Of the three cartoon series that made up the The Quick Draw McGraw show, Augie Doggie was the last, even though, in a way, it was first.
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, as you well know, directed the Tom and Jerry series at MGM. Tom’s nemesis, on occasion, was a bulldog named Spike. By the ‘50s, the series was getting stale. Barbera looked around for some new characters, so he paired Spike with a son named Tyke and hired Daws Butler to give the dad a Jimmy Durante voice and Durante’s “Dat’s my boy who said dat” relationship on radio with Garry Moore.
When Mr. H and Mr. B. opened their own studio, they borrowed freely from cartoons made at Metro and when Quick Draw was being developed, brought back the idea of a Durante-sounding father dog and his young son.
There was some tinkering on the part of Hanna, Barbera and writer Mike Maltese. Variety on January 8, 1959 announced the doggie pair were named Pete and Repete. The paper revealed a change on January 28 and said the series would be called “Arf and Arf.”
We’re unable to discover when the studio settled on “Augie Doggie” and “Doggie Daddy” but it was no later than April 1959 as we can see from this model sheet by Dick Bickenbach.
Maltese deserves credit for naming the characters. His niece Margaret told me Augie was the name of her mother’s brother. And writer Tony Benedict mentioned to me that Maltese would say things when the two were talking and the words ended up as Augie Doggie dialogue. Augie also owes a bit to Warner Bros.’ Sylvester Junior, invented by writer Warren Foster for the Bob McKimson unit, especially when Augie would pull off one of those “Oh, for the shame of it all!” routines.
Daws Butler didn’t repeat (or “repete”) his Durante voice for the new series. He recalled in an interview that it took a lot out of his throat and he didn’t want to do it, so Barbera held auditions for the part. Radio actor Doug Young told TV historian Stu Shostak that Daws ran into him in a bookstore one day and corralled him into make an audition tape for Hanna-Barbera. Young remembered he and Peter Leeds auditioned for Doggie Daddy.
All this may have resulted in a delay getting Augie and Dear Old Dad into production. The first cartoon in the series was apparently the 16th made for the Quick Draw half-hours, Foxhound Hounded Fox. The cartoon is different than later ones in the series as it mainly focuses on Augie and a fox, instead of the familiar formula of Doggie Daddy being put upon and making observations to the TV audience about what was happening.
While a number of newspaper articles commented on the Quick Draw series or Quick Draw himself, one columnist focused on Augie and his long-suffering father. Here’s what’s the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Luke Feck wrote on June 17, 1960.
Dog Show
"Drink this, fun-loving Dad, of mine."
"Anything you say, my scientific son," a Durante-like voice gravels back.
That's the way next week adventures of Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddie gets off the ground Tuesday night on Channel 9’s “Quick Draw McGraw.”
As a cartoon-loving friend of mine once said. "This show isn’t for the kids alone. I wouldn't miss it on a bet."
"Why is that, fun-loving friend," I asked.
“I think it’s funny, sober pal of mine,” he replied.
"Why," I asked, trying my hardest not to sound overly sober.
“It works on two levels, levelheaded one,” he said.
“Oh,” I said, patting my flat-type hair, “are you calling me a flathead?”
"No, it really does work that way. There's the straight visual gimmick for the kids, but there is something deeper than that in it. This is a cartoon with a message for the youngster and the oldster alike.”
"And better than Yogi Bear," I said trying to put him in his place.
"Of course not," he said.
Now, I had to give him credit for proving that he was a pretty discerning fellow.
"BUT LOOK, besides the visual yuks, they have some pretty sophisticated humor and some mighty punny fun.” (I had to interject a “Good Grief” at that unsunny pun, which did nothing to brighten my day.)
"They have this young dog, Augie Doggie, and he seems to typify the younger generation—he’s might smart and sometimes he sure wonders what gives in the head with his dad, Doggie Daddie.”
"Is that questioning attitude typical of the younger generation?" I asked as naively as only a bachelor can.
"Those worryin' little sons of mine do nothing but wonder about their Dad's stupidity," he said.
"They have reason, family loving friend,” I said slipping into the Augie Doggie idiom.
"Imagine, a grown man like you making his children watch a cartoon series instead of the news. That sophistication deal is just a crutch to cover up your arrested development," I said.
That's what I said. But what I did, on a basis of what my friend had said, was to call WCPO. They promised me a screening of next week's show. I saw the cat and mouse affair, a pair named Snooper and Blooper, and a horse named "Quick Draw McGraw" and his partner Baba louie.
The cat and mouse—nothing like Jinks, Pixie and Dixie of the Huckleberry Hound show—didn’t really say anything that was meaty but there were plenty of sight gags for the kiddies.
The horse named Quick Draw did a fairly funny take off on the Zorro bit and was occasionally bright and once even witty.
Finally, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddie turned up with a bit of nonsense about lighter-than-air medicine that Augie made for his Daddie.
I must report that now I am an Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddie fan of theirs. So much a fan, in fact, that I converted the Boss into a fan of theirs too.
The boss, by the way, bears a close resemblance to Doggie Daddy in looks and mannerisms. He just doesn't bark, fortunately.
While Mr. Feck enjoyed Augie, and the Quick Draw serues was nominated for an Emmy in its first season, there’s always a wet blanket that wants to impose their views on everyone else. This letter appeared in a newspaper in York, Pa., on October 6, 1961:
REVOLTED
Editor, The Gazette and Daily:
On October 3, I was shocked to witness with my children a most objectionable display of sadism on a “kiddies” cartoon program entitled Augie Doggie and Augie Daddy [sic]. This was at 5 p.m., the so-called children’s hour.
I immediately telephoned the station and voiced my complaint, with the thought that perhaps no one there really looked at the film before putting it on the air. Fully 75 percent of the duration of this cartoon for little ones’ entertainment was taken up by watching “Augie Doggie” run through the house and yard firing a shotgun at point blank range at both “Augie Daddy” and a burglar, neither of which was hurt, although their faces were blackened and clothing tattered from the shots.
Aren’t there enough children shooting themselves and others needlessly without having an incentive such as this put before their eyes?
What more can I and other conscientious parents do to stop this revolting situation? Copies of this letter are being sent to Mr. Minow, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Washington, D.C., and the Department of Television Programming, National Broadcasting Company, New York.
SYLVIA F. MOHLER
I don’t know what the woman expected NBC to do about it, as Augie was never on the network.
As a kid, about all I copied from the Quick Draw McGraw show was Daws Butler’s pluralisation of sheep as “sheeps,” which drove my mother crazy and my dad had to tell her “He knows the real word. He heard it in a cartoon.” (On second thought, I might copied Quick Draw by yelling “Kabong!” and hitting my brother on the head with a Beany and Cecil toy guitar, but I can’t remember after 60 years).
Layout artist Bob Givens, who arrived at Hanna-Barbera with Maltese from Warners, said in a 2011 interview “the Augie Doggies, they were kind of fun to do.” Maltese seems to have enjoyed putting together the stories. Doggie Daddy would watch things fall apart but, generally, maintained a sense of humour. Doug Young’s performances made you believe Dear Old Dad was a caring father. The cartoons are still pleasant to watch after all these years.
As a cartoon show, Magilla Gorilla was a great merchandising opportunity.
Hanna-Barbera already had a marketing deal in place with the Ideal Toy Corp., which inflicted Pebbles Flintstone on television viewers (girl dolls sell better than boy dolls, claimed Ideal, so “Fred Jr.” remained on the drawing board). In August 1963, Ideal decided to invest $30 million over five years to sponsor four animated series in more than 150 cities. By October 7, Broadcasting magazine announced the first would be Magilla Gorilla and Friends. It had a little girl named Ogee (more girl dolls) and occasionally featured a dachshund (perfect for plush dog toy sales).
A half hour promotional film called Here Comes a Star was filmed at the Hanna-Barbera studio for airing on stations that would be broadcasting Magilla in January 1964. Young Me liked the promo. I got to see Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera and the outside of the shining new H-B studio on Cahuenga. And a real staff meeting to come up with ideas for the show! (Writer Tony Benedict, one of the people in the scene, admitted to me it was all scripted. And unfortunate alcoholic Dan Gordon is slurring his lines). But the cartoon show itself reeked of familiarity and it became the first H-B show I stopped watching.
Why a gorilla, you ask? Bill and Joe weren’t going to say “because Ideal can sell Magilla-in-a-boxes and Magilla pull-string talking dolls.” So the studio (I suspect that was the source) came up with this news release that papers could publish and drop in the call letters, date and time of the local Magilla affiliate. The Cincinnati Post published this on Dec. 28, 1963.
Magilla to Remove Chilla From Image of Bad Gorilla
Gorillas have a virile, vigorous and violent public image.
The way they shake the bars in the zoo denotes great strength. The memory of King Kong climbing the Empire State Building to swat airplanes like flies conjures up phenomenal animal power. Even Tarzan gulped a little when the great apes thumped their chests.
BUT IF ANYONE feels like wagering a bunch of bananas, it's a good bet that a gorilla by the name of Magilla is going to be tomorrow’s lovable TV glamor boy.
Magilla Gorilla is the hero of a new cartoon series that begins the week of Jan. 13. It will be carried by WCPO-TV.
Magilla is the creation of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, the hottest team in the animated cartoon business, and if anybody can make a gorilla lovable, they can. Cavemen had a rotten reputation for hundreds of years. Then Hanna and Barbera Productions created "The Flintstone,” and the public couldn’t get enough of them.
Besides “The Flintstones," Hanna and Barbera have created “Yogi Bear," “Huckleberry Hound," “Quick Draw McGraw" and “Top Cat."
MAGILLA GORILLA, as millions of children soon will learn, is a resident of Peebles Pet Shop, which would dearly love to sell him, or even give him away.
Each week poor Magilla will bravely embark on another adventure that somehow backfires. He makes an excellent pro-football player in one episode, until a member of the opposing team bribes him with a banana and he is taken back to the pet shop in disgrace.
Another adventure finds Magilla in the Army (assigned to guerrilla warfare, of course), and the less said about his behavior when he is sent aloft in the nose cone of a rocket, the better.
To Hanna and Barbera, it doesn't seem at all strange to have settled on a gorilla as a hero.
“IF YOU TRY a cartoon story today with tiny elves dancing and singing in child-like voices while leaves float away into the water and bunnies hop about with twitchy noses, you're lost," they explain. “Children will tolerate such foolishness but they won’t accept it. They’ve seen too many pointless, aimless pretties that insulted their intelligence. In the area of comedy, today’s child has a taste as sharp as his parents."
Magilla Gorilla will headline the half-hour weekly show, but the program also will feature two other regular segments, one involving a western sheriff called Ricochet Rabbit and his faithful deputy, Droop-Along Coyote, and the other recounting the running feud between a hillbilly cat and mouse, Punkin’ Puss and Mushmouse.
Magilla will make his debut at 6 p. m. Wednesday, Jan. 15 over Ch 9.
Now, let’s get to the real point of the post.
The late Earl Kress, I suspect while helping put together the Rhino Records Hanna-Barbera music discs years ago, dubbed (onto cassette) all kinds of cues by Hoyt Curtin written for the studio’s shows in the first half of the ‘60s. There’s an inch-high (get it?) stack of sheets from various music sessions, stating when and where they recorded, and some of them indicating the takes were not to be part of Curtin’s library. One session has the musicians guided through the Magilla theme. At almost 18 minutes, it’s a little repetitive, but it may be interesting to hear how a session went. And you may like to hear how the arrangements sounded without vocals over top.
The only musician identified is a drummer named Irving. Curtin can be heard in the background. Incidentally, the series’ credits say the theme was by Nelson Brock.
And here’s part of a voice session from October 8, 1963 with the unmistakeable voice of Joe Barbera trying to get what he wants out of Allan Melvin, who played Magilla, for a sponsored intro to the show. Joe isn’t terribly diplomatic. At one point, he tells Melvin he’s “completely out of character” and orders him to punch the sponsor’s name—IDEAL Toys.
Magilla lasted 31 episodes, with Mr. Peebles’ voice changing to Don Messick after Howie Morris told Barbera to go do something with himself.
There’s some cool stuff on this tape. Unfortunately Earl didn’t dub off all the master tapes (it would have taken forever) because there were cues written and recorded on Jan. 22, 1966 for Toing Tiger and The Suburbans (aka The Neighbors), and a main title theme with vocal for Hillbilly Hawk. None of them ever aired and Earl doesn’t appear to have copied them. But we’ll have another post here down the road with music you should remember.
Fernando Montealegre was among the first staffers at Hanna-Barbera, jumping over from MGM where he started as an assistant animator and became a background artist. In keeping with the times, his work on Mike Lah’s Droopy shorts (in Cinemascope) at MGM are quite stylised.
He has some fun shapes and colour choices in his early work at H-B, starting with Ruff and Reddy. One cartoon I like is “Tally Ho Ho Ho,” a Yogi Bear adventure that was the third animated short put into production for The Huckleberry Hound Show (first aired Monday, November 10, 1958).
In this cartoon, Monty creates trees using geometric figures of various shades of yellow, with stick-figure trunks and branches. Here are two reassembled pans, though both are, in reality, shorter, as you can see the same clump of trees at either end. In the first, the sign and tree in the foreground are on a cell overlay. See how he handles patches of grass, large rocks and clouds. (You can click on them to enlarge them).
While you’re seeing them in colour, I watched Huck and Yogi in black-and-white. Monty had to make sure the colour choices would look good on non-colour sets.
Lah was the layout artist on this cartoon, and also provided some of the animation.
By the way, this was the sole H-B cartoon where the sound cutter chose what became The Donna Reed Show theme, also in 1958. It was from the Capitol Hi-Q Library, reel L-40, entitled TC-430A Domestic (also known as “Happy Days”). There was a slow version and a fast version.
The Flintstones daily comics for the last half of December 1961 were pretty much centred around Fred and Wilma. Pebbles hadn’t been invented, so she couldn’t be the focus of the gags. Barney enters into the picture four times, and we see Betty once. Dino just stands there as decoration in one strip. Dear old Baby Puss is ignored again.
This may be the one and only mention of a Diplodocus in connection with the Flintstones. Usually, those long-necked dinosaurs in the cartoons are brontos (as in burgers), but someone decided to strive for accuracy. On the other hand, François is called “Franswah.” Maybe the correct spelling would have confused American readers.
Sam Echo looks to be a long-lost relative of Fred's.
As I mentioned before, someone else has these Flintstones dailies re-printed on their web site, so there’s no reason for me to duplicate it. Since I had clipped these, I figured I might as well post them. The place to find all of them is here.
Earl Kress was among a handful of wonderful people who loved and really knew Hanna-Barbara cartoons, and would go out of his way to help others who did, too, even if it was just to chat by e-mail.
Hanna-Barbera and other studios employed Earl as a writer. He won Emmys. He was only 60 when he passed away from cancer in 2011. When he died, the good people in animation said many good things about him.
Earl amassed what, I gather, was a huge amount of material; he was involved in publicity of the H-B cartoons after the studio was sold to Turner, in addition to music CDs and cartoon DVDs. Much of it has been sitting in his home in the dozen years since he left for another plane.
Denise Kress went through her late husband’s material some time ago and mailed some of it to me. I’ve passed on some of it in this blog. I think he would have wanted it. Earlier this month, Denise bundled up a package of Earl’s files and took the great expense of sending it to me. It’s a bewildering amount of material, including voice recording session data and animation credits for The Flintstones, a whole episode guide from Wacky Races, one of his draft stories for H-B from 1980, non-cartoon cues from the Capital “Q” library (the one before Hi-Q) and a lot more.
With this overly long introduction, let me post the lyrics and music for what I suspect was a theme song for Touche Turtle.
Yes, Touché’s part of starting-to-get-blah period of Hanna-Barbera comedies. But I post this because the lyrics are by Mike Maltese, my favourite of all cartoon writers, and I don’t know if this was ever used on television.
Touche’s gestation period seems to have started in 1960. A Life magazine spread featured story director Dan Gordon looking over concept drawings for a proposed Hairbrain or Harebrain Hare series. One of the drawings is pretty much Touché Turtle. A Variety story of October 20, 1960 stated a deal had been worked out for two syndicated cartoon series, one starring swordsman Hairbrain and Dum Dum, and the other with Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har, another Maltese invention.
Somehow, during development, the rabbit disappeared and Dum Dum was paired with Touché Turtle. Wally Gator was added by August 1961 (sayeth the Hollywood Reporter) and the troika appeared (in colour) on the Beachcomber Bill Show on KCOP in Los Angeles on Monday, September 3, 1962, after a preview the previous August 27th—at 7:30 in the morning! (The station signed on early). The Los Angeles Citizen-News reported “Zero-Hero,” animated by Ken Muse, was previewed. Screen Gems claimed each episode in the three shows cost $9600 a piece, 156 cartoons in all (Variety, Mar. 7, 1962).
Those of you who have seen the series know the theme song before each cartoon consists of the Randy Horne Singers belting out “Touché, away! Touché, away! It’s Touché Turtle.” Maltese did better, though he’s been wittier (eg. “The Flower of Gower Gulch” at Warners).
As you can see below, Hoyt Curtin composed a theme, including chords. I have no skill at playing in A-flat on anything so I can’t attempt to recreate this aurally for you.
It might have been cool if Bill Thompson, the voice of Touché, had sung this, but I don’t know if it was ever recorded.
Late note: Kurtis Findlay, who is the only person who subscribes to this feed who has met me in person, gave it a go. That is so cool. Don’t expect perfect pitch as he has a cold (I was a boy soprano. My choir teacher told me I had almost perfect pitch. I’m a pensioner now and am extremely flat).
As you know, this blog is retired but when I get a chance, I’ll put up a few more things Denise has sent this way.
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera had high hopes for Top Cat.
The shows starring Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw were still attracting audiences in syndication. Both had been nominated for Emmys in 1960—and Huck won. The Flintstones had some critics pouting at the outset, but soon gained an audience. Now, cartoon studios were falling over themselves to put an animated show in prime time. ABC picked up Top Cat.
Considering all that, and the fact the series had plenty of the popular Bilko show mixed into its formula, it shouldn’t lose.
It was likely ABC that set up a junket for entertainment reporters to come to California and find out about its new shows for the fall season. Jim Downing of the Tulsa Tribune was one who took advantage of the freebie and got two columns out of his visit with Joe and Bill as they plugged Top Cat. The first column appeared on June 28, 1961, the next the following day.
It’s a shame the scan of Joe’s drawing of T.C. is poor, but you get the basic idea. The busted hat didn’t make the cut—probably too much pencil mileage involved. And he’s borrowing a sweater from Choo Choo.
FROM TIME to time from now on through the summer I’m going to tell you about the new shows which are scheduled to be introduced on the TV screen next season. I talked with stars and producers of some of them when I was in Hollywood this spring and got a line on a number of them.
You haven’t heard about most of these shows, so I can brag that what you are going to be reading will be real little old scoops on the TV writing gentry. Let’s start out today with a real scoop. The picture you see here is “Top Cat," star of a coming cartoon series to be seen on ABC-TV this fall.
Joe Barbera, half of the cartoon team of Hanna-Barbera which produces "The Flintstones" among other popular pen-and-ink epics, picked at his lunch at the Tail O'Cock [sic] restaurant—I think that's in Sherman Oaks, Calif., and talked very happily about the success of "Flintstones" and the prospects for "Top Cat.”
"ITS A DAMON RUNYON kind of a yarn,” he explained, rubbing his blue jowls with a talented hand. (He looks pretty much like Fred Flintstone, if you must know.) “Top Cat is the leader of a gang of alley cats and he lives in a garbage can behind a bowling alley. He is trying to improve the standard of living of his pals, see?
“His buddies are Bennie the Ball, Choo-Choo, The Spook, Fancy Fancy and The Brain. He's a real operator—even has a telephone on the pole right by his garbage can. Sometimes his secretary answers it. . .”
“My, my,” I said. “Is he some kind of a nut?”
"WELL, YOU MIGHT SAY SO. He's a kind of an efficiency expert—efficient at conning the general public into supporting him in the style to which he has become accustomed. He— well, here's an example of how he operates: He blows his whistle, see? and times the other cats to see how long it takes ‘em to congregate. No excuses for tardiness."
I said it sounded like he was a Sgt. Bilko type.
“Yeah, that's the idea. In fact, we got one of Bilko's boys— Maurice Gosfield who did the Pvt. Dobermann part— to be the voice of one of the cats. He's Bennie the Brain.” [sic]
So I said that was fascinatin' —but what did Top Cat look like? Barbera took my notebook and scribbled rapidly with a pencil. "There. That’s what he looks like. That’s the first time we’ve shown him by the way. I guess it’s all right to let you see him now.”
The ABC-TV publicity man who arranged the luncheon-interview was wringing his hands. "We were going to send Jim some nice drawings, glossy prints for good reproduction,” he said. “Later, that is."
“Oh, well, anyway, that's what Top Cat looks like,” said Barbera. "He doesn't have to use this sketch.”
LITTLE DID HE KNOW! MISS an opportunity to reproduce a real Joe Barbera original? From my own note pad? Ha! (I also am treasuring another pair of sketches he made, showing Top Cat’s garbage can-castle.)
Hold your breath until tomorrow and I'll tell you some more about Hanna-Barbera stones factory.
The second column refers to their first studio on Cahuenga, not the one fans would recognise. This was the “window-less bunker,” as layout artist Jerry Eisenberg referred to it. Bill and Joe kept bragging about “no time clocks or memos” but never gave the reason. The bunker was so small, people worked from home. Of course there were no time clocks there.
People are curious about the animating process, so the column gives a brief summary.
My knowledge of Top Cat has huge holes in it, but I don’t recall Barbara Nichols ever voicing a character, though I can see her being cast as Honeydew Mellon. Fans are not helped by the Top Cat DVD having the same end credits spliced onto every cartoon. This is the first time I’ve read that Daws Butler was supposed to voice one of T.C.’s gang. He had been up for the role of Top Cat after Michael O’Shea fizzled out, but Barbera decided Daws was voicing too many lead roles for the studio and hired Arnold Stang, an excellent choice.
BILL HANNA and Joe Barbera produce such pen-and-ink operas as "Ruff and Ready" [sic], "Huckleberry Hound,” “Yogi Bear,” "Quick Draw McGraw” and "The Flintstones” for the panting television public. Now they are working on “Top Cat,” the Bilko-type feline I told you about in Wednesday's column who starts on ABC-TV next season.
These two modest fellows— and they are just that, as nice a pair of guys as you'll ever meet— no longer draw the stuff themselves because they just can’t do that much work. They have a staff of 150 animators, sketch artists, background painters and technicians working like mad to get the strips out. But Bill and Joe still check every detail and either one is capable of filling in anywhere in the production line.
Hanna-Barbera Productions is housed in a couple of one-story buildings sprawled on a hillside at 3501 Cahuenga Blvd. in Hollywood. From the outside the place looks about as impressive as a machine shop.
INSIDE, JOE AND BILL HAVE tiny cluttered, offices and their assistants have even tinier and more cluttered offices. Everything about the place seems miniature after seeing the vast halls of the Disney Studios. Every square foot of space is utilized and everybody works with somebody else's elbow in his ribs. H-B Productions simply has outgrown its quarters, but they're too busy to do anything about it. "We used to turn out 48 minutes of ‘Tom and Jerry’ cartoons a year for MGM," said Barbera during a luncheon interview. "Now we do twice as much in a week — with half as many people.”
To do that, Bill and Joe have worked out a system which reduces animation to the simplest elements. Their characters don't breathe, for example. And, usually, if one is talking, nothing else is moving about him. Movement is kept to a minimum, in fact. That makes for fewer drawings, faster production.
I have before me as I write this a complete "cell" of a scene from a Flintstones episode. The background is painted (with ordinary house paint, by the way) on white cardboard. Fred Flintstone is walking along in front of his house. He is in three layers. That is, most of him is painted on one transparent sheet of plastic, but his feet are on a second layer and his mouth is on the top layer. To make him talk, all the work needed is to draw his mouth. For walking, merely his feet change. The background is moved slightly each "frame" to make it appear he is walking past it.
All cartoons are done in color, by the way, on the theory that eventually they will be televised in color and also can be adapted for movie theater showing throughout the world.
At the time I interviewed the boys, they did not know who would be the "voice" of Top Cat.
Now it has been decided to give the job to Arnold Stang.
Voices are important in the cartooning business. Dawes Butler [sic] is a busy man at H-B. He does the voice of Yogi Bear and of Huckleberry Hound and will do The Spook, one of Top Cat's buddies. Alan Jenkins [sic], Maurice Gosfield, Herb Vigran, John Stevenson [sic] and Barbara Nichols will contribute their voices to TC (Top Cat) characters.
THE HOURS KEPT BY and Joe and their methods for getting the job done are considered unorthodox even by Hollywood standards. There are no time clocks or memos. If an animator or artist feels he does his best work by coming in at night and working until dawn, that's fine with them. Through a profit-sharing plan, all the employes share in the H-B success.
With nothing but success ahead of them, Bill Hanna (who looks like Barney Rubble) and Joe Barbera can trace their luck back to Huckleberry Hound who started them on the road to the top in 1958. And above each of their desks is a picture of Huckleberry Hound shaking hands with them. The inscription says, “Thank You Huck.”
Top Cat and the other new prime-time cartoons of 1961 failed to get audiences and several retreated to Saturday morning reruns. Some fans say the series was Hanna-Barbera’s best in prime time. “Best” is always debateable, but T.C. and his gang had staying power, were revived on occasion and are still remembered today.
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Of the three cartoon series that made up the The Quick Draw McGraw show, Augie Doggie was the last, even though, in a way, it was first.
All this may have resulted in a delay getting Augie and Dear Old Dad into production. The first cartoon in the series was apparently the 16th made for the Quick Draw half-hours, Foxhound Hounded Fox. The cartoon is different than later ones in the series as it mainly focuses on Augie and a fox, instead of the familiar formula of Doggie Daddy being put upon and making observations to the TV audience about what was happening.
I saw the cat and mouse affair, a pair named Snooper and Blooper, and a horse named "Quick Draw McGraw" and his partner Baba louie.
Fully 75 percent of the duration of this cartoon for little ones’ entertainment was taken up by watching “Augie Doggie” run through the house and yard firing a shotgun at point blank range at both “Augie Daddy” and a burglar, neither of which was hurt, although their faces were blackened and clothing tattered from the shots.
