Huckleberry Hound — Freeway Patrol

Produced and Directed by Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna. Credits: Animation – Ken Muse; Layout – Dick Bickenbach; Backgrounds – Art Lozzi; Story Sketches and Dialogue – Charlie Shows and Dan Gordon; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Cast: Narrator – Don Messick; Huck, Mugsy the Robber, Bird – Daws Butler.
Episode: Huckleberry Hound Show K-007, Production E-40.
First Aired: week of November 10, 1958.
Plot: Fleeing bank robber tries to outwit Huckleberry Hound of the Freeway Patrol.

Satire comes in all flavours, including in cartoons. Tex Avery used (among other things) kind of an outlandish ridicule to make fun of things like movie travelogues and automobiles. Paramount’s satires of suburban and modern behaviour circa 1960 were more cynical. But Hanna-Barbera, perhaps considering they were aiming primarily at kids (but hoping spending-happy adults would watch), went in more for a gentle lampoon.

Television was becoming a target of cartoons as the ‘50s wore on. The Huckleberry Hound Show followed the trend, using a parody of ‘Dragnet’ as the opening for Huckleberry Hound Meets Wee Willie, and then turning their eyes on ‘Highway Patrol’ when this cartoon was made.

Well, they borrow from the title. Huck doesn’t act at all like Broderick Crawford. Through the cartoon, he’s sleepy and dumb at times but ultimately in control. And then the running gag re-appears to end it all, so Charlie Shows, Joe Barbera and Dan Gordon have a nicely structured story here.

There are other things familiar here. There are those evergreens with the branches that flip up like Marlo Thomas’ hair on ‘That Girl.’ Since the same trees grow in cartoons by various background artists, I have to presume Dick Bickenbach was responsible for them in layout. He’s also designed some more late ‘50s cars with tail-fins but no doors. He’s also responsible for the cloverleaf that is the opening shot of the cartoon; later, there’s a road-level view with streetlights the same as he created for the “super-highway” in Yogi’s Baffled Bear. And the animated sunburst effect that’s used for disembodied speech, in this case out of a car radio, showed up in a number of Hanna-Barbara cartoons for several years. Ken Muse also drew it in Jinks’ Mice Device.

The opening is familiar, too. Huck cartoons, even when Warren Foster took over from Charlie Shows in season two, began with a narrator setting up the premise. Don Messick uses a stentorian style this time, perhaps because Highway Patrol featured the intoning Art Gilmore as its narrator. Gilmore has a Hanna-Barbera connection, by the way. He plugged Kellogg’s over the original intro and extro of The Huckleberry Hound Show (not the version heard on various CDs). The Messick narrator informs us millions of motoring Americans are protected “by a special dedicated group of officers—the Freeway Patrol. Alert. Eagle-eyed. Ready for any emergency” Naturally, the shot is of officer Huck dozing off at the wheel while driving. The opening also sets up the cartoon’s running gag. The dispatcher sends Huck (in the inevitable ‘Car 13’) to investigate a stalled truck. The camera focuses on an underpass as the police car races inside it. The camera shakes. We hear Huck report to headquarters and then the camera cuts to the gag shot.

Huck: I found that stalled truck. Send new patrol car.
Dispatcher: Oh, no. That’s three this week and it’s only Tuesday.


Now that it’s been established that Huck is inept and snoozy, the plot can unfold. There’s a bank robber driving a 1958 Bickenbach on the freeway. The narrator informs us “The Freeway Patrol springs into action.” Mind you, it takes a bit of shouting for the dispatcher for that happen, since he has to wake the sleeping Huck. Even then, there’s a delay as the new Car 13 gets into another smash-up.

The crook encounters “a roadblock” which is nothing more than Huck standing on the road like a school-crossing guard. Now we get comedy out of the situation more than the dialogue. The crook mocks concern about a robber being on the loose and shows his driver’s license, complete with mask and criminal occupation listed.

Huck: How comes you’re wearin’ a mask?
Robber: Uh, er, I, I’m the Masked Hornet on television.
Huck: Well, let’s see here now. So you’re a TV star.
Robber (bashfully): Heh heh heh. I didn’t think you’d recognise me.
Huck: Gosh! Can I have your autograph, Mr. Masked Hornet?
Robber: Anything for me fans.

There are some cartoons that Huck is so incredibly and consistently stupid that it’s annoying (Huck’s Hack is one). But the gag here is so silly that I’ll go along with it. Especially considering how idiotic star-struck fans can be in real life.

After the crook drives away, Huck looks at the autograph book and realises he’s been had. So the chase is on.

First, the crook puts on his brake. The sudden rear-end stop wrecks another Car 13 (but doesn’t scratch the bad guy’s car. Sturdy, those ’58 Bickenbachs). “Short car, ain’t it?” remarks Huck to the camera, emulating a sign in a Tex Avery cartoon. Next, the crook puts up a detour sign, which works in any cartoon. There’s a weird bit of topography here. Huck’s supposed to be on a freeway. He’s in the country in one shot and suddenly finds himself in the middle of a city block in the next. Oh, well. Let’s go along with that, too.



Huck drives onto a hoist in a garage which the crooks sends through the roof and into the sky. But nothing bothers Huck. He looks at a passing bird, smiles and remarks “That’s a right purty view from up here.” I like the way Bick turns the car at an angle; all we’ve seen through the whole cartoon is side views to accomodate the right-to-left roll of the background cells.

How does Huck get down? That’s left to your imagine.

As the narrator tells us: “Well, you can fool some of the people all of the time, and fool all of the people some of the time, but a sharp cookie can fool ol’ Huck most any old time.” The robber gets a flat so he whips out a housewife-y wig and pulls the woman-in-distress routine. We get the sob story tune ‘Winter Tales’ in the background as the ‘lady’ wails how helpless she is. Yup, Huck gets fooled. He starts to fix the tire and the crook takes off in his car. Huck turns to the camera and says, “You know, I just never could understand women.”

Ah, but the chase continues. Huck gets in the crook’s 1958 Bickenbach (to save animation, the wheels don’t turn; the car is stationary and the background rolls over and over). We reach the climax scene, with unnecessary narration augmenting the crook’s scheme to stop Huck—by raising a drawbridge. Huck drives right into the sky and, casually knowing he’s in full control of the situation (he isn’t stupid after all, you see), lands right on the smugly laughing crook. Chase over. Case closed.



“And so we say ‘hat’s off’ to the Freeway Patrol! Guardians of our highways. Protectors of our...” The narration’s interrupted by an on-screen crash.

The narrator tries it again. “As we were saying, ‘hat’s off’ to the Freeway Patrol. You might slow ‘em down, but you can’t stop ‘em.” The camera pulls back as Huck toodles down the street on a child’s scooter.

Daws re-used incidental voices, and I’m pretty sure he used the robber’s again on Fractured Fairy Tales and various petty crooks on The Flintstones. It’s distinct enough that my guess is he based it on some actor in old crime movies.

There’s not too much music by Bill Loose and John Seely for a change. We get a rare appearance (maybe the second) of the ‘Tick Tock/Pop Goes the Weasel’ mash-up (L-992) by Spencer Moore.

0:00 - The Huckleberry Hound Song (Hanna, Barbera, Curtin, Shows) – Main titles.
0:26 - ZR-45 METROPOLITAN (Hormel) – shot of freeway, Huck races to into overpass, crash sound.
1:09 - L-78 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) – Huck talks with headquarters.
1:19 - LAF-20-5 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) – Robber fires gun, headquarters calls Huck.
1:40 - ZR-51 LIGHT ANIMATION (Hormel) – Dispatcher wakes up Huck.
2:16 - L-78 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) – Huck reports after crash, Masked Hornet gag.
3:32 - TC-303 ZANY COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – “Hornet” drives away, robber brakes and Huck crashes.
4:23 - LAF-20-5 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) – Detour set up, Huck sent into sky. from gag.
5:00 - L-992 ANIMATION CHILDREN (Moore) – “Right purty view”, robber gets flat.
5:11 - L-1158 ANIMATION COMEDY (Moore) – Robber puts on wig, Huck stops.
5:22 - SF-? HEARTS AND FLOWERS (arr. Vic Lamont) – “Woman” gives sob story, drives off in police car.
5:40 - LAF-2-12 ON THE RUN (Shaindlin) – Huck chases robber, flies into sky from drawbridge, lands on crook.
6:42 - ZR-52 LIGHT QUIET (Hormel) – “So we say ‘hat’s off’...”, Huck rides away on kid’s scooter.
7:11 – The Huckleberry Hound Song (Hanna, Barbera, Curtin, Shows) – End titles.

Getting the Most Out of Limited Animation

One of my favourite one-shot characters has to be the TV director in Yogi’s ‘Show Biz Bear.’ It’s from early in the second season of the Huckleberry Hound Show when Don Patterson, George Nicholas and Ed Love came on board to animate. I’ve gone into the background of those three ex-Disneyites before. They all, for awhile anyway, tried to stretch the low budgets and fewer drawings of limited animation as far as they could go. Here’s a little example from the cartoon I’ve just mentioned.

Instead of a two-position head bob with the occasional shake, which seems to describe what all characters do in H-B cartoons by the time Yakky Doodle hit the air, we get four positions. At this point of the cartoon, the director has looked at Yogi, turned to the camera, shrugged and said “What can I lose?” Instead of just staying in the position or just going to the next pose, we get some subtle movement. He straightens up and drops his head down on twos. You can see below how the angle of his nose changes and the head stretches upward.





Here’s the animation slowed down. It’s not like what you see in the actual cartoon, but it may give you a better idea of the movement.


Then the director looks at the camera and says “Besides, he’s got his own bear suit.” What you see below aren’t all of his mouth movements, but you can get the idea. The head is stationary while the mouth moves around the face. But there’s variation in the expression as the eyes are closed or looking in a different direction while the mouth is held for a frame. It gives the impression of extra movement.





I really like the character’s design, too. The general consensus is it’s by Tony Rivera, newly-arrived from Disney.

Snooper and Blabber — Gopher Goofers

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Don Patterson; Layout – Dick Bickenbach; Backgrounds – Bob Gentle; Story – Mike Maltese; Story Director – Alex Lovy; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Cast: Snooper, Blabber – Daws Butler; J. Horti Culture, Gopher – Don Messick.
First Aired: week of January 11, 1960.
Plot: Snooper and Blabber are hired by a millionaire to get rid of a gopher on his estate.

The idea behind Snooper and Blabber was to parody the tired clichés of the TV and B-movie detective genre. But when you need a bunch of story ideas in a hurry and used to write for Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, you’ll use whatever you can to meet a deadline. That’s no doubt what faced Mike Maltese when he was asked to come up with plots for ‘The Quick Draw McGraw Show.’ So he mothered a cartoon where he simply took his detective characters and plopped them into a standard Warner Bros.-style, heckler-comes-out-on-top cartoon.

That can be the only possible explanation for Gopher Goofers. After all, why would anyone hire detectives to get rid of a gopher? Why wouldn’t they hire an exterminator? Well, I guess there is one other explanation—anything can happen in a cartoon. Maltese apparently liked the concept because he used it in Quick Draw McGraw’s Doggone Prairie Dog, which aired the same season with a similarly-drawn (but not identical) title character.

Maltese never wrote the Goofy Gopher cartoons at Warners but this one may remind you of the kinds of violence gags you’d see on one of those. And instead of the oh-so-polite dialogue which was the most enjoyable part of the Warners shorts, Maltese inserts his own style with lots of adjectives that characters dutifully recite, as if they’re reading parenthetical stage directions.

Instead of opening the cartoon with a shot of an eyeball on Snooper’s office door or window, we get it on his helicopter this time, with the title characters in silhouette and the white clouds (sponged?). They are on their way to the “vast, richly estate” of “fabulously wealthy” J. Horti Culture, descriptive terms that crop up several times in the dialogue.

There’s something I really like about the backgrounds here. Bick and Bob Gentle came up with a lot of roses and the main background features a flat gazebo in the back and some kind of tree with little round berries on the leaves. The orangy sky is an interesting colour choice; I’m presuming it’s the correct colour from these TV screen grabs anyway (pardon the annoying TV cable channel bug. I wish these were out on DVD).


Snooper still thinks he’s in a detective cartoon. He deduces he’s been called because Culture has a no-good nephew who is trying to do him in to get the estate. That’s when the ground shakes and we get some sight gags leading up to the appearance of the title character. The best one is how an apple drops from a tree and a buzz-saw noise, the uneaten core is sent back up. It’s almost the same as in Barney Bear’s Victory Garden (1942) except the gopher in that one pulls a tomato plant underground then pops it back up with the tomatoes eaten like apples.


Blab informs us it’s a “13-09. A landscape caper.” Culture offers a million dollars to get rid of the pest and we get some vaudeville-type corn in reply:

Snooper: For that kind of dough, I’d do a bicycle act with a hungry crocodile.
Blabber: What do you mean, Snoop? We don’t own no bicycle.

So now we proceed with a series of gags as Snooper’s attempts to get the gopher out of the garden fall apart through our heroes’ stupidity and the gopher having obviously watched old cartoons and knowing what’s coming. First, Blab lowers a mousetrap with a fishing line into the hole. Like Bugs Bunny, who has multiple holes when convenient, the gopher pops up with the trap through another hole, jibbers to the camera and snaps it on Snooper’s tail. Naturally, Blab thinks he’s caught something and reels Snoop through one hole and out the other.



Next, Snooper tries a metal orange and a magnet. But the gopher pops up through the second hole and offers the orange to Blab who swallows it (with a thud). Snoop uses the magnet and pulls Blab through one hole and out the other.

The rodent dashes off with Snoop loping after him. Don Patterson developed a six-drawing run cycle for the gopher. When he lands on either foot, it’s on twos. The other drawings are on ones. Earlier, when he has the gopher chattering, he varies the cycle again, with some drawings on twos and others on threes. By contrast, Snoop’s run is on twos.

“Stop in the name of the Private Eye Summer School!” is Snoop’s variation on his catchphrase in this cartoon. And the gopher does. To pull the old pick-a-card-with-dynamite trick.



Now, Snooper and Blabber pretend to leave, sounding like they’re reading badly off a script loud enough for the gopher to hear, then hide behind a tree. The gopher sings to himself, toddling along in a little head-bobbing cycle. He’s on ones, except when each foot is in the mid-air and Patterson leaves it there for an extra frame.

The gopher doodly-doos across some atypical Hanna-Barbera paving stones to the diving board of a swimming pool. Snooper runs after him. The gopher does a little knee-bending dance as casually pours glue on the diving board. Snooper mishears Blab’s warning about the glue and attempts his “triple-side somersault swan dive” into the pool after him. He doesn’t get that far.

A hunting rocket set to “gopher” is Snooper’s next weapon. The gopher does a variation of an old Warners gag and draws a picture of himself on the back of Snoop’s trench-coat.

Finally, Snooper decides to use TNT to blow up the gopher’s hole. But, instead, he blows up the grounds of the estate—along with the million-dollar garden he was supposed to protect.






Finally, we get one of those “what?!” endings. As Culture is about to hand over the million-dollar cheque, we hear the gopher, then see the millionaire’s boutonnière disappear into his smoking jacket. Finally, the flowers on the wallpaper disappear into the base-board. How’d the gopher get in there? Oh, that’s right. Anything can happen in a cartoon.



Don Messick once mentioned the gopher voice was among his favourite. I suppose if you asked someone what a gopher sounded like, he’d make the toothy noise Messick makes here. It sounds more like Messick during the scene when he heads to the ironing board. The little woodblock/flute tune of Jack Shaindlin’s fits the little walk he has, even though it’s not scored to the beat.

I still haven’t been able to find the title of that piece nor one of a bunch of marching band-style chase themes chopped at the end of the cartoon. More than half of the music is from the Q-2 series from EMI Photoplay by Phil Green.

0:00 - Snooper and Blabber Main Title theme (Hoyt Curtin).
0:25 - GR-347 GATHERING THE PRODUCE (Green) – Snooper and Blabber in chopper.
0:42 - GR-74 POPCORN (Green) – Snoop and Blab talk to millionaire.
1:13 - ASININE (Shaindlin) – Jackhammer sound, gopher appears.
1:31 - GR-74 POPCORN (Green) – $1,000,000 offer made.
2:33 - GR-90 THE CHEEKY CHAPPIE (Green) – Mousetrap gag.
3:07 - GR-93 DRESSED TO KILL (Green) – Orange gag, card gag.
4:25 - GR-76 POPCORN SHORT BRIDGE No 2 (Green) – “A double-dealing gopher.”
4:34 - GR-453 THE ARTFUL DODGER (Green) – Snooper and Blabber pretend to leave.
5:00 - tick tock/flute music (Shaindlin) – Gopher heads to pool, puts glue on diving board.
5:22 - LFU-117-3 MAD RUSH No 3 (Shaindlin) – Gopher jumps off diving board, Snooper sticks to glue.
5:41 - GR-87 SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD (Green) – Rocket gag.
6:10 - STEALTHY MOUSE (Harry Bluestone-Emil Cadkin) – Blow-up estate gag, Snooper gets cheque.
7:00 - fast chase music (Shaindlin) - Boutonnière and wallpaper flowers disappear.
7:10 - Snooper and Blabber end title theme (Curtin).

Presenting Hanna Barbera’s Wacko Wolf

You probably know the Flintstones were, at one point of their lives, the Flagstones. Joe Barbera revealed several names were considered for Yogi Bear—including Bumpkin, Barney and Huckleberry. Even Bill Hanna admitted the cat and mouse team that made him and his partner famous were born Jasper and Jinx. So it seems the biggest purveyors of television animation into the 1970s had trouble coming up with just the right names for characters.

There may be at least one other instance of this, if a story by Jack Gaver of United Press International is correct. This was in his TV notes column of November 6, 1960:

YOGI BEAR has become so popular as a character in the widely syndicated Screen Gems’ “Huckleberry Hound” TV cartoon series that he is being given a program of his own. The Yogi Bear series will be available in January. Two regular members of the cast, who have appeared from time to time in “Huckleberry Hound,” will be Snagglepuss, a lion, and Yakky Doodle, a duck. Yogi will be replaced in “Huckleberry Hound” by Wacko, a wise-cracking wolf.

Wacko Wolf?

Well, we all know that he was named Hokey Wolf. Gaver’s column is the only place I’ve been able to find in my admittedly limited research that he may have had a different original name. Gaver could have been mistaken. Or he could have been confused. There was another animated wolf who appeared in his own cartoons the following fall. There are references to him in the summer of 1961 in several news stories about Larry Harmon, who basically seized control of Bozo the Clown in the mid 1950s and produced television cartoons featuring the character. By 1960, he was sub-contracted to provide some Popeye TV cartoons for King Features. Harmon decided to expand his animated empire with drawn adventures of Laurel and Hardy. But that wasn’t all. Note this syndicated newspaper snippet from August 28, 1961:

Harmon also will continue as Bozo the Clown, adding 104 new cartoon sequences. He also will be the voice for Wacko Wolf, a western desperado.

The Hanna-Barbera influence can be seen pretty clearly in the drawing of Wacko (though it looks like the eyes were done at Gamma Productions). But did Joe and Bill come up with the name first? Or did they back down because of the stern gaze of Harmon’s lawyers?

According to “Hi There, Boys and Girls!: America's Local Children’s TV Shows” by Tim Hollis, Harmon started producing the Bozo cartoons in 1957 and gave the clown some supporting sidekicks, including Wacko Wolf (voiced by Paul Frees). So it could be that Hanna-Barbera quickly had to change their character’s already-taken name.

Or Gaver could have had his facts wrong. At this point, it’s an interesting little mystery that requires a bit more than the talents of Snooper and Blabber to solve.

Pixie and Dixie — Mark of the Mouse

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Carlo Vinci; Layout – Bick Bickenbach; Backgrounds – Sam Clayberger; Story Sketches and Dialogue – Charlie Shows and Dan Gordon; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Cast: Jinks, French Cat, Mailman, Dixie – Daws Butler; TV Announcer, Pixie – Don Messick; Mark of the Mouse – unknown.
Production: E-30, first aired week of January 19, 1959.
Plot: Jinks takes on Pixie dressed as the Zorro-like Mark of the Mouse—until the real one arrives.

Cartoon studios in the 1930s, to a varying degree, wanted to be Walt Disney. About the only one that didn’t want to be Walt Disney was Walt Disney. It seems he wanted to be Louis B. Mayer or Harry Cohen or Adolph Zukor. He wanted to be a live-action movie bigwig. So, in the ‘40s, he developed partial live-action movies, moved into live action adventure shorts and when television came along, had live-action shows. Even Disney himself showed up on camera—not as a drawing—playing the role of Uncle Walt. And Disney developed two live-action television properties that jumped off the screen and into popular kid culture—‘Davey Crockett’ and ‘Zorro’ (no doubt to the delight of his licensing department).

So cartoon studios in the 1950s started being Walt Disney again but, instead of reverential copies of his work, they made fun of it (after all, Tex Avery had come along in the interim). Thus, you see parodies of both the King of the Wild Frontier and the rapier-bearing masked avenger in cartoons. Hanna-Barbera seems to have been especially taken with Zorro; certainly Mike Maltese was, and that’s why he developed El Kabong. But before Maltese’s arrival, Joe Barbera and writers Charlie Shows and Dan Gordon came up with the Zorro-inspired cartoon Mark of the Mouse.

I’ve never quite understood the logic behind the opening of this cartoon, other than to set up the plot. Jinks is watching TV, and the show that’s on features the heroic Mark of the Mouse victorious over a cat. But why would Jinks watch that sort of thing, anyway? Perhaps it’s to make fun of it, because that’s what he does. “How ree-dick-ul-luss,” he says before the mouse cuts his mark (an “M”; as opposed to Zorro’s “Z”) on the French cat’s fur. Yes, there’s a bit of the Three Musketeers tossed in as Mark isn’t doing his avenging in Colonial California. Before Jinks shuts off the set, we get Don Messick as an announcer intoning the Mark of the Mouse theme—“He’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere. So beware!”

Jinks comes up his own rhyme as he shuts off the set. “Oh, broth-aire!” he remarks in phoney Français, “This Mark of the Mouse is real nowhere.” His TV review to the audience is interrupted by a mailman. It’s something for Dixie—a Mark of the Mouse suit, purchased with 40 box tops and 40 box bottoms.

Dixie: How do I look, Pixie?
Pixie: Like Dixie Mouse, mostly.
Dixie: Just wait till I put my mask on. Now how?
Pixie: You look better with the mask on (giggles).

Jinks is watching all this and also sees the outfit came with a harmless, rubber sword. So he’s ready when Dixie strolls up to him, pretending to be the Mark of the Mouse. Jinks pretends to be afraid. Daws gives a “reading-badly-from-a-script” delivery for the cat here, though it’s not in Jinks’ voice, even when he stops “acting”, turns to the camera and says “Am I overacting?” It would have been funnier if the whole routine had been in character.

Jinks runs away and grabs a sword that happens to be conveniently over the fireplace. Then he hides and gets ready. Dixie touchés him with the rubber sword. “Lucky you are not armed for ze duel, or I would slice you to pieces,” exclaims the mouse. Jinks gives one of those Groucho-like eyebrow looks and whips out the sword. So, the chase is on, complete with a patented Charlie Shows butt-puncturing joke.

Jinks “yuk-yuk”s as he walks away singing his version of the Mark of the Mouse theme but as he strolls past the window, who should arrive on the sill but— yeah, that’s right. Jinks thinks it’s still Dixie with his “rubber s-ward” until he gets “stuck-ed.” Notice below right how Jinks develops “Vinci teeth.” They’re thicker than the thin, sometimes partial row that Ken Muse drew.



While Dixie expresses scepticism there is a real Mark of the Mouse, the real one and Jinks engage in a sword fight. The meece come out of their hole and we get a alternating, two-drawing take from Dixie when he realises who is fighting.



And, here’s another clue this is a Vinci cartoon. Pixie and Dixie do Vinci’s stomp-run exit. I’ve slowed it down so you can see the stomping.



The sword fight continues until Jinks sees the meece in the window and has to be told he is fighting the real Mark of the Mouse, who uses his rapier to send Jinks’ sword high into the air. Now, we get a Charlie Shows rhyme. “Scram, Sam, take it on the lam,” Jinks says to himself, as he does a (animator identity clue alert) streched-diving exit out of the scene. Jinks hides under a hassock but the sword does the usual off-camera course change and finds him anyway.

Now comes a great, effective piece of limited animation. Jinks goes to stab Mark of the Mouse but thrusts his sword into the light socket. We get a great electrical shock take, which includes the two great, alternated drawings below.



Defeated and worn-out looking, Jinks repeats after Mark of the Mouse (in phoney French) a pledge never to chase the meeces again. He does so at sword-point. Sort of. The sword keeps disappearing in the cycle animation. Evidently, the sword “isn’t here, isn’t there, isn’t everywhere.”



Mark of the Mouse bids au revoir, as Jinks ridicules him. “Aw, you ain’t for real. Where’s your mark? That’s all I’ve got to say. Where’s your mark?” In a nice surprise ending, Jinks turns his body and we can see the answer.

It’s with a bit of irony that Zorro had a secret identity and so, too, does Mark of the Mouse. I don’t mean in the cartoon. Today, in syndication, the voice actor is not credited. It’s obviously not Butler or Messick. I put the question of “who” to Mark Evanier and he said neither he or cartoon writer Earl Kress could tell. It has been suggested it could be Doug Young’s first appearance in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon before he arrived the following season to play Doggie Daddy. Yet you’d think he’d have used the voice again somewhere but I don’t recall hearing it anywhere. It seems odd Hanna-Barbera would bring in someone to do a generic French accent, especially someone who obviously isn’t French; one wonders why Messick didn’t double (Daws was already playing the French cat).

This is also the last Hanna-Barbera cartoon Sam Clayberger worked on. Is the tree in the background here in water colours?

An odd choice was made for the first bit of music. It’s a medium circus march by Jack Shaindlin, used in a few cartoons, notably Lion Tamer Huck. Circus music doesn’t quite fit a French sword drama. What would have been more effective is if they used the Lou De Francesco piece (called ‘Light Activity’ in the Hi-Q library) at the beginning as it was used later in the cartoon when the Mark of the Mouse appeared and engaged in sword-play with Jinks. And, yes, Shaindlin’s ‘Toboggan Run’ makes its almost-mandatory appearance, along with a lot of familiar tunes.

\ 0:00 - Pixie and Dixie Main Title theme—instrumental (Hoyt Curtin).
0:27 - LAF-1-8 medium circus march (Shaindlin) – Jinks watches the Mark of the Mouse Show.
1:23 - TC-202 ECCENTRIC COMEDY (Bill Loose-John Seely) – Mailman calls, Dixie puts on Mark of the Mouse costume.
2:06 - TC-204A WISTFUL COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Meece walk back into house,
2:28 - TC-432 HOLLY DAY (Loose-Seely) – Meece spot Dixie, Jinks hams it up.
3:27 - LAF-5-20 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) – Jinks runs away.
3:41 - LAF-4-6 PIXIE PRANKS (Shaindlin) – Dixie goes looking for Jinks, Jinks pulls out sword.
4:10 - ZR-48 FAST MOVEMENT (Geordie Hormel) – Jinks attacks Dixie with sword.
4:36 - TC-303 ZANY COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Jinks dares meece.
4:54 - L-81 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Spencer Moore) – Mark of the Mouse arrives; stabs Jinks.
5:22 - TC-432 HOLLY DAY (Loose-Seely) – Meece ponder, hear sound of swords.
5:29 - SF-10 SKI(ING) GALOP (De Francesco) – Sword fight.
6:45 - ZR-51 LIGHT MOVEMENT (Hormel) – Jinks pledges never to chase mice; shows off ‘M’ on butt.
7:10 - Pixie and Dixie end title theme (Curtin).