Yogi Bear - Pie-Pirates

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Mike Lah; Layout – Mike Lah; Designer – Frank Tipper; Story and Sketches – Charlie Shows and Dan Gordon; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Cast: Yogi, Farmer, Dog – Daws Butler; Narrator, Boo-Boo – Don Messick.
Production E-1, Huckleberry Hound Show K-003.
First aired: week of Monday, October 13, 1958.
Plot: Yogi has to get past dog to get to a pie on a window ledge. He and Boo-Boo stop dog but have to settle for makeshift soup instead.

According to Ted Sennett’s The Art of Hanna-Barbera, this was the first Yogi cartoon put into production. The book goes on to explain that Joe and Bill contemplated calling our hero “Huckleberry Bear,” and the story-line for this cartoon would explain why.

The plot is basic, but entertaining. And, best of all, it’s not locked into the Ranger/Jellystone formula. There’s no ranger and no park in this one. We open with a farmer, surrounded by stationary chickens that look like something Ed Benedict might craft for Tex Avery in Farm of Tomorrow—even though Benedict receives no credit (former Schlesinger and Lantz animator Frank Tipper supposedly designed this one). The farmer shoots at burgling bears Yogi and Boo-Boo, who are identified by a narrator. The narrator disappears after the opening scene but is completely unnecessary to begin with, unless someone thought Yogi and Boo-Boo were new characters so they needed some kind of introduction.

The two protagonists are a bit different in this cartoon. The first few Yogis had the bear with a lighter-brown mask around his eyes, while Boo-Boo is suffering from stuffed sinuses. Mike Lah had an odd way of drawing Yogi. He gives the bear googly eyes and a mouth that doesn’t reach the end of his face, thus allowing him to animate only the mouth-lines. His animation tends to be jerky at times.





After making a running escape, the bears spy a hot, huckleberry pie cooling on the window sill (“Be right back with the snack, Jack,” rhymes Yogi). Misreading a warning—“I don’t smoke, anyhoo”—and not spotting any dog despite Boo-Boo’s translation of the sign, Yogi ends up running away in a panic when the canine appears as he reaches for the pie.

The bulldog has those little mirror-image ears that seem to have been borrowed from dogs in various Avery M.G.M. cartoons. There’s some really cheap-looking animation here. Yogi talks while he tippy-toes toward the pie, but his lips don’t move. There’s a repeat-shot of Boo-Boo licking his lips. And the dog growls in a two-frame cycle that lasts six seconds.



So now Yogi borrows from Bugs Bunny’s vocabulary and decides to use some “stragedy.” He pins Boo-Boo to a clothesline, but the pin can’t hold the little bear (in an unanimated sliding cell) who lands in a fortunately-placed rain barrel and uses it to escape. That gives Yogi an idea, but he blows it when he lifts the metal ring holding the barrel together, the staves fall down and that’s the dog’s cue to attack.







But Yogi tries a distraction by playing “Fetch the stick” in a crudely-drawn sequence—Yogi even loses his mouth for a few frames—but the dog re-appears via a basement window (in another unanimated sliding cell). So much for that idea.



Next, Yogi gets past the dog by using stilts, but the canine guard is ready with a match. Fortunately, Yogi crashes on top of the dog and is able to get away.



The climax action scene has arrived. Yogi attaches a bone to an inner-tube tied to a fence. Cartoons law is that dogs love bones, so the dog grabs the bone and sails through the air. The inner tube snaps back, sending the dog flying back, smashing through the wooden gate, knocking him cold.



We now get more of that rhyming word-play that Shows littered the Ruff and Reddy cartoons with, as Yogi remarks: “How’s that for size, blue eyes? And now for the prize. Huckleberry pies!” Afraid not, Yogi. The lady of the house (it is 1958, after all) reclaims her pie, so the bears settle for “inner tube minestrone soup.”



Hanna and Barbera sure loved Jackie Gleason. Setting aside the fact they later borrowed concepts from The Honeymooners for The Flintstones, not only is Daws Butler using an Ed Norton-esque voice for Yogi, he pulls an “And away we go” exit off-stage just like Gleason did on his variety show. He even cries “And away you go!” when he pushes Boo-Boo off on his journey on the clothes-line.

There’s less of Bill Loose and John Seely’s music than you’d normally find in an early Yogi, and the last piece is so covered up in dialogue and sound effects, I can’t tell what it is; I think it's an instrumental of the opening theme. It is not listed in the cue sheet for the cartoon.

0:00 - Yogi original opening theme (Hoyt Curtin-Hanna-Barbera).
0:26 - ZR-47 LIGHT MOVEMENT (Geordie Hormel) - Yogi chased by farmer.
0:44 - ZR-51 LIGHT ANIMATION (Hormel) - Yogi and Boo-Boo peer from behind tree.
1:51 - L-1158 ANIMATION COMEDY (Spencer Moore) - Yogi reaches for pie.
2:05 - L-1158 ANIMATION COMEDY (Moore) - Yogi reaches for pie again.
2:11 - LAF-20-5 TOBOGGAN RUN (Jack Shaindlin) - Yogi chased by dog.
2:29 - ZR-52 LIGHT QUIET (Hormel) - Boo Boo on clothesline.
3:50 - ZR-47 LIGHT MOVEMENT (Hormel) - Yogi chased by dog after barrel falls apart.
4:45 - L-81 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) - Yogi on stilts.
5:36 - trumpet blare - Yogi falls after dog burns stilts.
5:41 - LAF-20-5 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) - Yogi runs after stilts burn.
5:47 - TC-432 HOLLY DAY (Loose-Seely) - Yogi nails inner tube to fence.
6:02 - L-78 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) - Yogi gives bone to dog.
6:30 - L-1154 ANIMATION COMEDY (Moore) - Dog stuck in gate; lady takes pie.
7:01 - unknown - Yogi makes soup.
7:12 - Yogi original closing theme (Curtin).

Huckleberry Hound - Lion-Hearted Huck

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation - Ken Muse; Layout - Bick Bickenbach; Backgrounds - Fernando Montealegre; Story Sketches - Charlie Shows and Dan Gordon; Titles - Art Goble; Production Supervision - Howard Hanson.
Cast: Huck, Lion - Daws Butler; Narrator, Monkey - Don Messick.
Episode: Huckleberry Hound Show K-002, Production E-33.
First Aired: week of October 6, 1958.
Plot: Huckleberry Hound goes to Africa to hunt big game, and takes on a practical-joking King of the Jungle. Huck takes a pounding and doesn't capture the lion, who gets his in the end when one of his tricks backfires.

The best part in this cartoon is, as usual, Daws, this time using his Frank Fontaine-ish voice for the lion. Huck’s cartoons are pretty typical. He gets picked on, sometimes violently, then stops and remarks something to the audience, generally so casually it’s like pain doesn’t bother him. It’s really a concept Tex Avery created in the M.G.M. cartoon Billy Boy, right down to the same Southern accent Butler gave to the wolf in that cartoon. And while the wolf whistled Kingdom Coming (aka The Year of Jubilo), Huck gave us Clementine, though he hadn’t learned it when this cartoon was released.

Joe Barbera and writer Charlie Shows seem to have loved the idea of a narrator. You’ll find one in a bunch of the H-B cartoons in 1958; it’s probably an idea left over from Ruff and Reddy, like a bunch of things found on the Huck Show cartoons (including Reddy’s “Huck” voice). They wisely use one here just to establish the story and then the action takes over.

We open with a shot of Africa, then the usual right pan over the jungle background, and then Huck in his jeep passing the same light green tree seven times. However, this being the modern, high-tech world of 1958, one of the jungle palms sports a grid-shaped antenna. It detects Huck and sends a warning sound to a monkey, who spots Huck on a radar scope (bringing new meaning to the theme song lyric “tune up your TV set”), and warns a sleeping King of Beasts.



Here’s where a clever animation-saving device can be found. Movement is simulated by holding the monkey in the air and then doing a leg spin-cycle for a few seconds; Jinks did this in Cousin Tex as well. This same airborne-monkey cycle is used a few seconds earlier, thus saving more animation.

Oops! There’s a continuity screw-up. When the lion is woken up by the phone, he is not wearing a crown. There's a cut to his arm reaching to answer the phone, and then the scene cuts back to a full shot of the lion and he’s wearing a crown.



Now comes the “mixed-up tracks routine” as the lion tries to throw Huck off the scent. First, there are lion tracks, then hen tracks, which cause Huck to remark “Maybe this lion is chicken.” OK, it’s corny but it’s my favourite line.








Sneaker tracks follow, and then the lion in killer high-heels. Huck takes a short cut to investigate (why didn’t he do that in the first place?) which results in a conversation where the lion realises Huck’s the hunter he’s trying to avoid, and he beats a retreat into a convenient cave.

Next comes the ebb and flow of the battle of wits. Huck digs a lion trap but the convenient cave has a convenient bulldozer which is used on our hero. Now, it’s the lion’s turn. He first snares Huck’s jeep (which Huck somehow gets down), then uses thumb tacks to puncture a tire and helpfully hoist the stricken jeep, crushing it (and Huck) under the branch of some firm foliage.



Huck tries laying a trap, but he has to get inside it to separate the jaws. Unfortunately, Huck tells the lion what he’s doing is “ticklish business,” which gives the lion a gitchie-gitchie idea and “Thwap!” When Huck is caught, the audience never actually sees it; there’s a cutaway shot to the lion. On top of that, there’s a five-second hold on the shot while the lion laughs. Can footage be any easier?

The climax scene arrives as the lion pulls his “best gag”—the missing motor bit. But cartoon karma strikes, for when Huck turns the ignition, the detached motor chugs into action, sending the lion on a ride in the sky, as the blue hound remarks “that there lion will do anything for a laugh.” But don’t worry. The lion returns in the second season (and with a name) in the funnier Somebody’s Lion.



Only four music beds are used in the cartoon itself, along with one of Spencer Moore’s bassoon effects. This one has the most common of the circus-chase pieces found in the early H-B half-hour cartoons (and Ruff and Reddy before then) called On The Run by Jack Shaindlin. And this is pre-Clementine, so an earlier “Dixieland” opening theme is used with drums at the start.

0:00 - Huck (drums) opening theme (Hoyt Curtin).
0:26 - ZR-49 LIGHT EERIE (Geordie Hormel) - Monkey warns lion that Huck is looking for game.
2:01 - LAF-4-1 FISHY STORY (Shaindlin) - Huck follows tracks, chases lion into cave, digs hole.
4:00 - L-1158 ANIMATION COMEDY (Moore) - Lion starts bulldozer.
4:06 - LAF-2-12 ON THE RUN (Shaindlin) - Lion covers hole, snares Huck, tosses tacks in path of Huck’s jeep.
5:13 - LAF-21-3 RECESS (Shaindlin) - Lion jacks up jeep, Huck caught in trap, lion steals motor.
6:48 - LAF-2-12 ON THE RUN (Shaindlin) - Lion rides motor in sky.
7:12 - Huck drum close theme (Curtin).

Pixie and Dixie - Little Bird-Mouse

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation - Lew Marshall (Mike Lah uncredited); Layout - Ed Benedict; Backgrounds - Fernando Montealegre; Dialogue and Story Sketches - Charlie Shows and Dan Gordon; Titles - Art Goble; Production Supervision - Howard Hanson.
Cast: Pixie, Professor - Don Messick; Dixie, Mr. Jinks - Daws Butler.
Production E-6 (third Pixie and Dixie carton); Huckleberry Hound Show K-004.
First aired: week of Monday, November 10, 1958.
Plot: Despite the professor’s claim in class that mice can’t fly, Dixie does so, and has to stave off Jinks, who tries to catch him to become a zillionaire. The professor and Pixie put a stop to that, and Dixie teaches the other mice to fly.

When you think of Pixie and Dixie, you think of the two mice outwitting Jinks as he chases them past the same light socket about eight times to the immortal strains of Jack Shaindlin’s Toboggan Run. You think of Mr. Jinks shouting “I hate meeces to pieces” and showing off his vast vocabulary, but not quite demonstrating his proficiency as he adds a syllable or an incorrect vowel sound. But that doesn’t describe this cartoon. The characters say very little, reminiscent of Hanna and Barbera’s Tom and Jerry cartoons at M.G.M. where the title cat and mouse rarely used dialogue. And there very well could be a reason for that.

Hanna-Barbera was founded as a direct result of M.G.M. getting out of the cartoon business (temporarily) in 1957. As they explain it, Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna were told by Metro to finish the shorts they had in the pipeline then turn out the lights and leave for good. Some time ago, animation history Jerry Beck came upon a full list of production numbers assigned to projects during the 20-year life of the studio. Several cartoons were begun but abandoned due to the impending closure. One of these, the last one assigned a production number, was called ‘Bird Mouse.’ It seems quite probable that Hanna and Barbera simply took the story for this cartoon with them to their own studio and reworked it for Pixie and Dixie as ‘Little Bird-Mouse,’ though there’s no indication from Jerry’s site what the plot of the abandoned movie was. Regardless, this early effort has a different feel than any other Pixie and Dixie cartoon.



Our story opens with a pan to the right over a 1950s cartoon background that’s flatter than what you’d find in an average H-B cartoon. The pan makes it seem flatter than in the composite frames above. It’s much in the style of Ed Benedict’s work at M.G.M.

A professor (who never again graces the small screen after this cartoon) is trying to teach arithmetic, but Dixie (whose voice isn’t as Southern as in later cartoons) would rather emulate Chuck Jones’ Ralph Phillips and look out the window, daydreaming about flying. The professor punishes him by doing what bad kids were forced to do at one time—wear a dunce cap and write a phrase over and over again on the blackboard. Today, this would result in a lawsuit and endless news stories on all the networks.



Then Dixie sees a blue hummingbird outside. Not just any blue hummingbird. A blue hummingbird with those elongated eyes that scream Ed Benedict. Dixie tries emulating the feathered creature by flapping his ears and—ta da!—he’s off the ground. Still chalking “Mice don’t fly” on the blackboard, Dixie gracefully defies his statement on his way out the window and messes around with a flower, a butterfly and a certain orange cat.




Just about all of the dialogue is superfluous. An example is here where Jinks is reading the book aloud even though we can read it for ourselves. The problem is you can’t get the expressions in limited animation that tell and drive the story as you would in a Tom and Jerry theatrical. So, to move things along better, you add dialogue.

Charlie Shows loved to throw in, first in the Ruff and Reddy series and then in the first season Huck Show cartoons, rhyming pairs of words to end a sentence. In this cartoon, Jinks says “Don’t be silly, Willy.” The rhyming is something that Yogi Bear would continue to spout long after Shows left H-B Enterprises.

Another indication this is an early cartoon is Jinks is horrendously off-model (see right). And, besides the usual H-B repeated running cycles, we see more animation short-cuts. Instead of turning a character before he runs away, Hanna (or Barbera) simply cuts from the character in one standing position and in the next frame has him running away from Jinks (see below).







Jinks captures Dixie in a mailbox, but then the professor and Pixie come to the rescue (with a well-timed thwack with the Professor’s pointer). Jinks chases down the professor, who is saved by a paper-bag waterbomb, and then the old rope trick saves Pixie.



The waterbomb drop is a good example of the difference between theatrical and TV animation. Tex Avery would, as he told Joe Adamson in Tex Avery, King of Cartoons, have something drop from the sky in five frames: “It makes the gag that much funnier. If you saw this thing coming down, and you panned down with it, and it hits—uh uh.” But Hanna (or whoever) does exactly what Tex wouldn’t have done—he pans down with the paper bag. Hanna likely wouldn’t have done it that way in an M.G.M. cartoon, but it doesn’t take a lot of animation to have a drawing of paper bag with a background doing a vertical roll behind it, and that saves time and money.



Finally, we reach the climax where Jinks chases Dixie into a railroad tunnel but the cat quickly emerges running away from a diesel. Being a TV cartoon, there’s no expensive perspective shot; just a rolling background over a run cycle that fades into the final scene, where Dixie is now teaching Pixie and the Prof how to fly as our story ends.

Today’s number is six. That’s how many times Jinks runs past the same flower before a cut to something else.

The music selection is interesting; the sound cutter looped Geordie Hormel’s Fast Movement over and over to take up a good portion of that cartoon and when everything’s done, the bed is just faded out (few H-B cartoons did this; there was always a definite end to the music). The skippy string music by Spencer Moore at the beginning was apparently used in only this cartoon. And Hormel’s Comedy Mysterioso makes a rare appearance, though it was used fairly often in the Pinky-Harry Safari storyline of the earlier Ruff and Reddy series.

0:00 - Pixie and Dixie main title (Bill Hanna-Joe Barbera-Hoyt Curtin).
0:26 - L-85 LIGHT MECHANICAL (Spencer Moore) - Dixie wishes he could fly.
1:56 - TC 203 WISTFUL COMEDY (Bill Loose-John Seely) - Dixie flies out window; Jinks tries to capture him with net; Jinks reads “specimen index.”
2:57 - L-1158 ANIMATION COMEDY (Spencer Moore) - Jinks contemplates flying mouse = money.
3:04 - LAF-20-5 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) - Jinks chases Dixie with net.
3:51 - ZR-53 COMEDY MYSTERIOSO (Hormel) - Professor hits Jinks with pointer.
4:13 - ZR-48 FAST MOVEMENT (Hormel) - Jinks chases professor, then Dixie, then Pixie.
5:09 - ZR-48 FAST MOVEMENT (Hormel) - Pixie waterbombs Jinks.
6:02 - ZR-48 FAST MOVEMENT (Hormel) - Dixie stops Jinks with rope.
6:22 - LAF-20-5 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) - Jinks runs from train.
6:55 - ZR-48 FAST MOVEMENT (Hormel) - Dixie teaches Pixie and professor how to fly.
7:10 - Pixie and Dixie end title (Curtin).

Yogi Bear - Foxy Hound-Dog

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation - Lew Marshall (Mike Lah uncredited); Layout - Bick Bickenbach; Backgrounds - Fernando Montealegre; Dialogue and Story Sketches - Charlie Shows and Dan Gordon; Titles - Art Goble; Production Supervision - Howard Hanson.
Cast: Yogi, English hunter - Daws Butler; Yowp - Don Messick.
Music: Bill Loose/John Seely, Jack Shaindlin, Spencer Moore, Geordie Hormel.
Production E-15; Huckleberry Hound Show K-005.
First aired: week of Monday, October 27, 1958 (repeat, week of April 25, 1959 and December 14, 1959.
Plot: Yogi protects a little fox from a hunter and his yowping dog until hunting season ends.

It’s only appropriate that I, Yowp, should pick my screen debut for the first cartoon we’ll talk about here.
The earliest Yogis are the most fun, since they haven’t been locked into a tiresome formula. No Boo-Boo. No Ranger Smith. In fact, there’s nothing to say Yogi’s cave is in a park, let alone Jellystone.
The story opens with something atypical of H-B cartoons—a chase past the same background over and over again. The little fox runs past the same trees four times before stopping behind a rock (on a foreground cell). The Yowp and fox run cycles were repeated in several scenes at the start. There weren’t too many backgrounds in this cartoon, and the woodsy meadow got the most mileage.

For some reason, H-B liked incidental characters with football-shaped heads. The unnamed fox has one, at least in some of the shots. It’s reminiscent of the original Tony the Tiger cartoons where Tony’s head could be tossed for a touchdown.

The fox is eventually chased into Yogi’s cave, where he hides unbeknownst to his host. The hunter pulls Yowp out of the cave twice and it’s at that point we get this cutsy bit to your right and Yogi decides to save the frightened fox from the hunter, who is attired in a chic chequered jacket like a number of incidental characters in the early Yogis and Hucks.





A little series of gags follows. The fox is first disguised as a “Davey Cricket” hat, which fools the Hunter-from-the-Thamas but not the intrepid Yowp. Mike Lah takes over to animate as our heroes try to escape in the river and that doesn’t work either. But evidently Yogi has watched some Bugs Bunny cartoons, as the old log-over-the-cliff bit works, with Yowp even realising what’s happened, looking toward the camera akin to Wile E. Coyote and then giving a plaintive “yowp” before dropping with a lens-shaking crash.

Yowp chases Yogi and the fox up a tree (that turns out to be hollow) and cleverly pops up in the hole at the top. Yogi does a stretch-dive out of the scene, an effect generally used by Carlo Vinci. Marshall takes over again. It’s back to more disguises, as Yogi (emulating Bugs again) does drag with the fox disguised as a stole. This is a great little limited animated take here. See the contented look Yowp has as Yogi (Daws uses a falsetto) says “Nice doggie!” then realises he’s been had. The cocked head is a great touch.



The stole becomes a sleeping baby. Yowp, being ever-polite, yowps quietly as he leaves until the dog gets wise, and looks through the window to discover the true identity of the “stole”.

The fox is finally captured by Yowp in a TV set but all is for naught as Hunting Season has come to an end and the fox must be released. Yowp takes the news well.







The incidental music used in the very earliest Yogis (the first-season ones that were part of The Huckleberry Hound Show) were almost exclusively the products of only four uncredited composers: Bill Loose (working at times with John Seely), Spencer Moore, Geordie Hormel and Jack Shaindlin. The first three were part of the Capitol Hi-Q library, though Hormel had his own label, Zephyr Records, and it’s likely his cues were leased from that. Shaindlin was one of the composers for the New York-based Langlois Filmusic library, a later off-shoot of the Lang-Worth Transcription Service that supplied musical programmes for radio stations and incidental music. Later composers included Raoul Kraushaar, whose cues from the Omar library were part of the Hi-Q collection, and Phil Green, who composed for EMI Photoplay, Capitol’s British affiliate.

0:00 - Yogi Bear (Hanna-Barbera-Shows-Hoyt Curtin) - Main titles.
0:26 - TC 219A CHASE-MEDIUM (Loose-Seely) - Dog chases tired fox into Yogi's cave.
1:32 - TC 300 ECCENTRIC COMEDY (Loose-Seely) - Yowp pulled out of cave twice by hunter.
2:38 - TC 201 PIXIE COMEDY (Loose-Seely) - Fox disguised as coonskin cap; Yogi and fox jump in river.
3:59 - LAF-20-5 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) - Yogi and fox run into log.
4:16 - L-81 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) - Log-over-the-cliff bit.
4:41 - LAF-20-5 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) - Yogi and fox chased up tree.
5:20 - L-1154 ANIMATION COMEDY (Moore) - Yogi wears fox as stole; rocks fox in crib like baby.
6:12 - TC 303 ZANY COMEDY (Loose-Seely) - Yowp captures fox, cries that he has to let fox go.
7:10 - Yogi Bear (Hanna-Barbera-Shows-Hoyt Curtin) - End titles.

Note: TC 219A CHASE MEDIUM was originally a Synchro Fox cue called as COMBAT written by Joseph Cacciola.