Mike Lah’s Yogi Bear

The Huckleberry Hound Show was set to beam out from TV sets starting September 29, 1958 and that meant artists at Hanna-Barbera had to get busy. On June 24th, columnist William Ewald reported that the Huck show had been bought by Kellogg’s, so enough cartoons to fill 26 half-hours had to be ready fast (All must have been finished by December 1st. That’s when Broadcasting magazine announced H-B writer Charlie Shows had been signed by Larry Harmon Productions to write Bozo the Clown cartoons).

Ken Muse, Lew Marshall and Carlo Vinci animated almost all of the entire first season (23 Hucks, 22 Yogis and 22 Pixie and Dixies) while working on a second season of “Ruff and Reddy.” So a fourth animator picked up some work. Mike Lah not only animated a few cartoons (including the first Yogi cartoon in production, “Pie Pirates”) but was called on to do uncredited scenes in others’ cartoons.

Mike always found a way to inject neat looking extremes and expressions into his work; if only the studio had carried on the same way instead of making its animation smoother and blander. He also found a way to save money. A lot of the time, Mike’s characters never had jaws. He’d animate dialogue by having a black space for an open mouth and change the shape of the space for vowel and consonant movements, sometimes with a line to indicate the upper lip. To the right you see an example from his scene in “Big Bad Bully.” Notice the oval google eyes; you’ll see that in his animation of Yogi in other cartoons.

Lah draws a really fun scene where Yogi ties the bull’s tail to a stake. Unknown to Yogi, the bull pulls it out. Yogi cracks a joke about a “tough steak” and yucks it up. Yogi develops teeth when needed in a Lah scene.



The bull goes from angry to fed up as Yogi yucks away, jerking his head and moving his mouth in different positions. It’s limited animation but you can easily feel the expressions. Here are some of the drawings. Lah doesn’t use them in a cycle; he varies them so the action isn’t robotic.



The bull clobbers Yogi with the stake. The bull’s expression changes to one of satisfaction. Lah employs what must be a visual trick. The stake doesn’t actually crown Yogi; it goes past him. But the effect on the screen is he’s smashed on the head. You see the same kind of thing by animators in other early H-B cartoons.



Isn’t that last pose great? And look what Lah does with Yogi’s legs. If only Yogi were as expressive a few years later.

Then Yogi vibrates. Again, Lah uses several different drawings and not in a cycle. Here are some of them.



Readers here probably know Lah’s background. He had been directing the second unit at MGM when the studio’s cartoon division closed in 1957. Lah went into business with Bill Hanna making Crusader Rabbit cartoons before legal threats by Shull Bonsall, who claimed to own the character, stopped it. Lah freelanced at Hanna-Barbera through about 1959; he had his own company, Cinema Ad. He joined Quartet Films, Inc. around March 1961 (along with Hanna Barbera’s Dan Gordon), rising to the company’s presidency. Among his clients was Kellogg’s. He died in Los Angeles on October 13, 1995, age 83.

Flintstones Weekend Comics, July 1963

There’s something bothersome about characters suddenly taking on a new trait just for the sake of a gag before it disappears again. It’s no different than people taking cartoon characters they supposedly love and then “updating” them so they no longer behave like the same character.

This isn’t anything new, I suppose. A good example is in one of the Flintstones comics from 50 years ago this month. Fred is suddenly chronically indecisive. He was never like that in the cartoon series. He was like that in one comic for convenience’s sake.

Far more satisfying is the final cartoon that month where Fred behaves exactly as you expect Fred would behave. Some great poses add to the fun.



The July 7th comic is a variation on an old gag that was used on the Jack Benny radio show. Jack didn’t go to a doctor. He went to a veterinarian (played by Frank Nelson) because it was cheaper. Note that Fred writes with a pencil in this comic; chiseling probably would have cluttered the frame.



The first of two baseball-oriented comics appeared in newspapers on July 14th. I really like the baseball logo in the first frame. Interesting view of Wilma and Betty from the back in the bottom left-hand panel. Note the presence, again, of Pebbles who doesn’t have anything to with the plot. Triceratops toy alert! The set-up and gag are good, but Fred’s out of character.



Great poses fill the July 21st comic. A shame I can’t find a better version of this on-line, especially the last panel. People watching baseball from atop dinosaurs in the parking lot? Well, I know people used to sit in their cars and watch the Dukes play inside the old Sports Stadium in Albuquerque some years ago.



Some great drawings again in the July 28th comic. This is the best version I could find. Wavy-mouthed Fred and shocked Wilma (bottom row, far left panel). Clever switch gag.

Alas, Baby Puss seems to have been replaced by Baby. Lots of Pebbles but no sabre-tooth tiger again this month.

As usual, you can click on the cartoons to enlarge them.

Pixie and Dixie — A Wise Quack

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Bob Carr; Layout – Paul Sommer; Background – Vera Hanson; Story – Warren Foster; Story Direction – Alex Lovy; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Dixie, Jinks – Daws Butler; Pixie – Don Messick; Duck – Red Coffey.
Music: Bill Loose/John Seely, Jack Shaindlin, Geordie Hormel, Spencer Moore, Phil Green.
Production: Huckleberry Hound Show K-46.
First Aired: week of January 9, 1961.
Plot: Pixie and Dixie unsuccessfully hide a duck from Mr. Jinks.

There’s exactly one gag in this cartoon. At the very end. And even in the final scene it takes forever to get there because Mr. Jinks and the meeces talk about it first.

This cartoon kind of sums up what went wrong at Hanna-Barbera. It’s virtually all dialogue and almost none of it is all that amusing. Of course, the proceedings aren’t helped by the whining, crying, self-pitying duck that drives the plot who, as we all know, got his own series of cartoons after a bit of a reworking the following season. I don’t know what Bill and Joe saw in him. Surely they couldn’t think all that “poor little me” wailing was funny. Or maybe they thought the audience was supposed to feel sorry for him, instead of getting fed up with all that bawling about himself, the reaction anyone would have in real life with someone like that.

Warren Foster was capable of writing funny dialogue, as any Warner Bros. cartoon fan knows, but either the character or the workload (70-plus cartoons in one season) wore him down. The most amusing thing the Yakky-Doodle-to-be says, after bursting into tears (well, there would have been tears if the budget allowed for drawing them), is after Dixie tells him he’ll grow up to be a beautiful swan. “I don’t want to be a swan,” he howls. “I don’t even know what a swan is.” But Pixie and Dixie don’t top it with a reaction that would make it funny. Story director Alex Lovy simply cuts to a three-character shot and Dixie rolls on with the next line of dialogue while the innocuous music fades in the background.

The best line, predictably, comes from Mr. Jinks. “Let ‘em cry me a river,” he says to the duck, “and swim downstream on it.” Jinks is evidently in a song-title quoting mood as he puts his arm to his head and sarcastically exclaims “I’m all shook up.” Daws Butler tries to help the cartoon a little more with one of his typical Jinks word-mangles: “I’m despicable-buh-bob-bob-buh-ble-like.”



The story goes like this: the duck is swimming in Jinks’ water dish for some reason. The duck boo-hoos to Pixie and Dixie that everyone makes fun of him. Pixie and Dixie hide the duck in their hole from Jinks. The duck doesn’t help by constantly making noise. Pixie and Dixie pretend they’re quacking and playing “Duck.” Jinks tells them to duck from his broom. The duck comes out of the hole to demand Jinks stop. Jinks makes fun of the duck, who drags himself out of the house wallowing in self-pity. Gunfire is heard. It’s rabbit season duck season. Jinks feels no guilt about evicting the duck because he has no conscience. So Dixie pretends to be Jinks’ conscience by talking to him through a garden hose. Jinks falls for it. Cut to a marsh where Jinks calls for the duck by going “quack quack.” You can guess what happens next. Unseen stupid hunters mistake a cat for a duck. Blam!



The final scene has more yap-yap-yap between the meeces and the duck. Jinks orders the duck from his water dish. Jinks needs it. He sticks his shot-up butt in the dish to cool it off. But Jinks can’t have been in pain because he manages to carry on as normal though all that yapping in the final scene. Jinks’ final line: “Conscience-like. Who needs it?” Yeah, it’s the best Foster could come up with.

The Hanna-Barbera ‘B’ team worked on this. Bob Carr’s animation is basic with characters mainly standing and talking, Paul Sommer’s layouts are like looking straight ahead at a stage and Vera Ohman Hanson had only seven backgrounds to draw as most of the action takes place against a living room baseboard. Jinks looks like he has some kind of curved spine disease the way Carr draws him in the cartoon’s only chase sequence.



There’s unintentional irony on the soundtrack. When the duck is mournfully elaborating how his mama and daddy and the pussycat don’t like him, the tune in the background is Phil Green’s “And They All Lived Happily Ever After.” The thing is, that’s the cue’s name in the EMI Photoplay series. The sound-cutter at Hanna-Barbera used the Capitol Hi-Q library, where it was given the name “Lullaby.” The first cue was also used to open the Pixie and Dixie cartoon “Light Headed Cat,” which has a number of pieces of music I can’t identify. The other cues should be pretty familiar.

0:00 - Pixie and Dixie Main Title theme (Hanna-Barbera-Curtin-Shows).
0:11 - quizzical flute cue (Shaindlin) – Pixie and Dixie talk, Jinks in a mean mood.
1:52 - COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) – Meeces in hole with duck, Jinks with feather, “Duck” game, broom comes down.
2:58 - ZR-47 LIGHT MOVEMENT (Hormel) – Jinks runs with broom, skids to stop, “Well…”
3:13 - TC-201 PIXIE COMEDY (Loose-Seely) “That explanations…,” Jinks kicks duck out.
4:09 - GR-259 AND THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER (Green) – Duck at door, gunshots, meeces decide to create conscience.
4:57 - TC-204A WISTFUL COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Jinks sleeping, meeces chat.
5:11 - TC-300 ECCENTRIC COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Dixie as conscience.
5:57 - TC-202 ECCENTRIC COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Jinks in bullrushes, explosion.
6:11 - LAF-74-2 LICKETY SPLIT (Shaindlin) – Jinks runs.
6:17 - LAF-10-7 GROTESQUE No 2 (Shaindlin) – Duck in dish, Jinks cools butt.
6:55 - Pixie and Dixie End Title theme (Curtin).

From Storyboard to Garbage Can

Not every gag a writer comes with ends up in a finished cartoon. Some gags are weak so they never get on the storyboard. Others may not quite fit the flow of the story. And, at Hanna-Barbera in the ‘50s, there was always the chance they could be cut for time, as each cartoon had to be the exact same length so it could fit into any half-hour Huck or Quick Draw show.

Some time ago, Frank Forte on his blog Cartoon Concept Design posted some of the panels from the fine Huckleberry Hound cartoon “A Bully Dog” (1959). The drawings are sketchy but lots of fun; they look like Warren Foster’s work though you shouldn’t take my word for it. It’s interesting comparing them with the finished cartoon because not only was some of Huck’s dialogue changed, some of the gags never made it onto the screen.

The story is simple. Huck keeps getting thwarted by a crafty snickering watchdog as he tries to deliver a telegram to the house where a Mr. Muggins lives. Frank posted seven sets of panels—a shame the rest aren’t around—and they contain gags you won’t find in the cartoon.

In the first two sets of panels, Huck hides in a garbage can to sneak toward the house’s front door. The hole-digging dog stops him and the two end up in a fountain. That’s not in the cartoon. The next gag on the second set, where Huck’s on a phone wire, made it into the short, but the dialogue in panels six and seven has been changed. The overhead angle of the dog next to the makeshift trampoline in the third set of panels is pretty much how it looks in the cartoon.



The bedspring gag is next in the cartoon, but the whole sequence of the dog running into the cellar and grabbing a mallet was changed. Instead, the dog simply stands at the top of the brick wall and bashes Huck with a tennis racket. Huck then sproings down the street, through a manhole, bounces underground in the sewer (his head buckles the pavement when he hits it from underneath), then emerges from the other end and delivers a variation of the gag line on the story board.

The dark glasses gag—and there are two sets of panels missing so we don’t know what Foster had in mind—is missing from the cartoon. Instead, Foster brings back the idea of Huck sneaking along inside a garbage can, except the gag ends with Huck being crushed by an anvil dropped by the dog.



In the last set of panels, the dialogue’s been changed slightly. In the cartoon, the woman doesn’t order Huck to sing to the dog, it’s a request. And Huck’s final line is deleted altogether.



Why were the gags cut or changed? Did Foster do it or was story director Alex Lovy or maybe Bill Hanna responsible? We’ll never know at this late date. But it’s nice to see they’ve been preserved and that someone at the studio liked them enough to copy them so, eventually, fans could see them, too.

Frank’s got a nice little collection of early Flintstones model sheets and a great selection of sheets by Alex Toth for the fantasy/adventure cartoons the studio made in the mid-‘60s. You can see them by clicking HERE.

Quick Draw McGraw — Talky Hawky

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera
Credits: Animation – Ed de Mattia; Layout – Tony Rivera; Backgrounds – Art Lozzi; Written By Mike Maltese; Story Director – Alex Lovy; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Narrator, Rancher, Jeb, Store Owner – Doug Young; Quick Draw, Baba Looey, Maxie, Zeke, Masked Robber, Singing Cowboy, Chicken, Sniffing Bullet – Daws Butler.
Music: Jack Shaindlin, Phil Green, Bill Loose, Harry Bluestone-Emil Cadkin, Hoyt Curtin, Roger Roger.
Production: Quick Draw McGraw Show M-037, Production J-116 (or J-109).
First Aired: week of February 26, 1961.
Plot: Quick Draw is hired to rid a ranch of Maxie the chicken hawk.

There’s a gag in the Bugs Bunny/Wile E. Coyote cartoon “Operation: Rabbit” (1952) where Bugs quickly puts on a rubber chicken head to fool a rabbit-hunting radarscope, which ends up blasting the coyote instead. In “Talky Hawky,” Maxie the chicken hawk puts on a rubber chicken head to fool a chicken hawk-hunting bullet, which ends up blasting Quick Draw instead.

Both cartoons were written by Mike Maltese, and about half of this one bears a resemblance to the format of the coyote shorts at Warners, as there’s a series of gags where Quick Draw tries to catch the chicken hawk and fails miserably. And it’s a pretty good cartoon. Maltese tosses in some silly dialogue and a ridiculous ending.

The chicken hawk isn’t named in the actual cartoon, but he is on the model sheet. And he is in the cartoon’s summary in the TV listings for the Los Angeles Times the day it was first broadcast. I’m presuming the summaries were provided by the studio to the paper or some kind of newspaper service. Daws Butler gives him the Maxie Rosenbloom voice he used on the “Fractured Fairy Tales” for Jay Ward. So which came first, the chicken or the egg voice?



Maxie’s designed by layout artist Tony Rivera, who gave him huge eyes. There are a couple of odd layouts in the cartoon and I don’t know whether this originally came from Maltese’s storyboard. The chicken rancher and Quick Draw aren’t in perspective. If you could lower the camera on the characters below the bottom of the screen, the rancher would have to be standing on a box to be at the same level as Quick Draw.



And some of the shots don’t match from medium to close up; I suspect that’s the way Rivera drew them in layout. These are consecutive drawings. When the scene cuts to the close-up, Quick Draw’s facing in a different direction.



Ed De Mattia animated this one. He has distinctive two-drawing head shakes. See the extra lines on the face.



And de Mattia liked two teeth in dialogue. His Baba looks a little off; I can’t really explain it.



The rolling, rosy hills signify Art Lozzi. I like the shades of brown on the dirt. It seems most of the H-B background artists put liver spots on the ground.



A little unusual in this cartoon is the inclusion of Hoyt Curtin’s Quick Draw McGraw theme that was used in the little cartoon vignettes between the cartoons. The following season, H-B would eliminate the use of library music altogether and go with cues by Curtin. There’s also a rare appearance of “Chopsticks” by Roger Roger from the Valentino library to open this cartoon.

Maltese uses some old tricks at the start of the cartoon. There’s a narrator—it seems to me a majority of Quick Draws featured a narrator—and a repetitive/overly descriptive bit of dialogue. “When gold was in the Old West,” we’re informed, “the gold rush was on. In their hasty greed for gold, the miners overlooked many of life’s necessities.” That’s the cue for an exhausted miner to repeat “In our hasty greed for gold, we plumb forgot to bring something.”

The premise is something that was a reality in the Klondike Gold Rush. Simple foodstuffs went for an exorbitant amount of money. In this cartoon, it’s eggs (‘Easy terms arranged”). And that’s prompted a cattle baron to turn into a chicken rancher. Only one problem. A chicken hawk starts stealing his chickens to get at the eggs (he doesn’t want to eat the chickens themselves, he assures the hens). What’s the rancher to do? He’s urged by a cowboy to call for—and then the cowboy sings the Quick Draw McGraw theme (out of his range).

Allow me to pause for a moment and point out the difference between a Hanna-Barbera cartoon and a Jay Ward cartoon made at the same time using the same Daws Butler Maxie Rosenbloom voice. Maxie says “Like, I’m a natural-born chicken rustler on account of I’m a chicken hawk. There’s a connection there somewheres.” It’s not unlike a line in Ward cartoon. The difference is a Ward cartoon would immediately cut to another shot or another piece of dialogue. It would treat it as a punch line and move on. But in this cartoon, Maxie tip-toes off-stage, comes back, there’s more dialogue, then the camera fades. And in the background, the slow wa-wa trumpets of Harry Bluestone’s “CB-83A” are heard, which don’t fit snappy dialogue. One of the things that helped the Ward cartoons was they were half the length of an H-B short, so everything was faster. And, as Tex Avery learned directing at MGM, if you pick up the pace of your cartoon, the cartoon generally become funnier.

I’ve mentioned before the huge workload—over 75 cartoons—that Maltese had to churn out in 1959, so he didn’t have time to polish dialogue like he would have writing fewer than ten a year at Warners. Sometimes, Maltese’s work at Hanna-Barbera is really inspired. And, sometimes, it sounds like he’s just moving the plot along or putting in something because he got to put something in there and get on to the next cartoon. The rancher offers Quick Draw $10,000 to catch the chicken rustler.

Baba: Let’s face it, Quickstraw. It’s no chicken’s feed.
Quick Draw: Then I’ll catch that chicken hawk, or my name ain’t Quick Draw “Chicken Rustler-Catchin’ McGraw.

At Warners he would have had time to come up with a sillier (and, therefore, funnier) nickname. And he might have made fun of (or avoided) the tired “chicken feed” pun. Or Chuck Jones would have augmented the pun with a funny pose or bits of personality animation by Ken Harris or Benny Washam. But Maltese doesn’t have that luxury here. Still, he comes up with a funny cartoon. The gags:

● A radar-return shooter has a bullet that sniffs out chicken hawks. As mentioned above, Maxie uses a mash to fool it, then pulls a chicken hawk mask over Quick Draw. The bullet does its job. Quick Draw tosses in a “Hold on thar!” I like how Maxie shows up with a pillow case. “Ahem. Pardon the intrusion, gentlemen. But I’m in dire need of loose chicken feathers. My pillow is dreadful unlumpy without ‘em.” “Why, shore, li’l stranger,” replies the dopey Quick Draw, not even knowing he’s dealing with a chicken hawk.
● A TNT-loaded chicken dummy is left by Quick Draw as bait. Maxie’s clued in because he’s watching what’s happening (off-scene). He convinces the rancher it’s one of his chickens. “Thanks, honest chicken hawk,” says the rancher, who gets blasted by Quick Draw. The reward is down to $1.30.
● “I’ll do the thinnin’ around here,” cries our hero, who forces Baba to dress up as a hen. Baba replies with a stringer of Desi Arnaz-invoking faux Spanish. Maxie’s fooled (“enough left over for snicky-snacks”) until he sees Quick Draw’s rifle. Naturally, Quick Draw shoots Baba in the butt instead.
● “Quick Draw is, like, shootin’ up your chickens,” Maxie tells the rancher. The reward is down to nothing. Quick Draw’s dander is up (Maltese ran out of funny dialogue again).
● Finally, Quick Draw brings in a banty-fightin’ rooster to battle the chicken hawk. Baba tries to warn him it won’t happen. Cut to a shot of the chicken and an egg. Yes, it’s not a rooster at all. The wind-up gag has Baba and Quick Draw running, then the camera pulls back to show the two of them and the egg (with feet through the shell) doing roadwork as Quick Draw decides to start “trainin’ this little rooster early.” Cut to the egg panting. Cut to Baba’s tag line: “That Quickstraw’s pretty smart. He never winds up with egg on his face.” Iris out.



There’s the usual insult/word turnaround gag. “I theen Quickstraw’s a bird-brain,” laughs Baba. “What did you say?” asks the annoyed Quick Draw. “I said ‘I thin it’s goin’ to rain’.”

This was Maxie’s only cartoon. He joined Scooter Rabbit and Yippee Coyote in the Quick Draw retirement home.

0:00 - Quick Draw McGraw Sub Main Title theme (Curtin).
0:15 - CHOPSTICKS (Roger) – Gold miner scene, miners collapse.
0:31 - C-71 ROMANTIC MAIN TITLE (Loose) – Miners on ground, shot of ‘Eats’ store.
0:47 - CB-83A MR TIPPY TOES (Cadkin-Bluestone) – Eggs in window, robbery, rancher talks to camera, Maxie steals eggs, rancher talks to cowboy.
1:48 - (THAT’S) QUICK DRAW McGRAW (Curtin) – Cowboy sings Quick Draw theme.
1:53 - CRAZY GOOF (Shaindlin) – Quick Draw and Baba walk, talk to rancher, bullet scene.
3:59 - jaunty bassoon and skippy strings (Shaindlin) – “My radar chicken hawk gun works,” fake chicken blow-up scene.
5:03 - GR-472 HICKSVILLE (Green) – Baba-hen scene, Quick Draw talks to rancher.
5:52 - (THAT’S) QUICK DRAW McGRAW (Curtin) – Banty rooster scenes.
6:43 - Quick Draw McGraw Sub End Title theme (Curtin).

Yogi Bear Weekend Comics, July 1963

It must have been a hot July 50 years ago because two of the four Yogi Bear weekend comics that month use the heat as a starting point for the plot. I suppose I could look it up but I’m too lazy. Must be the heat.

Anyway, it’s so hot that Boo Boo must be taking refuge in a cave as he’s not in two of the four comics. However, we do get freckled, puffy-cheeked kids again and one comic where Yogi spends all his time talking in rhyme. Hey, hey, hey! Sigh. Now he’s got me doing it.



Yogi’s being a jerk in the July 7th comic. Ranger Smith takes care of that. I like the shocked fish and contented ranger in the middle row, first panel. “I think I orter go under water.” What?! Someone’s trying too hard with the dialogue.



Why is there a general in Jellystone Park? Is there an air force base at the airport? Well, best not to ask questions like that. July 14th has Yogi and Boo Boo survive a looping helicopter crash. They’re not even scratched. Ranger Smith’s being the jerk in this one, revelling in the punishment he expects Yogi to get. I like the pleading panel with Yogi and Boo Boo in the bottom row. There’s a shadow background that reminds you of an interrogation. We get silhouettes in one panel in the middle row and a wavy-mouthed Yogi in another.



The less said about the rhymes in the July 21st comic the better.



Look at the detail in the last panel of the July 28th comic. And the perspective. It must be Harvey Eisenberg at work. And Gene Hazelton, or whoever did the story on this, tosses in a little song for atmosphere, because it doesn’t advance the plot.

As usual, click each comic to enlarge it. Several people have commented to me that it’s a shame some company has never issued a book with all these old Sunday comics. I bet it would sell pretty well. Hey, hey, hey!