The Biggest Show in Town?

Were the theme song singers right? Was the biggest show in town Huckleberry Hound for all you guys and gals? The answer is “it depends.”

When the Huck show debuted in 1958, a company called the American Research Bureau (now Arbitron) provided a diary-based ratings system for TV shows in various cities. Among the things it measured were ratings for syndicated shows, such as Huckleberry Hound. The results were published in Variety. You’ve read here in contemporary newspaper reports how Huck became a fad. The show’s early ARB numbers reveal it was able to hold its own against all kinds of syndicated programming—and there was an awful lot of it.

Posts about numbers are boring posts, so I’ll apologise in advance if you find this post boring. But I want to go through some of the ratings Huck got in its first few months on the air. Variety wasn’t consistent in which cities were published month to month, so that’s why some markets only appear once. The magazine eventually changed its system in 1959 to publish only the top ten syndicated programmes in a city. And in the second week of January 1959, Huckleberry Hound was the No. 1 syndicated programme in the Seattle-Tacoma area. It was the Biggest Show in Town, at least of the syndicated type.

Variety originally ran the top 20 syndicated shows, chopping the number to the top 10 just after the start of 1959. The first number below is the rating and the second number is the share. One rating point equals 1% of the number of homes with TVs in the market area. The share is the percentage of TV sets tuned to a show in the market. We found that in one rating period in Spokane, Sky King had a 100% share. That’s because it was on at a time when the other stations in the city hadn’t signed on for the day. Interestingly, Huck never cracked the top 20 in Chicago in the first few months after it began airing.

You’ll also found ratings for other syndicated cartoon shows. The Woody Woodpecker Show, the version sponsored by Kellogg’s and emceed by Universal cartoon studio boss Walter Lantz, was extremely popular and rated well in cities where Huck was below the top 20. The Popeye and Looney Tunes cartoons were syndicated by AAP (later UAA), while CBS syndicated Terrytoons and the old Farmer Al Falfa shorts. Huck and Woody ran as part of a five-days-a-week Kellogg’s strip along with Superman and two other filmed shows. The last Variety refers to Huck winning its time slot, showing again it was the Biggest Show in Town (depending on how you look at things).

October 10-17, 1958
NEW YORK
1. Sea Hunt 32.4 67
13. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:30) WPIX 5.6 19
(Popeye, No. 8)

LOS ANGELES
1. Divorce Court 16.7 25
7. Huckleberry Hound (Tue. 6:30) KNXT 11.4 29
(Popeye, No. 14)

SAN FRANCISCO
1. Sheriff of Cochise 24.5 44
19. Huckleberry Hound (Wed. 6:30) KTVU 10.9 22

ATLANTA
1. Big Story 31.5 66
11. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) WSB 14.9 48
(Looney Tunes, No. 12; Woody Woodpecker, No. 15)

BALTIMORE
1. Casey Jones 20.3 47
9. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 5:00) WJZ 12.8 52
(Popeye, No. 7; Woody Woodpecker, No. 9)

BUFFALO
1. Silent Service 35.5 65
17. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 5:30) WGR 15.5 55

MINNEAPOLIS
1. Death Valley Days 25.5 40
14. Huckleberry Hound (Tue. 6:30) WCCO 10.9 22
(Popeye, No. 9; Looney Tunes, No. 11; Woody Woodpecker, No. 12)

PORTLAND
1. Man Without a Gun 22.5 42
11. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) KGW 15.5 41

ROCHESTER
1. Gray Ghost 38.1 57 11. Huckleberry Hound (Fri. 6:00) WVET 19.8 57
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 6; Popeye, No. 7)

October 10-30

BAKERSFIELD
1. Rescue 8 33 53
16. Huckleberry Hound (Wed. 7:00) KBAK 21.5 42

CHARLESTON-HUNTINGDON
1. 26 Men 24.3 49
14. Huckleberry Hound (Mon. 6:00) WCHS 13.8 30

DAVENPORT-ROCK ISLAND-MOLINE
1. Harbor Command 39.3 60
18. Huckleberry Hound (Fri. 6:00) WOC 17.5 43

SACRAMENTO
1. Sheriff of Cochise 34.5 57
3. Huckleberry Hound (Fri. 7:30) KCRA 32.4 47

WICHITA
1. MacKenzie’s Raiders 25.8 41
13. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 5:00) KAKE 16.3 52
(Looney Tunes, No. 7; Popeye, No. 10; Bugs Bunny, No. 11; Woody Woodpecker, No. 14)

Top 20 National Syndicated Shows
(Based on U.S. Pulse Spot Film Report for October).
Compilation of the top 20 syndicated shows in the U.S. is based on 22 basic markets, representing about 16,391,500 tv homes.
Pulse, in compiling the list, utilizes a weighted average keyed to the number of sets in each of the 22 markets. The weighted average takes in only the markets in which the program has been telecast. In order to qualify, a property must be telecast in at least ten of the 22 markets. Total number of the 22 basic markets included in the rating compilation for each series is listed in the brackets.
The markets include Atlanta, Baltimore, Birmingham, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Detroit, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, Providence, San Francisco-Oakland, Seattle-Tacoma, St. Louis and Washington.
Top 20
1. SEA HUNT (20) 21.1
19. HUCKLEBERRY HOUND (19) 8.6

November 5-12
NEW YORK
Huck not in Top 20

LOS ANGELES
1. Mr. Adams and Eve 16.4 26
15. Huckleberry Hound (Tue. 6:30) KNXT 10.7 25
(Popeye, No. 13)

ATLANTA
1. Big Story 32.2 67
9. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) WSB 14.2 41
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 8; Looney Tunes, No. 13; Popeye, No. 16)

BALTIMORE
1. Death Valley Days 23.3 47
7. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 5:00) WJZ 15.3 63
(Popeye, No. 4; Woody Woodpecker, No. 5)

BUFFALO
1. Silent Service 36.5 65
15. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 5:30) WGR 16.3 58

CINCINNATI
1. Highway Patrol 27.4 66
13. Huckleberry Hound (Wed. 6:00) WCPO 14.2 48
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 7)

COLUMBUS
1. Sea Hunt 29.2 53
15. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:30) WTVN 14.5 43
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 6)

HOUSTON
1. State Trooper 23.5 38
15. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 5:00) KTRK 12.8 47
(Popeye, No. 8; Woody Woodpecker, No. 14)

KNOXVILLE
1. Gray Ghost 35 58
2. Huckleberry Hound (Mon. 6:00) WATE 29.3 62
(Tied with Badge 714 and Highway Patrol)
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 4)

LOUISVILLE
1. Highway Patrol 44.8 56
8. Huckleberry Hound (Tues. 6:30) WAVE 24.8 48
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 15)

MIAMI
1. Highway Patrol 28.5 59
14. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 7:00) WCKT 18.9 40
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 10)

PORTLAND
1. Casey Jones 19.5 46
6. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) KGW 15.9 39

RICHMOND, Va.
1. Sheriff of Cochise 23.5 43
11. Huckleberry Hound (Wed. 6:00) WTVR 12.9 44
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 6; Farmer Al Falfa, No. 9)

SAN ANTONIO
1. Death Valley Days 34.7 56
13. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) KONO 16.9 39
(Popeye, No. 14; Woody Woodpecker, No. 17)

SAN DIEGO
1. Sea Hunt 25 53
10. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) KFSD 15.2 36
(Popeye, No. 12)

December 1-8
NEW YORK
1. Sea Hunt 32.6 61
14. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:30) WPIX 7.2 19
(Popeye, No. 7; Woody Woodpecker, No. 8; Terrytoons, No. 15)

LOS ANGELES
1. San Francisco Beat/Sea Hunt 14.7 23
7. Huckleberry Hound (Tues. 6:30) KNXT 12.5 28
(Popeye, No. 12)

ATLANTA
1. Whirlybirds 32.2 65
7. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) WSB 18.2 48
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 10; Looney Tunes, No. 11; Popeye, No. 14)

BALTIMORE
1. Death Valley Days 28.3 44
7. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 5:00) WJZ 16.3 59

CINCINNATI
1. Highway Patrol 29.2 67
5. Huckleberry Hound (Wed. 6:00) WCPO 19.5 68

DETROIT
1. Sea Hunt 28.5 54
10. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 7:00) CKLW 14.5 27
(Popeye, No. 2; Woody Woodpecker, No. 3; Bugs Bunny No. 10 w/28 share)

PROVIDENCE
1. Death Valley Days 25.8 71
15. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 5:00) WPRO 10.3 51
(Popeye, No. 12; Woody Woodpecker, No. 15)

January 2-9, 1959

NEW YORK
1. Sea Hunt 27.9 52
14. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:30) WPIX 8.7 21
(Popeye, No. 13; Woody Woodpecker, No. 20)

LOS ANGELES
1. Mr. Adams and Eve 18.4 28
10. Huckleberry Hound (Tues. 6:30) KNXT 11.9 35
(Popeye, No. 6)

ATLANTA
1. Whirlybirds 31.4 68
9. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) WSB 18.8 48
(Popeye, No. 14; Woody Woodpecker, No. 15; Looney Tunes, No. 16)

BALTIMORE
1. Death Valley Days 23.8 41
4. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 5:00) WJZ 17.8 61
(Tied with Superman)
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 2; Popeye Nos. 3, 4)

BOSTON
1. Gray Ghost 24.9 50
11. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:30) WNAC 18.5 43

COLUMBUS
1. Death Valley Days 27.5 41
14. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:30) WTVN 16.2 43
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 3)

DETROIT 1. Sea Hunt 27.9 51
14. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 8:00) CKLW 13.9 27
(Popeye, No. 4; Bugs Bunny, No. 6; Woody Woodpecker, No. 8, Farmer Al Falfa, No. 13)

FRESNO
1. People’s Choice 20.8 39
2. Huckleberry Hound (Wed. 6:00) KJEO 20.3 52
(Popeye, No. 5)

MILWAUKEE
1. Whirlybirds 25.2 53
14. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 5:00) WISN 14.3 45
(Terry Toons, No. 7; Woody Woodpecker, No. 9)

OKLAHOMA CITY (Jan. 2-29)
1. Silent Service 30.7 52
16. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 5:00) WKY 18.8 48
(Popeye, No. 10; Crusader Rabbit, No. 14; Woody Woodpecker, No. 17)

PORTLAND
1. State Trooper 23.2 44
13. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) KGW 18.5 40
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 20)

RICHMOND
1. Whirlybirds 23.9 49
11. Huckleberry Hound (Wed. 6:00 WTVR 16.2 44
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 8; Farmer Al Falfa, No. 15)

SEATTLE
1. Highway Patrol 26.2 44
15. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs 6:00) KING 15.5 36
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 12)

SPOKANE (Jan. 2-29)
1. Death Valley Days 35.8 57
8. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) KREM 20.8 50
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 2; Popeye, No. 4)

TACOMA (Jan. 8-14)
1. Citizen Soldier 25.3 38
10. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) KING 15.3 33
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 11)

Top 20 National Syndicated Shows
(Based on U.S. Pulse Spot Film Report for January).
1. Sea Hunt (22) Ziv 21.0
18. Huckleberry Hound (21) Screen Gems 18.1

January 5-11, 1959
TOP TEN only
LOS ANGELES
1. Rescue 8 (Tues. 7:00) KRCA Screen Gems 17.2 32.3
7. Huckleberry Hound (Tues. 6:30) KNXT Screen Gems 12.0 27.8
(Popeye, No. 8)

ATLANTA
1. Whirlybirds (Wed. 7:00) WSB CBS 32.4 71.2
9. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) WSB Screen Gems 19.1 56.7
(Popeye, No. 3; Woody Woodpecker, No. 5, Looney Tunes/Bosko No. 10)

BALTIMORE
1. Death Valley Days (Mon. 7:30) WJZ 24.0 39.9
5T. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 5:00) WJZ 19.7 66.8
(Popeye No. 2; Woody Woodpecker, No. 3; Popeye, No. 5T)

COLUMBUS
1. Sea Hunt (Mon. 7:30) WBNS 35.2 62.1
9. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:30) WTVN 22.9 60.1
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 2)

DALLAS-FORT WORTH
1. Death Valley Days (Sat. 9:30) KRLD U.S. Borax 25.8 46.8
6. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) KFJZ Screen Gems 16.9 39.4
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 5)

HARTFORD
1. Sky King (Sun. 6:00) WHNC 24.1 60.1
3. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) WHNC 19.6 53.8
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 2; Popeye, No. 4)

KANSAS CITY
1. Mike Hammer (Sat. 9:30) KCMO MCA 27.9 56.3
2t. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) KMBC Screen Gems 25.0 53.6

MIAMI
1. Sea Hunt (Fri. 7:00) WTVJ 40.1 67.9
10T. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 7:00) WCKT 21.6 41.2

MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL
1. Death Valley Days (Sat. 9:30) WCCO 24.4 49.3
9. Huckleberry Hound (Tues. 6:30) WCCO 15.4 23.8
(Woody Woodpeckerm, No. 2; Popeye No. 3)

PITTSBURGH
1. State Trooper (Sat, 10:30) KDKA MCA 34.7 56.6
3. Huckleberry Hound (Mon. 7:30) WTAE Screen Gems 23.8 42.1

PORTLAND, Ore.
1. State Trooper (Tues. 7:00) KGW MCA 38.5 70.0
2. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) KGW Screen Gems 32.6 56.4
(Woody Woodpecker, No. 6)

SAN DIEGO
1. Sea Hunt (Thurs. 7:00) KFMB Ziv 34.0 52.6
2. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) KFSD Screen Gems 26.2 49.4
(Popeye, No. 3; Woody Woodpecker, No. 5)

SEATTLE-TACOMA 1. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 6:00) KING 26.6 49.5
(Beat local news, Huntley-Brinkley on KOMO)

SYRACUSE
1. Sea Hunt (Wed. 7:00) WSYR 36.3 58.8
10. Huckleberry Hound (Thurs. 5:00) WSYR 25.0 74.6
(Popeye, No. 3; Woody Woodpecker, No. 4)

From Variety, February 25, 1959
KELLOGG'S PAYOFF ON 'HUCKLEBERRY'
High status of "Huckleberry Hound," the nationally-spotted Kellogg cartoon show sold by Screen Gems, is reflected (in the Pulse top 20 chart this week) and in the ARB tv rundown.
Kellogg sponsors the stanza in slightly over 200 tv markets. In the 85 markets covered by ARB for the months of October, November and December, the SG show, the last report available in each market shows "HH" has copped first place over the competition 75 out of 85 times.

Tally Ho, Carlo

One disadvantage we kids had watching the Huckleberry Hound Show in the late 1950s and early 1960s is the cartoons were in black and white. Most TV programming was not in colour at the time, so Screen Gems sent 16 mm black-and-white prints to stations to broadcast, though the show had been wisely shot in colour.

This means youngsters way-back-when didn’t get the full effect of some of the great colour work in the background artwork of the cartoons. Here’s a lovely example from the third Yogi Bear cartoon put into production, “Tally Ho-Ho-Ho” (1958). I really like the shades of yellow and green and, especially, the stylised groves of autumnal trees. This is the work of Fernando Montealegre. He, Art Lozzi and Bob Gentle handled most of the background work in the show’s first season. You can see the large foreground rock on both sides; this was a repeating background.


The animators in the cartoon are Carlo Vinci and Mike Lah. I really like Lah’s animation in this one; he gives Yogi a crazy exit scene that you’d never find in later cartoons. Because this is an early Yogi, Carlo’s animation isn’t altogether fluid (the studio evidently was on a tighter budget in the first few cartoons), but he manages to fit in some interesting poses. Here’s Yogi surprised seeing a hunter with a gun. The head stretch is typical early-HB Vinci.



Check out the trees in the background. Monty varies the colours; the trunks and branches are either brown, grey or green.

Yogi gets shot at by the hunter, played by Professor Gizmo of the Ruff and Reddy series (he’s the same design with the same voice as Gizmo). Joe Barbera and Charlie Shows cough up the old water-leaks-through-body-holes gag that Tex Avery loved at MGM. We get some neat poses, backed up by Bill Hanna’s fine timing.



More reactions from Yogi. He thinks he’s fooled the hunter until bullets whiz past him. The second drawing is held for 20 frames while the bullets go by; the third drawing is on the screen for 10 frames.



We posted some of these drawings about nine years ago when we reviewed this cartoon, but we’ll put them up again anyway. These are Mike Lah’s poses as Yogi runs in place then zips out of the scene.



One other thing should be mentioned—Yogi’s entire face is tan coloured. He was drawn that way for the first six cartoons before someone decided to limit the colour to his muzzle alone.



One of the things I like about the first-season Yogis is there was no formula. Boo Boo wasn’t in a number of cartoons. Ranger Smith hadn’t been invented yet. Jellystone wasn’t specified as Yogi’s home. This cartoon has two characters (besides a silent elk that does little in its brief appearance) and they carry the plot nicely. The Yogi formula was, looking back, the right direction for the studio but the character was stronger and richer in the Barbera-Shows-Gordon period and it’s a shame the studio decided to go in another direction, helped by good poses and attractive background artwork.

The Hanna-Barbera Tricks

Hanna-Barbera was given X amount of time and X amount of money to make TV cartoons. “X” in TV cartoons didn’t equal “X” in theatrical cartoons. There was less time and less money. Chuck Jones could sneer at “illustrated radio” all he wanted, but if someone handed him $300 and told him to buy a car, he wouldn’t be getting a new Cadillac. He’d get the best he could for $300.

Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera didn’t invent held drawings, background pans and walk cycles. You could find them in theatrical cartoons, too. But the H-B studio had to rely on them more than the old theatrical cartoon factories because it didn’t have the time or money to do it any other way.

Here are some examples from the Yogi Bear cartoon “Big Brave Bear” (1958).

The cartoon opens with the camera fixed on of one of Monty’s well-composed background drawings; the same kind of establishing shot you’d find in some Bob McKimson cartoons at Warners. No cels to ink and paint, no time-consuming movement by the cameraman. Frank Paiker, or whoever was operating the camera, simply clicked the number of times indicated on the exposure sheet and then cross-faded into the next scene.

Here’s a recreation of the second scene. The camera panned slowly left to right over a background drawing and came across Boo Boo and Yogi. The only animation is a cycle of Yogi’s right lower leg lazily going up and down. There’s just enough movement to keep the scene from being static. This stock cue from Geordie Hormel plays in the background.


Opening dialogue? It’s as simple as it can be. No wild gestures. No body movement. There’s no time or money. Yogi and Boo Boo remain stuck on a cel as the mouth changes shape to reflect vowels in Daws Butler’s and Don Messick’s voices. If you look closely, though, you will see the backgrounds are not the same as in the pan shot.



Carlo Vinci animated this cartoon. At least for the first few years at Hanna-Barbera, Carlo tried to avoid stiff walk cycles. Here’s a loping little walk in eight drawings, each exposed on two frames, with the background moved slightly. I’m sorry I can’t isolate Boo Boo so you can see it better; the jerking background may be distracting. But you can see Boo Boo changes in every drawing; it’s full animation.



Hanna-Barbera cartoons appear rife with repeating backgrounds, where Pixie and Dixie would run past the same light socket six times, or Huckleberry Hound would stroll in front of the same trees five times. Pixie, Dixie and Huck would all move in cycle animation. But there were times in the first number of cartoons on the Huck half-hour where there would be no movement at all; something would slide across a background until the background ran out and had to start again. Here is an example where the gangster’s car doesn’t move; not even the wheels. It takes 32 frames (16 frames per second) for the car to reach one end of the background to the other before repeating. What you see below been slowed down. I admire the early Hanna-Barbera background work. The trees are outlines, the colours are sponged over top. (Dick Bickenbach seems to have loved cars with no doors in medium-long shot).



Though the animation isn’t exactly lush in TV cartoons, Carlo fitted in some nice expressions in some of the early Huck shows, including “The Buzzin’ Bear” and “Hookey Daze.” I like this realisation/shock take from Boo Boo below in this cartoon. It’s a shame things got tamer as the years went on.



Overall, the animation short-cuts the H-B staff had to go with in the early cartoons were used pretty well. Combined with good voice work, pleasing art and (though not in every short) solid stories, the studio got a lot of mileage for their “X.” Certainly the cartoons pleased kids 60 years ago and, I’d hope, do so today.

Spoofing Westerns and Private Eyes

Mike Maltese seems to have had an affinity for Western characters. At Warner Bros., he invented Yosemite Sam. Then about 15 years later, he came up with Quick Draw McGraw for Hanna-Barbera.

Quick Draw is my favourite series. Maltese managed to make fun of pretty much every Western cliché. For good measure, he added in Snuffles, the dog who was loyal only to whoever would feed him a biscuit. For even better measure, he added Quick Draw’s Zorro-like alter ego, El Kabong, who was feared or respected by other characters despite his obvious incompetence. And, just to add to things, several cartoons pitted Quick Draw against the sheep-stealing orange Snagglepuss, who may have been funnier as a villain than as the pink thespian of his own series. Plus, Maltese borrowed bits of dialogue and ideas from his old Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck cartoons (For example, orange Snagglepuss, in Lamb Chopped, cries “Yoicks and away!” a la Daffy Duck in Robin Hood Daffy, released about a year earlier).

Quick Draw McGraw debuted on the week of September 28, 1959. It was nominated for an Emmy but lost to H-B’s other syndicated effort for Kellogg’s, Huckleberry Hound.

This National Enterprise Association column appeared in newspapers starting around October 24, 1959. I am pretty much 100% certain I posted it in this blog years ago but I can’t find it. Perhaps I deleted it by accident. Regardless, here it is. Why the writer decided to omit the Augie Doggie/Doggie Daddy element on the show, I don’t know. However, he picked up on some of Maltese’s funnier ideas, and gives you a good idea why I’ve always liked the show.

Westerns, Private Eyes Get Kidded—By Animal Kingdom
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
NEA Staff Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (NEA) — Quick Draw McGraw knew exactly how and where to handle the problem. The damsel in distress who had written, "Am in danger, need help at once," signed her initials, "T. H. L. Q."
With born horse sense, Quick Draw — who is a HORSE and TV's newest fast gun — knew the initials meant "Typical Helpless Lumber Queen."
All the boys were there for the private eye convention and among them were: H. Two Oh, famous underwater private eye; Sky Hi, space private eye; Forchoon Cookie, well-known Chinese private eye, and Snooper, a cat, and his partner, Blabber, a mouse.

Today I give you Quick Draw McGraw and his partner, Bobba [sic] Looey, a Mexican burro, and Snooper and Blabber, private eyes, as proof that at least someone has a sense of humor about TV western heroes and private eyes.
The "Someones" are Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, who for 20 years were responsible for the hilarious cat and mouse MGM cartoon team, "Tom and Jerry."
When the studio fired them two years ago, they moved over to TV to become the only company turning out new and original cartoons made especially for television.
"RUFF and READY," [sic] "Huckleberry Hound" and "Yogi Bear" were their first animated cartoon TV stars and this season they've caught up with the western and private eye cycle.
Horselaughing with them, via 150 TV stations today, is Quick Draw McGraw, a talkin', shootin' horse and the only western star able to look a "bad man in the eye while swishing his tail and standing on four legs.
Helping Quick Draw tame the west is his slightly dumb sidekick, Bobba Looey, the burro. As Bat Masterson is proficient with a cane, Quick Draw is handy with a guitar, even becoming a singing horse at times.
But spoofing desperate human western heroes, on the adult level, gives Producers Hanna and Barbera their biggest laughs for an audience reported to be 60 per cent adult.

SNOOPER, "the world's greatest private eye," is a cat and his assistant. Blabber, a mouse, and they LOST their first case (proving that Hanna and Barbara can thumb their noses at Madison Ave.)
Like most all the TV's private eyes, Snooper and Blabber wear trench coats, collars up, and they even have a girl Friday. She's never seen but her voice comes over the telephone in their car.
"She's not too bright," Blabber explains, "but she's kind to her parakeet."
While other private eyes on TV are concerned only with murder, Snooper and Blabber wrestle with other problems, such as "The Case of the Missing Bank Building."
WHEN THEY WERE FIRED by MGM, Hanna and Barbera offered to produce cartoons for the studio's TV production company. MGM said it couldn't be done so Hanna and Barbera became the first do-it-yourself-kids in the TV animation business.
Today one sponsor spends 12 million dollars annually on Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw and a staff of 150 artists and technicians are working on around-the-clock shifts for the multi-million-dollar Hanna and Barbera Productions.
With the assembly-line planning and the use of 80 per cent fewer drawings — "without sacrificing quality" — they have produced in two years more cartoon shows for TV than they did in 20 years at MGM.

Meet the You-Know-Whos

“An inked disaster” is how the venerable New York Times referred to the debut of The Flintstones in 1960 (read the review HERE). Some critics weren’t all that impressed when the series first aired, partly because they it kept being pushed by ABC and Screen Gems as an “adult comedy,” they thought it would be a little more sophisticated and satiric.

The series turned out to have simple but creative spoofs of suburban living conditions of the 1950s transposed to the Stone Age, or at least the impressions everyone had of it. The audience was quite happy with that.

Here’s a full-page feature story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s “Sunday Magazine” of February 19, 1961. The writer evidently wasn’t altogether impressed (he had already written about the series before it aired; you can read what he had to say HERE). The interesting thing to me is the revelation that The Flintstones never had a pilot film. For some time, people have been referring to a 90-second-or-so reel of animation of The Flagstones as a “pilot,” which it never was. Could we please put that to rest now?

The spelling of Bill Hanna’s name is his. The publicity set-up photos came with the article.

Meet 'The Flintstones' of Bedrock
By Arnold Zeitlin
JOSEPH BARBERA AND William Hannah are two of the most inventive men in the television business and in the face of nervous concern by paid-in-full members of the Screen Actors Guild they are demonstrating a canny facility for inventing flesh-and-blood actors off your home television screens and replacing them with their own pen-and-ink creations.
Their most recent contribution to the attrition of live talent on television is the weekly series, "The Flintstones," seen Friday nights over Channel 4. The series of half hour animated cartoons, which they insist are for adults, has compounded the reputation the adept pair earned with the appearance of "Huckleberry Hound" on television screens across the country. The program, which was created with the kiddies in mind, is seen on Channel 2.
FOR VIEWERS SEEKING sophisticated comedy or devilish satire, "The Flintstones" would be a dead waste of time. Despite considerable promise before the start of the current television season, the program's first, 'The Flintstones" is a situation comedy to rank with the ranker days of "Life with Riley" and other such efforts.
"The Flintstones" sounds and looks better on paper than it does on the screen, a circumstance which makes easily believable the story behind its sale to sponsors.

Barbera, a dark haired, dark complexioned man with an earnest and disarming approach [sic], did not stoop to taking a pilot film with him when he met with potential buyers in New York City.
Instead, he spread the story board (sketches of the finished program) around a Madison Avenue office and proceeded to act all the parts himself. "The Flintstones" became a purchase.
'The Flintstones" seems to have caught on, despite, or perhaps, because of the puerility of its content. The program has a saving grace for the watcher who is excited by invention. It is crammed with the wildest contraptions since the heyday of the Rube Goldberg spectacular.
“The Flintstones” tell the story of an ordinary couple, their neighbors, their work-a-day world. With one difference. The couple, Fred and Wilma Flintstone, live in the Stone Age.
Barbera and Hannah, therefore, boyishly have invented one fantastic anachronism after the other to suggest modern times.
WIILMA VACCUM cleans her home, a stone hut of course, with the leathery trunk of an elephant with elephant still attached. A big beaked Dodo bird was resurrected from extinction to serve as record player needle ("So, it's a living," the bird confesses to the audience).
Fred operates a dinosaur-powered crane for the Rock Head & Quarry Cave Construction Company. A lizard serves as the brake for Fred's coupe with the stone wheels. He uses his feet for locomotion. Name of his city is Bedrock ("Any city in the United States could be this town." insists Barbera), it has a newspaper called the Bugle, chipped in stone tablets.

WHEN A STONE AGE movie company arrived in Bedrock one episode to make the movie, "Monster of the Tarpits." it came from a place called Hollyrock. A lizard with bucked teeth, for instance, is Wilma's can opener.
"Have you ever tried to cast a can opener?" said Barbera.

To demonstrate their basically generous attitude toward live actors, Barbera and Hannah have employed four good ones to supply voices for their animated offspring. Alan Reed and Jean Vander Pyl play the Flintstones. Bea Benaderet and Mel Blanc speak for the Barney Rubbles, the neighbors.
Huckleberry Hound was the first Barbera-Hannah character of consequence ("I love Huck," says Barbera, “he's so pure.”)
The two animators had worked 20 years from 1937 for MGM Studios, producing “Tom and Jerry” cartoons. In 1957, ( "business was on its ear": Barbera), the two men quit before they were fired. Shortly afterward, MGM discontinued 'Tom and Jerry" production.
THE SUCCESS OF HUCK and his cohorts, most singularly a character named Yogi Bear (who probably will get his own series) attracted letters from adults, inspiring the idea of a series in so-called adult hours.
The fears of live television actors notwithstanding, more animated cartoon programs doubtlessly will dot the schedule starting next fall. Barbera and Hannah will be leading the way, of course.
Barbera recalls it was considered a full year's work when they turned out six “Tom and Jerry” features (eight minutes each) for MGM. Last year, they produced 52 half hours, with more scheduled.
"I'll never understand," says a mystified Barbera. "what the hell we were doing in those days."

Wilma and Brickrock

Today we can enjoy DVDs or on-line streams of our favourite old cartoons (or bootlegs in some cases). A generation ago, baby boomers ooh-ed and aww-ed about the latest home entertainment technology of the day—video cassettes. Yes, people could actually see some of their favourite cartoons without having to wait for them to appear on TV.

Who better to give free plugs for these wondrous new products than the people who appeared on the cartoons?

Mel Blanc and Jean Vander Pyl were the only main cast members of The Flintstones who were alive when episodes of the ‘60s show first started appearing on home video. Blanc had a whole new career at the time as a raconteur, showing up on talk shows to gab about the old days of the Jack Benny radio show and throw in samples of the voices of his characters (mainly the Maxwell, an English horse and Warner Bros. cartoon stars) that everyone instantly recognised. Vander Pyl seems to have been less in demand. Of the four main actors, her career was arguably the one with the lowest profile. She wasn’t known for much more than being Wilma Flintstone.

Still, we’ve stumbled across this story dated August 27, 1987. In the few interviews I’ve read, she strikes me as a modest, open person, and I’m glad to see she got more recognition in her later years (especially when the live-action Flintstones movie came out). The columnist asks the right (if obvious) questions—“What about the Honeymooners connection?” “Are the old cartoons better than the new ones?” “Are you surprised with the show’s success?”

The many voices of the Flintstone family the work of one
By Mike Cidoni
Gannett News Service
Jean Vander Pyl is never alone, even when she’s by herself.
Forget Sybil. Vander Pyl is a REAL mistress of multiple personalities. Each of hers collects a paycheck.
And there’s another check on the way, as Vander Pyl — the voices of Wilma and Pebbles Flintstone as well as eight occasional characters on “The Jetsons” — picks up her profits from the videocassette “The Flintstones: The First Episodes” (Worldvision, $29.95). The tape (arriving Aug. 29) features the animated series’ first four shows, which aired on ABC in the fall of 1990. When Vander Pyl picks up the phone, you half expect a blast from that past, you expect to hear Wilma; perhaps Pebbles and Bamm Bamm cooing in the background; maybe a few of Fred’s brontosaurus burgers broiling on the grill.
What yon get is a voice that’s husky, warm, matronly.
You get a feeling that Vander Pyl loves creating the voices of Wilma and Pebbles Flintstone. She loves to review the show’s original episodes. She has a gay old time whenever she returns to Bedrock.
Yon also get a little perplexed and a lot bedazzled.
Give Vander Pyl a cue. Any cue. And out comes a quiver. Then a nasally quake.
“Fred!”
One word reveals it all. It’s Wilma, alright.
“And you’ll never believe it," says the 67-year-old Vander Pyl. “That’s all I need to say and I get surrounded by people. I’m more popular now than I was 20 years ago. It’s still a big deal.”
And it still gives the San Clemente-based Vander Pyl a bounty of work. She says her character is featured in a new series of ads, including one for MasterCard of England.
While she’s grateful for the recent Flintstone gigs, Vander Pyl agrees that they don’t make ’em — or write ’em — like they used to.
“Amen,” she says. “The writing, that parody, that wit. It was really ahead of its time. The originals — from 1960-66 — that we did ... Everybody says they’re the best. I have met so many people, kids 35 and 40, who grew up with the originals.”
Those first “Flintstone” shows, which make up the longest-running animated series in prime-time history, are now in syndication. They’ve also inspired a string of spin-offs including the Saturday-morning series “Pebbles and Bamm Bamm” and ABC’s current “The Flintstones Kids.”
Hanna-Barbera also is in pre-production with its big-budget live-action “Flintstones” feature starring Jim Belushi as the hard-headed Fred.
Vander Pyl hopes the new projects will recapture the spirit and success of the earliest episodes.
“(Producers) Mr. Barbera and Mr. Hanna were such pioneers,” she explains. “They had seen that something like 90 percent of ‘Huckleberry Hound’s audience was over the age of 19. So they decided to try an experiment an animated series strictly for adults that would air in prime time.”
The late Alan Reed gave a voice to Fred. Mel (“Bugs Bunny”) Blanc played neighbor Barney Rabble. Vander Pyl originally auditioned for the role of Barney’s wife, Betty. But she lost the part to the late Bea Benaderet (who simultaneously played Kate, the mother, on CBS’ “Petticoat Junction.”)
“Almost all of us came from radio,” Vander Pyl says. “And in radio days, if you couldn’t do two or three characters in one show, you didn’t work. Who’s gonna pay for three actors if you can get just one to do three parts?"
Impressed with Vander Pyl’s versatility, Barbera cast her as Wilma.
“He showed us some drawings and told us ‘This show was kind of inspired by “The Honeymooners’.” So, at first, Vander Pyl based Wilma on Jackie Gleason’s “Honeymooners” wife, Audrey Meadows.
“You know what I mean,” Vander Pyl explains. Then she breaks into flat, through-the-nose Meadows impersonation. “Oh, Raaalph!”
She says Barbera’s direct command to clone “The Honeymooners” separates “The Flintstones: The First Episodes” from the rest in the series.
"When we first started the show, we were all striving — more or less — for that ... I have to come out and say it. We were copying THEM,” she says, laughing. “But it only lasted for about three or four shows because we quickly eased into our characters. Now, I think Wilma’s more like me. A caricature version. People that know me well can spot me in Wilma. I get awfully angry at men sometimes.”
Oddly enough, in its debut season (1960-61), “The Flintstones” scored a higher Nielsen ranking than its original inspiration. It also had a longer run (the original “Honeymooners” ran just a season, “The Flintstones” ran for six).
“And nobody really expected it to go that long. It was just something they were going to try out,” she says.

Vander Pyl may have won the audition for Wilma, but it wasn’t her first role at Hanna-Barbera. When the studio expanded in 1959 to add the half-hour Quick Draw McGraw show, Joe Barbera went out to look for new voices. One was Vander Pyl, whose first role was Mrs. J. Evil Scientist on a Snooper and Blabber cartoon.

Vander Pyl and the Flintstones’ cast received an unexpected honour in the series’ second season. This is likely a news release from studio PR flack Arnie Carr and appeared in the Binghamton Press of January 6, 1962.

Flintstones Are Invited To Film Festival

A new honor has just been bestowed on the ABC-TV television program, The Flintstones, in the form of an invitation to enter the Monte Carlo TV Film Festival being held this month.
The invitation specifically requested that the Flintstone episode, "Alvin Brickrock Presents," represent the Flintstones show in the comedy category.
"Alvin Brickrock Presents" has to do with a neighbor of the Flintstones and the Bubbles, Alvin Brickrock, whose strange activities with spades, shovels, and coffin-like boxes leads Flintstone and Rubble to suspect that Alvin has done away with his wife — whose absence from the Brickrock home is not satisfactorily explained.
To qualify for the Monte Carlo Festival, the "Brickrock" script had to be translated into French and dubbed with French subtitles. Elliot Field, well-known Hollywood "voice," stars as Alvin Brickrock. Wilma and Fred Flintstone are played by Jean Vander Pyl and Alan Reed, Betty and Barney Rubble by Bea Benaderet and Mel Blanc.

Someone else hired at Hanna-Barbera in 1959 appeared in the cartoon mentioned above. It was Color Radio KFWB disc jockey Elliot Field. Elliot was hired as the voice of Blabber Mouse and appeared in the first four Snooper and Blabber cartoons (and provided incidental voices). However, he explained to me once he ended up in hospital for surgery and when he was fit again, Daws Butler had taken over the role. As you can see, he came back to the studio, but any further cartoon work was cut short by a radio career move to Detroit.

Elliot sent a note several days ago to let me know he’s still out there. He’s the last of the pre-1960 Hanna-Barbera voice actors kicking around (Jimmy Weldon wasn’t hired to be Yakky Doodle until late 1960). We wish Elliot good health and hope to hear from him again. His book about his time in ‘60s rock-jock radio, commercials and animation is still available.