Meet the Flintstones (Collector)

I’ve never been quite sure how a sheep feels so, therefore, I’m not quite sure what feeling sheepish is like. But perhaps I feel it now.

I’ve posted pictures of Hanna-Barbera merchandise from the distant past sent to me by various readers who have found it on the internet. I’m not a collector myself, other than of DVDs of the funny old cartoons (and, I suppose, the music on the original H-B cartoons). But one of our readers is. And Dave Nimitz and his Flintstones collection has been profiled on an internet web site in a post that, frankly, is far more in depth than anything I’ve ever been motivated to write here.
So please direct your attention to BEYOND THE MARQUIS, as Dave shows off what he’s found over the years and proudly displays in his apartment.

I probably should have talked to Dave and posted something here but, to be honest, my batting average getting people to agree to be interviewed here is pretty low. And this blog is a little something to do in my spare time and I really don’t have a lot of it. By the way, one thing the post doesn’t mention is Dave’s friendship with some of the great voice actors of cartoons past, like June Foray.

Now’s a good time to segue into more pictures of old H-B merchandise found on the internet by reader Billie Towzer.



Thanks to the folks at Standard Toykraft Products of Brooklyn, New York, you could make your own plaster versions of Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw and Yogi Bear. This was sold in 1960.



You think of Ideal Toys when you think of Pebbles Dolls, but (as Dave Nimitz can attest), Knickerbocker made them, too. They’re 3½ inches tall. The company made Fred and Barney, too.



Knickerbocker also made plastic banks. Here’s one of Quick Draw from 1960. There were a couple of different ones, and a Baba Looey bank as well.



Billie didn’t identify these two plastic Hucks. I’ll bet Greg down the I-5 can tell us what they are. (Late note: See the comment section).



And we wouldn’t have had Huck, Quick Draw and Yogi if it hadn’t been for the folks at ♫♪♫♪ K-E-Double L-O-Double Good... well, you know the song. Oh, horrors! Cereal with, with... SUGAR! And a gun! Hey, you can’t let kids eat that. They’ll grow up to be obese murderers.

My thanks to Billie for peering around the ‘net and passing on these pictures.

Huckleberry Hound — Pony Boy Huck

Produced and Directed by Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna.
Credits: Animation – La Verne Harding; Layout – Tony Rivera; Backgrounds – Bob Gentle; Story – Warren Foster; Story Sketches – Dan Gordon; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Narrator, Chief Crazy Coyote, Vulture, 2nd Pony Express Manager – Don Messick; Huckleberry Hound, Pony Express Manager, Horse – Daws Butler.
Music: Spencer Moore; Jack Shaindlin; Raoul Kraushaar?
First aired: week of Dec. 28, 1959 (rerun, week of July 4, 1960).
Episode: Huckleberry Hound Show No K-035.
Plot: Pony Express rider Huck has to get the mail past Chief Crazy Coyote.

Chief Crazy Coyote and the Joe Besser horse are back in La Verne Harding’s first attempt at animating Huck (her last one was in the fourth season). Harding’s animation is pretty undistinguished here, and Tony Rivera’s design of the horse is much more streamlined than Walt Clinton’s in the first Huck/Crazy Coyote match-up. Warren Foster’s story has some cute bits in it.

Foster used a narration device in a bunch of cartoons, with Don Messick as a narrator intoning “This picture is dedicated to...” This was the first one where he tried it. (Pet Vet and Huck’s Hack were the others in Huck’s second season). In this case, it’s “dedicated to the memory of the Pony Express riders” and opens with Huck and his horse in long shot. Foster tries a running gag when Huck enters the Pony Express office. Huck’s told he’s being assigned the duty of delivering a package because “you, above all others, live up to our proud motto.” Huck doesn’t know what he’s talking about. After it’s explained (“the mail must go through”), Huck promises he will live up to the “proud mott-to.” As he walks to the horse stable, he repeats the sentence over and over, emphasising a different word each time. “I gots to ree-member to learn that proud mott-to.”

The next gag’s fun. Huck’s horse is reluctant to take him on the delivery. He peeks out of the stable and up and puts his hoof out. “Oh, come on! It’s not rainin’!” Huck shouts at him.

Okay, the narration sets up some spot gags of Huck getting on the horse. He slides along the side of the galloping horse to mount him. “Performed at full speed, it was a beautiful thing to watch,” says our solemn narrator. Huck crashes into a fence post. Hanna’s timing is perfect. “As we were saying...” intones Messick. This time, the horse mounts Huck. “Now what did I do wrong?” Huck says to the audience.



We fade into the next scene and Huck is riding the horse. Huck hits the horse with a switch to get him to go faster. The horse stops, turns and tells him he doesn’t like it and won’t say it. Foster resists the temptation to add “Or I’ll give you such a pinch. You cra-zy!”

If you’ve lost track, Crazy Coyote is supposed to be the antagonist. We’re a third of the way through the cartoon and he hasn’t shown up yet. Foster has to toss in a “Neither rain, nor snow” narration gag. Messick describes torrential rains, snow-choked passes (all we see is a hat moving on top of the snow) and the deepest rivers. The horse stops short of the river but all Huck does it fly across to the other side with a wimpy sound effect landing. The gag is apparently the way Daws Butler bends his vowels when he says “starch” and “cuffs.”

Huck’s now in ‘Injun Country’, where you “cain’t be too careful...Ol’ Crazy Coyote shows up where you least expect him.” While Huck’s saying all this, the top-hatted chief is sitting right behind him on the horse, baying like (presumably) a coyote, and Huck’s telling us a coyote’s out there and not far away. Huck doesn’t notice for a good 20 seconds of screen time until Craze says he wants off at Big Rock. And even then, he’s pretty casual about it, telling him it’s against the rules to take on riders. “Oh, bro-ther!” says the Besser horse. And he doesn’t even know it’s Crazy Coyote until the chief tells him in the next scene. Harding wastes a chance at a take. All that happens is the camera cuts from a two-shot of Huck with his eyes half closed and the Chief to a shot of Huck with his eyes fully-opened. Lame.



Foster pulls a gag out of nowhere. Crazy Coyote grabs the letter Huck’s delivering so Huck pulls out his gun. The chief responds by holding up the letter wherever Huck moves the barrel of his gun because if the letter gets damaged by bullets, Huck will be fired. So Huck simply shoots into the air and a buzzard falls from the sky and lands on top of Crazy Coyote. “Sorry I had to use you, Mr. Vulture.” The vulture responds with his best impression of Señor Wences: “S’all right.”

Anyone recognise the next gag? The chief does a war dance. Cut to a shot of a chart that teaches him the steps. The only thing that screws up the bit is he explains what he’s doing and then reads what’s on the chart. Not only can we see it for ourselves, the gag’s over by the time he’s finished talking. Oh, and Craze does his “hee-haw” laugh to stretch out the scene even more.



You should recognise the next gag. Crazy Coyote rolls a boulder down the steep slope of the Great Divide to bowl down Huck and his horse. But “Shucks. Me miss-um.” The boulder rolls past the pair up the other side of a cliff and into the air. Yeah, suddenly Crazy Coyote is emulating another cartoon coyote. The boulder lands on top of him as he looks at the audience, gets into a Jackie Gleason-esque pose and says “And away-um we go.” The scene ends with Crazy (Coyote, not Guggenheim) under the rock giving a weird muffled laugh that sounds like Gloop or Gleep from The Herculoids (also voiced by Don Messick).

Short gag. Narrator: “But as the brave rider presses on”—we see more cycle footage of Huck riding the horse—“a relentless redskin draws a bead and fires!” Crazy Coyote turns as he aims his rifle and points it against a rock. The bullet, of course, can’t get out the front end, so it explodes inside the rifle. Muffled laugh by Craze again.



Huck finally arrives at the Pony Express station. But the horse keeps riding right through it, up a flight of stairs (as we can tell by the camera pan up and to the left) and out an upstairs window. Foster just gives Huck a few “whoa”s but avoids turning him into Yosemite Sam going “Aw, come on, horsey, pretty please” and so on (Foster, of course, wrote a majority of the Bugs-Sam cartoons at Warners).

So Huck “brought the mail through, just like our motto says,” the Pony Express guy behind the desk tells him. “Well, I’m right humble, and grateful, and proud, and grateful and humble...” “Never mind all that,” the Express guy interrupts. He hands Huck the letter and him told he has to deliver it in person—to Chief Crazy Coyote. The final scene has a close-up of Huck, with galloping sounds in the background, telling us he has to keep his eyes peeled for Crazy Coyote because he’s liable to show up any place. Cut to a medium shot that reveals Huck is riding atop Crazy Coyote’s hat. We hear the hee-haw laugh and the cartoon fades out to end.

Crazy Coyote made one more appearance, in the third season’s Huck Hound’s Tale, which is similar in plot to the first season cartoon written by Charlie Shows.

The music is a bit of a nightmare here. Someone decided to give Huck a chase cue every time he rode his horse, and Crazy Coyote a couple of the standard Indian cues in the Hi-Q library when he appeared. But there are cases when a cue is heard for a few seconds, then the sound cutter cuts into the middle of one of the familiar pieces of stock music generally used on Huck cartoons. It doesn’t flow. You can hear the interruption. If you have a staff composer, (s)he can blend it together, but it doesn’t work with a stock library of different composers, arrangements and tempos.

You’ll see I haven’t identified most of the music. I have some chase themes on a few reels of the Hi-Q ‘D’ series which sound similar to what’s used when Huck’s on horseback but not that one. That’s if it is only one; I honestly can’t tell. My guess is the chase theme and the Indian music were written by whoever ghost-wrote for Geordie Hormel or Spencer Moore. The Indian music may be in the Hi-Q ‘X’ series but I haven’t been able to locate it. The chase cue was only used in this one cartoon.

0:00 - Huckleberry Hound Sub Main Title theme (Curtin)
0:25 - medium dramatic chase (?) – long shot of Huck and horse on plains, Huck walks into Pony Express Station
0:38 - creepy reverb trumpet music (Kraushaar?) – Huck in Pony Express office.
1:09 - L-70 COMEDY UNDERSCORE (Moore) – Huck mumbles to himself, horse looks for rain, horse takes off.
1:38 - medium dramatic chase (?) – Huck tries to get on horse, horse skids to stop.
2:14 - TC-201 PIXIE COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Horse complains to Huck.
2:35 - medium dramatic chase (?) – Huck on horse, weather gags.
3:03 - four beat tom-tom/flute cue (?) – shot of Injun Territory map, Crazy Coyote howls like coyote.
3:19 - medium dramatic chase (?) – Huck on horseback, “Whoa!”
3:49 - TC-303 ZANY COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Huck talks to Crazy Coyote, Vulture drops on Crazy Coyote.
4:35 - medium dramatic chase (?) – Huck on horse.
4:39 - four beat tom-tom/flute cue (?) – Chief does war dance, shot of foot chart.
4:57 - two drum-beat cue (?) – Crazy Coyote laughs.
4:59 - medium dramatic chase (?) – Huck and horse up Great Divide, slide down.
5:14 - four beat tom-tom/flute cue (?) – Crazy Coyote on mountain, pushes rock.
5:20 - medium dramatic chase (?) – Huck and horse slide down, rock goes past them, lands on Crazy Coyote,
5:31 - four beat tom-tom/flute cue (?) – Crazy Coyote looks down hill.
5:35 - medium dramatic chase (?) – Rock rolls down mountain, crashes on Crazy Coyote, Huck rides, Crazy Coyote’s rifle goes off, horse rides into Pony Express office.
6:23 - no music. Pan up side of building, Huck and horse crash through window, thud.
6:32 - PIXIE PRANKS (Shaindlin) – Huck in office.
6:55 - LAF-72-2 RODEO DAY (Shaindlin) – Huck on Crazy Coyote.
7:10 - Huckleberry Hound Sub End Title theme (Curtin)

Not So Curiouser

They lost with me with the television scene.

I haven’t been nine years old for some time but that’s how old I was when the Hanna-Barbera ‘Alice in Wonderland’ special aired in 1966. I haven’t seen it since then but I distinctly remember some things about it (it’s remarkable what the memory retains). I remember how much I was looking forward to it. And I remember how I was really let down. Right from the first scene.



What was a TV doing in the story? What was the point of deviating from the original storyline? And why were Fred and Barney a caterpillar? It couldn’t have been some Gazoo trick because Gazoo wasn’t there, and the cartoon wasn’t in the Stone Age, anyway. I mean, if you’re going to have Fred and Barney in a cartoon, they should be Fred and Barney, right? And what was with that hipped-up song at the end? It was loud and just didn’t fit. In fact, I didn’t like the compressed-sounding underscore used in the whole cartoon. About the only highlight for me was Janet Waldo because Janet Waldo is wonderful. Even though they wouldn’t let her sing (nine year olds can tell these things).

I only bring up this 46-year-old special because I’ve come across newspaper clippings about it in my Hanna-Barbera travels looking for information about Alex Lovy. Not all H-B fans have the same tastes—there are people who can actually stomach those Abbott and Costello cartoons—so for any of you reading who have fond memories of ‘Alice,’ let me post them.

Lovy was interviewed on a couple of occasions about the cartoon. Here’s one from the National Enterprise Association syndication service, March 26, 1966.

Alex Lovy of Alice in Wonderland Directs the Cartoon With Pencil
By ERSKINE JOHNSON
HOLLYWOOD — HOW do you direct a cartoon?
There was no shadow of doubt in the mind of TV director Alex Lovy.
“With a pencil,” he said.
Super-spectacular
The “cartoon” in question is a super-spectacular, an hour-long animated color special called Alice in Wonderland or What’s a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This, slated for Wednesday evening March 30 on the ABC-TV network.
Animation is by the team of Hanna-Barbera with a list of voices that sounds like Who’s
Who: Sammy Davis Jr. as the Cheshire Cat, Zsa Zsa Gabor as Queen of Hearts, Howard Morris as the White Rabbit and Bill Dana, as Jose Jimenez, as the White Knight.
Dana also wrote the script, which director Lovy admits is far from the original version. Because they used just the characters from the famous classic, the opening credit will read:
“With apologies to Lewis Carroll.”
But there is no apology from either Lovy or Dana about their version, which they describe as a musical. “My Alice,” says Dana “is a contemporary girl. I wouldn’t want to compete with Lewis Carroll.”
This is Lovy’s explanation of how he directs with a pencil:
“The actors take my direction in their voice interpretations and then I direct with a pencil to the animators. I tell the artists how each person moves. I draw the moves and the artists work them in.”
How important this direction-by-pencil can be is spotlighted by the fact that the hour show required 70,000 individual drawings. The mere words “Good morning, how are you?” from Alice required more than 24 drawings to give the illusion of motion.
An oddity of the production is that at no time did any member of the “voice” cast meet another cast member. All recorded their voices separately in Hollywood with the exception of Sammy Davis Jr. Because he was starring in “Golden Boy” on-Broadway, director Lovy recorded his voice in New York.
Two Voices
Another oddity is that Alice required two voices, the speaking voice of Janet Waldo and the singing voice of Doris Drew Allen.
Dana says his version of “Alice” is not an adaptation but a fantasy. “I wouldn’t do an adaptation because I didn’t regard Alice as a children’s book. It was a satire of ‘in’ jokes for the six close friends for whom Lewis Carroll wrote the story.”

Joe Barbera, who could sell wire hangers to Joan Crawford, was unleashed to do his P.R. magic on the press yet again before the cartoon aired. You can depend on Joe to include in any interview “We won seven Oscars, you know” and “our cartoons aren’t kid programming.” He has the task of trying to spin the cartoon as being new, and that’s good, but old, and that’s good. Contradictory? Ol’ Smoothie doesn’t give people time to come to that realisation as he does his pitch.

This is another syndicated piece, found in newspapers starting March 27, 1966:

TV Set Replaces Looking Glass In Alice Special
By EDGAR PENTON
HOLLYWOOD — “Curiouser and curiouser!” as Alice would say. There’s a White Rabbit playing guessing games, the hep feline Cheshire Cat, a two-headed caterpillar working in show business, and a hard-boiled egg named Humphrey Dumpty.
Any similarity between these characters and the inhabitants of that Wonderland first encountered by Lewis Carroll’s Alice over a century ago is purely intentional.
They are 1966 versions of the Carroll characters and will be seen in Alice in Wonderland or What’s a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This, ABC-TV’s fully animated musical color special airing Wednesday, March 30.
HOW DID they come up with a title like that, a title that had Carroll-philes shaking their heads when it was announced last year?
David Sontag, director of special programs for ABC, had this reply. “The title comes from one of the show tunes sung by Sammy Davis Jr., ‘What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This.’ We liked the song and Sammy’s rendition so well it was decided to incorporate it in the title of the show.
“The appellation, which may well be one of the longest in television history, is an indication of the concept of the show. . . it’s current; a contemporary version written in the style of Lewis Carroll.”
Sammy Davis Jr. voices the Cheshire Cat, a fourth generation feline from Jersey City. Zsa Zsa Gabor, as the Queen of Hearts, manages to get in an occasional “dahlink” in between shouts of “Off with her head!”
Bill Dana, making use of his Jose Jiminez character for the White Knight, carries on his battle with the English language by insisting that the “K” in knight be pronounced.
Howard Morris provides the voice of the “zany” White Rabbit, and the late Hedda Hopper gives voice to a new character, Hedda Hatter, wife of the Mad Hatter, vocally portrayed by Harvey Korman.
Talented young actress Janet Waldo speaks the words of Alice, with Doris Drew Allen performing the heroine’s musical numbers. Daws Butler does double duly by voicing the King of Hearts and the March Hare. Allan Melvin is heard as Humphrey Dumpty.
SPECIAL GUEST stars Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, of the network’s The Flintstones, are voiced by Alan Reed and Mel Blanc. They play, respectively, the front and rear ends of the caterpillar.
Co-producing the special are William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, winners of seven Academy Awards for their animated productions. Screen Gems is associated in the venture.
“This is our first hour-long television venture,” Barbera says.
“It would be impossible to do the complete Carroll story in that time. Without changing the original Carroll concept, we have given our story a line that children today can easily understand and identify with.
“INSTEAD of Alice entering Wonderland by a rabbit hole or through a looking glass, she finds her way into the wonderous kingdom by falling through the screen of the family television set.
“I don’t mean to imply that the special is strictly for the youngsters. The story of Alice is not just another cute kiddie tale. It has a charm and sophistication that appeals to adults as well. In essence, it has all the ingredients to make it fun and entertaining to the entire family.
“To do a successful TV special today you must give the audience something they are familiar with. This we are doing in story and personalities. We believe the show will become a perennial.”
BILL DANA, a top comedy writer but better known to the public as Jose Jiminez, adapted the Carroll classic.
Barbera, speaking of Dana and his script, said, “Bill has done a remarkable job of maintaining the original flavor and feel of the Carroll work. His whimsical and light approach to life and to writing made him a natural choice for the job. That same ‘flibbity-jibbity’ type of dialogue that made ‘Alice’ a part of the language is still there.
“BILL HAS sustained the absurb-but-unspoiled-by-‘common-sense’ outlook of the Carroll characters. Alice is still the polite young lady who never receives a straight answer to any of her questions, and the characters answering her are just as delightfully improbable as ever.”
The production features original music by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse, composers of “Bye, Bye, Birdie” and the current Broadway hit, “Golden Boy,” starring Sammy Davis.
In addition to the Sammy Davis title tune, the special has four other original songs:
“Life’s a Game,” sung by the White Rabbit; “I’m Home,” a ballad by Alice; “They’ll Never Split Us Apart,” sung and danced by the two-headed caterpillar, and “Today’s a Wonderful Day,” a duet by Alice and the White Knight.
Lewis Carroll's “Alice” has been entertaining readers, theater and movie audiences for over a century. The adventures of his wonderous heroine has passed into polyglot and in Mother England one can purchase any number of booklets dealing with every facet of the story and its author.
“ALICE” comes to television on her 101st unbirthday.
Alex Lovy, director of the special, discussed some of the technical and statistical aspects of the television version in a recent interview: “From inception to finished show represents better than 18 months work by approximately 125 people, not including performers and musicians. Animation alone required roughly 8000 man hours.”
Asked if any of the animated characters were difficult to create, Lovy answered, “Alice was our biggest problem. There were over 50 drawings of one before we felt we had the right one. It was just the opposite with the Cheshire Cat. The first drawing submitted on him was so well liked by everyone that we stuck with it.
“An interesting thing about this show," continued Alex, “is that only three of the characters will be seen in caricature. These are Bill Dana, Hedda Hopper and Zsa Zsa Gabor.”
LOVY WENT on to explain why caricatures of the three performers were used. “Since we had a hat gag segment in the show where Mrs. Mad Hatter tries on a number of hats, it seemed only natural to use a likeness of Hedda Hopper.
“With Dana it was more than an identification with his already well-known Jose Jiminez character that prompted us to caricaturization. The amazing amount of character and elasticity in Bill’s face made it perfect for the White Knight. I could have had our artists create a cartoon knight, but why bother when we already had the perfect face in the real Bill Dana?
“ZSA ZSA’S caricature was a matter of love,” he added, jokingly.
“When it was learned she was to do the voice of the Queen of Hearts, it wasn’t hard to picture exactly what the character should look like. And the artists working on her likeness enjoyed their work very much.”
Carroll’s original work was described recently by a journalist as a “dream-bible for
children.” A passage from the original “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” best describes ABC-TV’s modern translation.
“. . . and make their young eyes bright with many a strange tale, perhaps even with a dream of Wonderland of long ago. . .”

Finally, let’s hear about all the casting of an H-B regular amongst all those big names. This unbylined story ran in the Sandusky Register on March 30.

Janet Waldo As Alice
“Knowing the character,” one of the principles of acting, paid dividends for actress Janet Waldo when she auditioned for the voice of one of literature’s most wondrous heroines — Alice.
Actors usually study a character after being cast in the role. Janet's advance understanding
of Alice was instrumental in her being selected to voice the title role in ABC-TV’s “Alice in Wonderland or What’s a Nice Kid Like You Doing In a Place Like This.” The hour-long, animated musical special will be telecast in color Wednesday, March 30, 8-9 p.m. on Ch. 5, 7, 13.
“We tested dozens of young actresses for Alice,” said co-producer Joseph Barbera, “and I was surprised by the answers many gave to questions regarding the character. The majority of them didn’t know who she really was. They were familiar with Lewis Carroll's books, but had their characters confused with those from other well-known stories. Many had never read the books at all.
“Janet not only knew all about Alice, but about the author as well. When she was growing up, reading the Carroll classics was a part of the process.
“I don't want to give the impression that we cast Janet simply because she knew that Alice was a girl who got into some “kooky place” through a mirror. Janet is an extremely talented actress and one of her greatest loves is doing voices,” he continued.
Janet won the reputation of one of America’s most irresistible teen-agers as the star of her own radio and TV series, “Meet Carliss Archer.” [sic]
Since beginning her acting career at Seattle’s Penthouse Theater, Janet has voiced numerous characters, robots and dogs as well as people. In commercials, her voice, sultry and sophisticated, has been heard extolling a cosmetic, or as a frustrated housewife who hasn’t discovered a new time-saving product. A blithe comedienne, she appeared as Tony Franciosa’s secretary on ABC-TV’s “Valentine’s Day,” and as the voice of the teen-age daughter in “The Jetsons.” Recent TV credits include ABC-TV’s “The FBI” and “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” and “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies” and “Get Smart.”
“Janet has done voices for Hanna-Barbera Productions before,” said Barbera, “so we were familiar with her talent.
“Because she so thoroughly understood the character, she was able to get the 14-year-old shading and expressions demanded by the part into her voice. Her animated voice brought the mechanical animation to life.”

Ah, that Joe Barbera. Considering how many liberties were taken with the story, what difference would it make if Janet knew more about the original story and Carroll than whoever Joe had on his casting couch? Still, could you find anyone better for the role? Janet had that teenaged girl sound—and, amazingly, still does.

Considering Janet’s work in theatre, it’s surprising a voice double was brought in to do her song. Alan Reed suffered the same fate. His singing voice was Henry Corden, who took over as Fred’s speaking voice as well after Reed died. Mel Blanc, who, like Reed, had sung on network radio and in cartoons, warbled for himself, as did Howie Morris and Bill Dana.


I'M HOME


LIFE'S A GAME


WHAT'S A NICE KID LIKE YOU


THEY'LL NEVER SPLIT US APART


TODAY'S A WONDERFUL DAY

And, as a bonus, here s another story you can click to enlarge and read.

Pixie and Dixie — Cat-Nap Cat

Produced and Directed by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.
Credits: Animation – Ken Muse; Layout – Bick Bickenbach; Backgrounds – Bob Gentle; Story Sketches and Dialogue – Dan Gordon and Charlie Shows; Titles – Art Goble; Production Supervision – Howard Hanson.
Voice Cast: Pixie, Voice on Phone – Don Messick; Dixie, Jinks – Daws Butler.
Music: Bill Loose/John Seely; Jack Shaindlin; Geordie Hormel.
First aired: week of March 9, 1959.
Production: Huckleberry Hound Show K-24.
Plot: Pixie and Dixie stops Jinks from having the cat-nap he needs to make him an effective mouser.

This cartoon is kind of the inverse of Hanna and Barbera’s Sleepy Time Tom (released 1951) where Jerry tries to get tired old Tom to sleep so he can be kicked out of the house. Here, Pixie and Dixie learn Jinks’ secret to catching them—he gets catnaps. So they try to keep him awake. The one thing they have in common is both cartoons were animated by Ken Muse. You can see the similarity in the split upper lip in the way that he Jinks to the way the cats are drawn in the nice little opening and closing sequences of the Tom and Jerry cartoon.



Sleepy is kind of the operative word here because you could snooze waiting for this cartoon to get into the plot. A real failing of some first season cartoons is they’re brimming with humourless (and occasionally superfluous) chatter and cycle animation to fill time. This is one of them. It isn’t until the 3:15 mark that the mice do much. In the meantime, there isn’t a lot going on, just a long set-up. In the opening scene, we learn Jinks is a domineering jerk. He runs back and forth in their yard, stopping Pixie and Dixie from getting away from him by stepping on their tails with time being filled with cycling drawings of the mice running in place (Why? Is the grass slippery or something)? The best part of the scene is the multiples and brush work when Jinks zips off stage right and re-emerges on the next background drawing stage left.



Here’s some of Shows’ witty dialogue during the opening scene: “Ever hear the expression cat playin’ with the mice? That’s what I’m doin’.” And after he scoops Pixie and Dixie in a paper bag: “Well, what have we here? A sack of goodies.” That’s the best he can come up with? And Shows can’t make up his mind. It was pretty well established by the time this cartoon was written that Jinks calls Pixie and Dixie “meeces” because he doesn’t know the plural form of the word “mouse.” But in this scene, Shows uses “meeces,” “mouses” and “mice”. Yes, he gets the word right. Joe, can you hurry up and hire Warren Foster, please?

This goes on for the minute and 15 seconds of the cartoon. The scene is interrupted by an off-camera phone ringing. Then we get 3½ seconds of a static shot of a garbage can. “Ta ta and aw revvor, meeces,” is how Jinks mangles French as he tosses the crunched up paper bag with Pixie and Dixie in it into the aforementioned can.

The dialogue’s a little better in the next scene when Jinks is on the phone but the humour’s undermined by the music the sound cutter has picked. It’d be perfect over a pan of scenic Jellystone Park (which is what it was used for in several cartoons) but it’s too low-key for the arrogant braggart Jinks. “I’ve just been named Cat of the Year? A wise decision,” he jauntily tells whoever is on the other end. He’s also been elected captain of the Olympic Mouse Catching Team and asked to endorse cat food (he accepts “for a reasonably exorbitant fee, of course”). During the scene, Barbera cuts back to shots of the meeces’ head sticking out of the garbage can. One lasts seven seconds and the other ten. They consist of nothing more than eye blinks and head turns in three drawings. No wonder Ken Muse could slash out the footage.

Jinks explains on the phone the secret to his mouse-catching success is getting a cat-nap that gives him “wim, wiggour and witality” (with those “w”s for “v”s, Jinks have originally spoken Latin). The meece overhear it and decide to see that Jinks doesn’t get any sleep. Now we can finally see some gags.

● Jinks is snoozing on a hammock. The meeces pull it down and let go. Jinks flies straight up, then back down into the hammock, which twirls him around and lands him hard on the ground. Jinks: “Them mices has attack-ed me.” Sweet milk of magnesia in a bottle, Charlie, that’s a quip? The best part is Bob Gentle’s background, which shows the meece have their own address (and I don’t think the stylised brick wall was used in any other cartoon).



● Jinks goes for a “short, snappy siest-er” on the living room couch. Oh, geez, Charlie Shows is back with his rhyming dialogue. “Shall we try this pot on for size, guys?” says Dixie. But there’s no “guys.” He’s only talking to one “guy”—Pixie. Great barking antelope, Charlie, stop being so contrived. Anyway, Dixie puts a pot over Jinks’ head and Pixie hits the pot with a spoon. There’s a bell sound and Jinks’ head vibrates in three drawings on twos. He has no comeback. He just stares at the camera. I guess Charlie Shows got tired of me complaining and decided no dialogue was better than lousy dialogue.

Pixie runs one direction and Dixie runs the other way into a mouse hole. Jinks wags his finger. “You guys can’t humil-erate the Cat of the Year, you hear?” But there’s no “guys” again. Pixie ran away in a completely different direction, there’s only one mouse in the hole, Charlie. Sigh.

● Jinks gets sleepy at the mouse hole and dozes off. Dixie puts a balloon in his mouth. Jinks’ snoring blows up the balloon and it pops, waking him up. “Uh, what went ‘kapoom’?” Jinks says at the camera.

● The meece thoughtfully leave Jinks a “sofy piller on which to rest my weary head bones” outside the mouse hole in the other side of the living room. It’s just a ruse. Jinks sleeps. Dixie sticks a bugle through Jinks’ ears and blows. It sounds like a ’53 Pontiac instead of a bugle, but we get the gag. You’ve seen it before.



● A closet seems like a good place for a nap. Nope. The meece have left a stick of dynamite inside. The fuse goes under the door. Pixie lights it. Whoever in Roberta Greutert’s ink and paint department (I think she was in charge at the time) uses a nice bit of brushwork here to show the meece getting away from a standing position. Shot of the door moving, smoke coming out, camera shaking and the door falls. We don’t see how badly Jinks is scarred but we do see the surrender flag waved (four drawings on twos).




Those are the gags. All four of them.

So Jinks signs a peace treaty (with three Xs) including an agreement to sleep in the doghouse. Then Jinks falls asleep on the paper, talking in his sleep “I hate mice” in between snores until the time on the cartoon is up.



The music is sufficiently dreamy in the closet scene and a sound cutter can never go wrong using ‘Toboggan Run’ in a chase scene.

0:00 - Pixie and Dixie Main Title theme (Curtin-Shows-Hanna-Barbera).
0:26 - LAF 5-20 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) – Jinks steps on meeces tails; blows up bag.
1:36 - no music. Jinks pops bag.
1:40 - TC 204A WISTFUL COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Phone rings, phone call, part of “win, wivour” line.
2:52 - TC 436 SHINING DAY (Loose-Seely) – end of “wivour, vitality” line, Jinks in hammock, Jinks sproings up.
3:34 - ZR 47 LIGHT ANIMATION (Hormel) – Jinks in air, crashes to ground, skids to mouse hole, shakes finger.
4:04 - TC 432 HOLLY DAY (Loose-Seely) – Jinks on couch, pot clanged over head.
4:24 - LAF 5-20 TOBOGGAN RUN (Shaindlin) – Jinks sees mice run, goes to mouse hole, starts snoring.
4:46 - TC 300 ECCENTRIC COMEDY (Loose-Seely) – Dixie comes out of hole, balloon bursts.
5:11 - ZR 48 FAST MOVEMENT (Hormel) – Mice running, Jinks sleeps on pillow.
5:47 - no music. Bugle blown through Jinks’ ears.
5:51 - ZR 49 LIGHT EERIE (Hormel) – Jinks in closet, kaboom.
6:26 - F 3 RECESS (Shaindlin) – Jinks waves flag, signs agreement, sleeps.
7:10 - Pixie and Dixie End Title theme (Curtin).

Art Goble

When you watch an old movie and see the credit “Gowns by Adrian” or “Music by Bernard Herrmann,” you have a pretty good idea what that entails. The same can’t be said for the credit “Titles, Lawrence Goble” on the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

It’s logical to think that this would apply to the title card in front of each cartoon, like the ones Iraj Paran drew for a later generation of H-B cartoons. But that’s not the case. Dick Bickenbach, I’m told, was the one who designed all of the early cards. So what exactly did he do? And who was Lawrence Goble?

There’s a bit of confusion in who he was because he only seems to have gone by his given name in the credits of Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Everyone knew him as Art Goble, at least in adulthood. What he was known as a boy is unclear.

Census and death records show Lawrence Samuel Goble was born on August 12, 1897 in Bates, Missouri to Edward C. and Mary E. Goble, the sixth child in the family (three more followed). The 1900 Census lists him as “Samuel L.,” but future census reports have him as “Lawrence S.” By age 12, he was living in Allen, Kansas. Some time in the 1920s, he moved to Kansas City where he married his wife Beryl. More importantly, he got into the animation business there. Yes, at the same Kansas City Film Ad company that employed all the early names of Hollywood animation—Disney, Iwerks, Harman, Ising. Bugs Hardaway worked in Kansas City. So did Carl Stalling. And Friz Freleng. And many more. Prior to that, he got a job as a clerk for Western Auto Supply.

Goble arrived in Los Angeles about 1931. The 1933 City Directory lists his occupation as “card writer” while the following year he is recorded as a “cartoonist.” He was the ink and paint supervisor at the Leon Schlesinger studio by 1936. But, like Freleng, he got a call from Fred Quimby the following year. And the Motion Picture Herald quotes from an MGM news release naming 31 key employees of its new cartoon studio. It announces the hiring of Bill Hanna as a director, Joe Barbera as a storyman and “L.S. Goble is inking and painting head.” Interestingly, the article names the former studios of most of the hirees, but not Goble.

He seems to have remained at Metro until its cartoon studio closed in 1957, with his name never appearing on a theatrical short. Well, with one exception.



There’s Goble’s name on that certificate on the jail cell in Tex Avery’s ‘Cellbound’ (1955). Incidentally, the other name is Vera Ohman, who married Howard Hanson, the first Production Supervisor of the Hanna-Barbera studio.

It’s because of Avery that I first heard of Art Goble to begin with. More specifically, Joe Adamson’s interview with Avery in his book Tex Avery, King of Cartoons. Writer Mike Maltese is in the room with him:

Avery: Remember the Coke machine that would let you almost get the next bottle out, but you couldn’t? So we took the cap off. . . .
Maltese: . . . and put in a straw. . . .
Avery: . . . and we siphoned it. And we sent the mail boy to get a double shot of booze, and poured it in there. . . .
Maltese: . . . put it in the Cokes. . . .
Avery: . . . double shot of bourbon. . . .
Maltese: . . . then we replaced the cap. . . .
Avery: . . . and found a sucker. It was Art Gobel [sic]. Art took that drink, and he went over to the sand pot and spit it right out. He felt this hot stream going right down, you know. He said “I’ve been poisoned!”

As Maltese arrived at Schlesinger from Fleischer’s in 1937, the “poisoning” had to take place that year.

When the MGM studio closed in 1957, Hanna and Barbera took some—but not all—of its key employees. Art Goble came along but not as the head of inking and painting. His former assistant, Roberta Greutert, got that job. Instead, he credits a credit under “Titles.” Considering Bickenbach did the main title card and the only titles on The Flintstones were calligraphic, it may simply be that Art Goble took care of the lettering of the credits superimposed over the animation at the end of each show. Or, in the case of Loopy de Loop and the other shorts, lettered some title cards.

Art Goble would have certainly been in animation longer than anyone else at the studio at the time it began (Dick Lundy arrived almost two years later; his career started in 1929), even longer than Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera themselves. Goble’s last credit was on Top Cat, which was the first to use a rectangular, slightly-shadowed lettering. Daily Variety of July 30, 1962 announced his retirement from Hanna-Barbera. Goble died in Los Angeles on February 25, 1968.

Yogi Bear, Sunday, January 1962

Let’s start the first Sunday of the New Year looking back at the Yogi Bear Sunday comics from 50 years ago this month. My usual source isn’t on-line so all but one are from the Ottawa Citizen, which published them the previous Saturday.



Little forest creatures, the kind you almost never saw on Yogi Bear cartoons, grace the optional top panel of the January 7 comic. The punch line panel is kind of creepy. Incidentally, the Hanna-Barbara script logo is the same one that was on title cards for the Huck, Meeces, Quick Draw, etc. cartoons that year.



Is there no end to “injuns” who “talk-um” like “heap-big” stereotypes? We’ve got another one here. And “Rain in Face”? Spare me. I like how whoever is lettering the comic for January 14 makes sure we catch the rhyme at the end by putting it in bold. In fact, all four of these comics do it.



Cute story in the January 21 comic. Yogi’s doing a Highland dance in one of the panels and the Arthur Murray pun doesn’t just settle for a pun on his name, like on a Flintstones episode. Sorry for the poor quality; this one was snipped from newspapers in Joplin (which has the full three rows but in poor quality)and another paper I don’t normally use.



A good-looking Quick Draw McGraw makes an appearance on January 28. Yogi interrupted a TV Western shoot at Jellystone in ‘Droop-a-long Yogi’ which should have aired about the time this comic was published.

Click on any of the comics to enlarge them.

Yowp Note: Due to difficulties locating the Flintstones Sunday comics, I won't be posting them any more. You’ve had a chance to view the first couple of months.