Yogi as he plucks the wind-up key from Boo Boo’s back and puts it on his. Then, it’s off to the Lodge where he steals a refrigerator (but not before a Gleason-eque “And away I go” which, no doubt, pleased those Gleason-loving Hanna and Barbera). Here are Patterson’s two drawings of Yogi as a wind-up toy, slowed down.



Meanwhile, Ranger Smith has all the toy bears in his office and has counted them all. “This should wind-up the wind-up toy bear bit,” he says. Reader J. Lee would point out that Smith’s eyes look toward the camera, signalling he’s about to pull a groaner on us.

The Lodge calls to report the refrigerator theft. Smith finally clues in that it’s Yogi and lets out with a crazy laugh. Ah, but he hasn’t gone nuts. He sets a trap for the thieving bear—a loaded picnic table. Yogi sees it and his hat does a spinning take (by contrast, Yogi’s body remains rigid and the background drawing slides behind him). “With food on the table, I’m willing and able,” rhymes Yogi, who then turns to the camera to make sure we got it. Yogi gets in the whole role here by enunciating like a mechanical toy. As he grabs a cake, the ranger pops out from behind a tree. Yogi still won’t give up the fraud. “I am not a Yo-gi, sir. I am a mech-an-i-cal bear,” he stiffly states. “Good,” says Smith, who then comes out from behind the tree, showing his own wind-up key in the back. “Because I’m a wind-up ranger. And I’m winding up your park career.” Yogi and the ranger are nose-to-nose. Yogi drops the cake and zips out the frame. The ranger’s nose bounces up and down, another little bit that Patterson added that you wouldn’t see in an H-B cartoon (except in a take) within a year or so.



The Ranger chases Yogi down the road and into the distance, but not before Foster fits in a reference to the song title “Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis.” No one’s named ‘Louis’ here; Foster seems to think just referring to it is funny. But, obviously, the pilfering bear’s comeuppance isn’t being shipped to the zoo, any more than Ranger Smith’s wife is named ‘Mabel’ anywhere but in this cartoon. Yogi’s back in Jellystone for another adventure next week.

This is one of a few Yogi cartoons in the second season that doesn’t open with a narrator.

Lots of Jack Shaindlin music in this cartoon and there’s that short reverbed trumpet which I haven’t located.

0:00 - Yogi Bear Sub Main Title Theme (Curtin-Hanna-Barbera)
0:13 - C-3 DOMESTIC CHILDREN (Loose-Seely) – Ranger nails sign, Yogi looks in window, Yogi hammers wind-up key.
1:32 - LAF-4-6 PIXIE PRANKS (Shaindlin) – Yogi and Boo Boo walk out of cave, Boo Boo walks away with cake, makes off with pie.
2:53 - creepy muted horn music (Kraushaar?) – Ranger in office.
3:18 - LAF-10-7 GROTESQUE No 2 (Shaindlin) – Ranger in souvenir shop, talks with Yogi, Boo Boo quits.
4:57 - LAF-1-1 FISHY STORY (Shaindlin) – Ranger counts toy bears.
5:08 - L-75 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) – Yogi goes to lodge, takes fridge.
5:36 - LAF-25-3 bassoon and zig zag strings (Shaindlin) – Ranger in office.
6:05 - TC-437 SHOPPING DAY (Loose-Seely) – Ranger leaves cake for Yogi, Yogi grabs cake, wind-up ranger, Yogi runs away.
6:45 - LICKETY SPLIT (Shaindlin) – Ranger chases Yogi into horizon.
6:58 - Yogi Bear Sub End Title Theme (Curtin).

Ruff and Reddy Story Drawings

I’m not a big fan of Ruff and Reddy, but I am a fan of old storyboards. And some story panels from a couple of Ruff and Reddy episodes have showed up on line. I suspect they’re the work of Dan Gordon, who did story sketches for Hanna-Barbera for the first two years (and then some) of the studio’s life. They’re pretty attractive.






I didn’t make notes, but I think these came from the Van Eaton Gallery, which sells all kinds of animation art.

Here’s a layout drawing of Olaf, the little Viking boy who appeared in the second season.



Joe Barbera must have been hot for scripts with little blond boys that year. The cave kid Ubble Ubble was also introduced that season.



As I mentioned, I’m not a big fan of the series so I can’t tell you which cartoon in the Pinky adventure this is from. I can tell you it was used in newspaper publicity art. And that Reddy is fatter than he should be.

One of the reasons Ruff and Reddy never appealed much to me as a kid is that it wasn’t funny like Huck or Quick Draw. I couldn’t get into the characters. And it really seems aimed at younger kids; when you’re exposed to Warners and Fleischer cartoons and adult sitcoms as a child, who wants dull kid stuff? Here’s a dialogue sheet, apparently one used by Don Messick. All the lines that are changed are Messick’s.



Someone had the sense to cross out material that made the narration seem like it was talking down to kids even more. Wisely, Barbera, Gordon and writer Charlie Shows decided the studio’s next venture, The Huckleberry Hound Show, may have been in what was a kids’ timeslot in the network radio days, but went for a general audience instead. Barbera’s stories and Shows’ dialogue were more hit than miss, and it was Huck, not Ruff and Reddy, that gave the studio its initial fame.

Flintstones Sunday Comics, January 1962

I’ve now managed to find all the colour Flintstones for this month 50 years ago. They’re from different papers and some are not in the best shape but I’ll post them anyway.

The most interesting comic is the one for January 21. There’s a little girl with a bone in her hair. Yes, we all know that describes Pebbles Flintstones, but she didn’t appear for the first time until February 22, 1963. The connection between the comic and the not-even-foetal Pebbles is Gene Hazleton. He was in charge of the Sunday comics for Hanna-Barbera and Ed Benedict explained that Hazleton designed Pebbles.

With that, let’s look at the comics.


January 7, 1962


January 14, 1962


January 21, 1962


January 28, 1962

You can click on any of them to make them bigger.

Snooper and Blabber — Desperate Diamond Dimwits

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Ken Muse; Layout – Walt Clinton; Backgrounds – Fernando Montealegre; Story – Mike Maltese; Story Sketches – Dan Gordon; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Snooper, Light Fingers François – Daws Butler; Narrator, Blabber, Dog Catcher – Elliot Field.
Music: Phil Green, Jack Shaindlin, Harry Bluestone/Emil Cadkin.
First aired: week of November 2, 1959 (rerun, week of May 2, 1959).
Episode: Quick Draw McGraw Show M-006, Production J-7.
Plot: Snooper and Blabber try to retrieve the King Size Diamond that Light Fingers François, disguised as a dog, has hidden in a fake bone.

Childhood was filled with immeasurable pastimes, and one of the more enjoyable ones was counting how many times a character ran past the same thing in the background of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Pixie and Dixie adventures seemed specially made for such a joyous activity, but there were other cartoons, too. Like this one.

The bad guy, Light Fingers François, steals the King Size Diamond and runs with it down the street. See that building with the gibberish sign? Light Fingers runs past it three times. Cut back to Snooper and Blabber. Cut back to François, who runs past it another 14 times. François loses the diamond (which is concealed in a dog bone) and it flies past the store another three times. And that’s just in this one scene.



The gibberish building appears in the first scene of this cartoon as a narrator does a Dragnet put-on, intoning “This is a true case. Only the characters are ridiculous.” It doesn’t return until the second half of the cartoon. The first half is set inside Sparkle Jewelry, where Snooper and Blabber are guarding the diamond. Blab engages in some overwrought hero worship, something he did in later cartoons. “Leave us face it,” Snoop says to us, “This kid’ll go far.”

The camera pans over to the window where the narrator introduces the bad guy, Light Fingers François. Daws Butler gives him the same Blacque Jacques Shellacque-ish voice that he used for Powerful Pierre in the Huck cartoons. François’ scam: disguise himself as a cute, lovable dog to ingratiate himself with the detectives and get close to the diamond. And it works. The fake pooch treats his bone like a rifle and walks, sentry-like, past the diamond, with some Phil Green marching music in the background. Snooper and Blabber go for a snack-type lunch.” François hides the diamond in the bone but Blab has been looking back at his new pet the whole time and sees it. The detectives start chasing him. “Here’s mud in your private eye,” cries François, lifting up his head temporarily to reveal his identity. Then Mike Maltese shamelessly puts this pun in the mouth of Snooper: “Yeah. There’s skul-doggery afoot.”



We get to see a lot of the gibberish store as the chase moves to the street. François loses the bone because he’s so busy looking back at Snooper and Blabber he runs into a light pole. The bone goes flying and smashes into a garbage can-diving bulldog in the butt. The dog thinks it has a delicious meal but François grabs the bone and darts off.



Now the bulldog joins the chase. Maltese decides to treat him as a real bulldog and not give him any lines, unlike the dog with the diamond ring on its tail chased by Snooper and Blabber later in the season in ‘Doggone Dog, Gone.’ Possession of the bone keeps changing throughout the cartoon. Snoop gets it back, but then the bulldog grabs it when Snoop hides in the garbage can seen earlier. You can tell Ken Muse worked on the cartoon; the bulldog has a resemblance to Spike in the last few Tom and Jerry shorts at MGM (as does François as a dog in a few poses). Snoop lets out with his catchphrase: “Stop in the name of the Ajax Private Eye School.”

I like the cause-and-effect gag next. François skids to a stop, pulls out a stick from somewhere and tells the bulldog to fetch it. Snooper skids up to François, who pulls out another stick. It’s only logical in Snoop’s mind that he fetches it. That’s what one does with sticks. François takes off. The dog, then Snoop, skid back into the scene with sticks in their mouths. “Leave us to admit it Bow wow. We goofed,” he says to the bulldog. Au revoir, goofers,” François says as a cap to the gag.

Blab now grabs the bone from François by hiding in a mailbox (“Fooey to you-ey, Louie,” says Blab to François, reminiscent of Bugs Bunny saying to Yosemite Sam “So long, screwy, see ya in St. Louie” in Hare Trigger, also written by Maltese). . François gets the bone back by taking a baseball bat to the mailbox. Blab vibrates out the door in back, which conveniently opens. But the vibrating bone causes François to vibrate (a gag I’m trying to place from somewhere). “Just call me ‘Shakey,’” says the smiling François to the audience.



“‘Snakey’ is better, you jewel thief,” says Snoop, whose arm reaches into the scene and grabs the bone. The chase is on again. François uses Snoop’s catchphrase: “Stop in zee name of zee International Jewel Thief Association!” Snoop skids to a stop when he sees the bulldog in front of him. He pulls out a stick and tells the bulldog to fetch it. The bulldog isn’t having any of it. “You fetch it,” he growls as he tosses Snooper out of the scene. François grabs the bone, runs and stops. He’s pleased with himself until a net suddenly slams onto of him. “How do you ya like dat? No dog license, no nuttin’,” says a dog catcher, who hauls off François. I’ll avoid comment on “some day, you’ll go to the dogs pun,” Maltese uses here.

The final scene has Snooper pleading with the bulldog to tell him where the bone is. The camera pans to reveal a hill with a bunch of holes in it and Blabber digging with a shovel trying to find it. “Pretty please with sugar on it? Strawberries in season?” grovels Snooper in a line you’d expect out of Maltese. The cartoon’s over and while François apparently never escapes from the dog pound, the gibberish building returns in a few other cartoons later in the season. It was rare for H-B to reuse backgrounds but they did it with this one (there are seven buildings of various sizes on the street).



This cartoon marks the fourth and final one for the different-sounding Blab. He was voiced by KFWB afternoon drive show host Elliot Field. Daws Butler took over the role in the next cartoon then continued to do it until the day he died.

The bulk of the music is by Phil Green and Jack Shaindlin in this cartoon, all to good effect. Green’s ‘And They All Lived Happily Ever After’ sounds like ‘The Toyland Parade’ for a good reason. Both are from his ‘Kiddie Comedy Suite’; the latter is the overture and the former is the ending. The sound cutter uses the second half of the cue.

0:00 - Snooper and Blabber Main Title theme (Curtin, Hanna, Barbera).
0:25 - PG-181F MECHANICAL BRIDGE (Green) – Pan of city street, shot of diamond.
0:40 - GR-90 THE CHEEKY CHAPPIE (Green) – Snooper and Blabber in front of diamond, pan to window.
1:17 - CRAZY GOOF (Shaindlin) – François at window, dresses as dog, gets hired, rushes out of scene.
2:18 - GR-259 AND THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER (Green) – François/Dog marches in front of display case, grabs diamond, “Light Fingers strikes again.”
2:45 - GR-453 THE ARTFUL DODGER (Green) – Snoop and Blab return, François/Dog runs away.
3:10 - LFU-117-2 MAD RUSH No 2 (Shaindlin) – Snoop and Blab run after François, François runs into light pole.
3:43 - PG-160G LIGHT MOVEMENT (Green) – Bone flies through air, hits bulldog, bulldog runs out of garbage can.
3:54 - SIX DAY BICYCLE RACE (Shaindlin) – Bulldog runs after François, Snoop grabs bone, jumps in garbage can.
4:12 - LFU-117-3 MAD RUSH No 3 (Shaindlin) – Bulldog reaches into garbage can, François grabs bone, skids to stop.
4:33 - GR-99 THE DIDDLECOMB HUNT (Green) – François plays fetch with bulldog and Snooper, Blabber grabs bone, François bashes mailbox, Blab shakes, François shakes, “Snakey is better, you jewel thief”
5:40 - GR-77 CUSTARD PIE CAPERS (Green) – Snoop runs with bone, bulldog growls.
5:53 - CB-85A STEALTHY MOUSE (Bluestone-Cadkin) – Snoop tries to play fetch with bulldog, François netted by dog catcher.
6:39 - ASININE (Shaindlin) – Snoop pleads with bulldog.
7:09 - Snooper and Blabber End Title theme (Curtin)